INDEX

This article discusses the role of executive clemency in light of the current political environment. Attending to the political aspects of the capital litigation process gives insight into the trends in the use of executive clemency

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

This research examines the effects of social context on support for the death penalty using individual-level data from the 1974-98 General Social Survey (GSS) which have been linked with aggregate level data on homicide rates and sociodemographic, political and economic characteristics. This study finds that residents of areas with higher homicide rates, a larger proportion of blacks, and a more conservative political climate are significantly more likely to support the death penalty, net of compositional differences.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Public opinion,

This article gives insight into the different opinions held by the US and Europe in terms of the death penalty. The interplay between terrorism, the death penalty and extradition is also examined.

• Document type Article
• Themes list Extradition, Terrorism,

That the European area is a zone free of capital punishment is the result of a complex process of restraints that has evolved over the last 50 years. Domestic, regional and universal international law, as well as certain components within each level, have influenced each other to produce a dynamic, circular movement towards abolition. Starting from the internal level, restraints on the death penalty rose up to the regional and universal levels, and then descended back down into domestic law. This process, however, has not produced a completely closed circle, and certain countries in Europe retain legislation permitting recourse to the death penalty for certain crimes, especially war crimes and, according to recent interpretations, criminal offences related to terrorist activity. Extradition or other administrative mechanisms of expulsion also illustrate potential disjunctions in the circle, as they may allow persons to be transferred to retentionist countries. Even though the legislative framework has significantly evolved in the last few years, the dominant role played by political evaluations creates new fissures in the abolitionist circle. Only recently have new abolitionist perspectives emerged from the ‘right of interference’ in foreign death penalty cases, which some countries try to exercise when their own nationals are involved.

• Document type Article
• Themes list Networks,

Drawing from televised debates over capital punishment on CNN’s Crossfire from February 2000 to June 2002, I argue that Teles’s (1998) theory of “dissensus politics” is useful in understanding the U.S.’s preservation of capital punishment as well as current divisions in death penalty sentiment within the U.S. I pose the retention of capital punishment as the product of rival elites who are unwilling to forsake capital punishment’s moral character (and often the political benefits it offers), and who consequently ignore an American public that appears to have reached a measured consensus of doubt about the death penalty.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Public opinion, Public debate,

Part I of this Article will discuss the Court’s prior decisions in Booth and Gathers, and Parts II and III will briefly attempt to clarify the parameters of the Payne holding. Part IV of this Article will survey the current legal landscape of state and federal practice regarding the admissibility of VIE and argument. Finally, this Article will offer in conclusion some brief perspectives on several unresolved issues in this particularly thorny (and misguided) area of capital punishment jurisprudence.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Murder Victims' Families,

Part I of this Article examines the evolution of victims from interested parties to participants giving sentencing recommendations. Part II examines the constitutionality of victim sentencing participation laws and explains why crime victims’ sentencing recommendations in capital cases are constitutional. In Part III, this Article shows how existing judicial procedures provide adequate constitutional safeguards. Finally, Part IV demonstrates how victims of capital homicide are harmed when the law denies them the ability to recommend sentences

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Murder Victims' Families,

European executions obeyed a complex model that the author proposes to call ‘the supplice pattern’. The term supplice designates tortures and tormented executions, but it also includes their cultural background. The European way of executing used religious deeds, aesthetic devices and performing arts techniques which themselves called for artistic representations through paintings, theatre, etc. Moreover, Christian civilisation was unique in the belief that the spectacle of a painful execution had a redemptive effect on the criminals and the attendants as well. Chinese executions obeyed an entirely different conception. They were designed to show that punishment fitted the crime as provided in the penal code. All details were aimed to highlight and inculcate the meaning of the law, while signs of emotions, deeds, words, that could have interfered with the lesson in law were prohibited. In China, capital executions were not organized as a show nor subject to aesthetic representations, and they had no redemptive function. This matter-of-fact way of executing people caused Westerners deep uneasiness. The absence of religious background and staging devices was interpreted as a sign of barbarity and cruelty. What was stigmatised was not so much the facts that their failure to conform to the ‘supplice pattern’ that constituted for any Westerner the due process of capital executions.

• Document type Article
• Countries list China
• Themes list Networks,

The report also discusses the issue of capital punishment and makes reference to death penalty cases in which the Special Rapporteur has intervened in reaction to reports that the sentences concerned had been passed in violation of international restrictions and human rights standards.

• Document type International law - United Nations
• Themes list Trend Towards Abolition,
• Available languages حالات الإعدام خارج نطاق القضاء أو بإجراء اتموجة أو تعسفاً تقرير المقرر الخاص اسمة جهانقير, مقدم مطابقا لقرار لجنة الحقوق الانسان 2002/36Внесудебные казни, казни без надлежащего судебного разбирательства или произвольные казни: Доклад Специального докладчика Асмы Джахангир, представленный в соответствии с резолюцией 2002/36 Комиссии по правам человекаExécutions extrajudiciaires, sommaires ou arbitraires: Rapport de la Rapporteuse spéciale, Mme Asma Jahangir, soumis en application de la résolution 2002/36 de la Commission des droits de l’homme法外处决、即审即决或任意处决: 特别报告员阿斯玛·贾汉吉尔根据人权委员会第 2002/36 号决议提交的报告Las ejecuciones extrajudiciales, sumarias o arbitrarias: Informe de la Relatora Especial, Asma Jahangir, presentado en cumplimiento de la resolución 2002/36 de la Comisión de Derechos Humanos

The report also discusses the issue of capital punishment and makes reference to death penalty cases in which the Special Rapporteur has intervened in reaction to reports that the sentences concerned had been passed in violation of international restrictions and human rights standards.

• Document type International law - United Nations
• Themes list Trend Towards Abolition,
• Available languages Exécutions extrajudiciaires, sommaires ou arbitraires: Rapport de la Rapporteuse spéciale, Mme Asma Jahangir法外处决、即审即决或任意处决: 特别报告员阿斯玛·贾汉吉尔Las ejecuciones extrajudiciales, sumarias o arbitrarias: Informe de la Relatora Especial, Asma Jahangirحالات الإعدام خارج نطاق القضاء أو بإجراء اتموجة أو تعسفاً تقرير المقرر الخاص اسمة جهانقيرВнесудебные, суммарные и произвольные казни: Отчет специального докладчика Асмы Джахангир (Asma Jahangir)