STUDIES: Death Penalty Adversely Affects Families of Victims and Defendants

The death penal­ty adverse­ly affects both fam­i­lies of mur­der vic­tims and fam­i­lies of the accused, accord­ing to two recent jour­nal arti­cles. In his Psychology Today blog, Talking About Trauma, psy­chol­o­gist Dr. Robert T. Muller (pic­tured) reports that psy­cho­log­i­cal stud­ies have have found that the death penal­ty pro­duces neg­a­tive effects on fam­i­lies and friends of mur­der vic­tims (referred to as ​“co-vic­tims”).

One University of Minnesota study found that just 2.5% of co-vic­tims report­ed achiev­ing clo­sure as a result of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, while 20.1% said the exe­cu­tion did not help them heal. That may be because, as one co-vic­tim described it, ​“Healing is a process, not an event.” A 2012 Marquette University Law School study report­ed that co-vic­tims had improved phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal health and greater sat­is­fac­tion with the legal sys­tem in cas­es where per­pe­tra­tors received life sen­tences, rather than death sen­tences. The authors of that study said co-vic­tims, ​“may pre­fer the final­i­ty of a life sen­tence and the obscu­ri­ty into which the defen­dant will quick­ly fall, to the con­tin­ued uncer­tain­ty and pub­lic­i­ty of the death penalty.” 

Lula Redmond, a Florida ther­a­pist who works with fam­i­ly mem­bers of mur­der vic­tims, said, ​“More often than not, fam­i­lies of mur­der vic­tims do not expe­ri­ence the relief they expect­ed to feel at the exe­cu­tion. Taking a life doesn’t fill that void, but it’s gen­er­al­ly not until after the exe­cu­tion that fam­i­lies realize this.” 

A num­ber of co-vic­tims expressed sym­pa­thy for fam­i­ly mem­bers of the con­demned, but the death penal­ty process also can polar­ize the fam­i­lies, obstruct­ing heal­ing for both. An arti­cle for the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform by Professor Michael Radelet of the University of Colorado at Boulder describes the ret­ribu­tive effects of the death penal­ty on the fam­i­ly, friends, and attor­neys of death row pris­on­ers. Radelet com­pares these impacts to the effect of life with­out parole and argues ​“that the death penalty’s added pun­ish­ment over LWOP often pun­ish­es the fam­i­ly just as much as the inmate, and after the exe­cu­tion the full brunt of the pun­ish­ment falls on the fam­i­ly. This added impact dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly pun­ish­es women and chil­dren.” These effects on peo­ple oth­er than the inmate, he writes, ​“under­mine the prin­ci­ple that the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem pun­ish­es only the guilty and nev­er the inno­cent. The death penal­ty affects every­one who knows, cares for, or works with the death row inmate.”