INDEX
Document(s)
The Mercy Workers, Death Penalty Mitigation Specialists
By Maurice Chammah, The Marshall Project, on 2 March 2023
2023
Article
Legal Representation
United States
More details See the document
For three decades, a little-known group of “mitigation specialists” has helped save death-penalty defendants in the USA by documenting their childhood traumas. A rare look inside one case.
- Document type Article
- Countries list United States
- Themes list Legal Representation
Document(s)
Carrying out executions took a secret toll on workers — then changed their politics
By Chiara Eisner, on 16 November 2022
2022
Article
United States
More details See the document
Most of the workers NPR interviewed reported suffering serious mental and physical repercussions. But only one person said they received any psychological support from the government to help them cope. The experience was enough to shift many of their perspectives on capital punishment. No one who NPR spoke with whose work required them to witness executions in Virginia, Nevada, Florida, California, Ohio, South Carolina, Arizona, Nebraska, Texas, Alabama, Oregon, South Dakota or Indiana expressed support for the death penalty afterward, NPR found.
- Document type Article
- Countries list United States
Document(s)
Deeply Rooted: How Racial History Informs Oklahoma’s Death Penalty
By Death Penalty Information Center, on 14 October 2022
2022
Article
United States
More details See the document
These individual cases illustrate issues found in systemic reviews of the state’s death penalty system. In 2017, a bipartisan commission that included former prosecutors, defense lawyers, judges, citizens, crime victim advocates, and law professors found that the state’s capital punishment system created “unacceptable risks of inconsistent, discriminatory, and inhumane application of the death penalty.” In an extensively researched report, the commission recommended a moratorium on executions until reforms were made. Five years later, Oklahoma has enacted “virtually none” of the suggested reforms.
- Document type Article
- Countries list United States
Document(s)
The Court is Satisfied with the Confession: Bahrain Death Sentences Follow Torture, Sham Trials
By Human Rights Watch, on 10 October 2022
2022
Article
Bahrain
arMore details See the document
In a February 2019 letter to the United Nations Office in Geneva, the government of Bahrain claimed that its courts “actually hand down very few death sentences.” In fact, since 2011, courts in Bahrain have sentenced 51 people to death, and the state has executed six since the end of a de facto moratorium on executions in 2017. As of June 2022, 26 men were on death row, and all have exhausted their appeals. Under Bahraini law, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa has the power to ratify these sentences, commute them, or grant pardons.
- Document type Article
- Countries list Bahrain
- Available languages المحكمة تطمئن إلى سلامة الاعتراف : أحكام الإعدام في البحرين إثر التعذيب والمحاكمات الصُوَرية
Document(s)
Anti–Death Penalty Advocacy: A Lawyer’s View from Australia
By Julian McMahon SC, on 1 September 2022
2022
Article
Australia
More details See the document
This article reviews the executions of Australians in the region and the Australian responses over the past two decades. Informed by the author’s legal defence role in death penalty cases in Singapore and Indonesia and other countries, the article explores developments in anti–death penalty advocacy since 2015: the parliamentary enquiry, the ‘whole of government’ strategy led by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the efforts made by Australia and Australians in Asia.
This article was first published in Crime Justice Journal: https://www.crimejusticejournal.com/issue/view/119
- Document type Article
- Countries list Australia
Document(s)
The Myth of Autonomy Rights
By Kathryn E. Miller, on 20 July 2022
2022
Article
United States
More details See the document
Supreme Court rhetoric, scholarly discussion, blackletter law, and ethical rules have perpetuated a myth that individual rights protect the autonomy of defendants within the criminal legal system. To expose this myth, I examine six rights that the Court has enshrined as essential decision points for criminal defendants due to the rights’ purported expressive and consequential functions: (1) the right to self-representation; (2) the right to plead guilty; (3) the right to waive a jury; (4) the right to testify; (5) the right to waive appeals; and (6) the right to maintain innocence at a capital trial. I conclude that each of these rights fails to protect defendant autonomy.
I then argue that genuine displays of autonomy under the criminal legal system take the form of resistance to the law, legal advocates, and the legal system. Thus, the autonomy of criminal defendants occurs not because of law but in spite of it. As such, scholarly discussions of the personal autonomy of criminal defendants should focus not on rights and rules but on acts of resistance. The current autonomy rights discourse is harmful because it obscures the system’s defects by framing discussions around individual rights instead of structural limitations. This lends itself to solutions involving procedural tinkering to better actualize individual rights instead of radical structural reform or abolition. By obscuring these structural defects and stressing the system’s protective qualities, the autonomy rights discourse presents the system not only as legitimate, but as functional, and potentially even successful. As such, a new scholarly frame is warranted: autonomy as resistance to law and the legal system. By illuminating the ways in which autonomy in the criminal legal system resembles autonomy under the American institution of slavery, the autonomy as resistance frame exposes the need for radical structural change and facilitates a reimagining of the criminal legal system.
- Document type Article
- Countries list United States
Document(s)
: Factsheet for Lawyers – 2020 World Day
on 8 September 2020
2020
Article
frMore details Download [ pdf - 328 Ko ]
On the occasion of the 2020 World Day, focusing on the right to access to counsel, Reprieve and the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty released a facthsheet for defense lawyers.
- Document type Article
- Themes list Fair Trial, World Coalition Against the Death Penalty,
- Available languages Fiche d'information pour les avocat·e·s de la défense - Journée mondiale 2020
Document(s)
The Death Penalty in 2016: trends confirm global movement toward restricted use of the death penalty
By Cornell Law School, on 8 September 2020
Article
More details See the document
The number of abolitionist countries continued to grow in 2016, but national crises have created a political climate that heightens the risk that the death penalty will be reintroduced in a handful of abolitionist nations.The Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide assesses the evolutions of the worldwide situation of the death penalty in 2016.
- Document type Article
- Themes list Trend Towards Abolition, Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment and Punishment, Member organizations, World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, Death Penalty,
Document(s)
Oral Statement: 56th Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights
By FIACAT, on 8 September 2020
Article
More details See the document
During the 56th Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights in Banjul, Gambia, 21 April – 7 May 2015, the FIACAT made an oral statement as they would like to would like to congratulate on the actions taken by the Committee for the prevention of torture in Africa since the 55th Ordinary Session of the ACHPR. Nevertheless, FIACAT remains greatly concerned by the number of cases of torture documented by its members (ACATs) and the impunity which torturers enjoy.
- Document type Article
- Themes list Trend Towards Abolition, Country/Regional profiles,
Document(s)
Database Center for North Korean Human Rights – Briefings on public execution
By Database Center for North Korean Human Rights, on 8 September 2020
Article
Republic of Korea
More details See the document
NKDB hosts a monthly English language briefing and discussion on North Korean human rights every month with embassy officials, NGO staff, and NKDB staff as guests
- Document type Article
- Countries list Republic of Korea
- Themes list World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, Death Penalty, Country/Regional profiles,