INDEX

The American Medical Association is among many medical professional organizations that prohibit the participation of physicians in the physical act of execution. Despite these clear guidelines, debate remains regarding physician involvement in various aspects of death penalty cases. This article outlines different positions that physicians and specifically forensic psychiatrists have taken on this issue. Our position is that given the overwhelming secondary duty related to their physician role—specifically to do no harm—forensic psychiatrists should not use their expertise if they believe their involvement will be used for the primary purpose of obtaining a death penalty.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Intellectual Disability,

This report highlights the death penalty situation and executions in Asian countries between 2010 and 2013. It also gives an overview over the legal protection measures for the mentally impaired and intellectually disabled in Asian countries where the death penalty is used. Furthermore, we have listed Asian countries that have acceded to the ICCPR and its Second Optional Protocol. We have also collected excerpts from international human rights documents. By using these documents for mutual reference, death penalty activists in Asia will be able to get a more comprehensive picture of the use of the death penalty and executions in Asian countries.

• Document type Article
• Themes list International law, Public debate, Most Serious Crimes,
• Available languages 亞洲不公平審判報告 II : 死刑並非亞洲的共同價值

A recent article in Mother Jones examines lingering questions in the determination of which inmates are exempt from execution because of mental incompetency. In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Ford v. Wainwright that a person could not be executed if he or she was “unaware of the punishment they’re about to suffer and why they are to suffer it.” The 2007 ruling in Panetti v. Quarterman updated that decision, with Justice Anthony Kennedy writing, “A prisoner’s awareness of the State’s rationale for an execution is not the same as a rational understanding of it.” Scott Panetti (pictured), the inmate involved in the 2007 case, knew that the state of Texas planned to execute him for the murder of his in-laws, but also sincerely believed that he was at the center of a struggle between God and Satan and was being executed to stop him from preaching the Gospel.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Intellectual Disability,

In a new article for the University of Chicago Law Review, Professors Carol S. Steiker (left) of the University of Texas School of Law and Jordan M. Steiker (right) of Harvard Law School examine the racial history of the American death penalty and what they describe as the U.S. Supreme Court’s “deafening silence” on the subject of race and capital punishment. They assert that the story of the death penalty “cannot be told without detailed attention to race.” The Steikers’ article recounts the role of race in the death penalty since the early days of the United States, including the vastly disproportionate use of capital punishment against free and enslaved blacks in the antebellum South and describes the racial and civil rights context in which the constitutional challenges to the death penalty in the 1960s and 1970s were pursued. The authors contrast the “salience of race” in American capital punishment law and practice through the civil rights era with the “relative invisibility [of race] in the judicial opinions issued in the foundational cases of the modern era.”

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

A new study by the Brennan Center for Justice examined several possible explanations for the dramatic drop in crime in the U.S. in the 1990s and 2000s. Among the theories studied was use of the death penalty, which the report found had no effect on the decline in crime.

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

This article is a written explanation of the 12-minute Australian Broadcasting Corporation video of the same name.

• Document type Article
• Countries list Japan
• Themes list Fair Trial, Trend Towards Abolition, Innocence,

The main aim of this article is to explore the problem of wrongful convictions in Japanese criminal justice by focusing on the case of Hakamada Iwao, who was sentenced to death in 1968 and released in 2014 because of evidence of his innocence.

• Document type Article
• Countries list Japan
• Themes list Fair Trial, Innocence,

The release of Hakamada Iwao from death row in March 2014 after 48 years of incarceration provides an opportunity to reflect on wrongful convictions in Japanese criminal justice. My approach is comparative because this problem cannot be understood without asking how Japan compares with other countries: to know only one country is to know no country well. Comparison with the United States is especially instructive because there have been many studies of wrongful conviction there and because the U.S. and Japan are the only two developed democracies that retain capital punishment and continue to carry out executions on a regular basis. On the surface, the United States seems to have a more serious problem with wrongful convictions than Japan, but this gap is more apparent than real. To reduce the problem of wrongful convictions in Japanese criminal justice, reformers must confront a culture of denial that makes it difficult for police, prosecutors, and judges to acknowledge their own mistakes.

• Document type Article
• Countries list Japan
• Themes list Fair Trial, Innocence,

Do the characteristics of the victim determine a murderer’s punishment?Theory and research both suggest that they do. This Article focuses on thegender of the murder victim, in particular, how victim gender influences deathseeking and death penalty sentencing decisions. First, the Article reviews theexisting evidence supporting a “female victim effect” which theorizes that crimesinvolving female victims are punished more harshly than crimes with malevictims. It also presents and assesses various theoretical explanations for thefemale victim effect. Second, the Article analyzes cases from a comprehensivedataset of Delaware capital trials, exploring how cases with male and femalevictims differ. It then considers which of the theoretical explanations for afemale victim effect best explain death penalty decisions in this sample of cases.

• Document type Article
• Themes list Women, Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment and Punishment, Discrimination, Death Penalty,

The Iranian authorities use the drug issue to enforce their rule and repress ethnic nationalities and members of opposition groups. Whenever it faces escalating crises, internally or externally, new and harsher laws against drugs and addicts are adopted and public hangings of members of ethnic nationalities increase dramatically. The following periods of hangings and drug laws illustrate this policy.

• Document type Article
• Countries list Iran (Islamic Republic of)
• Themes list Drug Offences,
• Available languages ایران: استفاده از مجازات اعدام در جرایم مربوط به موادمخدر بعنوان ابزاری برای کنترل سیاسیt