Exploring the Outer Limits of the Usefulness of Criminal Justice Theories

Very few people who have experienced first year criminal law classes in the American law school system would be surprised to hear about a professor posing a series question about the potential for rehabilitation or retributive legal theory based on an extreme set of facts, either real or imagined. Maybe then it should not be that surprising that professor and blogger Douglas A. Berman used the real life example of the so-called Craigslist Killer and his sentencing-day suicide to illustrate a point about utilitarian theory.

Despite this, Berman's point, that the suicide of the accused was pleasing to him, as by, 'killing himself, Markoff saved a lot of time, money and energy for those who would be tasked with prosecuting and defending him,' has struck a bit of a chord both with commentors on his site and other blogs such as Above the Law. While some agree with his assessment that society is better off after the accused took his own life, others argue that the result is less than satisfying.

Assuming the accused had committed the crimes he was suspected of, it is difficult to know whether or not this was a 'good' outcome in this situation. While the killer will certainly never take someone else's life, he also took justice out of the hands of the system, creating any number of problems for anyone who believes in rehabilitation or that the system can act as a deterrent. Retributivists should also be torn over the result, probably at least in part depending on whether they adhere to the theory due to its biblical roots or for some alternative reason.

It also seems that the family believes that it has been robbed of closure (though it is tough to see how it could truly ever get closure in a case such as this one). If the accused were mentally unstable, maybe his suicide does not even serve to validate utilitarian theory. It will remain difficult to know for sure without the benefit of the illuminating light of a trial.

Perhaps we can all agree that this is/was an awful situation for all of the families involved. Maybe it just goes to show that not all things in the criminal justice system fit nicely into the parameters provided by first year criminal law classes, and maybe that sometimes life is a little more complicated than text books would have us believe.