scholarly journals MISUNDERSTANDING OF THE INDONESIAN HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS ON THE APPLICATION OF THE DEATH PENALTY

Asy-Syari ah ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 185-198
Author(s):  
Tajul Arifin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Statistical Data ◽  
The United States ◽  
Drugs And Crime ◽  
Low Rate

AbstractThis research mainly uses statistical data published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDDC) in April 2014 to support the hypothesis of this research that “Human Rights Activists in Indonesia as in other countries have failed in comprehending the wisdom (hikmah) of the application of Capital Punishment”. This study found that: (1) the hypothesis of this research was strongly supported by the data; (2) the application of Syari`ah Criminal Law in Saudi Arabia has been an unchallenged proof for the wisdom (hikmah) behind the application of Capital Punishment by keeping the level of murder crime to a low rate which sharply contrast to many countries which apply positive laws which are based on a social contract between the ruler and the ruled, such as in The United States and Mexico; and (3) In upholding the true justice in Islamic Criminal Law, punishment can only be awarded to the criminals in a society where the Islamic ideal of social justice has been achieved. AbstrakPenelitian ini menggunakan data statistik yang diterbitkan oleh United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDDC) pada bulan April 2014 untuk mendukung hipotesis dari penelitian ini bahwa "Aktivis HAM di Indonesia seperti di negara-negara lain telah gagal dalam memahami hikmah dari penerapan hukuman mati". Studi ini menemukan bahwa: (1) hipotesis penelitian ini sangat didukung oleh data; (2) penerapan Hukum Pidana Syari`ah di Arab Saudi telah menjadi bukti tak terbantahkan untuk menunjukkan hikmah di balik penerapan hukuman mati dengan menjaga tingkat kejahatan pembunuhan pada tingkat yang sangat rendah yang sangat berlawanan dengan yang terjadi di banyak negara yang menerapkan hukum positif yang didasarkan pada kontrak sosial antara penguasa dan rakyat, seperti di Amerika Serikat dan Meksiko; dan (3) dalam menegakkan keadilan sejati dalam Hukum Pidana Islam, hukuman hanya dapat diberikan kepada penjahat dalam masyarakat di mana keadilan sosial yang ideal menurut Islam telah dicapai.

The Use of the Death Penalty

1969 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter C. Reckless
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
The United States ◽  
Death Sentence ◽  
Dramatic Reduction ◽  
Public Sentiment ◽  
Discernible Effect ◽  
The World ◽  
Important Trend

Undoubtedly the most important trend in capital punishment has been the dramatic reduction in the number of offenses statutorily punishable by the death penalty. About two hundred years ago England had over two hundred offenses calling for the death penalty; it now has four. Some countries have abolished capital punishment completely; a few retain it for unusual offenses only. The trend throughout the world, even in the great number of countries that retain the death penalty, is definitely toward a de facto, not a de jure, form of abolition. In the United States, where the death penalty is possible in three-fourths of the states, the number of executions has declined from 199 in 1935 to an average of less than three in the last four years. This change is related to public sentiment against the use of the death penalty and even more directly to the unwillingness of juries and courts to impose a first-degree sentence. The increasing willingness of governors to commute a death sentence and of courts to hear appeals also contributes to this decline. A review of the evidence indicates that use of the death penalty has no discernible effect on the commission of capital offenses (especially murder).

Public Opinion and Capital Punishment: A Close Examination of the Views of Abolitionists and Retentionists

1983 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 116-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phoebe C. Ellsworth ◽  
Lee Ross
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Response Rate ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Supreme ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Legal Implications

A survey designed to examine the attitudinal and informational bases of people's opinions about the death penalty was administered to 500 Northern California residents (response rate = 96 percent). Of these, 58.8 percent were proponents of capital punishment, 30.8 percent were opponents, and 10.4 percent were undecided. When asked whether they favored mandatory, discretionary, or no death penalty for various crimes, respondents tended to treat these options as points on a scale of strength of belief, with mandatory penalties favored for the most serious crimes, rather than considering the questions of objectivity and fairness that have influenced the United States Supreme Court's considerations of these options. For no crime did a majority favor execution of all those convicted, even when a mandatory penalty was endorsed. Respondents were generally ignorant on factual issues related to the death penalty, and indicated that if their factual beliefs (in deterrence) were incorrect, their attitude would not be influenced. When asked about their reasons for favoring or opposing the death penalty, respondents tended to endorse all reasons consistent with their attitudes, indicating that the attitude does not stem from a set of reasoned beliefs, but may be an undifferenti ated, emotional reflection of one's ideological self-image. Opponents favored due process guarantees more than did Proponents. A majority of respondents said they would need more evidence to convict if a case was capital. Theoretical and legal implications of the results are discussed.

scholarly journals United States Withdraws from the UN Human Rights Council, Shortly After Receiving Criticism About Its Border Policy

2018 ◽  
Vol 112 (4) ◽  
pp. 745-751 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Interests ◽  
Human Rights Council ◽  
High Commissioner ◽  
Undocumented Families ◽  
Border Policy ◽  
The United Nations

On June 19, 2018, the United States withdrew from the UN Human Rights Council. Announcing this decision, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley characterized the Council as “a protector of human rights abusers and a cesspool of political bias.” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo observed that while “the United States has no opposition in principle to multilateral bodies working to protect human rights,” nonetheless “when organizations undermine our national interests and our allies, we will not be complicit.” The withdrawal occurred one day after the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights criticized the United States in a speech at the Human Rights Council for its “unconscionable” practice of forcibly separating undocumented families entering the United States. In August, U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton stated that in addition to withdrawing from the Council, the United States would also reduce its assessed contribution to the United Nations by the amount that would ordinarily flow to the Human Rights Council and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The Politics of the Death Penalty

2009 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 925-928
Author(s):  
Marie Gottschalk
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
The United States ◽  
High Point ◽  
Opinion Polls

The death penalty is declining in the United States. The number of people executed each year has fallen by about half since the late 1990s. Opinion polls show support for capital punishment is waning. It now stands at about two-thirds, down from a high point of 86% in 1995, according to Gallup polls (p. 173).

Capital Punishment

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Kaplan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
State Government ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
The United States ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Criminal Offenses ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
Criminal Charge ◽  
Modern Era

The death penalty, also referred to as capital punishment, is the process whereby a state government orders a sentence of death for a person found guilty of a particular set of criminal offenses. In the United States, the primary capital crime is first-degree murder with an additional aggravating factor, usually called a “special circumstance” (e.g., murder of a law enforcement officer). Capital punishment is a complex process that includes a criminal charge, an involved legal process, sentencing, special “death row” prison housing, post-conviction appeals, and the ultimate execution of the defendant. Persons sentenced to death are called condemned. Execution refers specifically to the process in which the defendant is killed. Capital punishment has been practiced throughout human history, with considerable variation across eras and regions. In the last 50 years, the use of capital punishment has declined across the globe, and there are relatively few countries that use it regularly as a form of punishment, most notably China. Some countries have abolished the death penalty completely, such as all member states of the European Union. Most other countries have seen a decline in its use. For instance, only 31 out of 50 states in the United States currently have death penalty statutes (there are also federal death penalty statutes, which are rarely used). The other 19 U.S. states are referred to as “abolitionist.” The “modern era” of capital punishment in the United States was spurred by two important Supreme Court cases. The Furman v. Georgia (1972) decision ruled that arbitrariness in the application of the death penalty deemed its use unconstitutional. The reversal of that ruling four years later in Gregg v. Georgia (1976) reestablished the death penalty in America, and experts refer to the modern era as 1976 to the present.

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.

Human Rights and Wrongs in Iran's Drug Diplomacy with Europe

2017 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 403-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janne Bjerre Christensen
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Drug Trafficking ◽  
Drug Control ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Human Rights Organizations ◽  
History Of ◽  
Drugs And Crime

Europe has a strong interest in and a history of assisting Iran in controlling inflows of drugs from Afghanistan. But due to Iran's increasing use of the death penalty in drug trafficking cases, Europe has terminated its cooperation. Based on interviews with Iranian policy-makers and representatives of both human rights organizations and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), this article presents Denmark's withdrawal of drug control funding in 2013 as a case study, analyzing the dilemmas and trajectories of joint Iranian-European drug diplomacy and the prospects for reengagement following the nuclear agreement.

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