[...] The number of bad or morbid predispositions our antecedents have been able to transmit to us is, thus, incalculable. We come into the world laden wih the weight of an infinite necessity. [...] there never exists any total responsibility, or, consequently, any absolute punishment or reward. No one can be rewarded completely, not even the winners of Nobel Prizes. But no one should be punished absolutely if he is thought guilty, and certainly not if there is a chance of his being innocent. The death penalty, which really neither provides an example nor assures distributive justice, simply usurps an exorbitant privilege by claiming to punish an always relative culpability by a definitive and irreparable punishment.