Abstract

The author analyses a discussion on death penalty that took place in Belgrade, at the end of the socialist era, between Igor Primorac and Ivan Jankovic. Primorac attacked the utilitarian justification of the socialist penal system, though he agreed on different, retributive grounds that death penalty for premeditated murder should be preserved. Jankovic advocated utilitarian ideas and rejected the death penalty as an atavistic aberration. In the first part of the article, their main arguments are presented and their contextual meaning is being explained. In the second part of the article, the author analyses those arguments and concludes that a) retributivism has not been the philosophy of death penalty during its history, b) that retentionist conclusions do not follow from retributive premises, c) that utilitarianism, in spite of its historical connection with abolitionism, can justify death penalty, d) that since the problem cannot be resolved on moral grounds alone, it should be resolved on political grounds, and e) that political considerations require the abolition of death penalty