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The Death Penalty and the Fallibility of Knowledge:
A Philosophical Critique of the Death Penalty
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Hadi Samadi *    |
| Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Law, Theology, and Political Science, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran. |
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Abstract: (141 Views) |
Statistics show that at least 4 percent of those sentenced to death in the United States have been innocent. This figure alone reveals an undeniable reality: judicial systems—despite striving for fairness—are administered by human beings, and human beings are fallible. Judges, prosecutors, juries, lawyers, witnesses, and even the defendants’ own confessions are all prone to error. This fallibility is a fundamental feature of human cognition, one that must be taken into account in the design of all social systems, especially criminal justice systems.
In this paper, we first draw directly on fallibilism to analyze irreversible rulings such as the death penalty. We then proceed from an epistemological critique to a moral one. Next, from two additional epistemological perspectives, we turn first to experimental jurisprudence, urging traditional legal systems to take empirical data on capital punishment seriously; and finally, by consulting an entry from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, we examine—this time from the standpoint of analytical jurisprudence—the concept of “evidence” as the basis for issuing death sentences. |
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| Keywords: Death penalty, philosophy, fallibilism, epistemology, pragmatic encroachment, experimental jurisprudence, legal evidence |
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Full-Text [PDF 546 kb]
(61 Downloads)
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Type of Study: Research |
Subject:
Special
Received: 2025/06/17 | Accepted: 2025/11/3 | Published: 2026/03/16
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