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This study aims to assess the possibility of Viet Nam ratifying the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) aiming at the abolition of the death penalty. It analyzes: (a) the current international legal framework and the process of legal development to abolish the death penalty in selected countries, (b) the compatibility between the existing regulations on the death penalty in the Vietnamese legal system and the Second Optional Protocol of the ICCPR, and (c) the assessment of feasibility for abolition of the death penalty in Viet Nam.

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FIACAT press release about the awareness raising workshop for permanent representatives to the African Union.

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This paper begins by providing some basic information about children of parents sentenced to death, issues that persist through the whole of a parent’sinteraction with the criminal justice system. Next, it looks at issues that aresimilar to those faced by other children of prisoners, but focuses on the ways inwhich children of parents sentenced to death are different. For a more detailedaccount of the situation of children of prisoners worldwide, including recommendations and examples of good practice, read QUNO’s 2012 paperCollateral Convicts. Thirdly, the fundamentally different issues are considered, thoseonly children of parents sentenced to death experience. There are a limitednumber of recommendations included throughout: these are not intended to becomprehensive, instead only covering those areas where there is already clarity about a positive way forward.

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本レポートは，初めに死刑囚の子どもについての基本的情報，すなわち，親が刑事司法制度において裁かれるに全過程を通じて現れる諸問題を提示する。次に，一般的な受刑者の子どもが直面する問題点との類似性を踏まえつつ，死刑囚の子どものケースは異なるものであることに焦点を当てる。世界における受刑者の子どもが置かれた状況の詳細については， 勧告や望ましい実践例も含め，QUNO発刊のCollat-eralConvicts （2012） を参照していただきたい。第三に，死刑囚の子どもだけが体験する根本的に特有な問題点を検討する。本レポートは，限られた数の勧告のみを掲示している。これは，網羅的であることを意図するのではなく，前向きな展開が明確な分野の勧告のみを取り上げたためである。

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The ACLU conducted an analysis of court rulings in the 25 Washington cases in which the death sentence has been imposed since 1981, when the current death penalty statute took effect. That analysis of almost two decades of death sentences and executions makes it clear that the system by which we impose and review death sentences in Washington is fundamentally flawed.

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This paper will raise awareness of some of the issues facing the child. It will consider and elaborate on each of these issues in as much detail as the current literature permits.

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Two trends accompanying the abolition of the death penalty give reason for concern: there is a striking increase in offences that carry the sanction of life imprisonment as the sanction which typically replaces the death penalty following abolition or a moratorium of the death penalty; and a striking increase in prisoners serving this indefinite sentence. Secondly, a differential, harsher treatment is applied to them as compared to other categories of prisoners. At the same time, the development of international standards in any affirmative–if not legally binding– form are lacking. As a consequence states are more frequently enforcing a form of punishment problematic in terms of international human rights standards and norms.

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The World Coalition and its members have collected testimonies of victims of torture in the death penalty. Confessions, death row phenomenon, moments before the execution, psychological torture of those not sentenced to death, methods of execution. Read the stories of these victims.
We thank all those who agreed to share their testimonies and their stories.

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The death penalty in the USA in 2021 was defined by two competing forces: the continuing long-term erosion of capital punishment across most of the country, and extreme conduct by a dwindling number of outlier jurisdictions to continue to pursue death sentences and executions.

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Published on December 18, 2023.

Initial impressions of others based on facial appearances are often inaccurate yet can lead to dire outcomes. Across four studies, adult participants underwent a counterstereotype training to reduce their reliance on facial appearance in consequential social judgments of White male faces. In Studies 1 and 2, trustworthiness and sentencing judgments among control participants predicted whether real-world inmates were sentenced to death versus life in prison, but these relationships were diminished among trained participants. In Study 3, a sequential priming paradigm demonstrated that the training was able to abolish the relationship between even automatically and implicitly perceived trustworthiness and the inmates’ life-or-death sentences. Study 4 extended these results to realistic decision-making, showing that training reduced the impact of facial trustworthiness on sentencing decisions even in the presence of decision-relevant information. Overall, our findings suggest that a counterstereotype intervention can mitigate the potentially harmful effects of relying on facial appearance in consequential social judgments.

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Business engagement in the death penalty is critical because of the impact it can have. Putsimply: the power is in your hands. If your business is looking for a human rights issue whereit can achieve measurable change, advocacy on the death penalty must be considered.Global support for the death penalty is declining. Meanwhile, competition for investment isfierce. Governments and the public at large care more about job creation and a healthy economythan a system of executions. Therefore, the voices of businesses and business leaders havea huge role to play in shaping public dialogue about whether to keep – or end – the use ofcapital punishment.

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In a year awash with incendiary political advertising that drove the public’s perception of rising crime to record highs, public support for capital punishment and jury verdicts for death remained near fifty-year lows. Defying conventional political wisdom, nearly every measure of change — from new death sentences imposed and executions conducted to public opinion polls and election results — pointed to the continuing durability of the more than 20-year sustained decline of the death penalty in the United States.
The Gallup crime survey, administered in the midst of the midterm elections while the capital trial for the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida was underway, found that support for capital punishment remained within one percentage point of the half-century lows recorded in 2020 and 2021. The 20 new death sentences imposed in 2022 are fewer than in any year before the pandemic, and just 2 higher than the record lows of the prior two years. With the exception of the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, the 18 executions in 2022 are the fewest since 1991.

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The mainstream legal community, including the ABA, has long understood the importance of system-building, but the revised Guidelines state the point especially forcefully. In articulating “the current consensus about what is required to provide effective defense representation in capital cases,” they set high performance standards not just for lawyers, but for death penalty jurisdictions. As the problems are systemic, it is “imperative” that the solutions be.The Guidelines accordingly not only call on governments to deliver capital defense resources that are sufficient in amount, but also furnish the states with a user-friendly blueprint for using those resources wisely to create structures that will function well in the present and evolve effectively over time. This mandate for institution-building is welcome, and the states should lead it. Indeed, they must do so if the Guidelines are to achieve their ameliorative purposes and avoid becoming just a collection of lofty aspirations “‘that palter with us in a double sense, that keep the word of promise to our ear, and break it to our hope”.

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This report covers the judicial use of the death penalty for the period January to December 2020. As in previous years, information is collected from a variety of sources, including:
– official figures;
– judgements;
– information from individuals sentenced to death and their families and representatives;
– media reports;
– and, for a limited number of countries, other civil society organizations.

Amnesty International reports only on executions, death sentences and other aspects of the use of the death penalty, , such as commutations and exonerations, where there is reasonable confirmation. In many countries governments do not publish information on their use of the death penalty. In China and Viet Nam, data on the use of the death penalty is classified as a state secret. During 2020 little or no information was available on some countries – in particular Laos and North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) – due to restrictive state practice.

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8 Myths about the death penalty are explored in this text: 1. the death penalty is needed to keep society safe, 2. the death penalty is applied fairly, 3. the death penalty is used worldwide, 4. the death penalty deters crime, 5. execution is cheaper than permanent imprisonment, 6. the death penalty offers justice to victims’ families, 7. only the truly guilty get the death penalty, 8. religious teachings support the death penalty.

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Isolation and Desolation – Conditions of Detention of People Sentenced to Death in Malaysia is the first ever fact-finding mission report on the conditions of detention of death row prisoners in Malaysia.

It examines the use of death penalty in Malaysia as well as the actual situation of people on death row.

This report is not meant to point fingers but rather to put the facts on the table in a transparent manner and work from there. It is mainly an advocacy tool for all abolitionist stakeholders, from civil society actors to the parliamentarians who will keep fighting for the abolition of the death penalty.

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The signatory organizations are convinced that the death penalty is incompatible with the prohibition of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, which is a peremptory norm of international law (jus cogens) and should thus be abolished. The death penalty is only tolerated by international law and standards to the extent that it may only be imposed for the most serious crimes and applied in a way that causes the least possible suffering. However, the signatory organizations believe that from the sentencing to the execution, the death penalty inevitably causes physical harm and psychological suffering amounting to torture or ill-treatments.

The present position paper documents the extent to which international and regional organisation have already recognised a violation of the absolution prohibitionof torture in the application and imposition of the death penalty.

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Isolation and Desolation – Conditions of Detention of People Sentenced to Death in Malaysia is the first ever fact-finding mission report on the conditions of detention of death row prisoners in Malaysia.

It examines the use of death penalty in Malaysia as well as the actual situation of people on death row.

This report is not meant to point fingers but rather to put the facts on the table in a transparent manner and work from there. It is mainly an advocacy tool for all abolitionist stakeholders, from civil society actors to the parliamentarians who will keep fighting for the abolition of the death penalty.

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Isolation and Desolation – Conditions of Detention of People Sentenced to Death di Malaysia adalah satu-satunya laporan berasaskan misi mengkaji fakta (fact-finding mission) mengenai keadaan-keadaan penahanan bagi banduan-banduan hukuman mati di Malaysia.

Laporan ini mengkaji pelaksanaan hukuman mati di Malaysia dan juga keadaan sebenar orang-orang yang dijatuhkan hukuman mati.

Laporan ini bukan bertujuan untuk menunding jari terhadap mana-mana pihak, tetapi bertujuan untuk memberi pencerahan kepada fakta-fakta yang ditemui dan berusaha ke atasnya. Laporan ini bertujuan utama sebagai alat advokasi kepada semua pihak yang mempunyai kepentingan dalam pemansuhan, bermula dari ahli persatuan kemasyarakatan sehingga ahli parlimen yang akan berusaha berterusan untuk memansuhkan hukuman mati.

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The present report is submitted pursuant to decision 18/117 and resolution 42/24 of the Human Rights Council. The report focuses on consequences arising from the lack of transparency in the application and imposition of the death penalty on the enjoyment of human rights.

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Where the death penalty is applied, international law, jurisprudence and practice require that certain minimum standards are applied. The standards include international and regional treaties that are legally binding on states that have ratified them, customary international law that is binding on all states without exception, and non-binding standards and resolutions that nonetheless command the support of the majority of states. International understanding of these minimum standards has continued to evolve in the years since they were drafted, but the documents themselves do not always keep pace. This paper brings together international, regional and national standards, the most recent understandings of relevant experts and appropriate insights from other connected disciplines. It explores possible ways in which international minimum standards could be further strengthened at this time, whether through ECOSOC, the UN Human Rights Council, the UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, regional bodies or national amendments to laws and policies. In each section, the issue and current practice is described, followed by examples of good practice or suggestions for improvement, finishing with a short list of recommendations for strengthening existing standards. These issues and recommendations are not final, but are intended to provide a point from which discussion can begin.

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Published in December 2023.

This paper seeks to map the political economy of capital punishment in Iran, in particular in relation to dual and foreign nationals, and examines its external and internal functions. The external functions include suppressing the ‘cultural threat’ of cross-border drug trafficking, achieving more power in sanctions negotiations, seeking reciprocal prisoner swaps or demanding recompense for outstanding multinational debt. The internal functions include quashing protests against the regime, supressing separatist movements, or even just ‘otherness’. It is evident that those facing disadvantage across foreign national and intersectional lines face the death penalty disproportionately. In addition, although only representing a fraction of the overall population of death row, the arbitrary detention of dual nationals has a disproportionate political function.

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It is of the utmost importance, in the short and medium-term, to develop an intense work of academically nature both of study and disclosure of the problems of the abolition of the death penalty in the international scenario, to complement and help the work of the diplomatic action and non-governmental organizations. To this effect it is proposed to keep REPECAP as an ever – growing scientific world network comprising academic law scholars, human rights centers, institutions of public law and Ngos, with expertise and skill in the problems of death penalty and interests in the field of international criminal justice, as well as young researchers who have been dealing with these topics or wish to get involved with the subject, regardless of nationality or locations.

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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.

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

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In 1998 Richard A. Leo and Richard J. Ofshe published a study of false confession cases entitled, The Consequences of False Confessions: Deprivations of Liberty and Miscarriages of Justice in the Age of Psychological Interrogation, which drew a response from Paul Cassell (1999), The Guilty and the Innocent : An Examination of Alleged Cases of Wrongful Conviction from False Confessions. In this article, the authors demonstrate that Cassell s article misreports the research and analysis contained in Leo and Ofshes 1998 article, and that Cassell s attempt to challenge Leo and Ofshes classifications of nine out of sixty false confessions is erroneous because Cassell excludes or presents an incomplete picture of important facts in his case summaries, selectively ignores enormous inconsistencies, implausibilities and/or contradictions in the prosecution s cases, and fails to acknowledge the existence of substantial exculpatory, if not dispositive, evidence. To illustrate the problems and biases in Cassell s commentary, this article discusses at length one of Cassell s challenges, the Barry Lee Fairchild case, in the main body of the article and in a detailed appendix analyzes the eight other cases (Joseph Giarratano, Paul Ingram, Richard Lapointe, Jessie Misskelley, Bradley Page, James Harry Reyos, Linda Stangel, and Martin Tankleff). Leo and Ofshe provide a point by point refutation of Cassell s assertions in all nine cases, demonstrating that all nine individuals were, as originally classified, almost certainly innocent of the crimes to which they had confessed.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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The World Medical Association has strengthened its opposition to capital punishment with a resolution at its recent conference in Bangkok that “physicians will not facilitate the importation or prescription of drugs for execution.”

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

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The Reverend Russ Ford, who served as the head chaplain on Virginia’s death row for eighteen years, raged against the inequities of the death penalty—now outlawed in Virginia—while ministering to the men condemned to die in the 1980s and 1990s. Ford stood watch with twenty-eight men, sitting with them in the squalid death house during the final days and hours of their lives. In July 1990 he accidentally almost became the 245th person killed by Virginia’s electric chair as he comforted Ricky Boggs in his last moments, a vivid episode that opens this haunting book. Many chaplains get to know the condemned men only in these final moments. Ford, however, spent years working with the men of Virginia’s death row, forging close bonds with the condemned and developing a nuanced understanding of their crimes, their early struggles, and their challenges behind bars. His unusual ministry makes this memoir a unique and compelling read, a moving and unflinching portrait of Virginia’s death row inmates. Revealing the cruelties of the state-sanctioned violence that has until recently prevailed in our backyard, Crossing the River Styx serves as a cautionary tale for those who still support capital punishment.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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This study addresses the subject of the “death Penalty in Egypt”, which is an applied theoretical study done in light of the principles of the Islamic law and provisions concerning international human rights law. Egyptian Penal Code No. 58/1937 is the modern penal code that still retains the death penalty in spite of its cruelty and strictness and impossibility of reforming its results or amending them. The laws governing the death penalty in Egypt are considered one of the most deterrent penalties at all levels, general and private, that ensures combating crimes and preserving the interests of society, as well as ensuring stability in spite of the presence of an increasing international inclination led by the United Nations and some international NGOs headed by Amnesty International to abolish the Death Penalty given the difficulty to reconcile between this penalty and obligation to respecting human rights.There is no doubt that the intention to study the legislative system of the death penalty in Egypt, with the purpose of the determination of legality of this penalty and the demonstration of the feasibility of its application for society, is difficult without identifying all the roles and functions caused by the death penalty over successive legal ages in Egypt. When the criminal legislator passes new laws that address crimes in Egypt, in his appreciation, to achieve deterrence and for the purpose of combating crime, the legislator does nothing new in society. The work of the legislature work is a product of an interaction between the proposed legislative articles to solve the realistic problems from which society suffers in a historical moment on the one hand, and the cultural, social, religious, legal and political heritage coming to our society from abroad, may play a key role in the determination of the content of the proposed legislative text in the context of the mutual influence between cultures. In this context, this study begins by an introductory chapter entitled “The Historical Origins of the Death Penalty in Egypt” in which we tried to pin the Egyptian penal legislation to its origin by studying the position of death penalty and its evolution in society. By identifying the historical origin of the Death Penalty in Egypt, we then present an objective view on the future of death penalty in Egypt between retention and abolition. —- Please find document at bottom of web page.

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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.

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युक्त अरब अमीरात में एक पाकिस्तानी नागरिक की हत्या के लिए मौत की सज़ा पाने वाले 17 भारतीयों के मामले में मानवाधिकार संस्था एमनेस्टी इंटरनेशन ने यूएई की कड़ी आलोचना की है. एमनेस्टी ने भारतीयों को कथित तौर पर ‘प्रताड़ित किए जाने और ज़बरदस्ती उनसे अपराध मनवाने’ के बारे में यूएई की आलोचना की है.

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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.

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

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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.

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Many studies during the past few decades have sought to determine whether the death penalty has any deterrent effect on homicide rates. Researchers have reached widely varying, even contradictory, conclusions. Some studies have concluded that the threat of capital punishment deters murders, saving large numbers of lives; other studies have concluded that executions actually increase homicides; still others, that executions have no effect on murder rates. Commentary among researchers, advocates, and policymakers on the scientific validity of the findings has sometimes been acrimonious.

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

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Report about the treatment of Pakistanis in the Saudi criminal justice system

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

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Saudi Arabia uses the death penalty as an instrument against individuals, society and freedoms. It is used far away from any international laws and frameworks as it is applied sometimes on children. These practices have become an approach that includes numerous violations as well as denial of the right to life, such as arbitrary detention, torture and unfair trials. As the world revives the anti-death penalty day on October 10, the European Saudi organization for Human Rights (ESOHR) illuminates it through its figures, the issues it has documented and the campaigns it has led. Through the articles published ESOHR tries to show the usage of the death penalty by the Saudi government as a mean to achieve its goals and to impose silence.

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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.

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The report “Sentenced to oblivion. Fact-finding mission on death row. Cameroon”, which was officially launched on 21 June at the Delegation of the European Union from Yaoundé to Cameroon, is the result of an unprecedented fact-finding mission, conducted from May to October 2018 in five Cameroonian prisons by the Cameroonian Lawyers’ Network against the Death Penalty (Racopem) and the association ECPM (Ensemble contre la peine de mort).

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Published in October 2023.

The most commonly observed fact of American capital punishment is its present outlier status: the United States (U.S.) is the only developed Western democracy that retains the death penalty, and it does so not simply as a matter of law, but as a matter of practice, conducting numerous executions every year. This “exceptionalism” with respect to the death penalty is noteworthy, but focusing on present-day American retention obscures many additional aspects of American death penalty exceptionalism. This Keynote will trace several ways in which the American death penalty was an outlier at its founding and throughout its subsequent history, as well as the varied aspects of its exceptionalism today. I will conclude by predicting that U.S. exceptionalism will soon come to an end–with an “exceptional” form of death penalty abolition, traceable to the distinctive path of the American death penalty

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This Article argues for the abandonment of the two-track approach to sentencing by the Supreme Court. It finds no support in the Constitution’s text, history, or structure, and the functional arguments given by the Court to support its capital decisions apply with equal force to all other criminal punishments.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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The second edition of America’s Experiment with Capital Punishment is an updated and expanded version of the comprehensive first edition. Chapters, authored by the country’s leading legal and social science scholars, have been revised to include a host of important developments since the 1998 edition. Thus, new evidence and information is presented concerning racial disparities in the administration of the death penalty, wrongful convictions, deterrence, the prediction of future dangerousness, jury decision-making, public opinion about the death penalty, the effects of the capital punishment process on murder victims’ and offenders’ relatives, death row incarceration, the costs of capital punishment, execution methods, and many other issues.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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This video is part of the campaign run by Amnesty International titled “Death to the Death Penalty”, in the video wax figures ressembling forms of execution melt away leaving only the Amnesty International candle burning/Ce video, réalisé par Amnesty International pour la campagne intitulé “La peine de mort est condamnée à disparaître”/Muerte a la Pena de Muerte.

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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.

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Mike Farrell talks about the death penalty in the United States. Amongst many things he speaks about innocence, deterrence and retribution.

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This series visually documents the face and last meal of a convicted killer and is without question honest and true. This will be an ongoing project as executions continue to take place in the United States.

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Two of the Bali Nine have been speaking publicly for the first time… just days ahead of final hearings on whether their death sentences for drug trafficking will be carried out.Dateline reporter Mark Davis gained exclusive access to Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan in the ‘death tower’ at Indonesia’s Kerobokan Prison.They talk openly about their lives then and now, what they think of their crimes, and the prospect of facing death by firing squad.Mark also hears first-hand of the heartache for their families back in Australia, as they wait to hear if their pleas for clemency will be granted.

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A witness to the lethal injection execution of Stanley Tookie Williams describes what she saw at his execution. Stanley Tookie Williams execution was botched and he experienced 35 minutes of pain because part of the lethal injection 3 drug procedure did not work effectively.

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This video explores the case of Greg Tomson who killed a 28 year woman. Originally he was seen as competent to stand trial, now his defense who are appealing his case, are trying to show that Tomson was not mentally stable when he committed the crime and also that he does not understand why the state is seeking the death penalty against him.

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This video explores the story of Leonel Herrera who was sentenced to death for the murder of a police man. A statement from his nephew came many years later that shed light on Leonels innocence.

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A murder victim’s family member talks out about her opposition to the death penalty.

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Mpagi Edward Edmary from Uganda spent over 18 years on death row, accused of killing a man who was later found to be alive.Mr. Mpagi’s family successfully campaigned for his release, providing evidence that the alleged victim was still alive. Sentenced to death for murder in 1982, the Attorney General proved that the man Mr Mpagi was accused of murdering was still alive in 1989. However it was not until 2000 when a nine member presidential committee released Mr Mpagi, deciding he was innocent.Held for many years in the Luzira Upper Prison, Mr. Mpagi taught his fellow inmates to read and write. He became one of the longest serving inmates and a prison elder. Mr. Mpagi is now an advocate for the abolition of the death penalty and is a committed religious leader. A graduate from a Catholic Diocese he regularly tours prisons providing inspiration and hope to prisoners.

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The article discusses the difficulties and controversies surrounding the 1999 Draft Resolution on the Death Penalty to the United Nations General Assembly.

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Ray Krone was on death row in Arizona State Prison for two years (and eight years in prison) before he was freed after DNA tests proved his innocence in 2002.Mr. Krone became the 100th death row inmate to be proven innocent in the United States of America since 1973. Mr. Krone was twice convicted for a murder he did not commit. Mr. Krone tell his story in this video.

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In 1981, Mumia worked as a cab driver at night to supplement his income. On December 9th he was driving his cab through the red light district of downtown Philadelphia at around 4 a.m. Mumia testifies that he let off a fare and parked near the corner of 13th and Locust Streets. Upon hearing gunshots, he turned and saw his brother, William Cook, staggering in the street. Mumia exited the cab and ran to the scene, where he was shot by a uniformed police officer and fell to the ground, fading in and out of consciousness. Within minutes, police arrived on the scene to find Officer Faulkner and Mumia shot; Faulkner died. Mumia was arrested, savagely beaten, thrown into a paddy wagon and driven to a hospital a few blocks away (suspiciously, it took over 30 minutes to arrive at the hospital). The trial began in 1982 with Judge Sabo (who sent more people to death row than any other judge) presiding. Mumia wished to represent himself and have John Africa as his legal advisor, but before jury selection had finished, this right was revoked and an attorney was forcibly appointed for him. Throughout the trial, Mumia was accused of disrupting court proceedings and was not allowed to attend most of his own trial.

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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.

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This is a video following the Journey of Hope in Texas, a group lobbying for abolition in Texas.They tour Texas giving talks on the death penalty and they promote a message of love and not retribution. This video includes testimonies from murder victim families and exonerees.

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FaultLines explores the death penalty in the United States. Interviews with murder victim families, politicans and the exonerated are included.

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This event was held by the North Atlantic Innocence Project. The video explores post conviction evidence that can prove innocence after conviction. Testimonials from the exonerated, a victim and from a police officier who works on post conviction cases.

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This is a highly thought-provoking work where Beccaria-Bonesana has explained his ideas against the use of torture and capital punishments. He has produced a humanitarian spirit in the dispensation of laws. This work is important as the views expressed here, were not regarded either in his times or now.

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House Bill 472 and Senate Bill 461, known as The North Carolina Racial Justice Act, addresses racial discrimination in capital sentencing. This video featuring death row exonoree Edward Chapman, talks about racial bias and how the Racial Justice Act attempts to assure that race would not play a role in who gets the death penalty.

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Meet the Bloggers talks about the death penalty with two anti death penalty campaigners. The cases of Troy Davis and Montell Johnson are discussed and issues such as discrimination, retribution, the cost of the death penalty, religion and sentencing alternatives are touched upon. Short clips on the Death Penalty in Mexico, Amnesty Internationals campaign and how you can help fight the death penalty are all discussed here.

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Renowned capital defense attorney Stephen Bright discusses the death penalty in light of recent Supreme Court decisions.

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This Sky News Report discusses the administration of the death penalty in China; Innocent people who have been put to death, stealing the organs of the executed and the nature of the death penalty in China.

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