INDEX

In general, Muslim nations recognize the validity of the death penalty, and many frequently impose it. According to Amnesty International, between 1985 and mid-1988, Saudi Arabia executed 140 prisoners for the crimes of murder, robbery with violence, drug smuggling or distribution, and adultery. During the same period, Pakistan executed 115, primarily for the crime of murder. Hundreds every year faced the firing squad in Iraq for murder, desertion, treason, sabotage, and economic corruption. At the same time, the Islamic Republic of Iran executed more than 743 inmates for murder, drug crimes, political offenses, prostitution, adultery and other “moral offenses,” including “being corrupt on earth” and “being at enmity with God.” In face of the widespread acceptance of the death penalty within the Muslim world, this essay explores the contours of an Islamic argument against capital punishment. The argument is not, and cannot be, an appeal for the abolition of the death penalty in all circumstances. It does call into question, however, the legitimacy – indeed, the legality in accordance with the principles of classical Islamic law, or the Shari’ah – of capital punishment as it is practiced in the era of Islamization.

• Document type Article
• Countries list Iran (Islamic Republic of)
• Themes list Religion , Capital offences, Most Serious Crimes,

As of November 2001, 203 men sit on Ohio’s death row. With the executions of Wilford Berry on February 19, 1999, Jay D. Scott on June 14, 2001, and John Byrd, Jr. on February 19, 2002, the death penalty in Ohio is a reality. The capital defense practitioner representing a client at trial or on appeal must be prepared to defend his or her client against that reality. To that end, this article examines the statutory framework within which capital cases are prosecuted with the express purpose of aiding defense practitioners and improving the quality of capital representation in Ohio. This article analyzes both the positive and negative aspects of Ohio’s death penalty statute. To meet its twin objects, practical advice and suggested litigation strategies are intermingled with critical analysis of the law in Ohio.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Legal Representation,

American death penalty laws and procedures persistently minimize cases involving female capital offenders. Recognizing some benign explanations for this disparate impact, Professor Streib nonetheless sees the dearth of female death penalty trials, death sentences, and actual executions as signaling sex bias throughout the death penalty system. In this article, he provides data concerning death sentencing and execution patterns and then suggests both substantive and procedural means to address the apparent sex bias. Much more significant, however, is the unique lens for examining the death penalty that is provided by a sex bias analysis. Professor Streib concludes that this perspective unmasks the system’s crime-fighting rhetoric to reveal a macho refuge that masculinizes all who enter therein.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Women,

The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) of 1996 was drafted, enacted, and signed in an atmosphere of anger and fear. The legislation, which includes substantial cutbacks in the federal habeas corpus remedy, was Congress’s response to the tragedy of the Oklahoma City bombing. During the congressional hearings on the bills that culminated in AEDPA, the proponents of the legislation claimed that its habeas corpus restrictions and other provisions were necessary to fight domestic terrorism. The Senate bill was approved by the House on April 18, 1996, the day before the one-year anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. President Bill Clinton invoked the bombing in a statement he issued at the time of the Senate’s passage of the legislation and again when he signed the legislation into law. Even at the time of the debates, some courageous legislators were willing to denounce the fallacious connection that the bill’s proponents drew between the bombing and the broader issues of the scope and availability of habeas corpus review. Many of the habeas corpus restrictions ultimately built into AEDPA had been under consideration by Congress since 1990, though none had been adopted. The congressional proponents of these restrictions seized upon the Oklahoma City tragedy as a means of accomplishing their longstanding goal to scale back federal habeas corpus review.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Networks,

We assessed the Court’s reformist project on its own terms, asking whether the Court achieved the goals explicit or tolerated, if not invited, the inequalities and capriciousness characteristic of the pre-Furman era. We also argued that, apart from its failure on its own terms, the Supreme Court’s reformist regulation of capital punishment might well have carried an additional unanticipated cost. Whereas abolitionists initially sought judicial regulation of the death penalty as at least a first step towards abolition, judicial reform actually may have helped to stabilize the death penalty as a social practice. We argued that the appearance of intensive regulation of state death penalty practices, notwithstanding its virtual absence, played a role in legitimizing the practice of capital punishment in the eyes of actors both within and outside the criminal justice system, and we pointed to some objective indicators—such as the dramatic decline in the use of executive clemency in the post-Furman era[12] —as support for this thesis. Implicit in Furman and the 1976 foundational cases. Our assessment was not a positive one. Although the reformist approach spawned an extraordinarily intricate and detailed capital punishment jurisprudence, the resulting doctrines were in practical terms largely unresponsive to the underlying concerns for fairness and heightened reliability that had first led to the constitutional regulation of the death penalty. We described contemporary capital punishment law as the worst of all possible worlds. Its sheer complexity led to numerous reversals of death sentences and thus imposed substantial costs on state criminal justice systems. On closer inspection, however, the complexity concealed the minimalist nature of the Court’s reforms.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Networks,

The report as presented to the Ohio State Bar Association Council of Delegates in 1997,the OSBA’s recommendations and, where there have been changes in the law since that time, updates reflecting those changes. New information is noted at the conclusion of each section of the report immediately following the OSBA recommendation for that section.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Networks,

Recently, the work of the abolitionist community has shifted from the courts to the legislatures. In this article, Professor Sarat examines the significance of what he calls the “new abolitionism” in the politics of legislation aimed at changing or ending the death penalty. The author describes the new abolitionism in detail and then examines its role in the May 2000 vote of the New Hampshire State Legislature to repeal the death penalty. The author concludes that the focus of the new abolitionism on the practical liabilities of our system of capital punishment makes it possible for legislators to oppose the death penalty whilepresenting themselves as guardians of widely shared values and the integrity and fairness of our legal institutions.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Networks,

Mr. Page committed an atrocious crime. He did not know his victim, Peyton Tuthill, a young woman who had recently graduated from college and moved to Denver. But he was in her house, looking for money and items to sell, when she returned from a job interview. Instead of leaving her home, Mr. Page stayed to beat Peyton Tuthill, tie her up, stab her, slit her throat, rape her repeatedly, and eventually, kill her. Clearly, Ms. Tuthill did not deserve to die such a tortured death. Clearly, her death resulted from an egregious crime. However, the answer to the question of whether Mr. Page should be executed for committing this murder is not as clear. Some would answer affirmatively, others negatively. An important question is: who should decide?

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Networks,

The landscape of the American death penalty is diverse. Though death penalty attitudes show a remarkable and increasing degree of homogeneity by region, race, gender, religion, and other factors, the actual practice of the death penalty varies substantially from region to region, and even from state to state. While these variations are widely recognized, they are not widely studied or understood. The lack of attention paid to the actual practice of the death penalty in different states and regions, the patterns that contribute to its use, and the factors associated with these patterns represents a substantial and troubling gap in our knowledge of an issue as widely studied as the death penalty.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Networks,

The capital punishment system in the United States is broken. Studies reveal growing delays nationwide between death sentences and executions and inexcusably high rates of reversals and retrials of capital verdicts. The current system persistently malfunctions because it rewards trial actors, such as police, prosecutors, and trial judges, for imposing death sentences, but it does not force them either to avoid making mistakes or to bear the cost of mistakes that are made during the process. Nor is there any adversarial discipline imposed at the trial level because capital defendants usually receive appointed counsel who either do not have experience trying capital cases or who receive inadequate resources from the State to pay litigation expenses. Instead, the appellate system is forced to deal with large amounts of error, creating backlog and delays. This article proposes a radical trade-off for capital defendants in which they agree to give up existing post-conviction review rights in return for a real assurance of better qualified, higher quality trial counsel. This proposal will avoid the traps of window dressing reforms, save states a good bit of the expense of appellate review, and make the capital punishment system more fair, efficient, and effective.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Legal Representation,