scholarly journals Death As a Bargaining Chip: Plea Bargaining and the Future of Virginia's Death Penalty

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John G. Douglass
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Plea Bargaining ◽  
Death Sentence ◽  
Capital Case ◽  
Death Sentences ◽  
The Future

Virginia now averages less than a single death sentence each year, a far cry from its not-too-distant history as the second most active death penalty state in the nation. The numbers alone tempt us to forecast the death of Virginia's death penalty: a death by disuse. But those numbers leave much of the story untold. The plummeting number of death sentences is only the diminishing tip of a larger, more stable iceberg of capital case litigation. That iceberg is melting very slowly, if at all.

Death Penalty Disposition in China: What Matters?

2016 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 253-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yudu Li ◽  
Dennis Longmire ◽  
Hong Lu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
The United States ◽  
Death Sentence ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Sentencing Decisions ◽  
Significant Relationships ◽  
Death Sentences ◽  
Capital Cases ◽  
Using Data

In theory, sentencing decisions should be driven by legal factors, not extra-legal factors. However, some empirical research on the death penalty in the United States shows significant relationships between offender and victim characteristics and death sentence decisions. Despite the fact that China frequently imposes death sentences, few studies have examined these sanctions to see if similar correlations occur in China’s capital cases. Using data from published court cases in China involving three violent crimes—homicide, robbery, and intentional assault—this study examines the net impact of offender’s gender, race, and victim–offender relationship on death sentence decisions in China. Our overall multiple regression results indicate that, after controlling for other legal and extra-legal variables, an offender’s gender, race, and victim–offender relationship did not produce similar results in China when compared with those in the United States. In contrast, it is the legal factors that played the most significant role in influencing the death penalty decisions. The article concludes with explanations and speculations on the unique social, cultural, and legal conditions in China that may have contributed to these correlations.

scholarly journals The Death Penalty: Should the Judge or the Jury Decide Who Dies?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerie P. Hans ◽  
John H. Blume ◽  
Amelia C. Hritz ◽  
Sheri Lynn Johnson ◽  
Caisa E. Royer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Death Sentence ◽  
Final Decision ◽  
Jury Decision Making ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
Capital Trials ◽  
Death Sentences ◽  
Capital Cases ◽  
Jury Decision

12 Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 70-99 (2015)This article addresses the effect of judge versus jury decision making through analysis of a database of all capital sentencing phase hearing trials in the State of Delaware from 1977– 2007. Over the three decades of the study, Delaware shifted responsibility for death penalty sentencing from the jury to the judge. Currently, Delaware is one of the handful of states that gives the judge the final decision-making authority in capital trials. Controlling for a number of legally relevant and other predictor variables, we find that the shift to judge sentencing significantly increased the number of death sentences. Statutory aggravating factors, stranger homicides, and the victim’s gender also increased the likelihood of a death sentence, as did the county of the homicide. We reflect on the implications of these results for debates about the constitutionality of judge sentencing in capital cases.

The Shadow of Subversion

2020 ◽  
pp. 201-244
Author(s):  
David M. Doyle ◽  
Liam O’Callaghan
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
The State ◽  
Death Sentence ◽  
Death Sentences ◽  
Irish Government ◽  
Additional Protection ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Government

This chapter examines the abolition of the death penalty in Ireland. The Criminal Justice Act 1964, introduced by the Minister for Justice and staunch abolitionist Charles Haughey, removed the death penalty for all offences apart from murder committed under certain circumstances. Among these was murder of an on-duty member of the Garda Síochána, who, the government decided, warranted the additional protection assumed to be afforded them by the death penalty. The legislation was grounded in lingering fears, as old as the state itself, about anti-state subversive activities, mainly those likely to be carried out by the IRA. In light of this, the chapter compares the abolition experiences of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. That the death penalty was a dubious deterrent under the southern legislation was proven by a spate of garda murders (and resultant death sentences) in the 1970s and 1980s perpetrated by individuals specifically targeted by the 1964 Act. The potency of the 1964 Act was also undermined by the singular unwillingness of any Irish government even consider confirming a death sentence, especially in light of the abolitionist consensus among western European governments.

Using sentencing evidence to effectively establish the balanced application of the death penalty in China

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 143-157
Author(s):  
Xu Huijun
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Death Sentence ◽  
Legal Information ◽  
Death Sentences ◽  
Capital Cases ◽  
Peking University ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Empirical Analysis ◽  
Insight Into

Whether a death sentence is fair or not is an fundamental question for a country’s criminal justice system, yet in practice, similar cases still occasionally receive differing judgments. In response to this problem, this paper has proposed to take sentencing evidence as the breakthrough for the balanced application of death penalty. This paper begins by analysing written judgments from 40 cases, which involve 69 individuals and have been sampled from all those archived under the Gazettes section by the Beidafabao,1 Peking University Centre for Legal Information. This analysis provides considerable insight into the type of sentencing evidence admitted in capital cases, as well as the impact that principal evidence has on where death sentences are imposed. Next, in accordance with the basic problems of evidence law, this paper separates out sentencing evidence of capital cases from conventional theories that confuse it with convictions. Taking sentencing evidence as the core, the objective of the empirical analysis and theoretical discussion is to establish guidelines as well as a policy analysis for capital cases in China in the future.

The Decline of the Judicial Override

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 539-557
Author(s):  
Michael L. Radelet ◽  
G. Ben Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
State Courts ◽  
Death Sentence ◽  
Death Sentences ◽  
Eighth Amendment ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
National Consensus ◽  
Key Questions

Since 1972, the Supreme Court has experimented with regulation of the death penalty, seeking the illusive goals of consistency, reliability, and fairness. In this century, the court held that the Sixth Amendment prohibited judges from making findings necessary to impose a death sentence. Separately, the court held that the Eighth Amendment safeguarded evolving standards of decency as measured by national consensus. In this article, we discuss the role of judges in death determinations, identifying jurisdictions that initially (post 1972) allowed judge sentencing and naming the individuals who today remain under judge-imposed death sentences. The decisions guaranteeing a jury determination have so far been applied only to cases that have not undergone initial review in state courts. Key questions remain unresolved, including whether the evolving standards of decency permit the execution of more than 100 individuals who were condemned to death by judges without a jury's death verdict before implementation of the rules that now require unanimous jury votes.

I Cannot Allow This Boy to Be Executed

Lethal State ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 84-110
Author(s):  
Seth Kotch
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
The State ◽  
High Rate ◽  
Death Sentence ◽  
Parole Board ◽  
Death Sentences ◽  
Executive Clemency

This chapter explains how executive clemency—the state governor’s power to reduce a death penalty to a lesser sentence—helped make capital punishment function in North Carolina. With mandatory death sentences for four serious crimes (murder, rape, burglary, and arson), judges had no choice but to pronounce a death penalty upon conviction. This left it up to the governor to decide whether or not the convicted person would be executed. Although this power was reserved for the governor, it was soon transferred to a parole board, which reviewed each death sentence and invited community comment. This process most benefitted teenagers and women. Perversely, more African Americans received commutations than whites because of the high rate of error in their trials.

Settling and Pleading for LWOP

2021 ◽  
pp. 95-126
Author(s):  
Marion Vannier
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Plea Bargaining ◽  
Death Sentence ◽  
Death Sentences

In courtrooms, defence attorneys, too, rely on LWOP to avoid a death sentence for their client. In examining sentencing pathways, Chapter 3 finds that very little space is given to prosecutors, lawyers, and judges and jurors to discuss or debate, evaluate, and review the severity of LWOP. In part, this has to do with how the sentencing mechanisms—such as plea bargaining, mandatory application, and proportionality review—detach the offender, in particular his or her level of culpability, from the punishment. This chapter triangulates textual analysis of criminal and sentencing laws in California and interviews with prosecutors and defence lawyers. It also relies on a small statistical component of data on LWOP and death sentences collected from two district attorney’s offices (Alameda and Los Angeles).

Rep v. Chimkango: The Application of Kafantayeni to Pre-resentencing Appeals Against the Mandatory Death Penalty in Malawi

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 527-547
Author(s):  
Esther Gumboh
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Attorney General ◽  
Death Sentence ◽  
High Court ◽  
Criminal Jurisdiction ◽  
Death Sentences ◽  
The Status ◽  
Court Of Appeal

Despite confirming in several decisions that the striking down of the mandatory death penalty in Kafantayeni v. Attorney General entitled all offenders sentenced under the mandatory death penalty regime to a fresh hearing on sentence, the Malawi Supreme Court of Appeal (MSCA) entertained appeals against the original (now unconstitutional) mandatory death sentences in the absence of resentencing hearings in the High Court. The question that arose in Rep v. Chimkango was whether the High Court has the jurisdiction to hold a resentencing hearing in respect of a death sentence which had already been confirmed by the MSCA on appeal. The High Court, considering itself bound by judicial precedent and wary of running afoul of the doctrine by ‘faulting or refusing to be bound by’ the MSCA's decision, remitted the case to the MSCA for directions or resentencing. This article explores the High Court's decision and the status of appeal decisions against mandatory death sentences before the resentencing hearings. It argues that by entertaining these appeals, the MSCA dubiously assumed an original criminal jurisdiction mode within the confines of appellate principles instead of dismissing them as premature and directing the appellants to pursue a resentencing hearing in the High Court. The article also faults the decision of the High Court for not affording the accused a resentencing hearing.

The Future of the Death Penalty in America

1988 ◽  
Vol 33 (7) ◽  
pp. 573-575
Author(s):  
Hugo Adam Bedau
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
The Future

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).

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