Page:Glossip v. Gross.pdf/38

 Cite as: 576 U. S. ____ (2015)

5

SCALIA, J., concurring

judiciary’s pay grade. Perhaps JUSTICE BREYER is more forgiving—or more enlightened—than those who, like Kant, believe that death is the only just punishment for taking a life. I would not presume to tell parents whose life has been forever altered by the brutal murder of a child that life imprisonment is punishment enough. And finally, JUSTICE BREYER speculates that it does not “seem likely” that the death penalty has a “significant” deterrent effect. Post, at 25. It seems very likely to me, and there are statistical studies that say so. See, e.g., Zimmerman, State Executions, Deterrence, and the Incidence of Murder, 7 J. Applied Econ. 163, 166 (2004) (“[I]t is estimated that each state execution deters approximately fourteen murders per year on average”); Dezhbakhsh, Rubin, & Shepherd, Does Capital Punishment Have a Deterrent Effect? New Evidence from Postmoratorium Panel Data, 5 Am. L. & Econ. Rev. 344 (2003) (“[E]ach execution results, on average, in eighteen fewer murders” per year); Sunstein & Vermeule, Is Capital Punishment Morally Required? Acts, Omissions, and Life-Life Tradeoffs, 58 Stan. L. Rev. 703, 713 (2005) (“All in all, the recent evidence of a deterrent effect from capital punishment seems impressive, especially in light of its ‘apparent power and unanimity’ ”). But we federal judges live in a world apart from the vast majority of Americans. After work, we retire to homes in placid suburbia or to high-rise co-ops with guards at the door. We are not confronted with the threat of violence that is ever present in many Americans’ everyday lives. The suggestion that the incremental deterrent effect of capital punishment does not seem “significant” reflects, it seems to me, a let-them-eatcake obliviousness to the needs of others. Let the People decide how much incremental deterrence is appropriate. Of course, this delay is a problem of the Court’s own making. As JUSTICE BREYER concedes, for more than 160 years, capital sentences were carried out in an average of