mispunish

present singular third person mispunishes · participle present mispunishing · participle past mispunished · past mispunished

1. To punish inappropriately; to give the wrong amount or type of punishment, or to punish someone for an offense they did not commit.

   Multiple punitive damages are likely to mispunish defendants.

   1993, United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee on Courts and Administrative Practice, The Multiparty, Multiforum Jurisdiction Act of 1991, page 236

   3 more examples

   Some people do not correctly apply the natural law, or they tend to be biased when judging in their own cases, or they tend to mispunish, overpunish, etc.

   1998, N. Scott Arnold, “Affirmative Action and the Demands of Justice”, in Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller, Jr, Jeffrey Paul, editors, Problems of Market Liberalism, volume 15, page 145

   Ordinarily, hate censorship theorists would be the first to distrust a law that could so mispunish – but this is not the case when it comes to hate speech law.

   2004, Stefan Braun, Democracy Off Balance, page 109

   But what is a guilty person's complaint against an unreliable procedure? That it is too likely to mispunish him?

   2017, Edward P. Stringham, Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of Choice