INDEX

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

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

The story focuses on Tessie Hutchinson, who was selected by the communal lottery for execution; her only sin was to live in a village that had the tradition of stoning one of its inhabitants each year. This paper suggests some ways that the life of America’s death penalty mirrors the art of “The Lottery.” The author comments on the “masking of evil,” the execution of the innocent, the arbitrariness in selecting those who die, the search for justification, and the brutality of the death penalty. In “The Lottery,” the tradition of the stoning was so embedded in tradition and its administration was so formal and precise that the ultimate outcome of the tradition, the killing of a fellow human being, was sanitized and unexamined. In America, the net effect of the bureaucratization of executions is to give those who implement them and those who receive reports of them a sense of sterility and mundaneness that should never accompany the state’s killing of its own. Although proponents of capital punishment in America argue that the chances that an innocent person will be executed are slim, history shows that it has occurred. It was no comfort to Tessie Hutchinson that she was to be the only member of her village to be stoned that year. So it is no comfort to the innocent who are executed that each is only one of a small number of innocent people who have been killed by the state. The arbitrariness of the lottery in selecting who will be executed may not be so obvious in the selection of those who will be killed by the state in America. Still, random and arbitrary circumstances impact who is selected to be executed, circumstances such as the race and wealth of the defendant, the race of the victim, the quality of the defense counsel, the particular trial judge, and the State in which the crime occurs. Although there is no unequivocal evidence that the death penalty achieves some monumentally positive benefit for American society, support for it by the community persists, along with its brutality and cruelty. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that a “thinly veiled cruelty keeps the custom alive.”

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

In this Article, my goal is to raise doubts about the adequacy of the neo-retributive theory of clemency and stimulate reappraisal and development of what I will call the “redemptive” perspective. To this end I will present an exposition and critique of neo-retributive theory of clemency.

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

In this Essay, Professor Thomas C. Berg examines how religious conservatives, especially Roman Catholics and evangelical Protestants, have dealt with the recent concerns over the death penalty. Part I of the Essay documents how Roman Catholics and evangelical Protestants traditionally approach the death penalty.Part II analyzes the particular theological arguments and practical concerns that will be most effective in persuading religious conservatives to oppose the death penalty.

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

This article explores why women are rarely executed and examines the execution of four women in the Post-Furman Era, focusing on the execution of Karla Faye Tucker. The execution of Karla Faye Tucker in 1998, the second of the four women to be executed, occured in hte midst of relentless publicity. The Tucker execution revived interest in gender equity in the administration of capital punishment.

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

The ritual slaughter of humans for sacrificial purposes has an ancient provenance. Few members of modern society would be inclined to believe that killing humans for sacrificial purposes continues. Of those, most probably envision it only being practiced by individuals who belong to “uncivilized,” or non-“First-World” cultures. Upon closer scrutiny, however, it becomes apparent that this is a misconception because the past and present practice of capital punishment includes a thinly disguised manifestation of the ritualized killing of people, otherwise known as human sacrifice. The purpose of this article is to identify, describe, and analyze the historic and contemporary connection between the practices of capital punishment and human sacrifice. After describing how human sacrifice constitutes an integral component of capital punishment, it will be argued that the institutionalization of this antiquated barbaric ritual, vis-a-vis the use of capital punishment, renders the present use of the death penalty in the United States incompatible with “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society”; and that consequently, this facet of capital punishment renders the penalty at odds with the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against the infliction of “cruel and unusual” punishments.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment and Punishment,

In his Article, Professor Michael L. Radelet describes a global decline in the use of the death penalty, the United Nation’s progressively stronger stance against executions, and a growing opposition to capital punishment in the United States. This decrease is attributed to both empirical studies casting doubt on the death penalty’s efficacy in promoting its stated underlying goals, and to the increasingly vocal stance of religious leaders morally opposed to capital punishment. Nevertheless, the decline in other justifications for capital punishment has been met with increasing reliance on retribution as the primary argument in its support. Professor Radelet argues that retribution’s moral, rather than empirical, base makes it an issue largely within the purview of religious denominations, the traditional source of a community’s moral authority. Professor Radelet predicts that religious leaders’ increasing opposition to the flawed administration of the death penalty, rather than their lesser support for the abstract concept of capital punishment, will tip the balance toward its abolition in America.

• Document type Article
• Themes list Religion ,

Cruel and unusual punishment, as prohibited by the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution, encompasses punishment that amounts to torture and barbarity, cruel and degrading punishment not known to the common law, and punishment so disproportionate to the offense as to shock the moral sense of the community. Thus, contained in the Eighth Amendment is a fundamental respect for humanity. For the imposition of a death sentence, the trier is constitutionally mandated to take into account the character and record of the individual offender and the circumstances of the particular offense. What constitutes cruel and unusual punishment?

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment and Punishment, Electrocution,

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,

As our society’s enduring marriage to the death penalty prepares to enter yet another century, it is a marriage that places the children in danger. Why is it that we continue to impose the death penalty for crimes committed by juvenile offenders? As questionable as the death penalty is in general, might we not at least place an “adults only” label on it? The rest of the world has already done so. Only in America need children fear execution by their own government.

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