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Document(s)
Annual Statistics Report 2022
By Project 39A, on 22 February 2023
2023
NGO report
India
More details See the document
This is the seventh edition of the Death Penalty in India: Annual Statistics Report published by Project 39A at National Law University, Delhi. 2022 represents a significant shift in death penalty adjudication, with the Supreme Court recognising the need to reconsider the capital sentencing framework for the first time since it was laid down in Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab in 1980. In a momentous order, the Supreme Court noted the gaps in the death penalty sentencing framework and has sought to address these concerns through a Constitution Bench towards establishing the components of a real, meaningful and effective capital sentencing hearing. In another decision, the Court laid down guidelines for the collection of mitigating material by trial courts. However, in the same year that the Supreme Court cast grave doubts on the death penalty sentencing framework and its implementation by trial courts, it is of concern that 165 death sentences were imposed by Sessions Courts, the highest in a single year since 2000.
- Document type NGO report
- Countries list India
Document(s)
Capital Punishment & Social Rights Research Initiative – Texas
By Barbara Laubenthal, on 12 February 2023
2023
Multimedia content
Death Row Conditions
United States
More details See the document
The Capital Punishment and Social Rights Research Initiative assesses and analyzes the access of men and women on U.S. death rows to social rights such as health care, social contacts, visitation, communication, recreation and spiritual support. CPSR’s info series on living conditions on death row, state by state. Part 1: Texas
- Document type Multimedia content
- Countries list United States
- Themes list Death Row Conditions
![Prisoner’s Future Foundation's logo](https://worldcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/pff-logo.jpg)
Member(s)
Prisoner’s Future Foundation
on 28 March 2023
Prisoners’ Future Foundation (PFF) is a local non-governmental Ministry of Community Development and Social Services (MCDSS) following government enforcing the NGO Act of 2009 of the laws of Zambia. PFF has in the past handled both advocacy and service delivery, in responding to the needs of currently and formally incarcerated people and citizens who have […]
2023
Zambia
Document(s)
Estimating the effect of death penalty moratoriums on homicide rates using the synthetic control method
By Stephen N. Oliphant, on 18 September 2022
2022
Academic report
Moratorium
United States
More details See the document
Research examining death penalty deterrence has been characterized as inconclusive and uninformative. The present analysis heeds a recommendation from prior research to examine single-state changes in death penalty policy using the synthetic control method. Data from the years 1979–2019 were used to construct synthetic controls and estimate the effects of death penalty moratoriums on homicide rates in Illinois, New Jersey, Washington, and Pennsylvania. Moratoriums on capital punishment resulted in nonsignificant homicide reductions in all four states.
- Document type Academic report
- Countries list United States
- Themes list Moratorium
Document(s)
Death Penalty and the Indian Supreme Court (2007-2021)
By Project 39A, on 8 December 2022
2022
NGO report
India
More details See the document
Death Penalty and the Indian Supreme Court (2007-2021) maps the important trends and developments in the Supreme Court’s death penalty jurisprudence. These past 15 years have witnessed significant developments in the law on capital sentencing, post-mercy jurisprudence, and other procedural developments pertaining to the administration of the death penalty. Imagined as an intellectual successor of PUCL and Amnesty International’s doctrinal study of the Supreme Court’s death penalty cases between 1950 to 2006, in ‘Lethal Lottery: The Death Penalty in India’, this report highlights the sustained inconsistency and judge-centric reasoning in capital cases, with particular emphasis on the problem of arbitrariness in approaches to capital sentencing at the Supreme Court.
- Document type NGO report
- Countries list India
![Logo OCTT](https://worldcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Logo-OCTT-vectoriel.jpg)
Member(s)
Organisation Contre la Torture en Tunisie – OCTT
on 8 September 2023
The OCTT has been campaigning since its creation in 2003 against torture in all its forms and in particular the death penalty and against impunity. The OCTT develops strategies and programs to promote human rights and eradicate torture and ill-treatment and against any violation of physical and moral integrity and primarily the right to life. […]
2023
Tunisia
![Kurdpa's logo](https://worldcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/logo-Kurdpa.png)
Member(s)
Kurdpa Human Rights Organization
on 29 November 2023
KURDPA is a human rights organization and independent news agency, and is a leading source for the latest information on Kurdistan in Iran, with daily coverage in three languages. Founded in 2011, KURDPA’s on-the-ground reporting highlights human rights concerns affecting the Iranian Kurdish community. Kurdpa Organization intends to compensate the existing shortcomings in identifying and […]
2023
Iran (Islamic Republic of)
![Death Penalty Research Unit (DPRU), University of Oxford](https://worldcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/death_penalty_research_unit_dpru-1200x1200.jpg)
Member(s)
Death Penalty Research Unit (DPRU), University of Oxford
on 15 December 2023
The Death Penalty Research Unit has three main aims: to develop empirical, theoretical and policy-relevant research on the death penalty worldwide; to encourage death penalty scholarship including at graduate level, through education, events, research dissemination and an active blog; and to engage in knowledge production, exchange and dissemination in cooperation with civil society, charities, legal […]
2023
United Kingdom
Document(s)
Efforts towards abolition of the death penalty: Challenges and prospects
By Death Penalty Research Unit (DPRU), University of Oxford, on 5 February 2024
2024
Academic Article
Trend Towards Abolition
More details See the document
Published in December 2023.
This paper reflects on the role of international human rights treaties in promoting universal abolition and progressive restriction of the death penalty. It suggests that over the past quarter of a century a ‘new human rights dynamic’ has aimed to generate universal acceptance that however it is administered, the death penalty violates the human rights of all citizens exposed to it. Nevertheless, defences of capital punishment based on principles of national sovereignty are engrained in some parts of the world, particularly in Asia and the Middle East. The human rights project struggles to make inroads into such jurisdictions where political will is opposed to abolition, and trenchant protection of sovereignty threatens the very universality of these rights.
- Document type Academic Article
- Themes list Trend Towards Abolition
Document(s)
Fourteen Days in May
By Paul Hamann, on 30 November 2018
2018
Arguments against the death penalty
Multimedia content
Death Row Conditions
More details See the document
Fourteen Days in May is a documentary directed by Paul Hamann. The program recounts the final days before the execution of Edward Earl Johnson, an American prisoner convicted of rape and murder.
The documentary crew, given access to the prison warden, guards and chaplain and to Johnson and his family, filmed the last days of Johnson’s life in detail. The documentary argues against the death penalty and maintains that capital punishment is disproportionately applied to African-Americans convicted of crimes against whites. The programme features attorney Clive Stafford Smith, an advocate against capital punishment.
- Document type Arguments against the death penalty / Multimedia content
- Themes list Death Row Conditions
Document(s)
The war on drugs, forensic science and the death penalty in the Philippines
By Maria Corazon A.De Ungria and Jose M.Jose, on 10 August 2021
2021
Academic report
Drug Offenses
Philippines
More details See the document
The effectiveness of the death penalty to deter heinous crimes remains a contentious issue even though it has been abolished in many countries. Three years into President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration, the push to re-impose the death penalty is being taken seriously.
There is urgency in providing options to the drug problem other than killing drug suspects in the streets or sentencing them to death. The drug problem is a complex issue and exposes the human vulnerability of its users for criminal exploitation.
We propose here that addressing these vulnerabilities in a balanced and comprehensive manner through health-focused, rights-based criminal justice responses, conducting forensic science-based drug investigations and determining the social causes of drug abuse is an alternative solution that demands cooperation across different sectors of society as well as underscores the fundamental value of human life.
- Document type Academic report
- Countries list Philippines
- Themes list Drug Offenses
Document(s)
I Spent A Day With Death Row Survivors
By Anthony Padilla, on 1 January 2020
2020
Multimedia content
United States
More details See the document
Anthony Padilla interviewed 4 death row survivors to shed light on sentencing innocent people to death for a crime they did not commit. Derrick Jamison, Nick Yarris, Peter Pringle and Sunny Jacobs spent between 15 and 23 years awaiting executions, before being finally released from death row.
- Document type Multimedia content
- Countries list United States
Document(s)
Let the Lord Sort Them. The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty
By Maurice Chammah, on 27 January 2021
2021
Book
Public Opinion
United States
More details See the document
Maurice Chammah (The Marshall Project) explores the rise and fall of capital punishment in Texas where it appears to durably decline in spite of the state’s long use of the death penalty.
- Document type Book
- Countries list United States
- Themes list Public Opinion
![Madrid Bar Association](https://worldcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Logotipo-icam.png)
Member(s)
Madrid Bar Association
on 5 May 2021
Founded in 1596, the Madrid Bar Association is made up of 77,000 lawyers, and its main mission is to defend their corporate interests and those of the citizens they serve. Likewise, the Bar guarantees its independence and the validity of the basic values of the profession, and provides its members with the services they need […]
2021
Spain
Document(s)
The Phantom
By Patrick Forbes, on 10 August 2021
2021
Multimedia content
Innocence
Public Opinion
United States
More details See the document
THE PHANTOM tells the story of one of the darkest episodes in the long history of American justice. A story of how the State of Texas knowingly sent an innocent man to his death and left a serial killer at large. A case in which – for the first time – it can be conclusively proven that the US courts executed a blameless man.
This film uncovers the shocking truth behind a tale of murder, corruption and lies that unfolded in the dusty, desperate streets of a Texas oil town nearly thirty years ago.
- Document type Multimedia content
- Countries list United States
- Themes list Innocence / Public Opinion
Document(s)
No death penalty: Essay on the human dignity of the guilty
By Alfredo De Francesco , on 11 January 2022
2022
Book
More details See the document
Is the death penalty “natural” or sometimes legally due?
If not, is the death penalty always a political instrument?
If so, how and why can it be said that the death penalty is unjust, also considering religious values?
What about in case of war time or of very dangerous criminals?
In which way can there be an irrefutable argument for banning the death penalty worldwide and forever?
These and other issues concerning the death penalty are addressed by the Author of this book.
A book, where the most common theories for and against the death penalty are considered in the light of law history and philosophical views, and where Cesare Beccaria’s approach is revised, taking into account the development of the contemporary criminal law and of the legal positivism.
This is an essay, where the protection of humanity is not considered simply as a hope or as a naive dream, but rather as a juridical concept, absolutely necessary to understand one of most tragic questions of all time: “is it just to kill those who killed?”
- Document type Book
Document(s)
Chinese Netizens’ Opinions on Death Sentences
By Bin Liang and Jianhong Liu, The University of Michigan Press, on 4 November 2021
2021
Academic report
China
Public Opinion
More details See the document
The People’s Republic of China no doubt leads the world in both numbers of death sentences and executions. Despite being the largest user of the death penalty, China has never conducted a national poll on citizens’ opinions toward capital punishment, while claiming “overwhelming public support” as a major justification for its retention and use. Based on a content analysis of 38,512 comments collected from 63 cases in 2015, this study examines the diversity and rationales of netizens’ opinions of and interactions with China’s criminal justice system. In addition, the book discusses China’s social, systemic, and structural problems and critically examines the rationality of netizens’ opinions based on Habermas’s communicative rationality framework. Readers will be able to contextualize Chinese netizens’ discussions and draw conclusions about commonalities and uniqueness of China’s death penalty practice.
- Document type Academic report
- Countries list China
- Themes list Public Opinion
Document(s)
The State of Texas vs. Melissa
By Sabrina Van Tassel, on 25 March 2020
2020
Multimedia content
Fair Trial
United States
More details See the document
Melissa Lucio was the first Hispanic woman sentenced to death in Texas. For ten years she has been awaiting her fate, and she now faces her last appeal.
- Document type Multimedia content
- Countries list United States
- Themes list Fair Trial
Document(s)
Death Penalty Cases: Leading U.S. Supreme Court Cases on Capital Punishment
By David McCord / Barry Latzer / Butterworth-Heinemann, on 1 January 2010
2010
Book
United States
More details See the document
This brand new edition of Death Penalty Cases makes the most manageable comprehensive resource on the death penalty even better. It includes the most recent cases, including Kennedy v. Louisiana, prohibiting the death penalty for child rapists, and Baze v. Rees, upholding execution by lethal injection. In addition, all of the cases are now topically organized into five sections: * The Foundational Cases * Death-Eligibility: Which persons/crimes are fit for the death penalty? * The Death Penalty Trial * Post-conviction Review * Execution Issues The introductory essays on the history, administration, and controversies surrounding capital punishment have been thoroughly revised. The statistical appendix has been brought up-to-date, and the statutory appendix has been restructured. For clarity, accuracy, complete impartiality and comprehensiveness, there simply is no better resource on capital punishment available.
- Document type Book
- Countries list United States
- Themes list Networks,
Document(s)
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT AND ELITE POLITICS: DISSENSUS AND THE DEATH PENALTY IN AMERICA
By Judith Randle / Studies in Law, Politics and Society, on 1 January 2003
2003
Article
United States
More details See the document
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,
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)
Litigating in the Shadow of Death
By Lawrence C. Marshall / University of Pittsburgh Law Review, on 1 January 2006
2006
Article
United States
More details See the document
One gets the strong sense that Professor White believed that the key to changing or abolishing the death penalty in the United States was to educate policymakers and the public about its practical operation. This, of course, was Justice Thurgood Marshall’s hypothesis in Furman v. Georgia: that the widespread support that the death penalty enjoys in the country is a product of mass ignorance about how it is applied. Professor White did not simply posit the theory, he dedicated much of his life to the mission of educating the public about the inequities of the American death penalty. This final book does that in an extraordinarily effective way by combing together studies of illustrative cases, analysis of the lawyers’ roles and dilemmas, and cogent explanations of the state of the law.
- Document type Article
- Countries list United States
- Themes list Networks,
Document(s)
Deciding Death
By Corinna Barrett Lain / Duke Law Journal, on 1 January 2007
2007
Article
United States
More details See the document
When the Supreme Court is deciding death, how much does law matter? Scholars long have lamented the majoritarian nature of the Court’s Eighth Amendment “evolving standards of decency” doctrine, but their criticism misses the mark. Majoritarian doctrine does not drive the Court’s decisions in this area; majoritarian forces elsewhere do. To make my point, I first examine three sets of “evolving standards” death penalty decisions in which the Court implicitly or explicitly reversed itself, attacking the legal justification for the Court’s change of position and offering an extralegal explanation for why those cases came out the way they did. I then use political science models of Supreme Court decisionmaking to explain how broader social and political forces push the Court toward majoritarian death penalty rulings for reasons wholly independent of majoritarian death penalty doctrine. Finally, I bring the analysis full [*pg 2] circle, showing how broader sociopolitical forces even led to the development of the “evolving standards” doctrine. In the realm of death penalty decisionmaking, problematic doctrine is not to blame for majoritarian influences; rather, majoritarian influences are to blame for problematic doctrine. The real obstacle to countermajoritarian decisionmaking is not doctrine, but the inherently majoritarian tendencies of the Supreme Court itself.
- Document type Article
- Countries list United States
- Themes list Networks,
Document(s)
Predictors of Miscarriages of Justice in Capital Cases
By Talia Roitberg Harmon / Justice Quarterly, on 1 January 2001
2001
Article
United States
More details See the document
Prior research on wrongful convictions in capital cases focused primarily on qualitative methods designed to provide in-depth descriptive analyses of these cases. In contrast, this study is a quantitative comparison between 76 documented cases from 1970 to 1998, in which prisoners were released from death row because of “doubts about their guilt,” and a matched group of inmates who were executed. Through the use of a logistic regression model, significant predictors of cases that result in a release from death row as opposed to an execution, are identified. The final section of this study focuses on policy implications that may decrease the risk of error in capital cases. Additional lines of research are suggested in an effort to increase understanding of miscarriages of justice in such cases.
- Document type Article
- Countries list United States
- Themes list Innocence,
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)
STRENGTHENING THE DEFENCE IN DEATH PENALTY CASES IN THE PEOPLE´S REPUBLIC OF CHINA: Empirical Research into the Role of Defence Councils in Criminal Cases Eligible for the Death Penalty
By Hans Jörg Albrecht / Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law, on 1 January 2006
2006
Article
China
More details See the document
This project examines the role of defence councils in Chinese criminal proceedings that can end up with the imposition of the death penalty. It aims to review the problems defence lawyers face in such proceedings, the defence strategies they apply and to examine whether the assignment of a defence lawyer makes a difference in the outcome of a criminal trial. Moreover, the project explores what can and should be done to empower defence councils to effectively represent suspects and accused in death penalty eligible cases.The objective of the study is to shed light on the problems experienced by criminal defence councils when defending capital crime cases and to generate information on how death penalty cases are processed through the Chinese system of justice as well as the determinants of the outcomes death penalty eligible criminal cases.
- Document type Article
- Countries list China
- Themes list Legal Representation,
Document(s)
New Claims about Executions and General Deterrence: Déjà Vu All Over Again?
By Richard Berk / Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, on 1 January 2005
2005
Article
United States
More details See the document
A number of papers have recently appeared claiming to show that in the United States executions deter serious crime. There are many statistical problems with the data analyses reported. This paper addresses the problem of “influence,” which occurs when a very small and atypical fraction of the data dominate the statistical results.
- Document type Article
- Countries list United States
- Themes list Deterrence ,
Document(s)
Religion and the Death Penalty: A Call for Reckoning
By John D. Carlson / Erik C. Owens / Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company / Eric P. Elshtain / J. Budziszewski / E. J. Dionne / Avery Cardinal Dulles / Stanley Hauerwas / Frank Keating / Gilbert Meilaender / David Novak, on 1 January 2004
2004
Book
More details See the document
This important book is sure to foster informed public discussion about the death penalty by deepening readers’ understanding of how religious beliefs and perspectives shape this contentious issue. Featuring a fair, balanced appraisal of its topic, Religion and the Death Penalty brings thoughtful religious reflection to bear on current challenges facing the capital justice system.
- Document type Book
- Themes list Religion ,
Document(s)
Death Penalty: The Political Foundations of the Global Trend Towards Abolition
By Eric Neumayer / Human Rights Review, on 1 January 2008
2008
Article
More details See the document
The death penalty is like no other punishment. Its continued existence in many countries of the world creates political tensions within these countries and between governments of retentionist and abolitionist countries. After the Second World War, more and more countries have abolished the death penalty. This article argues that the major determinants of this global trend towards abolition are political, a claim which receives support in a quantitative cross-national analysis from 1950 to 2002. Democracy, democratisation, international political pressure on retentionist countries and peer group effects in relatively abolitionist regions all raise the likelihood of abolition. There is also a partisan effect, as abolition becomes more likely if the chief executive’s party is left wing-oriented. Cultural, social and economic determinants receive only limited support. The global trend towards abolition will go on if democracy continues to spread around the world and abolitionist countries stand by their commitment to press for abolition all over the world.
- Document type Article
- Themes list Trend Towards Abolition,
Document(s)
Death Penalty in Korea: From Unofficial Moratorium to Abolition?
By Kuk Cho / Asian Journal of Comparative Law, on 1 January 2008
Article
Democratic People's Republic of Korea
More details See the document
This article provides an overview of the legal regime governing the death penalty and the on-going debate on the death penalty in Korea. It begins by briefly reviewing international treaties that call for the abolition of the death penalty, contrasting them with the retentionist trend in most Asian countries. It then reviews the major decisions of the Korean Supreme Court and the Korean Constitutional Court. It also discusses recent moves in the National Assembly and the National Human Rights Commission to abolish the death penalty. It suggests that the Korean death penalty debate has potentially significant implications for its retentionist Asian neighbours grappling with similar issues.
- Document type Article
- Countries list Democratic People's Republic of Korea
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)
Europe as an International Actor: Friends Do Not Let Friends Execute: The Council of Europe and the International Campaign to Abolish the Death Penalty
By Sangmin Bae / International Politics, on 1 January 2008
2008
Article
Ukraine
More details See the document
This article investigates the way in which the Council of Europe enforced the norm against capital punishment in Europe. The Council of Europe, through both moral persuasion and centripetal pressure, compelled its member states to adopt the regionally promoted human rights standard. Ukraine, where the very last execution in Europe took place, accepted the norm after a number of years of resistance and in the face of public opposition to abolition. It was possible because of the adamant role of the Council of Europe in attempting to build a death penalty-free zone in Europe and Ukraine’s strategic will to be integrated within the European regional community.
- Document type Article
- Countries list Ukraine
- Themes list Trend Towards Abolition,
Document(s)
The Waiver and Withdrawal of Death Penalty Appeals as “Extreme Communicative Acts”
By Avi Brisman / Western Criminology Review, on 1 January 2010
2010
Article
United States
More details See the document
This paper explores the power struggle between the State and the condemned over the timing and conditions under which an inmate is executed. It begins with a discussion of current public opinion about the death penalty and the ways in which the death penalty has been resisted. Next, it describes capital defendants who elect execution over life imprisonment and considers some of the reasons proffered for waiver and withdrawal. This paper then contemplates whether some instances of “volunteering” should be regarded as “extreme communicative acts” (Wee 2004, 2007)—nonlinguistic communicative acts that are usually associated with protest, especially in the context of a lengthy political struggle (such as hunger strikes, self-immolation, and the chopping off of one’s fingers). In so doing, this paper weighs in on the larger questions of who ultimately controls the body of the condemned and what governmental opposition to waiver and withdrawal may reveal about the motives and rationale for the death penalty. This paper also furthers research on how the prison industrial complex is resisted and how State power more generally is negotiated.
- Document type Article
- Countries list United States
- Themes list Networks,
Document(s)
Capital Punishment at the United Nations: Recent Developments
By Ilias Bantekas / Peter Hodgkinson / Criminal Law Forum, on 1 January 2000
2000
Article
More details See the document
The article discusses the difficulties and controversies surrounding the 1999 Draft Resolution on the Death Penalty to the United Nations General Assembly.
- Document type Article
- Themes list Networks,
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)
Officials’ Estimates of the Incidence of ‘Actual Innocence’ Convictions
By Angie Kiger / Brad Smith / Marvin Zalman / Justice Quarterly, on 1 January 2008
2008
Article
United States
More details See the document
Evidence indicates that the conviction and imprisonment of factually innocent persons occur with some regularity. Most research focuses on causes, but the incidence of wrongful convictions is an important scientific and policy issue, especially as no official body gathers data on miscarriages of justice. Two methods are available for discovering the incidence of wrongful conviction: (1) enumerating specific cases and (2) having criminal justice experts estimate its incidence. Counts or catalogues of wrongful conviction necessarily undercount its incidence and are subject to accuracy challenges. We surveyed Michigan criminal justice officials, replicating a recent Ohio survey, to obtain an expert estimate of the incidence of wrongful conviction. All groups combined estimated that wrongful convictions occurred at a rate of less than 1/2 percent in their own jurisdiction and at a rate of 1-3 percent in the United States. Defense lawyers estimate higher rates of wrongful conviction than judges, who estimate higher rates than police officials and prosecutors. These differences may be explained by professional socialization. An overall wrongful conviction estimate of 1/2 percent extrapolates to about 5,000 wrongful felony convictions and the imprisonment of more than 2,000 innocent persons in the United States every year.
- Document type Article
- Countries list United States
- Themes list Innocence,
Document(s)
Determinants of the Death Penalty: A Comparative Study of the World
By Carsten Anckar / Routledge, on 1 January 2004
2004
Book
More details See the document
Determinants of the Death Penalty seeks to explain the phenomenon of capital punishment – without recourse to value judgements – by identifying those characteristics common to countries that use the death penalty and those that mark countries which do not. This global study uses statistical analysis to relate the popularity of the death penalty to physical, cultural, social, economical, institutional, actor oriented and historical factors. Separate studies are conducted for democracies and non-democracies and within four regional contexts. The book also contains an in-depth investigation into determinants of the death penalty in the USA.
- Document type Book
- Themes list Networks,
Document(s)
Annual Report of the Death Penalty in Iran in 2010
By Iran Human Rights (IHR), on 1 January 2010
2010
NGO report
faMore details See the document
The annual report of the death penalty in 2010 shows a dramatic increase in the number of executions compared to the previous years. The number of annual executions in 2010 in Iran is probably the highest since the mass executions of political prisoners in the summer of 1988.
- Document type NGO report
- Available languages سازمان حقوق بشر ایران: گزارش سالانه اعدام در سال میلادی ۲۰۱۰
Document(s)
Death by Design: Capital Punishment As a Social Psychological System
By Craig Haney / Oxford University Press, on 1 January 2005
2005
Book
United States
More details See the document
In Death by Design, research psychologist Craig Haney argues that capital punishment, and particularly the sequence of events that lead to death sentencing itself, is maintained through a complex and elaborate social psychological system that distance and disengage us from the true nature of the task. Relying heavily on his own research and that of other social scientists, Haney suggests that these social psychological forces enable persons to engage in behavior from which many of them otherwise would refrain. However, by facilitating death sentencing in these ways, this inter-related set of social psychological forces also undermines the reliability and authenticity of the process, and compromises the fairness of its outcomes. Because these social psychological forces are systemic in nature –built into the very system of death sentencing itself –Haney concludes by suggesting a number of inter-locking reforms, derived directly from empirical research on capital punishment, that are needed to increase the fairness and reliability of the process.
- Document type Book
- Countries list United States
- Themes list Networks,
Document(s)
America’s Death Penalty: Between Past and Present
By David Garland / Jonathan Simon / Douglas Hay / Michael Meranze / Randall McGowen / New York University (NYU) / Rebecca Mc Lennan, on 8 September 2020
2020
Book
United States
More details See the document
This volume represents an effort to restore the sense of capital punishment as a question caught up in history. Edited by leading scholars of crime and justice, these original essays pursue different strategies for unsettling the usual terms of the debate. In particular, the authors use comparative and historical investigations of both Europe and America in order to cast fresh light on familiar questions about the meaning of capital punishment.
- Document type Book
- Countries list United States
- Themes list Networks,
Document(s)
Ultimate Punishment: A Lawyer’s Reflections on Dealing with the Death Penalty
By Scott Turow / Picador, on 8 September 2020
Book
United States
More details See the document
Turow bases his opinions on his experiences as a prosecutor and, in his post-prosecutorial years, working on behalf of death-row inmates, as well as his two years on Illinois’s Commission on Capital Punishment, charged by the former Gov. George Ryan.Turow presents both sides of the death penalty debate and seems himself to flip sides depending on the argument.Turow’s reflections include: * Thoughts on victims’ rights vs. community rights * Whether execution is a deterrent * The possible execution of an innocent person * If not the death penalty, what to do with the worst offenders
- Document type Book
- Countries list United States
- Themes list Networks,
Document(s)
Mercy on Trial: What It Means to Stop an Execution
By Austin Sarat / Princeton University Press, on 1 January 2005
2005
Book
United States
More details See the document
In this compelling and timely work, Austin Sarat provides the first book-length work on executive clemency. He turns our focus from questions of guilt and innocence to the very meaning of mercy. Starting from Ryan’s controversial decision, Mercy on Trial uses the lens of executive clemency in capital cases to discuss the fraught condition of mercy in American political life. Most pointedly, Sarat argues that mercy itself is on trial. Although it has always had a problematic position as a form of “lawful lawlessness,” it has come under much more intense popular pressure and criticism in recent decades. This has yielded a radical decline in the use of the power of chief executives to stop executions.
- Document type Book
- Countries list United States
- Themes list Clemency,
Document(s)
When the State Kills: Capital Punishment and the American Condition
By Austin Sarat / Princeton University Press, on 1 January 2001
2001
Book
United States
More details See the document
Is capital punishment just? Does it deter people from murder? What is the risk that we will execute innocent people? These are the usual questions at the heart of the increasingly heated debate about capital punishment in America. In this bold and impassioned book, Austin Sarat seeks to change the terms of that debate. Capital punishment must be stopped, Sarat argues, because it undermines our democratic society.Sarat unflinchingly exposes us to the realities of state killing. He examines its foundations in ideas about revenge and retribution. He takes us inside the courtroom of a capital trial, interviews jurors and lawyers who make decisions about life and death, and assesses the arguments swirling around Timothy McVeigh and his trial for the bombing in Oklahoma City. Aided by a series of unsettling color photographs, he traces Americans’ evolving quest for new methods of execution, and explores the place of capital punishment in popular culture by examining such films as Dead Man Walking, The Last Dance, and The Green Mile.Sarat argues that state executions, once used by monarchs as symbolic displays of power, gained acceptance among Americans as a sign of the people’s sovereignty. Yet today when the state kills, it does so in a bureaucratic procedure hidden from view and for which no one in particular takes responsibility. He uncovers the forces that sustain America’s killing culture, including overheated political rhetoric, racial prejudice, and the desire for a world without moral ambiguity. Capital punishment, Sarat shows, ultimately leaves Americans more divided, hostile, indifferent to life’s complexities, and much further from solving the nation’s ills. In short, it leaves us with an impoverished democracy.The book’s powerful and sobering conclusions point to a new abolitionist politics, in which capital punishment should be banned not only on ethical grounds but also for what it does to Americans and what we cherish.
- Document type Book
- Countries list United States
- Themes list Networks,
Document(s)
The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions
By Helen Prejean / Vintage , on 1 January 2005
2005
Book
United States
More details See the document
She tells the story of two inmates she came to know as a spiritual adviser. Dobie Williams, a poor black man with an IQ of 65 from rural Louisiana, was executed after being represented by incompetent counsel and found guilty by an all-white jury based mostly on conjecture and speculation. Joseph O’Dell was convicted of murder after the court heard from an inmate who later admitted to giving false testimony for his own benefit. O’Dell received neither an evidentiary hearing nor potentially exculpatory DNA testing and was executed, insisting on his innocence the whole while. Besides exploring the shaky cases against them, Prejean describes in vivid detail the thoughts and feelings of Williams and O’Dell as their bids for clemency fail and they are put to death. The second part of the book details “the machinery of death,” the legal process that Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, dismayed at the inequities of the death penalty, cited as his reason for resigning and that current justice Antonin Scalia has boasted of being a part of.
- Document type Book
- Countries list United States
- Themes list Networks,
Document(s)
Murdering Myths: The Story Behind the Death Penalty
By Judith W. Kay / Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., on 1 January 2005
Book
United States
More details See the document
In Murdering Myths: The Story Behind the Death Penalty, Judith Kay goes beyond the hype and statistics to examine Americans’ deep-seated beliefs about crime and punishment. She argues that Americans share a counter-productive idea of justice–that punishment corrects bad behavior, suffering pays for wrong deeds, and victims’ desire for revenge is natural and inevitable. Drawing on interviews with both victims and inmates, Kay shows how this belief harms perpetrators, victims, and society and calls for a new narrative that recognizes the humanity in all of us.
- Document type Book
- Countries list United States
- Themes list Networks,
Document(s)
Capital Punishment: Strategies for Abolition
By William A. Schabas / Peter Hodgkinson / Cambridge University Press, on 1 January 2004
2004
Book
Georgia
More details See the document
The editors of this study isolate the core issues influencing legislation so that they can be incorporated into strategies that advise governments in changing their policy on capital punishment. What are the critical factors determining whether a country replaces, retains or restores the death penalty? Why do some countries maintain the death penalty in theory, but in reality rarely invoke it? These questions and others are explored in chapters on South Korea, Lithuania, Georgia, Japan and the British Caribbean Commonwealth, as well as the U.S.
- Document type Book
- Countries list Georgia
- Themes list Networks,
Document(s)
The cultural lives of capital punishment: comparative perspectives
By Sangmin Bae / David T. Johnson / Virgil K.Y. Ho / Evi Girling / Agata Fijalkowski / Julia Eckert / Christian Boulanger / Austin Sarat / Stanford University Press / Botagoz Kassymbekova / Shai Lavi / Jürgen Martschukat, on 1 January 2005
2005
Book
China
More details See the document
They undertake this “cultural voyage” comparatively—examining the dynamics of the death penalty in Mexico, the United States, Poland, Kyrgyzstan, India, Israel, Palestine, Japan, China, Singapore, and South Korea—arguing that we need to look beyond the United States to see how capital punishment “lives” or “dies” in the rest of the world, how images of state killing are produced and consumed elsewhere, and how they are reflected, back and forth, in the emerging international judicial and political discourse on the penalty of death and its abolition.
- Document type Book
- Countries list China
- Themes list Networks,
Document(s)
Peculiar Institution: America’s Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition
By David Garland / Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, on 8 September 2020
2020
Book
United States
More details See the document
This book offers a fresh perspective on why the death penalty endures in the United States when so many other countries in the Western world have already abolished it. The book seeks to understand the persistence of the death penalty in the U.S. as a social fact, using sociological, historical and legal analyses to explain the unique and peculiar manner in which the death penalty is applied. Garland concludes that the death penalty has survived in the United States because it is deeply connected to the fundamentally American institutions of local autonomy and popular democracy.
- Document type Book
- Countries list United States
- Themes list Networks,
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)
Chinas Death Penalty: History, Law and Contemporary Practices
By Terance D. Miethe / Hong Lu / Routledge, on 1 January 2007
2007
Book
China
More details See the document
This book examines the death penalty within the changing socio-political context of China. The authors’ treatment of China’s death penalty is legal, historical, and comparative. In particular, they examine; the substantive and procedures laws surrounding capital punishment in different historical periods the purposes and functions of capital punishment in China in various dynasties changes in the method of imposition and relative prevalence of capital punishment over time the socio-demographic profile of the executed and their crimes over the last two decades and comparative practices in other countries. Their analyses of the death penalty in contemporary China focus on both its theory – how it should be done in law – and actual practice – based on available secondary reports/sources.
- Document type Book
- Countries list China
- Themes list Networks,
Document(s)
The Death Penalty: An American History
By Stuart Banner / Harvard University Press, on 1 January 2003
2003
Book
United States
More details See the document
Law professor Stuart Banner tells the story of how, over four centuries, dramatic changes have taken place in the ways capital punishment has been administered and experienced. Banner moves beyond the debates, to give us an unprecedented understanding of capital punishment’s many meanings. As nearly four thousand inmates are now on death row, and almost one hundred are currently being executed each year, the furious debate is unlikely to diminish. The Death Penalty is invaluable in understanding the American way of the ultimate punishment.
- Document type Book
- Countries list United States
- Themes list Networks,
Document(s)
When the State No Longer Kills: International Human Rights Norms and Abolition of Capital Punishment
By Sangmin Bae / State University of New York Press, on 1 January 2007
2007
Book
Republic of Korea
More details See the document
This book tries to explain what leads a state to abolish capital punishment or impose a moratorium, by offereing in-depth analyses of four countries: Ukraine, South Africa, South Korea and the United States. Focusing on the role of political leadership and domestic political institutions, Bae clarifies the causal mechanisms that lead to state compliance or noncompliance with the norm.
- Document type Book
- Countries list Republic of Korea
- Themes list Moratorium ,
Document(s)
Debating the death penalty: should America have capital punishment? : the experts on both sides make their case
By Hugo Adam Bedau / Stephen B. Bright / Joshua K. Marquis / Bryan Stevenson / Louis P. Pojman / Alex Kozinski / Paul G. Cassell / Oxford University Press / George Ryan, on 1 January 2004
2004
Book
United States
More details See the document
This book contains contributions from judges, attorneys, and academicians on both sides of the death penalty question. The grounds advanced for justification of capital punishment–including deterrence, retribution, and closure for victims’ families–are considered. Whether life imprisonment is adequate to address these concerns is also debated. Other issues include whether racial minorities or indigent defendants are disproportionately executed, whether the penalty is otherwise arbitrarily applied, and what risks exist regarding the execution of an innocent person.
- Document type Book
- Countries list United States
- Themes list Networks,
Document(s)
Against the death penalty: international initiatives and implications
By Richard C. Dieter / Sangmin Bae / Seema Kandelia / William A. Schabas / Lilian Chenwi / Peter Hodgkinson / Roger Hood / Lina Gyllensten / Nicola Machean / Jane Marriott / Julian Killingley / Quincy Whitaker / Jon Yorke (ed) / Ashgate Publishing Limited / Rachael Stokes, on 1 January 2008
2008
Book
China
More details See the document
This edited volume brings together leading scholars on the death penalty within international, regional and municipal law. It considers the intrinsic elements of both the promotion and demise of the punishment around the world, and provides analysis which contributes to the evolving abolitionist discourse.The contributors consider the current developments within the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the African Commission and the Commonwealth Caribbean, and engage with the emergence of regional norms promoting collective restriction and renunciation of the punishment. They investigate perspectives and questions for retentionist countries, focusing on the United States, China, Korea and Taiwan, and reveal the iniquities of contemporary capital judicial systems. Emphasis is placed on the issues of transparency of municipal jurisdictions, the jurisprudence on the ‘death row phenomenon’ and the changing nature of public opinion. The volume surveys and critiques the arguments used to scrutinize the death penalty to then offer a detailed analysis of possible replacement sanctions.
- Document type Book
- Countries list China
- Themes list International law,
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-hantMore 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 type Article
- Countries list China
- Themes list Deterrence ,
- Available languages 犯罪学分析死刑威慑力量(注:英文名翻译)
Document(s)
The most important facts in 2000
By HANDS OFF CAIN, on 1 January 2000
2000
NGO report
enMore details See the document
This is the fourth consecutive year that Hands off Cain is publishing its report on the death penalty. The events registered in 2000 reveal a positive trend towards abolition.As of 31/12/2000, there were 123 abolitionist countries of various types: 77 were fully abolitionist, 12 were abolitionist for ordinary crimes, 30 were de facto abolitionist (they haven´t carried out a death sentence in at least ten years), 2 were engaged in abolishing the death penalty as members of the Council of Europe, 2 had a legal moratoria on executions. Seventy three states retained the death penalty.
- Document type NGO report
- Themes list Statistics,
- Available languages Italian : Sintesi dei fatti più rilevanti del 2000
Document(s)
THE MOST IMPORTANT FACTS OF 2001
By HANDS OFF CAIN, on 1 January 2002
2002
NGO report
enMore details See the document
The year 2001 has confirmed the accelerated trend towards the abolition of the death penalty on course for the past ten years. In 2001 the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia became totally abolitionist, Chile abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes, Ireland removed all references to the death penalty from its constitution, Burkina Faso joined the group of de facto abolitionists not having carried out any executions for more than ten years, and Lebanon has imposed a moratorium on executions.
- Document type NGO report
- Themes list Statistics,
- Available languages Italian : I FATTI PIÙ IMPORTANTI DEL 2001
Document(s)
THE MOST IMPORTANT FACTS OF 2008 (and the first six months of 2009)
By HANDS OFF CAIN, on 1 January 2009
2009
NGO report
enMore details See the document
The Worldwide Situation to Date: The worldwide trend towards abolition, underway for at least a decade, was again confirmed in 2008 and the first six months of 2009. There are currently 151 countries and territories that to different extents have decided to renounce the death penalty. Of these: 96 are totally abolitionist; 8 are abolitionist for ordinary crimes; 5 have a moratorium on executions in place and 42 are de facto abolitionist (i.e. countries that have not carried out any executions for at least 10 years or countries which have binding obligations not to use the death penalty).
- Document type NGO report
- Themes list Statistics,
- Available languages Italian : SINTESI DEI FATTI PIÙ IMPORTANTI DEL 2008 (e dei primi sei mesi del 2009)
Document(s)
SUMMARY OF THE MOST IMPORTANT FACTS OF 2002
By HANDS OFF CAIN, on 1 January 2003
2003
NGO report
enMore details See the document
The worldwide situation to date: The practice of the death penalty has drastically diminished in the past few years. Today the countries or territories that have abolished it or decline to apply it number 130. Of these: 78 are totally abolitionist; 14 are abolitionist for ordinary crimes; 2 are committed to abolition as members of the Council of Europe and in the meanwhile observe a moratorium; 6 countries are currently observing a moratorium and 30 are de facto abolitionist, not having executed any death sentences in the past ten years.
- Document type NGO report
- Themes list Statistics,
- Available languages Italian : I FATTI PIU´ IMPORTANTI DEL 2002
Document(s)
THE MOST IMPORTANT FACTS OF 2003
By HANDS OFF CAIN, on 1 January 2004
2004
NGO report
enMore details See the document
The worldwide situation to date: The worldwide situation concerning the death penalty has once again registered a trend towards abolition in the past year. The countries or territories that to different extents have decided to give up the practice of capital punishment total 133, including the first months of 2004. Of these 81 have abolished the death penalty completely; 14 have abolished it for ordinary crimes; 1, Russia, as a member of the Council of Europe is committed to abolish it and in the meanwhile apply a moratorium on executions; 5 are observing moratoriums and 32 countries are de facto abolitionist, not having carried out executions for at least 10 years.
- Document type NGO report
- Themes list Statistics,
- Available languages Italian : I FATTI PIU´ IMPORTANTI DEL 2003 (e dei primi mesi del 2004)
Document(s)
THE MOST IMPORTANT FACTS IN BRIEF 2004 (and up to September 15, 2005)
By HANDS OFF CAIN, on 1 January 2005
2005
NGO report
enfrMore details See the document
The worldwide situation to date: The worldwide trend towards abolition, underway for at least a decade, was again confirmed in 2004 and the first half of 2005. There are currently 138 countries that to different extents have decided to renounce the death penalty. Of these: 86 are totally abolitionist; 11 are abolitionist for ordinary crimes; 1 (Russia) is committed to abolishing the death penalty as a member of the Council of Europe and currently observing a moratorium on executions; 5 have a moratorium on executions in place and 35 are de facto abolitionist (i.e. no executions have taken place in those countries for at least ten years). Since the beginning of 2004, 3 countries have passed from retention to an extent of abolition, whereas 5 countries have advanced within the categories of the abolitionist group.
- Document type NGO report
- Themes list Statistics,
- Available languages Italian : SINTESI DEI FATTI PIU’ IMPORTANTI DEL 2004 (e dei primi mesi del 2005)LES FAITS LES PLUS IMPORTANTS DE 2004 (ET DES PREMIERS NEUF MOIS DE 2005)
Document(s)
THE MOST IMPORTANT FACTS OF 2005 (AND THE FIRST SIX MONTHS OF 2006)
By HANDS OFF CAIN, on 1 January 2006
2006
NGO report
enMore details See the document
The worldwide situation to date: The worldwide trend towards abolition, underway for at least a decade, was again confirmed in 2005 and the first half of 2006. There are currently 142 countries that to different extents have decided to renounce the death penalty. Of these: 90 are totally abolitionist; 10 are abolitionist for ordinary crimes; 1 (Russia) is committed to abolishing the death penalty as a member of the Council of Europe and currently observing a moratorium on executions; 5 have a moratorium on executions in place and 37 are de facto abolitionist (i.e. no executions have taken place in those countries for at least ten years).
- Document type NGO report
- Themes list Statistics,
- Available languages Italian : I FATTI PIù IMPORTANTI DEL 2005 (e dei primi sei mesi del 2006)
Document(s)
THE MOST IMPORTANT FACTS OF 2006 (and the first seven months of 2007)
By HANDS OFF CAIN, on 1 January 2007
2007
NGO report
enMore details See the document
The worldwide situation to date: The worldwide trend towards abolition, underway for at least a decade, was again confirmed in 2006 and the first six months of 2007. There are currently 146 countries and territories that to different extents have decided to renounce the death penalty. Of these, 93 are totally abolitionist, 9 are abolitionist for ordinary crimes, 1 (Russia) is committed to abolishing the death penalty as a member of the Council of Europe and currently observes a moratorium on executions, 4 have a moratorium on executions in place and 39 are de facto abolitionist (i.e. – no executions have taken place in the last ten years).
- Document type NGO report
- Themes list Statistics,
- Available languages Italian : SINTESI DEI FATTI PIU' IMPORTANTI DEL 2006 (e dei primi sette mesi del 2007)
Document(s)
THE MOST IMPORTANT FACTS OF 2007 (and the first six months of 2008)
By HANDS OFF CAIN, on 1 January 2008
2008
NGO report
enMore details See the document
The U.N. Moratorium on Executions : On December 18, 2007, with 104 votes in favour, 54 votes against and 29 abstentions, the United Nations 62nd General Assembly (UNGA) adopted a Resolution that calls upon all States that still maintain the death penalty to “Establish a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty.”
- Document type NGO report
- Themes list Statistics,
- Available languages Italian : SINTESI DEI FATTI PIÙ IMPORTANTI DEL 2007 (e dei primi sei mesi del 2008)
Document(s)
THE MOST IMPORTANT FACTS OF 2009 (and the first six months of 2010)
By HANDS OFF CAIN, on 8 September 2020
2020
NGO report
enMore details See the document
THE SITUATION TODAY The worldwide trend towards abolition, underway for more than ten years, was again confirmed in 2009 and the first six months of 2010. There are currently 154 countries and territories that, to different extents, have decided to renounce the death penalty. Of these: 96 are totally abolitionist; 8 are abolitionist for ordinary crimes; 6 have a moratorium on executions in place and 44 are de facto abolitionist (i.e. countries that have not carried out any executions for at least 10 years or countries which have binding obligations not to use the death penalty).
- Document type NGO report
- Themes list Statistics,
- Available languages Italian : I FATTI PIÙ IMPORTANTI DEL 2009 (E DEI PRIMI SEI MESI DEL 2010)
Document(s)
Parting Words
By Amy Elkins, on 1 January 2014
2014
Working with...
More details See the document
Parting Words, a visual photographic archive of the 500+ prisoners to date executed in the state of Texas.
- Document type Working with...
- Themes list Public debate, Death Row Phenomenon,
Document(s)
Change of Heart: Justice, Mercy, and Making Peace with My Sister’s Killer
By Jeanne Bishop / Westminster John Knox Press, on 1 January 2015
2015
Book
United States
More details See the document
Jeanne Bishop has written a new book about her life and spiritual journey after her sister was murdered in Illinois in 1990. Change of Heart: Justice, Mercy, and Making Peace with My Sister’s Killer tells Bishop’s personal story of grief, loss, and of her eventual efforts to confront and reconcile with her sister’s killer. She also addresses larger issues of capital punishment, life sentences for juvenile offenders, and restorative justice. Former Illinois Governor George Ryan said of the book, “When I commuted the death sentences of everyone on Illinois’s death row, I expressed the hope that we could open our hearts and provide something for victims’ families other than the hope of revenge. I quoted Abraham Lincoln: ‘I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.’ Jeanne Bishop’s compelling book tells the story of how devotion to her faith took her face-to-face with her sister’s killer …. She reminds us of a core truth: that our criminal justice system cannot be just without mercy.”
- Document type Book
- Countries list United States
- Themes list Murder Victims' Families,
Member(s)
Association for the Right to Live
on 30 April 2020
The Association for the Right to Life (ARL) was founded in Iran by Emadeddin Baghi, a writer and long-time human rights activist. Baghi was sentenced to three years in prison after writing an article against the death penalty in 2000. After his release, he established two human rights associations: – the Society for the defense […]
2020
Iran (Islamic Republic of)
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Member(s)
Coalition nationale tunisienne contre la peine de mort
on 30 April 2020
The National Tunisian Coalition Against the Death Penalty (CTCPM) was founded in 2007 and legally recognized in 2012 after the fall of dictator Ben Ali. The CTCPM continues many generations of activist’ fight for the abolition of the death penalty since the mid-1970s. The CTCPM’s objectives are written down in its charter: – Achieving the abolition […]
Tunisia
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Member(s)
Iran Human Rights
on 30 April 2020
Iran Human Rights (IHR) is a non-profit politically independent NGO with a mission to build a strong civil society by empowering citizens, promoting and defending human rights as defined by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Abolition of the death penalty is one of the main objectives of IHR’s activities. With its broad network of […]
Iran (Islamic Republic of)
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Member(s)
Hands Off Cain
on 30 April 2020
Hands Off Cain is a league of citizens and parliamentarians for the abolition of the death penalty worldwide. It was founded in Brussels in 1993. Hands Off Cain (HOC) is a non-profit organization and a constituent member of the Transnational Radical Party. The name “Hands Off Cain” is inspired by the Genesis. The first book […]
Italy
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Member(s)
Ordre des avocats du Barreau de Liège
on 30 April 2020
The Liège Bar Association (Ordre des avocats du Barreau de Liège) is the representative and disciplinary body for the lawyers registered with the Liège Bar. It promotes their profession and defends the rights of individuals. Some 880 lawyers are registered with the Liège Bar.
Belgium
Member(s)
Norden Directions
on 30 April 2020
Norden Directions is an Australian non-government organisation founded in 2009. It focuses on policy in relation to social justice and human rights issues both within Australia and overseas. It has contributed to the abolition of the death penalty internationally in public debate over the past decade. Its Director, Professor Peter Norden AO, is an experienced […]
Australia
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Member(s)
The Sunny Center Foundation
on 30 April 2020
Ireland
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Member(s)
Ordre des avocats de Genève
on 30 April 2020
The Geneva Bar association (Ordre des Avocats de Genève) represents lawyers before the authorities, other regional bar associations, foreign bar associations and the Swiss Lawyers’ Federation. At the same time, it looks after the strict application of ethical and deontological standards. The Geneva Bar association was a partner of the 4th World Congress Against the […]
Switzerland
Member(s)
Rescue Alternatives Liberia (RAL)
on 30 April 2020
Being the forerunner of prisoners’ rights and anti-torture and death penalty in Liberia, we have the vision that the Liberian society will adheres to: 1. The tenets of human rights, rule of law and democracy for all people; 2. Active citizens’ participation in national and local governance; and 3. Rehabilitation of survivals of torture, violence […]
Liberia
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Member(s)
We Believe in Second Chances
on 30 April 2020
We Believe in Second Chances was founded as a reaction to Yong Vui Kong’s condemnation to death, and are advocating for the abolishment of the death penalty in Singapore.
Singapore
Member(s)
Città di Venezia
on 30 April 2020
The city of Venice is globally renowned for its unique cultural heritage and location. Venice is strongly mobilised to improve the well-being of its inhabitants, by promoting a peaceful coexistence among its people and stimulating inter-religious and intercultural dialogue. In this way the city is following the example of tolerance set by the ancient “Serene […]
Italy
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Member(s)
Lutte pour la Justice
on 30 April 2020
Le comité Lutte pour la Justice (LPJ) was created in 1996 by Odell Barnes, a death row prisoner in Texas who wanted to have his innocence recognised and the right to a new trial. His three French correspondents took on his cause the very same year. This informal committee aimed to provide moral support and, […]
France
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Member(s)
Mouvement contre le Racisme et pour l’Amitié entre les Peuples (MRAP)
on 30 April 2020
The Movement Against Racism and for Friendship between Nations (MRAP) has its origins in the French Resistance: it emerged from the National Movement against Racism, founded secretly in 1941 to save Jewish children from deportation and to thwart the racist ideology of the Vichy regime. Since then the MRAP has taken action against other forms […]
France
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Member(s)
Ordine Provinciale dei Medici-Chirurgi e degli Odontoiatri di Firenze
on 30 April 2020
The Provincial Order of Doctors, Surgeons and Dentists in Florence is a member of the World Coalition.
Italy
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Member(s)
Ville de Dijon
on 30 April 2020
The City of Dijon, France, is a member of the World Coalition.
France
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Member(s)
ACAT Deutschland
on 30 April 2020
The objective of Aktion der Christen für die Abschaffung der Folter (ACAT Deutschland) is to fight against torture and the death penalty. They issue: urgent Appeals, petitions and caimpaign for raising awarness on human rights issues (schools, forums…).
Germany
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Member(s)
Ordre des avocats du Barreau de Versailles
on 30 April 2020
France
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Member(s)
Kurdistan Human Rights Network
on 30 April 2020
Iran (Islamic Republic of)
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Member(s)
Confédération générale du travail (CGT)
on 30 April 2020
The General Confederation of Labour (Confédération générale du travail – CGT) is based in France and is strong of 690,000 members. It is affiliated to the European Trade Union Confederation and the International Trade Union Confederation and is one of the confederated unions representing France. Through its analysis, proposals and action, it aims at developping […]
France
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Member(s)
International Academic Network for the Abolition of Capital Punishment (REPECAP)
on 30 April 2020
REPECAP was founded in 2009 with the aim of supporting preparations for the creation of the International Commission against the Death Penalty that was created a year later. We represent a non-governmental organization whose purpose is of academic nature for the dissemination of scientific knowledge impartially through its many nodes present at prestigious Universities around […]
Spain
Member(s)
Mouvance des Abolitionnistes du Congo Brazzaville
on 30 April 2020
Mandate and Objectives: – Promote fundamental human rights : LIFE , EDUCATION, ACCESS TO WATER AND ELECTRICITY – Making human rights in daily lives – Fighting for universal abolition of the death penalty, starting in Congo Brazzaville by a national moratorium Types of action: – Exhibitions and screenings – Lectures, discussion and citizen petition, Sit-in […]
Congo
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Member(s)
Réseau Marocain Euromed des ONG
on 30 April 2020
Morocco
Member(s)
Observatoire burundais des prisons
on 30 April 2020
Burundi
Document(s)
The last executioner
By Tom waller , on 1 January 2014
2014
Multimedia content
Thailand
More details See the document
Inspired by true event, The last executioner is the story of Chavoret Jaruboon, the last person in Thailand whose job was to execute by gun.
- Document type Multimedia content
- Countries list Thailand
- Themes list Firing Squad,
Document(s)
This Mortal Boy
By Fiona Kidman / Penguin, on 1 January 2018
2018
Book
New Zealand
More details See the document
A revealing novel based on real events and real people.Albert Black, known as the ‘jukebox killer’, was only twenty when he was convicted of murdering another young man in a fight at a milk bar in Auckland on 26 July 1955. His crime fuelled growing moral panic about teenagers, and he was to hang less than five months later, the second-to-last person to be executed in New Zealand.But what really happened? Was this a love crime, was it a sign of juvenile delinquency? Or was this dark episode in our recent history more about our society’s reaction to outsiders?Black’s final words, as the hangman covered his head, were, ‘I wish you all a merry Christmas, gentlemen, and a prosperous New Year.’ This is his story.
- Document type Book
- Countries list New Zealand
- Themes list Death Penalty,
Document(s)
SUSPENSE: TWELVE YEARS LIVING AND LONGING ON DEATH ROW
By Marit Lund Bødtker, on 1 January 2018
Book
More details See the document
Story of Ivan Ray Murphy Jr who was condemned to death for murder. Over a period of ten years and through the medium of more than a hundred letters, Murphy, who was known as Pee-Wee, shared his innermost thoughts with his twenty years older Norwegian pen friend, the author of this book, Marit Lund Bødtker. The author twice travelled to the prison in Huntsville, Texas, where Murphy was held and from where he worked tirelessly to regain his freedom. ‘Whether he is innocent, as he claims to be, or guilty, Murphy is first and foremost a human being, a man with his own personal strengths and weaknesses, dreams and aspirations. In all probability readers will sometimes find themselves agreeing with him, at other times totally at variance with his conduct and opinions, just as they do with other people they meet or read about.’ From the afterword by John Peder Egenæs, Secretary General, Amnesty International Norway
- Document type Book
- Themes list Innocence,
Document(s)
Surviving Execution: A Miscarriage of Justice and the Fight to End the Death Penalty
By Ian Woods / Atlantic Books, on 1 January 2018
Book
United States
More details See the document
Imagine being condemned to death for murder, when even the prosecutors admit that you didn’t actually kill anyone. This is what happened to Richard Glossip.Despite being convicted on the word of the actual self-confessed killer, the state of Oklahoma is still intent on executing him.Ian Woods, a reporter for Sky News in the UK, came across the case, and has tirelessly campaigned ever since to bring the injustices Glossip has faced to the world’s attention.
- Document type Book
- Countries list United States
- Themes list Innocence, Death Penalty,
Document(s)
Capital Punishment in Twentieth-Century Britain. Audience, Justice, Memory
By Lizzie Seal / Solon, on 8 September 2020
2020
Book
United Kingdom
More details See the document
Drawing on primary research, this book explores the cultural life of the death penalty in Britain in the twentieth century, including an exploration of the role of the popular press and a discussion of portrayals of the death penalty in plays, novels and films. Popular protest against capital punishment and public responses to and understandings of capital cases are also discussed, particularly in relation to conceptualisations of justice.
- Document type Book
- Countries list United Kingdom
- Themes list Trend Towards Abolition, Death Penalty, Country/Regional profiles,
Document(s)
Juan Melendez-6446
By YouTube / Comision de Derechos Civiles, on 1 January 2014
2014
Working with...
More details See the document
Juan Melendez-6446 portrays the story of a New York born Puerto Rican immigrant who was accused of murder in the state of Florida, a crime he did not commit. Juan Melendez was sentenced to death in a trial that only lasted 5 days. He was on death row for 17 years, 8 months and 1 day, until his exoneration on January 3, 2002.
- Document type Working with...
Document(s)
The Punishment
By Andres Segura, on 1 January 2018
2018
Multimedia content
United States
More details See the document
“The Punishment” is a short film that takes place in 1978 at a Texas State Penitentiary. The story follows inmate Randle Kohler’s last hours on Death Row leading up to his execution. The only human being he’s able to communicate with is the Prison Guard assigned to bring him his last meal. As their conversation develops we begin to see more and more layers of Kohler’s past and the events that led him to the prison cell.
- Document type Multimedia content
- Countries list United States
- Themes list Death Row Conditions, Electrocution, Death Penalty,
Document(s)
Capital Punishment, 2016 – Statistical Brief
By Bureau of Justice Statistics / Elizabeth Davis, on 8 September 2020
2020
NGO report
United States
More details See the document
Presents statistics on persons under sentence of death at year-end 2016, including summary trends in the population, admissions to and releases from death row, the number of persons executed, and an advance count of executions in 2017. Data are from BJS’s National Prisoner Statistics(NPS-8 series.Highlights:- At year-end 2016, a total of 32 states and the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) held 2,814 prisoners under sentence of death, which was 58 (2%) fewer than at year-end 2015.- California (26%), Florida (14%), and Texas (9%) held nearly half (49%) of the nation’s prisoners under sentence of death at year-end 2016; in 2016, Texas executed seven prisoners, Florida executed one, and California did not execute any prisoners.- In 2016, the number of prisoners under sentence of death decreased for the sixteenth consecutive year.- Twelve states received a total of 32 prisoners under sentence of death in 2016.- Five states executed a total of 20 prisoners in 2016, with Georgia (9) and Texas (7) accounting for 80% of executions.
- Document type NGO report
- Countries list United States
Document(s)
HRI makes two submissions on human rights and drug control to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
By World Coalition Against the Death Penalty / Harm Reduction International, on 1 January 2018
2018
NGO report
More details See the document
On May 18th HRI submitted information to the OHCHR, feeding into a report that the human rights body will present at the next session of the Human Rights Council, on the implementation of the 2016 UNGASS Outcome Document (entitled “joint commitment to effectively addressing and countering the world drug problem with regard to human rights”).The first contribution, submitted jointly with the World Coalition against the Death Penalty (WCADP), focuses on the death penalty for drug offences, building on our 2017 Global Overview. The second submission, dedicated to harm reduction as a core component of the right to health, analyses global trends related to the availability, accessibility and funding of harm reduction services, also highlighting the specific challenges faced by subjects in detention.
- Document type NGO report
- Themes list International law, Death Penalty,
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,