Rafael Robb: Should Someone Who Brutally Murders His Wife Be a Professor or Journal Editor?

This is part of the split-up post, Should Rapists Edit Scholarly Journals?

There has long been discussion of the Rafael Robb case in economics. Robb was a prominent professor of economics at the University of Pennsylania. His 1993 Econometrica paper with Kandori and Mailath, “Learning, mutation, and long run equilibria in games”, has 2,595 cites, compared to just 695 for my top paper, my 1991 “Naked Exclusion” with Ramseyer and Wiley in American Economic Review (I have 3,833 for my game theory book, but that’s because it’s good for reference). He gave a talk here at Indiana, and he either wrote or was going to be asked to write a promotion letter for one of our faculty, and I recall hearing that he’d been a major in the paratroops in the Israel army— a tough guy. In 2006 he beat his wife to death in an argument over their divorce. He got out of prison in 2017.

A 2019 article,“Upper Merion wife killer settles $124M civil dispute with wife’s estate” says:

A former University of Pennsylvania professor who killed his wife in their Upper Merion home in 2006 has agreed to relinquish three-quarters of his investment and pension assets to help satisfy a $124.4 million civil verdict lodged against him.
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Under an agreement reached last week in Montgomery County Court between convicted killer Rafael Robb and the estate of Robb’s late wife, Ellen Gregory, 75-percent of the value of Robb’s investment and pension assets will be transferred to the Gregory estate. Twenty-five percent of the assets will remain the sole property of Robb, according to the agreement.
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During previous court hearings, testimony revealed Robb’s assets included an estimated $2.2 million retirement account and more than $500,000 from several individual retirement accounts.
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Additionally, under the settlement that was approved by county President Judge Thomas M. DelRicci, Robb’s former Upper Merion home in the 600 block of Forest Road, where the murder occurred, will be sold with 75-percent of the net proceeds going to the Gregory estate and Robb retaining 25-percent of the proceeds.
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The home has not been occupied for more than 10 years and some characterized it in court as “a stigma house.”
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After a three-day civil trial in November 2014, a jury awarded the $124.4 million to the estate, consisting of the couple’s only child, Olivia, who was 12 at the time of her mother’s death.
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Lawyers said it was “the largest personal injury verdict in the history of Pennsylvania.”
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Specifically, the jury awarded $100 million in punitive damages to the estate and, in smaller increments, more than $24 million for loss of contributions to Olivia Robb from her mother and for the pain and suffering of Ellen while she was being beaten to death.
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During a hearing in January 2016, Robb lost his bid to prevent his retirement assets from being used to satisfy the civil verdict. In his ruling at that time, DelRicci noted “the record is clear that Ellen was moving forward with divorce proceedings” and had retained a lawyer.
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“If Ellen had not been murdered, the divorce would have proceeded and in due course she would have been entitled to a portion of those funds,” DelRicci wrote in 2016.
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Robb, now 68 and reportedly living near Pittsburgh after his release from prison two years ago, uttered, “Nothing to say,” when asked to comment about the resolution of the case as he left court last week with his lawyer.
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Robb, a former economics professor who specialized in game theory, pleaded guilty in 2007 to the Dec. 22, 2006, killing of his wife in their Forest Road home while she was wrapping Christmas presents. Under a plea deal, prosecutors withdrew charges of first- and third-degree murder and replaced them with one count of voluntary manslaughter. Robb was sentenced to five to 10 years in prison, to be followed by 10 years’ probation, on the manslaughter charge.

Robb was released from prison on Jan. 8, 2017, after serving the full 10-year prison term. He must now complete the additional 10-year period of probation.
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Robb has said the killing was the result of an argument inside the couple’s home. During his testimony at the separate civil trial, Robb claimed he was arguing with his wife and that she pushed him and he fell down. After the push, he claimed that he grabbed an exercise bar and used it to beat her to death.

A perennial discussion topic is whether Robb, if he’d want to (though I expect he is quite content to just retire) should be rehired by his old department or by some other economics department, and whether he should be a journal editor, or even a referee.

I say yes. I would have hanged him for the murder, myself, but given that people in America are going to be soft on crime, I see no reason not to use his talents in the service of the economy and the world of scholarship. He did not embezzle, or molest students, or plagiarize, or make up data. His offense, while extreme, was entirely personal. I would not let him marry my daughter, but I would let him edit my journal. It makes no sense at all, I think, to say that the best social policy is to put a price of just 10 years of his time for beating his wife to death but then add that someone like him should never be allowed to work again. It’s typical liberal thinking: pretend to be merciful and compassionate, but then be vindictive in the extreme and make sure the person’s life is totally ruined forever, even at society’s expense.