Capital Punishment

2018 ◽  
pp. 153-186
Author(s):  
Sandra Fredman
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Original Intent ◽  
Living Tree ◽  
Legislative Power ◽  
Fair Procedure ◽  
The Cross

This chapter applies the cross-cutting themes in Chapters 1–5 to the highly contested issue of the death penalty. It begins by considering the differences in constitutional texts, and particularly the ambiguity as to whether the death penalty is permitted. This requires judges to apply their interpretive theories. Original intent, natural meaning, and living tree approaches have all been relied on to achieve a mosaic of different and vehemently contested approaches. The chapter then considers how courts in different jurisdictions have addressed three main issues: whether a fair procedure can be found which justifies the death penalty; whether there are good penological justifications; and the role of substantive values, such as human dignity. The chapter highlights the ways in which courts approach the demarcation between judicial and legislative power; their use of comparative materials; and the increasing interconnectedness of the approach of different jurisdictions to the death penalty.

The Rise, Fall, and Afterlife of the Death Penalty in the United States

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 299-315
Author(s):  
Carol S. Steiker ◽  
Jordan M. Steiker
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Justice System ◽  
The United States ◽  
History Of ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
History Of Race ◽  
Western Democracies

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?

Executing Humanity: Legal Consciousness and Capital Punishment in the United States, 1915–1940

2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 929-976
Author(s):  
Daniel LaChance
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Legal Consciousness ◽  
Abstract Entity ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Collective Imagination

From the 1830s to the 1930s, elites across the United States increasingly privatized executions and standardized execution protocols. These changes reflected and reinforced a more bureaucratic image of the state as an abstract entity run by professionals operating in rule-bound roles rather than particular actors governing in an unsystematic way. After this period of change, the aesthetics of the execution ceremony had so thoroughly changed that the death penalty had the potential to inspire critiques of the modern state as cold, detached, and callous. It rarely did, however. Changes to state killing threatened to diminish the recognition of human dignity in the nation's execution chambers were countered by melodramatic popular renderings of executions that preserved their sacred, traditional character. Toward the end of this period of change, from 1915 to 1940, playwrights, screenwriters, and journalists maintained executions as events in which the humanity of the state that killed and the condemned who died was constantly foregrounded, even as execution modes and protocols became rationalized and machine-like. Reflecting this ethos, images of condemned men in the nation's collective imagination became disproportionately white.

Suspended Execution beyond China’s Borders

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-35
Author(s):  
Tobias Smith ◽  
Daniel Pascoe
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
First Century ◽  
Twenty First Century

Abstract Although China remains the world’s most prolific death-penalty jurisdiction, it has also reportedly reduced executions in the twenty-first century. China achieved this reduction in part through the use of a nominal capital sentence called “suspended execution.” The success of suspended execution as a diversionary tool has produced calls for its introduction elsewhere. However, there has been no empirical research on suspended execution outside China. This article fills this gap by identifying neighbouring countries where suspended-execution proposals have been considered, determining why these countries considered it, and examining how proposals were structured. We identify four Asian jurisdictions—Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, and Indonesia. We find that all of these countries looked to China for inspiration; each did so independently and for reasons unrelated to China’s death-penalty reforms. Our findings provide insights about capital punishment in Asia, the appeal of suspended execution, and the role of China in regional penal practice.

scholarly journals "Adorn the cross with roses"? Justice and human dignity, beauty and human flourishing

2020 ◽  
Vol Supp (29) ◽  
pp. 77-92
Author(s):  
N. Marais ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Good News ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Theological Discourse ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Theological Language

What does beauty have to do with justice, justification, and salvation? Can the world be saved by beauty? In this contribution, some theological and rhetorical convergences and differences between the discourse on human dignity and the discourse on human flourishing are explored. The role of beauty, in these discourses, is a pivotal concern – especially as often justice and human rights shape the theological discourse on human dignity. A key proposed argument in this analysis is that justice is to human dignity what beauty is to human flourishing, and that these shape or mould the theological language with which salvation – the good news of the gospel – is articulated. The argument concludes by proposing that both forensic language and aesthetic language are born from the fold of Christian soteriology, and that not only the more static, forensic language of human dignity is required to speak about salvation, but also the more pliable, artistic language of human dignity.

Capital Punishment in the Post-Civil War Years

2020 ◽  
pp. 31-62
Author(s):  
David M. Doyle ◽  
Liam O’Callaghan
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Death Sentences

This chapter examines the application of the death penalty in the first ten years of the Free State. Historians to date have argued that the relatively high number of civilian executions in the early post-independence years was symptomatic of Cumann nGaedheal’s broader anxieties with issues of law and order. This chapter revises that assessment and argues that those convicted of murder in the civilian courts in these years were no more likely to have their sentence carried out than those convicted in subsequent eras. By closely examining the decision-making process leading to the execution or commutation of death sentences, particularly the role of judges and government officials, this chapter argues that the death penalty, as imposed by the ordinary courts, was an example of the government’s efforts to restore peacetime civilian norms to the criminal justice system and was not used to any political end.

A View From the Inside: The Role of Redemption, Deterrence, and Masculinity on Inmate Support for the Death Penalty

2003 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tracey Steele ◽  
Norma Wilcox
Keyword(s):  
Child Abuse ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Inverse Relationship ◽  
Social Characteristics ◽  
Child Molestation ◽  
Crime Family ◽  
Serial Killing

Seeking to redress the lack of inmate-centered research, the authors examine inmate attitudes towards capital punishment to determine whether individual and social characteristics predict death penalty support for a sample of 309 midwestern inmates. The authors’ results indicate that while a slight majority of inmates opposed capital punishment (53%), opposition softened considerably for crimes such as serial killing, child molestation, and child abuse. Factors that significantly predicted inmate death penalty support included the belief that capital punishment deters violent crime, family members’ capital punishment advocacy, and a high score on the Alpha scale (a measure assessing inmate identification with violent and aggressive aspects of hegemonic masculinity). In addition, a significant inverse relationship emerged between the belief that a person can be rehabilitated and death penalty support. The findings strongly suggest that inmate death penalty opinions are complex and nuanced and can offer considerable insights regarding the efficacy of current social control practices.

Escaping the Guillotine: The Gap between the Crimes Punishable by Death and the Effective Death Sentences (France, 20th Century)

2019 ◽  
Vol 80 ◽  
pp. 265-281
Author(s):  
Nicolas Picard
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Judicial System ◽  
Place Of Death ◽  
The People ◽  
Death Sentences ◽  
Statistical Report ◽  
Mitigating Circumstances

A statistical report of 1906 evaluated the place of death sentences in the judicial system, with the main purpose of supporting the bill of abolition of the death penalty (finally rejected). This report showed the negligible role of the capital punishment in the penal repression – as if the guillotine had already fallen into abeyance. According to the Penal Code of 1810, aggravated murders (premeditated murders, murders accompanied by another crime, murders of a public officer), parricides, poisonings, arsons of houses, as well as complicity in and attempt of such crimes, were all punishable by the guillotine. However, a large implementation of the principle of mitigating circumstances allowed to avoid the enforcement of death penalty. Moreover, two thirds of the people sentenced to death were pardoned, often with the support of the juries. The substitute penalty was a perpetual imprisonment, but this “perpetuity” became shorter and shorter after 1945.

scholarly journals Support for the Death Penalty Reinstatement as a Protest Attitude: The Role of Political Trust

2020 ◽  
pp. 105756772096315
Author(s):  
Ridvan Peshkopia ◽  
Adam Trahan
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Cell Phone ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
Random Digit Dialing ◽  
Eu Membership ◽  
Random Digit ◽  
War On Crime ◽  
A Cell

We argue that support for the reinstatement of capital punishment might reflect protest against an untrustworthy judicial system, framing this as a protest attitude. We test our argument with data from a probability sample of 2,366 respondents in Albania collected in 2015 via a cell phone random digit dialing technique. We found that respondents’ support for the reinstatement of the death penalty is associated with lack of trust in the country’s judiciary but not necessarily respondents prioritizing the war on crime. Also, we found that skepticism toward European Union (EU) membership conditionality as a drive for the country’s democratization is a good predictor of support for the reinstatement of the death penalty, but there is no evidence that respondents related their support for the country’s EU membership with support for capital punishment.

Maintaining harmony across the globe: The cross-cultural role of closeness in interpersonal forgiveness

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Karremans ◽  
Camillo Regalia ◽  
Giorgia Paleari ◽  
Frank Fincham ◽  
Ming Cui ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Interpersonal Forgiveness ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Cultural Role

KEBIJAKAN MODERASI PIDANA MATI

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 193
Author(s):  
Mei Susanto ◽  
Ajie Ramdan
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Criminal Code ◽  
Right To Life ◽  
Life Imprisonment ◽  
Research Results ◽  
Moderation Model ◽  
The Right

ABSTRAKPutusan Nomor 2-3/PUU-V/2007 selain menjadi dasar konstitusionalitas pidana mati, juga memberikan jalan tengah (moderasi) terhadap perdebatan antara kelompok yang ingin mempertahankan (retensionis) dan yang ingin menghapus (abolisionis) pidana mati. Permasalahan dalam penelitian ini adalah bagaimana kebijakan moderasi pidana mati dalam putusan a quo dikaitkan dengan teori pemidanaan dan hak asasi manusia dan bagaimana kebijakan moderasi pidana mati dalam RKUHP tahun 2015 dikaitkan dengan putusan a quo. Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian doktrinal, dengan menggunakan bahan hukum primer dan sekunder, berupa peraturan perundang-undangan, literatur, dan hasil-hasil penelitian yang relevan dengan objek penelitian. Penelitian menyimpulkan, pertama, putusan a quo yang memuat kebijakan moderasi pidana mati telah sesuai dengan teori pemidanaan khususnya teori integratif dan teori hak asasi manusia di Indonesia di mana hak hidup tetap dibatasi oleh kewajiban asasi yang diatur dengan undang-undang. Kedua, model kebijakan moderasi pidana mati dalam RKUHP tahun 2015 beberapa di antaranya telah mengakomodasi amanat putusan a quo, seperti penentuan pidana mati di luar pidana pokok, penundaan pidana mati, kemungkinan pengubahan pidana mati menjadi pidana seumur hidup atau penjara paling lama 20 tahun. Selain itu masih menimbulkan persoalan berkaitan dengan lembaga yang memberikan pengubahan pidana mati, persoalan grasi, lamanya penundaan pelaksanaan pidana mati, dan jenis pidana apa saja yang dapat diancamkan pidana mati.Kata kunci: kebijakan, KUHP, moderasi, pidana mati. ABSTRACTConstitutional Court’s Decision Number 2-3/PUU-V/2007, in addition to being the basis of the constitutionality of capital punishment, also provides a moderate way of arguing between retentionist groups and those wishing to abolish the death penalty (abolitionist). The problem in this research is how the moderation policy of capital punishment in aquo decision is associated with the theory of punishment and human rights and how the moderation policy of capital punishment in the draft Criminal Code of 2015 (RKUHP) is related with the a quo decision. This study is doctrinal, using primary and secondary legal materials, in the form of legislation, literature and research results that are relevant to the object of analysis. This study concludes, firstly, the aquo decision containing the moderation policy of capital punishment has been in accordance with the theory of punishment, specificallyy the integrative theory and the theory of human rights in Indonesia, in which the right to life remains limited by the fundamental obligations set forth in the law. Secondly, some of the modes of moderation model of capital punishment in RKUHP of 2015 have accommodated the mandate of aquo decision, such as the determination of capital punishment outside the main punishment, postponement of capital punishment, the possibility of converting capital punishment to life imprisonment or imprisonment of 20 years. In addition, it still raises issues regarding the institutions that provide for conversion of capital punishment, pardon matters, length of delay in the execution of capital punishment, and any types of crime punishable by capital punishment. Keywords: policy, criminal code, moderation, capital punishment.

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