INDEX
Document(s)
Still Unfair, Still Arbitrary — But Do We Care?
By Samuel L. Gross / Ohio Northern University Law Review, on 8 September 2020
2020
Article
United States
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My assignment is to try to give an overview of the status of the death penalty in America at the beginning of the twenty-first century. I will try to put that in the context of how the death penalty was viewed thirty years ago, or more, and maybe that will tell us something about how the death penalty will be viewed thirty or forty years from now.
- Document type Article
- Countries list United States
- Themes list Public opinion, Public debate,
Document(s)
Abortion, Capital Punishment, and the Politics of “God’s” Will
By Kimberly J. Cook / William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal, on 8 September 2020
Article
United States
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In her paper, Professor Kimberly J. Cook uses statistics to illustrate the role the Christian Right plays in the public discourse over two issues permeated with religious overtones: abortion and the death penalty. She shows how the Christian Right’s approach to these issues is based on an ideological notion of ‘Justice ” that is primarily focused on vengeance and punishment, to the exclusion of forgiveness. Professor Cook’s exploration of the modern roots of this ideology leads to a movement dating from the 1960s known as Christian Reconstructionism, which advocates using state action to enforce its unique interpretation of “God’s Will.” This interpretation not only advocates an expansive view of the death penalty, but also patriarchal gender roles backed by force of law, religious intolerance, and the manifest goal of establishing a global Christian theocracy. Though it has been publicly disavowed by mainstream Christian Fundamentalists, Professor Cook argues that Reconstructionism has become the cornerstone of the Christian Right. To support this assertion, she compares current Christian Right socio-political goals with Reconstructionist theology. Professor Cook concludes with a warning that the Christian Right’s political power, coupled with its Reconstructionist influenced ideology, places our constitutional protections at risk.
- Document type Article
- Countries list United States
- Themes list Religion ,
Document(s)
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on 8 September 2020
Article
Marshall Islands
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This Ratification Kit is designed for government decision-makers. It gives the procedure to ratify or accede to the Protocol and arguments to convince target countries to endorse it. Governments are not likely to have an expert understanding of the Second Optional Protocol. This document may contain answers to government concerns that will be addressed to you during your lobbying action.
- Document type Article
- Countries list Marshall Islands
- Themes list International law,
Document(s)
Whom the State Kills
By Harvard Law Review / Scott Phillips / Justin Marceau, on 1 January 2020
2020
Article
United States
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An unexpected feature of the modern death penalty is the fact that most persons sentenced to death are not executed […]. Death sentences are remarkably poor predictors of who will ultimately be executed. An even more salient feature of the death penalty is the fat that race matters […]. Rarity and race, then, stand as hallmarks of the American death penalty. But until now the interaction of these two phenomena has not been studied. This Article examines whether race is relevant for understanding the fate of the unfortunate few […]. By combining Baldus’s sentencing data whith original execution data, we demonstrate that the overall execution is susbsentially greater for defendants convicted of killing a white victim than for those convicted of killing a Black victim.
- Document type Article
- Countries list United States
- Themes list Discrimination,
Document(s)
Psychological Assessments in Legal Contexts: Are Courts Keeping “Junk Science” Out of the Courtroom?
By Tess M. S. Neal / Psychological Science in the Public Interest, on 1 January 2020
Article
United States
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This article reports the results of a two-part investigation of psychological assessments proposed as expert evidence in legal context.
- Document type Article
- Countries list United States
- Themes list Mental Illness, Death Penalty,
Document(s)
Failings of the Supreme Court, Human Sacrifice, Sentencing and the Death Penalty
By Anup Surendranath / Economic and Political Weekly, on 1 January 2020
Article
India
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In the judicial discourse on the relationship between human sacrifice and punishment in criminal law, there are glaring errors. Looking closely at the Supreme Court’s judgment in Ishwari Lal Yadav v State of Chhattisgarh, the deviation from the principle of individualised sentencing and the consequences of ignoring evidence on the complex anthropological and psychological dimensions of human sacrifice are reflected upon.
- Document type Article
- Countries list India
- Themes list Hanging,
Document(s)
Black Deaths Matter: The Race-of-Victim Effect and Capital Punishment
By Daniel Medwed / Northeastern, on 1 January 2020
Article
United States
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The racial dimensions of the death penalty are well-documented. Many observers assume this state of affairs derives from bias—often implicit and occasionally explicit—against black defendants in particular. Research points to an even more alarming factor. The race of the victim, not the defendant, steers cases in the direction of death. Regardless of the perpetrator’s race, those who kill whites are more likely to face capital charges, receive a death sentence, and die by execution than those who murder blacks. This short Essay adds a contemporary gloss to the race-of-victim effect literature, placing it in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement and showing how it relates to the broader, systemic devaluation of African-American lives.
- Document type Article
- Countries list United States
- Themes list Discrimination,
Document(s)
The Rise, Fall, and Afterlife of the Death Penalty in the United States
By Carol S. Steiker / Annual Review of Law and Social Science, on 1 January 2020
Article
United States
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This review addresses four key issues in the modern (post-1976) era of capital punishment in the United States. First, why has the United States retained the death penalty when all its peer countries (all other developed Western democracies) have abolished it? Second, how should we understand the role of race in shaping the distinctive path of capital punishment in the United States, given our country’s history of race-based slavery and slavery’s intractable legacy of discrimination? Third, what is the significance of the sudden and profound withering of the practice of capital punishment in the past two decades? And, finally, what would abolition of the death penalty in the United States (should it ever occur) mean for the larger criminal justice system?
- Document type Article
- Countries list United States
- Themes list Country/Regional profiles,
Document(s)
Contradictions in Judicial Support for Capital Punishment in India and Bangladesh: Utilitarian Rationales
By Saul Lehrfreund / Carolyn Hoyle / Asian Journal of Criminology, on 1 January 2019
2019
Article
Bangladesh
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This article draws on two original empirical research projects that explored judges’ opinions on the retention and administration of capital punishment in India and Bangladesh. The data expose justice systems marred by corruption, incompetence, abuses of due process, and arbitrary and inconsistent treatment of defendants from arrest through to conviction and sentencing. It shows that those with the power to sentence to death have little faith in the integrity of the criminal process. Yet, a startling paradox emerges from these studies; despite personal knowledge of its flaws, judges have trust in the death penalty to deter crime and to realise other sentencing aims and feel retention benefits society. This is explained by reference to utilitarian values. Not only did our judges express strongly utilitarian justifications for sentencing people to death, in terms of their erroneous belief in its deterrent effect, but some also articulated utilitarian justifications for misconduct in pre-trial processes, suggesting that it was necessary to break the rules to secure convictions when the system was dysfunctional and ineffective.
- Document type Article
- Countries list Bangladesh
- Themes list Arbitrariness, Death Penalty,
Document(s)
Does the death penalty give victims closure? Science says no
By Linda Lewis Griffith / San Luis Obispo Tribune, on 1 January 2019
Article
United States
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This article deals with one of the main arguments of defenders of the capital sentence: is the death penalty a source of relief for the victims?
- Document type Article
- Countries list United States
- Themes list Public debate, Death Penalty,