INDEX

This article discusses a new art exhibition in Los Angeles which aims to humanise condemned prisoners. It continues to situate the exhibition in the greater context of the depiction of the death penalty in art history. The conversation this article raises is the link the death penalty in art history has with creating a public discussion. From the sword to the electric chair, the death penalty has inspired challenging art, writes Jason Farago.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Public debate,

The Dui Hua Foundation estimates that China executed approximately 2,400 people in 2013 and will execute roughly the same number of people in 2014. Annual declines in executions recorded in recent years are likely to be offset in 2014 by the use of capital punishment in anti-terrorism campaigns in Xinjiang and the anti-corruption campaign nationwide.

• Document type Article
• Countries list China
• Themes list Statistics,

A vast literature details the crimes that condemned inmates commit, but very little is known about the social histories of these capital offenders. For example, how many offenders possessed mitigating characteristics that demonstrate intellectual or psychological deficits comparable to those shared by classes of offenders categorically excluded from capital punishment? Did these executed offenders suffer from intellectual disability, youthfulness, mental illness, or childhood trauma? The problem with this state of affairs is that the personal characteristics of the defendant can render the death penalty an excessive punishment regardless of the characteristics of the crime. This Article begins to fill the mitigation knowledge gap by describing the social histories of the last hundred offenders executed in America. Scouring state and federal court records, this Article documents the presence of significant mitigation evidence for eighty-seven percent of executed offenders. Though only a first step, our findings suggest the failure of the Supreme Court’s mitigation project to ensure the only offenders subjected to a death sentence are those with “a consciousness materially more depraved” than that of the typical murderer. Indeed, the inverse appears to be true: the vast majority of executed offenders possess significant functional deficits that rival — and perhaps outpace — those associated with intellectual impairment and juvenile status; defendants that the Court has categorically excluded from death eligibility.

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

This paper examines the issue of judicial discretion and the role of the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) in death penalty reform since 2007. The SPC has been encouraging judges to give ‘suspended’ death sentences rather than ‘immediate execution’ for some homicide cases. Lower court judges are encouraged to use their discretion to recognize mitigating circumstances that would allow them to sentence offenders to a suspended death sentence. The SPC has used ‘guidance’ instruments which include ‘directives’ and other SPC interpretations and a new ‘case guidance’ system which provides case exemplars to follow. The study explored these guidance instruments as a way of deepening the understanding of how law, politics and judicial practices are interwoven to achieve reform goals.

• Document type Article
• Countries list China
• Themes list Death Penalty, Country/Regional profiles,

The report depicts the prisonners convicted of ordinary crimes’s treatment in Iran

• Document type Article
• Countries list Iran (Islamic Republic of)
• Themes list Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment and Punishment, Torture,

The report denounces the judicial use of the death penalty in Iran in 2012

• Document type Article
• Countries list Iran (Islamic Republic of)
• Themes list Statistics,
• Available languages گزارش سالانھ مجازات اعدام در ایران سال ۲۱۰۲Rapport Annuel sur la peine de mort en Iran 2012Annual Report: Death Penalty in Iran 2011گزارش سالانه اعدام در ایرا سال ۱۱۲۲Rapport annuel sur la peine de mort en Iran 2011

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.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Country/Regional profiles,

Ever since California added the death penalty to its penal code in the 1870s, supporters have argued that the threat of executions would make potential murderers think twice before committing heinous crimes.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Trend Towards Abolition, Country/Regional profiles,

A recent law review article by Professors Carol and Jordan Steiker examines two decades of attempts to regulate capital punishment and concludes that this process may have paved the way to a finding that the death penalty is unconstitutional

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Country/Regional profiles,

This paper has three objectives. First, it provides an analysis of the state-of-play regarding the death penalty in Asia. Second it reports on EU human rights dialogues. Third, it suggests policies that might help to support initiatives in Asian countries aimed both at restraining the use of the death penalty and securing its complete abolition.

• Document type Article
• Themes list Trend Towards Abolition, Country/Regional profiles,