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Document(s)

The Death Penalty in 2020: Year-End Report

By Death Penalty Information Center, on 1 January 2020


2020

NGO report

United States


More details See the document

2020 was abnormal in almost every way, and that was clearly the case when it came to capital punishment in the United States. The interplay of four forces shaped the U.S. death penalty landscape in 2020: the nation’s long-term trend away from capital punishment; the worst global pandemic in more than a century; nationwide protests for racial justice; and the historically aberrant conduct of the federal administration. At the end of the year, more states had abolished the death penalty or gone ten years without an execution, more counties had elected reform prosecutors who pledged never to seek the death penalty or to use it more sparingly; fewer new death sentences were imposed than in any prior year since the Supreme Court struck down U.S. death penalty laws in 1972; and despite a six-month spree of federal executions without parallel in the 20th or 21st centuries, fewer executions were carried out than in any year in nearly three decades.

  • Document type NGO report
  • Countries list United States

Document(s)

Safeguards guaranteeing protection of the rights of those facing the death penalty

By United Nations, on 1 January 1984


1984

United Nations report

arrufrzh-hantes
More details See the document

Approved by Economic and Social Council resolution 1984/50 of 25 May 19841. In countries which have not abolished the death penalty, capital punishment may be imposed only for the most serious crimes, it being understood that their scope should not go beyond intentional crimes with lethal or other extremely grave consequences.

Document(s)

10 Steps to Writing a UPR Stakeholder Report

By The Advocates for Human Rights, on 1 January 2014


2014

Working with...


More details See the document

This four-page document proposes a roadmap for organisations interested in submitting reports to the United Nations’ Universal Periodic Review of Human Rights.

  • Document type Working with...
  • Themes list International law,

Document(s)

Capital Punishment: New Perspectives

By Peter Hodgkinson / Ashgate Publishing, on 1 January 2013


2013

Book


More details See the document

The authors argue that capital litigators should use their skills challenging the abuses not just of process, but of the conditions in which the condemned await their fate, namely prison conditions, education, leisure, visits, medical services, etc. In the aftermath of successful constitutional challenges it is the beneficiaries (arguably those who are considered successes, having been ‘saved’ from the death penalty and now serving living death penalties of one sort or another) who are suffering the cruel and inhumane alternative.Part I of the book offers a selection of diverse, nuanced examinations of death penalty phenomena, scrutinizing complexities frequently omitted from the narrative of academics and activists. It offers a challenging and comprehensive analysis of issues critical to the abolition debate. Part II offers examinations of countries usually absent from academic analysis to provide an understanding of the status of the debate locally, with opportunities for wider application.

  • Document type Book

Document(s)

Discrimination and Instructional Comprehension: Guided Discretion, Racial Bias, and the Death Penalty

By Craig Haney / Mona Lynch / Law and Human Behavior, on 1 January 2000


2000

Article

United States


More details See the document

This study links two previously unrelated lines of research: The lack of comprehension of capital penalty-phase jury instructions and discriminatory death sentencing. Jury-eligible subjects were randomly assigned to view one of four versions of a simulated capital penalty trial in which the race of defendant (Black or White) and the race of victim (Black or White) were varied orthogonally. Dependent measures included a sentencing verdict (life without the possibility of parole or the death penalty), ratings of penalty phase evidence, and a test of instructional comprehension. Results indicated that instructional comprehension was poor overall and that, although Black defendants were treated only slightly more punitively than White defendants in general, discriminatory effects were concentrated among participants whose comprehension was poorest. In addition, the use of penalty phase evidence differed as a function of race of defendant and whether the participant sentenced the defendant to life or death. The study suggest that racially biased and capricious death sentencing may be in part caused or exacerbated by the inability to comprehend penalty phase instructions.

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

Document(s)

No Human Way to Kill

By Robert Priseman / Artfractures, on 1 January 2009


2009

Working with...


More details See the document

‘No Human Way to Kill’ comprises an exhibition of twelve etchings produced by the Goldmark Atelier in 2007 and a 102 page book published by Seabrook Press in association with the Human Rights Centre at the Universtiy of Essex in 2009. The etchings were first displayed at the University of San Francisco in 2008 and the European Commission Gallery in 2009.

  • Document type Working with...
  • Themes list Networks,

Document(s)

The International Library of Essays on Capital Punishment, Volume 3 : Policy and Governance

By Peter Hodgkinson / Ashgate Publishing, on 8 September 2020


2020

Book


More details See the document

This volume provides analyses of a range of subjects and issues in the death penalty debate, from medicine to the media. The essays address in particular the personal complexities of those involved, a fundamental part of the subject usually overridden by the theoretical and legal aspects of the debate. The unique personal vantage offered by this volume makes it essential reading for anyone interested in going beyond the removed theoretical understanding of the death penalty, to better comprehending its fundamental humanity. Additionally, the international range of the analysis, enabling disaggregation of country specific motivations, ensures the complexities of the death penalty are also considered from a global perspective.

  • Document type Book
  • Themes list Death Penalty,

Document(s)

Closing the Slaughterhouse

By Dale M Brumfield, on 8 December 2022


2022

Book

United States


More details See the document

On July 1, 2021, Virginia ended a 413-year tradition by abolishing the death penalty.
Many of those convicted from 1608 to 2017 deserved harsh punishment – but Virginia took harsh to a whole new level with its “finality over fairness” philosophy. Four hundred years of her racist, mob-driven capital punishment system ensnared many innocent and undeserving victims under the toxic guises of protecting white citizens or being “tough on crime.” So many of those killed by the state died with their guilt or innocence lost to history.
Virginia leads the nation with 1,390 executions. After a 1976 Supreme Court decision, Virginia institutionalized and streamlined the parade to the death chamber more efficiently than any other state, executing between 1976 and 2017 a breathtaking 73 percent of all who received death sentences. The national average is 16 percent.

  • Document type Book
  • Countries list United States

Document(s)

Sri Lankan expert needed to conduct study on the death penalty – Terms of reference

By World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, on 23 December 2021


2021

World Coalition


More details Download [ pdf - 83 Ko ]
  • Document type World Coalition

Document(s)

Human Rights and the Death Penalty

By The Advocates for Human Rights, on 1 January 2012


2012

Campaigning


More details See the document

Four-page introduction to the status of the death penalty in international human rights law and the global trend abolition.

  • Document type Campaigning
  • Themes list International law, Trend Towards Abolition,

Document(s)

Juvenile Offenders Awaiting Execution in Yemen : “Look at Us with a Merciful Eye”

By Human Rights Watch, on 1 January 2013


2013

NGO report

ar
More details See the document

The 30-page report found that at least 22 individuals have been sentenced to death in Yemen despite evidence that they were under age 18 at the time of their alleged crimes. In the last five years, Yemen has executed at least 15 young men and women who said they were under 18 at the time of their offense.

Document(s)

The Last Holdouts: Ending the Juvenile Death Penalty in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Pakistan, and Yeman

By Human Rights Watch, on 1 January 2008


2008

NGO report

ar
More details See the document

In this 20-page report, Human Rights Watch documents failures in law and practice that since January 2005 have resulted in 32 executions of juvenile offenders in five countries: Iran (26), Saudi Arabia (2), Sudan (2), Pakistan (1), and Yemen (1). The report also highlights cases of individuals recently executed or facing execution in the five countries, where well over 100 juvenile offenders are currently on death row, awaiting the outcome of a judicial appeal, or in some murder cases, the outcome of negotiations for pardons in exchange for financial compensation

Document(s)

So Long as They Die: Lethal Injections in the United States

By Human Rights Watch, on 1 January 2006


2006

NGO report


More details See the document

This 65-page report reveals the slipshod history of executions by lethal injection, using a protocol created three decades ago with no scientific research, nor modern adaptation, and still unchanged today. As the prisoner lies strapped to a gurney, a series of three drugs is injected into his vein by executioners hidden behind a wall. A massive dose of sodium thiopental, an anesthetic, is injected first, followed by pancuronium bromide, which paralyzes voluntary muscles, but leaves the prisoner fully conscious and able to experience pain. A third drug, potassium chloride, quickly causes cardiac arrest, but the drug is so painful that veterinarian guidelines prohibit its use unless a veterinarian first ensures that the pet to be put down is deeply unconscious. No such precaution is taken for prisoners being executed.

  • Document type NGO report
  • Themes list Lethal Injection,

Document(s)

Foreign Nationals and the Death Penalty in the US

By Death Penalty Information Center / Mark Warren, on 1 January 2013


2013

Article

United States


More details See the document

New information on foreign nationals facing the death penalty in the U.S. is now available through Mark Warren of Human Rights Research. This DPIC page includes information on 143 foreign citizens from 37 countries on state and federal death rows.

  • Document type Article
  • Countries list United States
  • Themes list Country/Regional profiles,

Document(s)

The Juvenile Death Penalty Today: Death Sentences and Executions for Juvenile Crimes, January 1, 1973 – February 28, 2005

By Victor Streib / Ohio Northern University, on 8 September 2020


2020

Article

United States


More details See the document

This is Issue #77, the final issue of these periodic reports, having first been launched on June 15, 1984. On that date, the death penalty for juvenile offenders (defined as those under age 18 at the time of their crimes) was an obscure issue in law as well as in political and social arenas. During the last twenty-one years, these reports have been with us (1) through the intense litigation of the late 1980s, (2) through our society’s near hysteria about violent juvenile crime in the 1990s, (3) into the era of the international pressure on the United States to abandon this practice, and (4) now at the end of this practice. The validity and influence of these reports is indicated by thecitations to them in the opinions of leading courts, including the United States Supreme Court: Roper v. Simmons, 125 S.Ct. 1183, 1192, 1193, 1210, 1211, 1221 (2005); In re Stanford, 537 U.S. 968, 971 (2002); and Stanford v. Kentucky, 492 U.S. 361, 373 (1989). In the litigation leading up to the final juvenile death penalty case before the United States Supreme Court (Roper v. Simmons, 125 S.Ct. 1183 (2005)), the Missouri Supreme Court majority opinion included 12 citations to these reports: See Simmons v. Roper, 112 S.W.3d 397, 408, 409, 411 (Mo. 2003). This final issue of this periodic report is intended to document the status of the death penalty for juvenile offenders as ofthe day before the United States Supreme Court held this practice to be unconstitutional. These reports sketch the characteristics of the juvenile offenders and their crimes who have been sentenced to death, who have been executed, and who are currently under death sentences. —- See bottom left hand corner of web page.

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

Document(s)

Take action on the death penalty

By The Advocates for Human Rights, on 8 September 2020


Campaigning


More details See the document

Two-page guide with tips and contacts for individuals interested in getting started in anti-death penalty activism in the US.

  • Document type Campaigning
  • Themes list Public opinion,

Document(s)

The Prevalence and Potential Causes of Wrongful Conviction by Fingerprint Evidence.

By Simon A. Cole / Golden Gate University Law Review, on 1 January 2006


2006

Article

United States


More details See the document

As the number of post-conviction DNA exonerations mounted and the Innocence Project undertook to treat these exonerations as a data set indicating the principal causes of wrongful conviction, the absence of fingerprint cases in that data set could have been interpreted as soft evidence that latent print evidence was unlikely to contribute to wrongful convictions. That situation changed in 2004 when Stephan Cowans became the first – and thus far the only – person to be exonerated by DNA evidence for a wrongful conviction in which fingerprint evidence was a contributing factor. Cowans’s wrongful conviction in Boston in 1997 for the attempted murder of a police officer was based almost solely on eyewitness identification and latent print evidence. The Cowans case not only provided dramatic additional support for the already established proposition that wrongful conviction by fingerprint was possible, it also demonstrated why the exposure of such cases, when they do occur, is exceedingly unlikely. These points have already been made in a comprehensive 2005 study of exposed cases of latent print misattributions. In this article, I discuss some additional things that we have learned about the prevalence and potential causes of wrongful conviction by fingerprint in the short time since the publication of that study.

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

Document(s)

The Death Penalty: The Ultimate Punishment

By Amnesty International, on 1 January 2008


2008

Campaigning

enfres
More details See the document

Campaigning toolkit published by Amnesty International. A 16-page detailed advocacy document explaining why the abolition of the death penalty is necessary and how the theories behind capital punishment get it wrong.

Document(s)

Religion and the Death Penalty

By Death Penalty Information Center, on 8 September 2020


2020

Arguments against the death penalty


More details See the document

In recent years, a growing number of religious organizations have participated in the nation’s death penalty debate. The purpose of this Web page is to provide access to information regarding the efforts of these faith groups and to highlight recent developments related to religion and the death penalty.

  • Document type Arguments against the death penalty
  • Themes list Religion ,

Document(s)

Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Decides

By Who Decides, Inc., on 1 January 2012


2012

Working with...


More details See the document

The objective of this initiative was to use “the product of art” as a vehicle to educate common people about the history and practice of capital punishment in America and to lift societies consciousness around the idea of endowing a National Death Penalty Museum to preserve its deep history.

  • Document type Working with...
  • Themes list Public debate,

Document(s)

Death Penalty and Mental Illness

By Amnesty International - USA, on 1 January 2013


2013

Arguments against the death penalty

es
More details See the document

The execution of those with mental illness or “the insane” is clearly prohibited by international law. Virtually every country in the world prohibits the execution of people with mental illness. This webpage explores international law and the death penalty in relation to the USA.

Document(s)

Death Penalty and Arbitrariness

By Amnesty International - USA, on 8 September 2020


2020

Arguments against the death penalty


More details See the document

This sheet details the factors which contribute to the arbitrariness of the death penalty in the USA.

  • Document type Arguments against the death penalty
  • Themes list Arbitrariness,

Document(s)

Death Penalty and Deterrence

By Amnesty International - USA, on 8 September 2020


Arguments against the death penalty


More details See the document

An argument against deterrence is made by looking at a survey which found that during the last 20 years, the homicide rate in states with the death penalty has been 48 to 101 percent higher than in states without the death penalty.

  • Document type Arguments against the death penalty
  • Themes list Deterrence ,

Document(s)

Death Penalty and Innocence

By Amnesty International - USA, on 8 September 2020


Arguments against the death penalty


More details See the document

This webpage talks about innocence and the death penalty: Examples of innocence in three cases in the United States and factors leading to wrongful conviction.

  • Document type Arguments against the death penalty
  • Themes list Innocence,

Document(s)

China Executed 2,400 People in 2013, Dui Hua

By Dui Hua Human Rights Journal, on 1 January 2014


2014

Article

China


More details See the document

The Dui Hua Foundation estimates that China executed approximately 2,400 people in 2013 and will execute roughly the same number of people in 2014. Annual declines in executions recorded in recent years are likely to be offset in 2014 by the use of capital punishment in anti-terrorism campaigns in Xinjiang and the anti-corruption campaign nationwide.

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

Document(s)

Death Penalty Trends

By Amnesty International - USA, on 1 January 2013


2013

Arguments against the death penalty


More details See the document

This sheet speaks about the trend towards abolition of the death penalty, aswell as declining public support for it.

  • Document type Arguments against the death penalty
  • Themes list Trend Towards Abolition,

Document(s)

Death Penalty and Race

By Amnesty International - USA, on 8 September 2020


2020

Arguments against the death penalty

es
More details See the document

From initial charging decisions to plea bargaining to jury sentencing, African-Americans are treated more harshly when they are defendants, and their lives are accorded less value when they are victims.

Document(s)

Database Center for North Korean Human Rights – Briefings on public execution

By Database Center for North Korean Human Rights, on 8 September 2020


Article

Republic of Korea


More details See the document

NKDB hosts a monthly English language briefing and discussion on North Korean human rights every month with embassy officials, NGO staff, and NKDB staff as guests

  • Document type Article
  • Countries list Republic of Korea
  • Themes list World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, Death Penalty, Country/Regional profiles,

Document(s)

Death Penalty Cost

By Amnesty International - USA, on 8 September 2020


Arguments against the death penalty

es
More details See the document

This factsheet deals with the cost of the death penalty in the United States using figures from a study conducted by the Californian Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice.

Document(s)

Handbook of Forensic Psychiatric Practice in Capital Cases

By The Death Penalty Project / Nick Green / Nigel Eastman / Richard Latham / Marc Lyall, on 1 January 2018


2018

Working with...


More details See the document

This Handbook represents a stand alone, single-volume practionners’ handbook for the use of psychiatrists and psychologists, sollicitors, barristers, prosecuting authorities and the courts, who are required to deal with homicide, and other cases, in jurisdictions and circumstances where the death penalty can apply.

  • Document type Working with...
  • Themes list Mental Illness,

Document(s)

Mass Injustice: Statistical Findings on the Death Penalty in Egypt

By Reprieve, on 1 January 2019


2019

NGO report


More details See the document

This report, Mass Injustice, presents the Egypt Death Penalty Index (“the Index”), a first-of-its-kind website and statisticaldatabase on Egypt’s application of thedeath penalty. The report provides background information on Egypt’s growing unlawful application of the death penalty, and explains how the Index was compiled.

  • Document type NGO report
  • Themes list Death Penalty, Country/Regional profiles,

Document(s)

A year-end compilation of death penalty data for the state of Missouri : Annual Report 2015

By Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, on 1 January 2015


2015

NGO report


More details See the document

MADP released its annual report which highlights some of the major problems with Missouri’s broken death penalty system. Here is a snapshot of the death penalty in Missouri in 2015: 6 executions in 2015 but no new death sentences in Missouri in 2015.

  • Document type NGO report
  • Themes list Country/Regional profiles,

Document(s)

South Korea’s changing capital punishment policy: The road from de facto to formal abolition

By Byung-Sun Cho / Punishment and Society, on 8 September 2020


2020

Article

Republic of Korea


More details See the document

The most recent executions in South Korea took place in December 1997, when 23 people were executed at short notice on the same day. Similarly, nineteen executions occurred in 1995 and 15 in 1994, in each instance occurring all on the same day. These group executions seem to reflect cultural factors that monthly statistics alone do not capture. No executions have occurred since 1998, but this de facto suspension has not been reinforced by law. Since 1999, lawmakers have thrice endorsed a bill favoring life imprisonment without parole in place of the death penalty, but each time the proposal has stalled and failed to move forward. The need remains to develop a culturally appropriate pro-abolition argument that could persuade the Korean public that the death penalty is unworkable and wrong. On 21 January 2007, in the Inhyeokdang case, the Korean Court acquitted 8 persons who had been executed 32 years earlier. The hope is that, in light of strong arguments based on the risk to innocent persons and the irreversibility of capital punishment, Korea will effectively transition from de facto to formal abolition.

  • Document type Article
  • Countries list Republic of Korea
  • Themes list Trend Towards Abolition,

Document(s)

Taking Capital Punishment Seriously

By Franklin E. Zimmering / David T. Johnson / Asian Journal of Criminology, on 1 January 2006


2006

Article


More details See the document

Although Asia is the most important region of the world when it comes to capital punishment, it is also one of the most understudied. This article identifies four research questions that deserve attention from students and scholars who believe taking capital punishment seriously requires studying Asia seriously too. What are the empirical contours of capital punishment in contemporary Asia? What are the histories of capital punishment in Asia? Can Western theories of capital punishment explain patterns and changes in Asia? And what is the future of capital punishment in Asia? If researchers take the trouble to explore these questions, the death penalty will not only become an interesting window into law and society in Asia, but Asia will prove to be an instructive window into the death penalty—the gravest real-life problem in the law.

  • Document type Article
  • Themes list Networks,

Document(s)

Fact Finding Report of LFHRI of the Sentencing of 17 Indians to Death by the Shariat Court of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates

By Lawyers for Human Rights International, on 1 January 2010


2010

Legal Representation


More details See the document

Lawyers For Human Rights International an Organisation of Lawyers having its base in Punjab, India, being part of an International movement against Death Penalty, decided to visit Sharjah jail in UAE to meet the 17 prisoners who have been sentenced to Death for killing a Pakistani youth. Two member team comprising of Navkiran Singh a Human Rights Lawyer & Activist from Panjab, practicing in the High Court at Chandigarh and who is the General Secretary of LFHRI along with another Lawyer Gagan Aggarwal, visited Dubai and Sharjah on 13th and 14th of April 2010 and met the Lawyers who have been hired to defend these 17 Indians by the Indian Consulate of UAE and also visited Sharjah jail and met all the prisoners. This report presents their findings.

  • Document type Legal Representation
  • Themes list Networks,

Document(s)

Too Late for Luck: A Comparison of Post-Furman Exonerations and Executions of the Innocent

By Talia Roitberg Harmon / William S. Lofquist / Crime and Delinquency, on 1 January 2005


2005

Article

United States


More details See the document

This study is a quantitative analysis designed to compare two groups of factually innocent capital defendants: Those who were exonerated and those who were executed. There are a total of 97 cases in the sample, including 81 exonerations and 16 executions. The primary objective of the authors is to identify factors that may predict case outcomes among capital defendants with strong claims of factual innocence. Through the use of a logistic regression model, the following variables were significant predictors of case outcome (exoneration vs. execution): allegations of perjury, multiple types of evidence, prior felony record, type of attorney at trial, and race of the defendant. These results point toward significant problems with the administration of capital punishment deriving primarily from the quality of the case record created at trial.

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

Document(s)

Criminological analysis on deterrent power of death penalty

By Yuanhuang Zhang / Frontiers of law in China, on 1 January 2009


2009

Article

China

zh-hant
More details See the document

Death penalty is the most effective deterrence to grave crimes, which has been the key basis for the State to retain death penalty. In fact, either in legislation or in execution, death penalty can not produce the special deterrent effect as expected. With respect to this issue, people tend to conduct normative exploration from the perspective of ordinary legal principles or the principle of human rights, which is more speculative than convincing. Correct interpretation based on the existing positive analysis and differentiation based on human nature which sifts the true from the false will not only help end the simple, repetitive and meaningless arguments regarding the basis for the existence of death penalty, but also help understand the rational nature of both the elimination and the preservation of death penalty, so as to define the basic direction towards which the State should make efforts in controlling death penalty in the context of promoting social civilization.

Document(s)

White Female Victims and Death Penalty Disparity Research

By Stephen Demuth / Marian R. Williams / Jefferson E. Holocomb / Justice Quarterly, on 1 January 2004


2004

Article

United States


More details See the document

Empirical studies of the death penalty continue to find that the race and gender of homicide victims are associated with the severity of legal responses in homicide cases even after controlling for legally relevant factors. A limitation of this research, however, is that victim race and gender are examined as distinct and independent factors in statistical models. In this study, we explore whether the independent examination of victim race and gender masks important differences in legal responses to homicides. In particular, we empirically test the hypothesis that defendants convicted of killing white females are significantly more likely to receive death sentences than killers of victims with other race-gender characteristics. Findings indicate that homicides with white female victims were more likely to result in death sentences than other victim race-gender dyads. We posit that this response may be unique and result in differential sentencing outcomes.

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

Document(s)

Chinese Executions: Visualising their Differences with European Supplices

By Bourgon J / European Journal of East Asian Studies, on 1 January 2003


2003

Article

China


More details See the document

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,

Document(s)

Views on the death penalty among college students in India

By Eric G. Lambert / Sudershan Pasupuleti / Punishment and Society / Shanhe Jiang / K. Jaishankar / Jagadis V. Bhimarasetty, on 1 January 2008


2008

Article

India


More details See the document

While research abounds on attitudes toward capital punishment in the United States, such work has been lacking in non-western nations — particularly in India, the world’s largest democracy. Data recently collected have revealed variance in levels of support for the death penalty among Indian college students: 44 percent express some degree of opposition, 13 percent are uncertain, and 43 percent express some degree of support. Reasons for support or opposition also exhibited variance. According to a multivariate analysis, statistically significant reasons for support included retribution, instrumentalist goals, and incapacitation; while significant reasons for opposition included morality and the belief that deterrence could be achieved by imposing sentences of life without parole.

  • Document type Article
  • Countries list India
  • Themes list Public opinion, Public debate,

Document(s)

Law, society, and capital punishment in Asia

By David T. Johnson / Franklin E. Zimring / Punishment and Society, on 1 January 2008


Article

Japan


More details See the document

Students of capital punishment need to study Asia, the site of at least 85 percent and as many as 95 percent of the world’s executions. This article explores the varieties of Asian capital punishment in two complementary ways. Cross-sectionally, the impression of uniformity that comes from classifying 95 percent of the population of Asia as living in executing states breaks down when closer attention is paid to the character of capital punishment policy within retentionist nations. Temporally, the general trajectory of capital punishment in the Asian region seems downward (though generalizations about patterns in this part of the world are undermined by significant data problems). Asia is also a useful territory for testing the generality of theories of capital punishment based on European experience. Looking forward, Japan and South Korea, two developed nations in Asia that still retain the death penalty, may indicate what other Asian nations are likely to do as they develop. Ultimately, Asia either will become a major staging area for world-wide abolition or the campaign against capital punishment will fail to achieve global status.

  • Document type Article
  • Countries list Japan

Document(s)

Murderers’ Relatives: Managing Stigma, Negotiating Identity

By Hazel May / Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, on 1 January 2000


2000

Article

United States


More details See the document

Drawing on in-depth interviews with the relatives of convicted murderers, this article interrogates the concept of stigma through an everyday notion of familial toxicity and commonsense understandings of murder. Identifying moments of stigmatizing strain, the article examines moments of opportunity for managing stigma through three metatactics: management of space, information, and self-presentation. However, due to the problems in carrying out sensitive research with a hidden population, there are limits to how far arguments made can be generalized. Therefore, the article concludes by raising questions for future research.

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

Document(s)

Gall, Gallantry, and the Gallows: Capital Punishment and the Social Construction of Gender, 1840-1920

By Gender and Society / Alana van Gundy-Yoder, on 1 January 2008


2008

Article

United States


More details See the document

In this article, the authors examine how the debate over women’s executions during the nineteenth and early twentieth century funneled and in various ways processed the contrary demands of gender and capital justice. They show how encounters with capital punishment both reflected and reinforced dominant interpretations of womanhood and as such contributed to the intricate web of normative strictures that affected all women at the time. At the same time, however, the often heated debates that accompanied such cases pried open some of the contradictions inherent in the dominant interpretations and, as a result, came to challenge the boundaries that separated not only women from men but also women from each other. Rather than viewing gender as a unidirectional influence on capital punishment, the authors argue that gender is best approached as an evolving social category that gets reconstructed, modified, and transformed whenever it is implicated in social practices and public debates.

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

Document(s)

The political origins of death penalty exceptionalism: Mao Zedong and the practice of capital punishment in contemporary China

By Zhang Ning / Punishment and Society, on 1 January 2008


Article

China


More details See the document

This article focuses on the role played by Mao Zedong in the making of the Chinese communist legal system in general and in the Chinese practice of the death penalty under Mao in particular. It attempts to study this link through an analysis of an event which represented a landmark, namely the campaign of the regression against counterrevolutionaries launched in 1950—2, and through an examination of three specific cases, which enable us to observe the concrete characteristics of these practices, whose effects continue to be felt in today’s China.

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

Document(s)

Racial Differences in Death Penalty Support and Opposition: A Preliminary Study of White and Black College Students

By Morris Jenkins / Eric G. Lambert / David N. Baker / Journal of Black Studies, on 1 January 2005


2005

Article

United States


More details See the document

Although the death penalty has a long history, it is not without debate and differing views. There appears to be a gap between Whites and Blacks in terms of their support of capital punishment. Students at a Midwestern university were surveyed to determine whether there were differences between the two groups of students in reasons to support or oppose the death penalty. In bivariate tests, there were significant differences between White and Black students on 15 of 16 measures for reasons for supporting or opposing capital punishment. These differences continued for 10 of the 16 measures even after multivariate analysis controlled for the effects of gender, age, and academic level. The results are discussed.

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

Document(s)

Capital Punishment Views in China and the United States: A Preliminary Study Among College Students

By Eric G. Lambert / International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology / Shanhe Jiang, on 1 January 2007


2007

Article

China


More details See the document

There is a lack of research on attitudes toward capital punishment in China, and there is even less research on cross-national comparisons of capital punishment views. Using data recently collected from college students in the United States and China, this study finds that U.S. and Chinese students have differences in their views on the death penalty and its functions of deterrence, rehabilitation, and incapacitation. This study also reveals that the respondents’ perspectives of deterrence, rehabilitation, retribution, and incapacitation all affect their attitudes toward the death penalty in the United States, whereas only the first three views affect attitudes toward capital punishment in China. Furthermore, retribution is the strongest predictor in the United States, whereas deterrence is the strongest predictor in China.

  • Document type Article
  • Countries list China
  • Themes list Public opinion, Public debate,

Document(s)

Failure to Apply the Flynn Correction in Death Penalty Litigation: Standard Practice of Today Maybe, but Certainly Malpractice of Tomorrow

By John E. Wright / John Niland / Cecil R. Reynolds / Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment / Michal Rosenn, on 1 January 2010


2010

Article

United States


More details See the document

The Flynn Effect is a well documented phenomenon demonstrating score increases on IQ measures over time that average about 0.3 points per year. Normative adjustments to scores derived from IQ measures normed more than a year or so prior to the time of testing an individual have become controversial in several settings but especially so in matters of death penalty litigation. Here we make the argument that if the Flynn Effect is real, then a Flynn Correction should be applied to obtained IQs in order to obtain the most accurate estimate of IQ possible. To fail to provide the most accurate estimate possible in matters that are truly life and death decisions seems wholly indefensible.

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

Document(s)

Capital Punishment: A Global Perspective

By Roger Hood / Punishment and Society, on 1 January 2001


2001

Article


More details See the document

This article reviews the extent to which the movement to abolish capital punishment has been successful and discusses some of the influences which have produced a remarkable increase in the number of abolitionist countries in the past two decades. It asks whether this trend has now come to an end as many countries which retain the death penalty continue to defy, for a variety of reasons, international pressure to change their laws and practices. Finally, it discusses some actions that might prove effective in overcoming these obstacles.

  • Document type Article
  • Themes list Trend Towards Abolition, Death Penalty,

Document(s)

The Abolition of the Death Penalty in International Law

By William A. Schabas / Cambridge University Press, on 1 January 2002


2002

Book


More details See the document

This extensively revised third edition covers developments since publication of the second edition in 1997. It includes consideration of the UN human rights system, international humanitarian law, European human rights law and Inter-American human rights law. New chapters address capital punishment in African human rights law and international criminal law. An extensive list of appendices contains many of the essential documents for the study of capital punishment in international law.

  • Document type Book
  • Themes list Networks,

Document(s)

Myth of the hanging tree: stories of crime and punishment in territorial New Mexico

By Robert J. Torrez / University of New Mexico Press, on 1 January 2008


2008

Book

United States


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The haunting specter of hanging trees holds a powerful sway on the American imagination, conjuring images of rough-and-tumble frontier towns struggling to impose law and order in a land where violence was endemic. In this thoughtful study, former New Mexico State Historian Robert Torrez examines several fascinating criminal cases that reveal the harsh and often gruesome realities of the role hangings, legal or otherwise, played in the administration of frontier justice. At first glance, the topic may seem downright morbid, and in a sense it is, but these violent attempts at justice are embedded in our perception of America’s western experience. In tracing territorial New Mexico’s efforts to enforce law, Torrez challenges the myths and popular perceptions about hangings and lynching in this corner of the Wild West.

  • Document type Book
  • Countries list United States
  • Themes list Hanging,

Document(s)

Last Day of Freedom

By Dee Hibbert-Jones / Nomi Talisman, on 1 January 2015


2015

Working with...


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When Bill Babbitt realizes his brother Manny has committed a crime he agonizes over his decision: should he call the police? Last Day of Freedom, a richly animated personal narrative, tells the story of Bill’s decision to stand by his brother in the face of war, crime and capital punishment. The film is a portrait of a man at the nexus of the most pressing social issues of our day – veterans’ care, mental health access and criminal justice.

  • Document type Working with...
  • Themes list Murder Victims' Families,

Document(s)

Arcs of Global Justice

By Oxford University Press / Margaret M. Guzman / Diane Marie Amann, on 1 January 2018


2018

Book


More details See the document

This work honours William A. Schabas and his career with essays by luminary scholars and jurists from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. The essays examine contemporary, historical, cultural, and theoretical aspects of the many arcs of global justice with which Professor Schabas has engaged, in fields including public international law, human rights, transitional justice, international criminal law, and capital punishment.Table of Contents (regarding information on the death penalty)II. Capital PunishmentChapter 5: International Law and the Death Penalty: A Toothless Tiger, or a Meaningful Force for Change?Sandra L. BabcockChapter 6: The UN Optional Protocol on the Abolition of the Death PenaltyMarc BossuytChapter 7: The Right to Life and the Progressive Abolition of the Death PenaltyChristof Heyns and Thomas Probert and Tess BordenChapter 8: Progress and Trend of the Reform of the Death Penalty in ChinaZhao Bingzhi

  • Document type Book
  • Themes list International law, Death Penalty,

Document(s)

NGO Media Outreach: Using the Media as an Advocacy Tool

By Coalition for the International Criminal Court, on 1 January 2003


2003

Working with...


More details See the document

A guide for NGOs to use media effectively. This guide explains the importance of media, how to create contacts, how to prepare a media outreach campaign, how to deliver a campaign to the media and how to use available resources to support your media campaign.

  • Document type Working with...
  • Themes list Networks,

Document(s)

Death Row – The Final Minutes

By Blink Publishing / Michelle Lyons, on 8 September 2020


2020

Book

United States


More details See the document

First as a reporter and then as a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Michelle was a frequent visitor to Huntsville’s Walls Unit, where she recorded and relayed the final moments of death row inmates’ lives before they were put to death by the state.Michelle was in the death chamber as some of the United States’ most notorious criminals, including serial killers, child murderers and rapists, spoke their last words on earth, while a cocktail of lethal drugs surged through their veins.

  • Document type Book
  • Countries list United States
  • Themes list Right to life, Death Penalty,

Document(s)

Film “Kill Troy Killing Me”

By Garry A. Boast / Cerebral Motion Productions, on 8 September 2020


Academic report

United States


More details See the document

A death penalty abolitionist (Martina Correia) must sound the alarms of our criminal justice system in time to save her brother from lethal injection.

  • Document type Academic report
  • Countries list United States
  • Themes list Innocence,

Document(s)

Film: “The Execution of Wanda Jean”

By Liz Garbus / New Video Group, on 8 September 2020


Academic report

United States


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In THE EXECUTION OF WANDA JEAN, award-winning filmmaker Liz Garbus continues her investigations into the American criminal justice system with the compelling story of convicted murderess Wanda Jean Allen

  • Document type Academic report
  • Countries list United States
  • Themes list Trend Towards Abolition,

Document(s)

Death Penalty Mitigation A Handbook for Mitigation Specialists, Investigators, Social Scientists, and Lawyers

By Oxford University Press / Jose B. Ashford / Melissa Kupferberg, on 1 January 2013


2013

Book


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This book provides an introduction to socio-legal forms of mitigation in capital sentencing. It helps mitigation specialists, defense investigators, social scientists, and lawyers in developing socio-cultural themes of mitigation. It examines scientific formulations, concepts, and frameworks for structuring social history investigations and assessments of moral culpability. A fundamental aim of this handbook was to provide mitigation professionals not only with an understanding of the context of mitigation in criminal justice thinking, but also ways of contextualizing issues of blame and culpability.

  • Document type Book
  • Themes list Due Process ,

Document(s)

Death Sentencing Database

By Brandon L. Garrett / End of its Rope, on 1 January 2018


2018

Working with...


More details See the document

This resource website displays data concerning death sentencing in the United States from 1990 to present. Research using these data includes a book, “End of its Rope: How Killing the Death Penalty Can Revive Criminal Justice” published by Harvard University Press in Fall 2017. This research was conducted by Professor Brandon L. Garrett with the support of the University of Virginia School of Law.

  • Document type Working with...
  • Themes list Death Penalty, Statistics,

Document(s)

The Death Penalty: America’s Experience with Capital Punishment

By Ray Paternoster / Robert Brame / Oxford University Press / Sarah Bacon, on 8 September 2020


2020

Book

United States


More details See the document

This book addresses one of the most controversial issues in the criminal justice system today—the death penalty. Paternoster et al. present a balanced perspective that focuses on both the arguments for and against capital punishment. Coverage draws on legal, historical, philosophical, economic, sociological, and religious points of view.

  • Document type Book
  • Countries list United States
  • Themes list Due Process , Public opinion, Country/Regional profiles,

Document(s)

Remedying Wrongful Execution

By Meghan J. Ryan / University of Michigan, on 1 January 2011


2011

Article

United States


More details See the document

The Article highlights that statutory compensation schemes overlook the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, executed in 2004, of wrongful execution and the greater injustice it entails and urges that the statutes be amended in light of this grievous wrong that has come to the fore of American criminal justice systems.

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

Document(s)

Racial Disparity and Death Sentences in Ohio

By Marian R. Williams / Jefferson E. Holocomb / Journal of Criminal Justice, on 1 January 2001


2001

Article

United States


More details See the document

The use of the death penalty has resulted in a number of studies attempting to determine if its application is consistent with the guidelines established by the United States Supreme Court. In particular, many studies have assessed whether there are racial disparities in the imposition of death sentences. This study examined the imposition of death sentences in Ohio, a state largely ignored by previous research and that, until 1999, had not executed an inmate since 1963. Drawing from previous studies that have examined the issue in other states, this study assessed the likelihood that a particular homicide would result in a death sentence, controlling for race of defendant and victim and other relevant factors. Results indicated both legal and extralegal factors (including race of victim) were significant predictors of a death sentence, supporting many previous studies that concluded that race plays a role in the imposition of the death penalty.

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

Document(s)

Death Penalty in India: Annual Statistics Report 2019

By NLU Delhi , on 1 January 2020


2020

Academic report


More details See the document

The ‘Death Penalty in India: Annual Statistics’ attempts to create a comprehensive year-by-year documentation of movements in the death row population in India. The publication tracks important political and legal developments in the administration of the death penalty and the criminal justice system in the year 2019.

  • Document type Academic report
  • Themes list Death Penalty, Statistics,

Document(s)

Death Penalty in India: Annual Statistics Report 2020

By Project 39A, on 1 January 2020


Academic report

India


More details See the document

The ‘Death Penalty in India: Annual Statistics’ attempts to create a comprehensive year-by-year documentation of movements in the death row population in India. The publication tracks important political and legal developments in the administration of the death penalty and the criminal justice system in the year 2020.

  • Document type Academic report
  • Countries list India

Document(s)

: Waiting for capital punishment

By Sadegh Souri, on 8 September 2020


2020

Academic report

Iran (Islamic Republic of)


More details See the document

According to Iranian law, the age when girls are held accountable for criminal punishment is nine years old, while international conventions have banned the death penalty for persons under 18. In Iran, the death penalty for children is used for crimes such as murder, drug trafficking, and armed robbery.Pursuant to the passing of new laws in recent years, the Iranian Judiciary System detains children in Juvenile Delinquents Correction Centers after their death sentence verdict, and a large number of them are hanged upon reaching age 18.

  • Document type Academic report
  • Countries list Iran (Islamic Republic of)
  • Themes list Juveniles, Women, Death Row Conditions,

Document(s)

Staying Alive: Executive Clemency, Equal Protection, and the Politics of Gender in Women’s Capital Cases

By Elizabeth Rapaport / Buffalo Criminal Law Review, on 1 January 2001


2001

Article

United States


More details See the document

In this Article, I will review the matrix in which executive decisions in women’s capital clemency cases are made, a matrix supplied by modern equal protection law, the nature and scope of the clemency power, gender politics, and contemporary death row. I will then conduct two thought experiments. Each invented case tests the relevance of gender in legally and politically acceptable contemporary clemency decisions. The goal is to understand the politics and law of granting or denying that very rare boon-commutation of sentence – to a female death row prisoner. The exercise offers support for two conclusions. In the age of formal equality, women cannot be granted clemency simply because they are women. The rhetoric of chivalry is untenable for the contemporary executive. A governor who is courageous and rhetorically skillful, however, can sometimes successfully defend the commutation of the death sentence of a woman as a proper use of the power to grant mercy, done for her sake, the class she exemplifies, the conscience of the governor, and the public.

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

Document(s)

Searching for Uniformity in Adjudication of the Accused’s Competence to Assist and Consult in Capital Cases

By John T. Philipsborn / Psychology, Public Policy and Law, on 1 January 2004


2004

Article

United States


More details See the document

Based on the review of capital cases from various jurisdictions involoving issues of competence to stand trial, this article examines the standards, literature, and varying practices associated with competence assessments and adjudications. The author, who is an experienced criminal defense lawyer with capital trial and postconviction litigation experiece, examines the implications of disparities in the approaches and definitions used in dealing with competence assessments and suggests solutions to improve the standards of practice related to these important assessments.

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

Document(s)

Up the River Without a Procedure: Innocent Prisoners and Newly Discovered Non-DNA Evidence in State Courts.

By Daniel Medwed / Arizona Law Review, on 1 January 2005


2005

Article

United States


More details See the document

This Article aims to provide an examination: An analysis of the state procedures that prisoners may employ after trial to litigate innocence claims grounded on newly discovered non-DNA evidence. Ultimately, the result of this examination is far from sanguine. Little-altered in decades beyond the trend toward recognizing the benefits of DNA testing, the structure of most state procedures means that a prisoner’s quest for justice may turn on the fortuity that a biological sample was left at the crime scene and preserved over time. The fact that DNA testing provides a modicum of certainty to an innocence claim does not imply that claims lacking the possibility of such certainty are spurious; on the contrary, DNA has unearthed holes in the criminal justice system, holes that are likely also prevalent in cases without biological evidence.

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

Document(s)

The Future of the Federal Death Penalty

By Rory K. Little / Ohio Northern University Law Review, on 1 January 2000


2000

Article

United States


More details See the document

On May 16, 2001, the federal government carried out its first execution for a criminal offense in over 38 years (Timothy McVeigh). This article (part of a symposium issue) examines recent developments in the administration of the federal death penalty, in the legislative, judicial, and executive (Department of Justice) arenas. While not an abolitionist, the author expresses misgivings about federal capital punishment as it is currently administered, updating statistics regarding racial and geographic disparity from his 1999 article “The Federal Death Penalty: History and Some Thoughts About the Department of Justice’s Role,”. The article also explains “What the Supreme Court Got Wrong in Jones,” (1999). Finally, the international implications of the first execution by the federal government in two generations are explored. No longer can the United States shift its internationally isolated position regarding capital punishment onto its constituent states under a theory of independent federalism. Note: This is a description of the paper and not the actual abstract.

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

Document(s)

Exonerations in the United States 1989 Through 2003

By Daniel J. Matheson / Kristin Jacoby / Samuel R. Gross / Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology / Nicholas Montgomery / Sujata Patil, on 1 January 2005


2005

Article

United States


More details See the document

In this paper we use reported exonerations as a window on false convictions generally. We can’t come close to estimating the number of false convictions that occur in the United States, but the accumulating mass of exonerations gives us a glimpse of what we’re missing. We located 340 individual exonerations from 1989 through 2003, not counting at least 135 innocent defendants in at least two mass exonerations, and not counting more than 70 defendants convicted in a series of childcare sex abuse prosecutions, most of whom were probably innocent. Almost all the individual exonerations that we know about are clustered in the two most serious common felonies: rape and murder. They are surrounded by widening circles of categories of cases that include false convictions that are rarely detected, if ever: rape convictions that have not been reexamined with DNA evidence; robberies, for which DNA identification is useless; murder cases that are ignored because the defendants were not sentenced to death; assault and drug convictions that are forgotten entirely; misdemeanor convictions that aren’t even part of the picture. Judging from our data, any plausible guess at the total number of miscarriages of justice in America in the last fifteen years must run to the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, in felony cases alone. We can, however, see some clear patterns in those false convictions that have come to light.

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

Document(s)

A ‘Commonsense’ Theory of Deterrence and the ‘Ideology’ of Science: The New York State Death Penalty Debate

By John F. Galliher / James M. Galliher / Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, on 1 January 2001


2001

Article

United States


More details See the document

This research will consider the principal claims and counterclaims made by death penalty supporters and opponents, as well as document the manner in which these claims were advanced or refuted. The nineteen-year debate provides a natural laboratory that can assist our understanding of why the United States is the only Western industrialized democracy to retain capital punishment.

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

Document(s)

Alternatives to the Death Penalty: The Problems with Life Imprisonment

By Penal Reform International, on 1 January 2007


2007

Arguments against the death penalty


More details See the document

This briefing examines the use of life imprisonment worldwide, including the increasing trend of life imprisonment without the possibility of release, or life without parole (LWOP). Emerging trends indicate an increase in the number of offences carrying the sanction of life imprisonment, a greater prevalence of indeterminate sentencing, a reduction in the use of parole, and the lengthening of prison terms as a whole. The abolition of the death penalty has played a significant role in the increased use of life imprisonment sentences, and LWOP in particular. Conditions of detention and the treatment of prisoners serving life sentences are often far worse than those for the rest of the prison population and more likely to fall below international human rights standards.

  • Document type Arguments against the death penalty
  • Themes list Sentencing Alternatives,

Document(s)

America has abandoned the death penalty

By The Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice / Harvard Law School, on 1 January 2015


2015

Academic report


More details See the document

In 2015, America had the lowest number of executions in 25 years. Of the 28 people executed, 68% suffered from severe mental disabilities or experienced extreme childhood trauma and abuse according to a new report released by Harvard Law School’s Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice. A significant number of the executed individuals had multiple mental impairments. Two individuals were executed despite doubts about their guilt.

  • Document type Academic report
  • Themes list Country/Regional profiles,

Document(s)

The Report of the Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission

By The Constitution Project, on 1 January 2016


2016

NGO report


More details See the document

The Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission (Commission) came together shortly after the state of Oklahoma imposed a moratorium on the execution of condemned inmates. In late 2015, Oklahoma executions were put on hold while a grand jury investigated disturbing problems involving recent executions, including departures from the execution protocols of the Department of Corrections. The report of the grand jury, released in May of 2016, was highly critical and exposed a number of deeply troubling failures in the final stages of Oklahoma’s death penalty

  • Document type NGO report
  • Themes list World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, Death Penalty,

Document(s)

The abolition of the death penalty in the United Kingdom. How it happened and why it still matters

By Death Penalty Project / Julian B. Knowles QC, on 1 January 2015


2015

NGO report


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Drawing on his own extensive advocacy experience in individual death row cases, Knowles traces the history of capital punishment in the UK, and in particular, the sequence of events that led to its abolition and analyses the impact that domestic and international law would have on any attempt to reintroduce it.Many lessons can be learnt from the United Kingdom’s experience. The movement to abolition was brought about by a combination of factors, including Parliamentary campaigning; changing attitudes towards social and penal affairs; and significantly, public disquiet over three controversial executions in the 1950s and a shocking series of miscarriages of justice cases that came to light in subsequent years.

  • Document type NGO report
  • Themes list Trend Towards Abolition, Country/Regional profiles,

Document(s)

Terror on Death Row: The Abuse and Overuse of Pakistan’s Anti-Terrorism Legislation

By Reprieve / Justice Project Pakistan, on 8 September 2020


2020

NGO report

Pakistan


More details See the document

This report is a result of death row prisoner data from 38 prisons across Pakistan’s four provinces(Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (‘KPK ’),Punjab and Sindh. For most of Pakistan, the data runs to December 2012, thereby covering all those who are presently subject to execution dates. However, the report reflects further data on the province of Sindh running to October 2014

  • Document type NGO report
  • Countries list Pakistan
  • Themes list Death Penalty, Country/Regional profiles,

Document(s)

Too Broken to Fix: Part I – An In-depth Look at America’s Outlier Death Penalty Counties

By Fair Punishment Project, on 8 September 2020


NGO report

United States


More details See the document

The trends are clear. In 2015, juries returned the fewest number of new death sentences—49—since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.Of the 3,143 county or county equivalents in the United States, only 16—or one half of one percent—imposed five or more death sentences between 2010 and 2015.This report takes a close look at how capital punishment operates on the ground in half of these active death-sentencing counties. In this first report, we dig deep into Caddo, Clark, Duval, Harris, Maricopa, Mobile, Kern, and Riverside counties. Our review reveals that these counties frequently share at least three systemic deficiencies: a history of overzealous prosecutions, inadequate defense lawyering, and a pattern of racial bias and exclusion. These structural failings regularly produce two types of unjust outcomes which disproportionately impact people of color: the wrongful conviction of innocent people, and the excessive punishment of persons who are young or suffer from severe mental illnesses, brain damage, trauma, and intellectual disabilities.

  • Document type NGO report
  • Countries list United States
  • Themes list Trend Towards Abolition, Country/Regional profiles,

Document(s)

Too Broken to Fix: Part II – An In-depth Look at America’s Outlier Death Penalty Counties

By Fair Punishment Project, on 8 September 2020


NGO report

United States


More details See the document

The trends are clear. In 2015, juries returned the fewest number of new death sentences—49—since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.Of the 3,143 county or county equivalents in the United States, only 16—or one half of one percent—imposed five or more death sentences between 2010 and 2015.This report takes a close look at how capital punishment operates on the ground in half of these active death-sentencing counties. In Part II, we highlight Dallas (TX), Jefferson(AL), San Bernardino (CA), Los Angeles (CA), Orange (CA), Miami-Dade (FL),Hillsborough (FL), and Pinellas (FL) counties.Our review of these counties, like the places profiled in Part I, reveals thatthese counties frequently share at least three systemic deficiencies: a history ofoverzealous prosecutions, inadequate defense lawyering, and a pattern of racialbias and exclusion. These structural failings regularly produce two types of unjustoutcomes which disproportionately impact people of color: the wrongful convictionof innocent people, and the excessive punishment of persons who are young or sufferfrom severe mental illnesses, brain damage, trauma, and intellectual disabilities.

  • Document type NGO report
  • Countries list United States
  • Themes list Trend Towards Abolition, Country/Regional profiles,

Document(s)

Counting executions: data analysis by justice project pakistan

By Justice Project Pakistan, on 1 January 2017


2017

Academic report


More details See the document

Facts and figures of the executions in Pakistan from december 2014 to May 2017

  • Document type Academic report
  • Themes list Death Penalty, Country/Regional profiles,

Document(s)

Missouri’s Death Penalty in 2016: The Year in Review

By Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, on 1 January 2016


2016

NGO report


More details See the document

MADP’s 2016 report has compiled the death penalty data for the State of Missouri in 2016 and notices a significant decline of executions (6 in 2015, 1 in 2016). Moreover, no new death sentences were handed down in Missouri in 2016

  • Document type NGO report
  • Themes list Death Row Conditions, Discrimination, Death Penalty, Statistics, Country/Regional profiles,

Document(s)

Annual report on the death penalty in Iran 2016

By Ensemble contre la peine de mort (ECPM) / Iran Human Rights (IHR), on 1 January 2017


2017

NGO report

fr
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The 9th annual report by Iran Human Rights (IHR) on the death penalty provides an assessment and analysis of the death penalty trends in 2016 in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The report sets out the number of executions in 2016, the trend compared to previous years, charges, geographic distribution and a monthly breakdown of executions

Document(s)

Advancing drug policy reform: a new approach to decriminalization

By Global Commission on Drug Policy, on 1 January 2016


2016

NGO report


More details See the document

The Global Commission produces technical and policy reports to ground evidence-based recommendations in human rights, health and development. Political reports focus on drug policy reform generally and provide recommendations to countries in areas such as decriminalization; health and security; alternatives to incarceration for low-level people involved in the production, transport or selling of drugs; more intelligent measures against violent organizations and policy innovations such as legal, regulated markets.

  • Document type NGO report
  • Themes list Drug Offences, Sentencing Alternatives, Death Penalty,

Document(s)

Death Row’s Children: Pakistan’s Unlawful Executions of Juvenile Offenders

By Justice Project Pakistan, on 1 January 2017


2017

NGO report


More details See the document

On 16 December 2014, the Government of Pakistan lifted a six-year de facto moratorium on the death penalty. Whilst the Government claims that the lifting of the moratorium is designed to curb terrorism, an analysis of the 423 executions that have taken place till February 2017 reveals that the death penalty has disproportionately impacted the most vulnerable of all populations including juvenile offenders. Even though Pakistan’s international obligations and domestic laws prohibit sentencing juvenile offenders to death, at least 6 have been executed in the past two years.Through this report, the Justice Project Pakistan highlights the fundamental weaknesses under Pakistan’s juvenile justice system that lead to the unlawful and arbitrary implementation of the death penalty against juvenile offenders.

  • Document type NGO report
  • Themes list Juveniles, Fair Trial, International law, Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment and Punishment, Death Penalty, Country/Regional profiles,

Document(s)

The Kentucky Death Penalty Assessment Report: Evaluating fairness and accuracy in state death panlty systems. An Analysis of Kentucky’s Death Penalty Laws, Procedures, and Practices

By American Bar Association, on 1 January 2011


2011

NGO report


More details See the document

This report examines how state death penalty systems are functioning in design and practice and are intended to serve as the bases from which states can launch comprehensive self-examinations, impose reforms, or in some cases, impose moratoria.

  • Document type NGO report

Document(s)

New opinion study shows Zimbabwean public ready to accept death penalty abolition

By Death Penalty Project, on 1 January 2018


2018

NGO report


More details See the document

Today, The Death Penalty Project, in partnership with Veritas, launches “12 Years Without an Execution: Is Zimbabwe Ready for Abolition?” a national public opinion study, providing for the first time comprehensive and contextualised data on public attitudes towards the death penalty in Zimbabwe – a country that has not carried out any executions in over 12 years.

  • Document type NGO report
  • Themes list Public opinion, Public debate, Death Penalty, Country/Regional profiles,

Document(s)

Sources of Variation in Pro-Death Penalty Attitudes in China: An Exploratory Study of Chinese Students at Home and Abroad

By Lening Zhang / Terance D. Miethe / Hong Lu / Bin Liang / British Journal of Criminology, on 1 January 2006


2006

Article

China


More details See the document

This paper examines Chinese students’ attitudes about the death penalty in contemporary China. Drawing upon Western public opinion research on the death penalty, samples of Chinese college students at home and abroad are used to explore the magnitude of their pro-death penalty attitudes and sources of variation in these opinions. Both groups of Chinese students are found to support the death penalty across different measures of this concept. Several individual and contextual factors are correlated with pro-death penalty attitudes, but the belief in the specific deterrent effect of punishments was the only variable that had a significant net effect on these attitudes in our multivariate analysis. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of this study for future research on public opinion about crime and punishment in China.

  • Document type Article
  • Countries list China
  • Themes list Public opinion, Public debate,

Document(s)

Compounded Violence: Domestic Abuse and the Mandatory Death Penalty in Ghana and Sierra Leone

By Anjuli Peters / University of Oxford, on 1 January 2019


2019

Arguments against the death penalty


More details See the document

This paper applies a gendered perspective to women sentenced to a mandatory death penalty in the West African countries of Ghana and Sierra Leone. At present, there are six women on death row in Ghana and two women on death row in Sierra Leone. All eight women are sentenced to mandatory death for murder. However, interviews with the women on death row suggest that their offenses do not meet the threshold of ‘most serious crimes.’ Instead, many are convicted for acts committed in retaliation following violence against them.

  • Document type Arguments against the death penalty
  • Themes list Women,

Document(s)

Indonesian : Tidak Manusiawi: Kondisi Lembaga Pemasyarakatan Bagi Terpidana Mati di Indonesia

By Ensemble contre la peine de mort (ECPM) / Kontras / Carole Berrih, on 8 September 2020


2020

NGO report

Indonesia

en
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Meskipun telah banyak penelitian telah dilakukan terkait dengan administrasi peradilan dalam kasus-kasus hukuman mati di Indonesia, hanya sedikit penelitian tentang kondisi penahanan seseorang yang dijatuhi hukuman mati di sebuah negara. Penelitian ini adalah salah satu penelitian pertama yang berfokus pada kondisi penahanan narapidana yang di hukum mati di Indonesia. Laporan ini bertujuan untuk memberikan suara kepada mereka yang mengalami hukuman mati di Indonesia dan juga pendapat dari keluarga mereka, bersamaan dengan mendokumentasikan situasi mereka.

Document(s)

Death Row USA – Spring 2020

By NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. / Deborah Fins, on 8 September 2020


NGO report

United States


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Spring 2020 edition of Death Row USA, on the situation of the death penalty in the USA as of April 2020

  • Document type NGO report
  • Countries list United States
  • Themes list Statistics,

Document(s)

The Pros and Cons of Life Without Parole

By Bent Grover / Catherine Appleton / British Journal of Criminology, on 1 January 2007


2007

Article

United States


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The question of how societies should respond to their most serious crimes if not with the death penalty is ‘perhaps the oldest of all the issues raised by the two-century struggle in western civilization to end the death penalty’ ( Bedau, 1990: 481 ). In this article we draw attention to the rapid and extraordinary increase in the use of ‘life imprisonment without parole’ in the United States. We aim to critically assess the main arguments put forward by supporters of whole life imprisonment as a punishment provided by law to replace the death penalty and argue against life-long detention as the ultimate sanction.

  • Document type Article
  • Countries list United States
  • Themes list Sentencing Alternatives,

Document(s)

Physicians Willingness to Participate in the Process of lethal Injection for Capital Punishment

By Joan Weiner / Brian M. Aboff / Neil J. / Farber / Annals of Internal Medecine 135(10), 884-888 / Elizabeth B. Davis / E. Gil Boyer / Peter A. Ubel, on 1 January 2001


2001

Article

United States


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Occasionally, physicians’ personal values conflict with their perceived societal duties. One example is the case of lethal injection for the purpose of capital punishment. Some states require that such lethal injections be performed by physicians. At the same time, leading medical societies have concluded that physicians should avoid participating in capital punishment. Physicians’ attitudes toward involvement in capital punishment may depend on how they balance their responsibilities to individuals against their duties to society. Other factors may include a desire to provide a more painless death for the prisoner or concern over the competency of other health care personnel. In a previous survey, we found that a majority of physicians condoned involvement of their fellow physicians in capital punishment. For the current study, we conducted another survey to ascertain physicians’ attitudes about their own involvement in capital punishment, as well as factors associated with these attitudes.

  • Document type Article
  • Countries list United States
  • Themes list Lethal Injection,

Document(s)

Whom the State Kills

By Harvard Law Review / Scott Phillips / Justin Marceau, on 1 January 2020


2020

Article

United States


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An unexpected feature of the modern death penalty is the fact that most persons sentenced to death are not executed […]. Death sentences are remarkably poor predictors of who will ultimately be executed. An even more salient feature of the death penalty is the fat that race matters […]. Rarity and race, then, stand as hallmarks of the American death penalty. But until now the interaction of these two phenomena has not been studied. This Article examines whether race is relevant for understanding the fate of the unfortunate few […]. By combining Baldus’s sentencing data whith original execution data, we demonstrate that the overall execution is susbsentially greater for defendants convicted of killing a white victim than for those convicted of killing a Black victim.

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

Document(s)

Nobody To Talk To: Barriers to Mental Health Treatment for Family Members of Individuals Sentenced to Death and Executed

By Texas After Violence Project, on 1 January 2019


2019

NGO report


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Four decades after the reinstatement of the death penalty in the United States, the harmful impact of death sentences and executions on persons other than the individual offender is still not widely recognized – not even among mental health professionals who specialize in responding to individual and community needs in the aftermath of traumatic events.

  • Document type NGO report
  • Themes list Mental Illness, Murder Victims' Families,

Document(s)

DEATH ROW USA. Summer 2019

By NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., on 1 January 2019


NGO report


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This report provides death row statistics and an update on executions in the US as of July 2019.

  • Document type NGO report
  • Themes list Statistics, Country/Regional profiles,

Document(s)

Texas Death Penalty Developments in 2019: The Year in Review

By Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty / Kristin Houlé / Grace Rudser, on 1 January 2019


NGO report


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The Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (TCADP) – a statewide advocacy organization based in Austin, Texas – publishes this annual report to inform the public and elected officials about issues associated with the death penalty over the past year. The report includes illustrative charts and graphs, and cites the death penalty developments in Texas (USA).

  • Document type NGO report
  • Themes list Death Penalty,

Document(s)

Iran 34th Session of the Working Group on the UPR: Death Penalty

By Ensemble contre la peine de mort (ECPM) / Iran Human Rights (IHR) / World Coalition Against the Death Penalty / Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation for the Promotion of Human Rights and Democracy in Iran / Association for Human Rights in Kurdistan of Iran-Geneva (KMMK-G) / Impact Iran , on 1 January 2019


NGO report


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This joint stakeholder report aims to provide up-to-date and useful information to understand the reality of the death penalty in the Islamic Republic of Iran, in view of the next review of Iran by the Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) in November 2019. The substantive information was gathered from news, reports and testimonies from various local sources. Iran is one of the leading death-sentencing and executing states in the world. Despite some recent steps towards limiting the scope of the death penalty for drug-related crimes, Iran’s use of capital punishment remains non-transparent, arbitrary, and worrisomely broad in scope.

  • Document type NGO report
  • Themes list International law, Country/Regional profiles,

Document(s)

Dehumanized: The Prison Conditions of People Sentenced to Death in Indonesia

By Ensemble contre la peine de mort (ECPM) / Kontras / Carole Berrih, on 1 January 2019


NGO report

en
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Although much research has been carried out into the administration of justice in death penalty cases in Indonesia, there is little research into the conditions of detention of the men and women sentenced to death in that country. This study is one of the first to focus on the conditions of detention of death row prisoners in Indonesia. This report aims to give a voice to the men and women on death row in Indonesia and to their families, while documenting their situation.

Document(s)

Punished for Being Vulnerable. How Pakistan executes the poorest and the most marginalized in society

By Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) / Fédération Internationale des Ligues des Droits de l'Homme (FIDH), on 1 January 2019


NGO report


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The present report aims to provide an update on the 2007 report, bearing in mind the significant changes that have taken place in Pakistan under various governments since then, including the 2008 unofficial moratorium and the resumption of executions in 2014. The mission aimed at exploring specific issues within the theme of the death penalty, including detention conditions on death row, the use of capital punishment for minors, and the impact of the death penalty on families of death row inmates, particularly their children. However, a recurring theme emerged in discussions about each of these sub-issues: a strong systemic bias against the poor and marginalized.

  • Document type NGO report
  • Themes list Fair Trial, Death Penalty,

Document(s)

Compounded Violence: Domestic Abuse and the Mandatory Death Penalty in Ghana and Sierra Leone

By Anjuli Peters / University of Oxford, on 1 January 2019


Arguments against the death penalty


More details See the document

This paper applies a gendered perspective to women sentenced to a mandatory death penalty in the West African countries of Ghana and Sierra Leone. At present, there are six women on death row in Ghana and two women on death row in Sierra Leone. All eight women are sentenced to mandatory death for murder. However, interviews with the women on death row suggest that their offenses do not meet the threshold of ‘most serious crimes.’ Instead, many are convicted for acts committed in retaliation following violence against them.

  • Document type Arguments against the death penalty
  • Themes list Women,

Document(s)

Mapping the Fate of the Dead (Killings and Burials in North Korea)

By Transitional Justice Working Group, on 1 January 2019


NGO report


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The Transitional Justice Working Group’s 2019 report “Mapping the Fate of the Dead: Killings and Burials in North Korea” is based on four years of research(2015-2019) to document and map three types of locations connected to human rights violations in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea):

  • Document type NGO report
  • Themes list Death Penalty, Country/Regional profiles,

Document(s)

On Trial: The Implementation of Pakistan’s Blasphemy Laws

By International Commission of Jurists , on 8 September 2020


2020

NGO report

Pakistan


More details See the document
  • Document type NGO report
  • Countries list Pakistan
  • Themes list Legal Representation, Networks, Death Penalty, Country/Regional profiles,