Death penalty views in China, Japan and the U.S.: An empirical comparison

2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (5) ◽  
pp. 862-869 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shanhe Jiang ◽  
Eric G. Lambert ◽  
Jin Wang ◽  
Toyoji Saito ◽  
Rebecca Pilot
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Empirical Comparison ◽  
The U.S

Drone Penalty

Killing Times ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 150-184
Author(s):  
David Wills
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Structural Space ◽  
Extrajudicial Killing ◽  
Criminal Conduct ◽  
The U.S

A different appropriation of the instant takes place in the case of extrajudicial killing by drones. That practice by the U.S., begun in 2002, has remained shrouded in secrecy. However one counts the victims, drone executions outnumber by a huge margin American judicial executions, and the drone penalty thus represents a particular paradigm of the American death penalty: for the most part out of sight and out of mind. It raises in turn questions about American democracy and the deadly criminal conduct of its foreign policy, but also produces a perspective that brings into focus the long series of historical relations between slavery and the death penalty, as well as lynching and the persistence of racism in the application of capital punishment. Furthermore, the sovereign secrecy of drone attacks produces a structural space shared by the U.S. president and the terrorist s/he attacks.

Intellectual Disability, Criminal Justice, and the Death Penalty

2020 ◽  
pp. 172-183
Author(s):  
Cliff Sloan ◽  
Lauryn Fraas
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Disability ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Adaptive Behavior ◽  
Current Medical ◽  
Medical Standards ◽  
Capital Cases ◽  
Social Work Practitioners ◽  
Iq Scores ◽  
Standard Error Of Measurement ◽  
The U.S

This chapter introduces the reader to key cases analyzing claims of intellectual disability, describes the current clinical definition and diagnosis, and provides an overview of recurring issues in capital litigation. In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that individuals with intellectual disability may not be executed. The Court subsequently clarified that current medical standards must be used in assessing claims of intellectual disability in capital cases. The clinical diagnosis requires assessing three factors: (a) deficits in intellectual functioning; (b) deficits in adaptive behavior; and (c) the onset of deficits during the developmental period. Courts must be informed by current medical standards regarding issues that arise, including the standard error of measurement in IQ scores, the problems of offsetting weaknesses in adaptive behavior with perceived strengths, and other clinical topics. The principle that the death penalty must not be imposed on individuals with intellectual disability signals important responsibilities for social work practitioners.

An Angle of Vision

2020 ◽  
pp. 43-54
Author(s):  
Edward A. Jr. Purcell
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
Personal Values ◽  
Gay Marriage ◽  
True Nature ◽  
The U.S

This chapter discusses the variety of types of cases Justice Antonin Scalia heard on the U.S. Supreme Court and notes their variety as well as the fact that in a few areas Scalia took originalist positions that brought results commonly regarded as “liberal,” such as his interpretation of the Confrontation Clause. The chapter then turns to the bulk of the cases where he supported “conservative” results. It points out that he used his originalist jurisprudence vigorously to defend certain positions that involved his own most intensely held personal values (those dealing with abortion, gay marriage, the death penalty, and assisted suicide), and it suggests that his originalism may have been designed to justify his views on those issues. The chapter then suggests that the true test of his jurisprudence and methodology lay not in his actions in those cases but rather in the more general run of cases where he applied his jurisprudential principles inconsistently, failed to apply them at all, or actually rejected them. That large and final category of cases constituted the majority of his decisions and opinions, the chapter argues, and it provides the best ground for testing his jurisprudential claims and ultimately identifying the true nature of his jurisprudence and the significance of his judicial career.

The History of Mitigation in Death Penalty Cases

2020 ◽  
pp. 34-45
Author(s):  
Russell Stetler
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
The United States ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Death Sentences ◽  
Eighth Amendment ◽  
Mitigating Factors ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Effective Representation ◽  
The U.S

This chapter discusses how the theory and practice of mitigation have evolved over more than four decades, thereby helping to define the modern death penalty era in the United States. Prior to 1976, juries generally made death penalty decisions in a unitary proceeding. Juries then had unfettered discretion to impose death sentences, and the results were so arbitrary that in 1972 the U.S. Supreme Court struck down all the existing death penalty statutes. In 1976, the Court approved new statutes that guided jurors’ discretion. The Court required individualized sentencing in which jurors could consider mitigating factors based on the diverse frailties of humankind. This broad definition of what might inspire juries to reject death was elaborated in succeeding decades in a series of decisions relying on the Eighth Amendment. Social workers and other nonlawyers became critical members of multidisciplinary capital defense teams providing effective representation under the Sixth Amendment.

scholarly journals Does Custom Have A Source?

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 108 ◽  
pp. 179-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Bodansky
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Customary International Law ◽  
Department Of State ◽  
International Court ◽  
Clear Idea ◽  
Death Penalty Case ◽  
The U.S

Customary international law often seems like a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. According to Manley O. Hudson, even the drafters of the International Court of Justice Statute “had no very clear idea as to what constituted international custom.” The situation has not changed much since then.I got my first taste of the difficulties in identifying custom when I was a junior attorney at the U.S. Department of State and was assigned the task of preparing the U.S. submission in a juvenile death penalty case before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The juvenile death penalty is prohibited by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the American Convention on Human Rights, but the question in the Inter-American Commission case was whether it is also prohibited as a matter of customary international law.

The Execution of Wallace Wilkerson

2017 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 349-367 ◽  
Author(s):  
James R. Acker ◽  
Ryan Champagne
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Death Sentence ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
Judicial Decisions ◽  
Firing Squad ◽  
Lethal Injection ◽  
The U.S

Wallace Wilkerson was executed by a Utah firing squad in 1879 after the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of his sentence. Shots from the marksmen’s rifles missed his heart. Not strapped into the chair where he had been seated, Wilkerson lurched onto the ground and exclaimed, “My God!…They missed it!” He groaned, continued breathing, and was pronounced dead some 27 min later. Relying on contemporaneous news accounts and legal documents, this article describes Wilkerson’s crime, the judicial decisions upholding his death sentence, and his execution. It next examines ensuing methods of capital punishment from the electric chair through lethal injection and notes persistent gaps between principle and practice in the continuing quest for increasingly humane modes of execution. The article concludes by suggesting that Wilkerson’s botched firing squad execution harbingered difficulties which continue to plague capital punishment. The implications for the future of the death penalty—a long-standing and resilient practice in American criminal justice—and the ultimate legacy of Wallace Wilkerson remain uncertain, although starkly evident is the daunting and perhaps impossible challenge of reconciling the paradox inherent in the concept of a “humane execution.”

Race as a Variable in Imposing and Carrying Out the Death Penalty in the U.S.

2000 ◽  
Vol 30 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 35-45
Author(s):  
Kristin D. Schaefer ◽  
James J. Hennessy ◽  
Joseph G. Ponterotto
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
The U.S

Examination of Decision Making and Botched Lethal Injection Executions in Texas

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (12) ◽  
pp. 1715-1732
Author(s):  
Talia Roitberg Harmon ◽  
Michael Cassidy ◽  
Richelle Kloch
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Single Drug ◽  
Lethal Injection ◽  
Injection Protocol ◽  
The One ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Analyze Data

This research examines the influence of lethal injection drug shortages on Texas criminal justice officials’ decision to change the state’s three-drug lethal injection protocol to the use of pentobarbital as a single drug protocol, without judicial oversight. We analyze data collected under the three- and one-drug protocols from 1982 through 2020 and compare differences in the length of time the lethal injection took, and complications reported by media witnesses. Findings suggest a higher rate of botched executions under the one-drug protocol than the three-drug protocol. We discuss the role compounding pharmacies may play in our results, the impact of this work on the U.S. Supreme Court’s death penalty jurisprudence, and implications concerning the unilateral decision making by Texas state officials.

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