Women and the Death Penalty

2020 ◽  
pp. 101-137
Author(s):  
David M. Doyle ◽  
Liam O’Callaghan
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Death Sentences

This chapter discusses the fate of women sentenced to death in independent Ireland. The majority of the women sentenced to death had killed babies and the judiciary and politicians instinctively looked upon them with pity. Death sentences in such cases were quickly commuted until 1949 when new legislation created the offence of infanticide which was dealt with much more leniently. A smaller number of women were convicted of killing adults and, as this chapter argues, their culpability was usually called into question by the patriarchal judicial and political establishment. In particular decision-makers deployed discourses around morality, sanity and social circumstances to make sense of the actions of this group of women, most of whom were impoverished and socially powerless. Thus with one notable exception – Annie Walsh, who was executed in 1926 – governments were minded to draw back from executing women and closely controlled their lives post-reprieve.

Capital Punishment in Independent Ireland

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Doyle ◽  
Liam O'Callaghan
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
The Political ◽  
Dual Function ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
Administration Of Justice

This is a comprehensive and nuanced historical survey of the death penalty in Ireland from the immediate post-Civil War period through to its complete abolition. Using original archival material, this book sheds light on the various social, legal and political contexts in which the death penalty operated and was discussed. In Ireland the death penalty served a dual function: as an instrument of punishment in the civilian criminal justice system, and as a weapon to combat periodic threats to the security of the state posed by the IRA. In closely examining cases dealt with in the ordinary criminal courts, this book elucidates ideas of class, gender, community and sanity and how these factors had an impact the administration of justice. The application of the death penalty also had a strong political dimension, most evident in the enactment of emergency legislation and the setting up of military courts specifically targeted at the IRA. As this book demonstrates, the civilian and the political strands converged in the story of the abolition of the death penalty in Ireland. Long after decision-makers accepted that the death penalty was no longer an acceptable punishment for ‘ordinary’ cases of murder, lingering anxieties about the threat of subversives dictated the pace of abolition and the scope of the relevant legislation.

Intelligent and Civilized Sentiments

Lethal State ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 111-152
Author(s):  
Seth Kotch
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
State Law ◽  
Death Row ◽  
Death Sentences ◽  
Death Row Inmates ◽  
History Of ◽  
Tangible Result

This chapter tells the history of some of the elements that contributed to the declining use of the death penalty in North Carolina. Journalist Nell Battle Lewis railed against the practice as racist, un-Christian, and barbaric. Paul Green echoed those sentiments as he campaigned to save death row inmates from death. Yet their activism had little tangible result. More significant was a change in state law that allowed juries to formally recommend mercy following a conviction, meaning that judges were no longer required to deliver mandatory death sentences. The end of the mandatory death sentences ended executions, which ceased in 1961 and would not resume until 1984.

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.

Death and Dignity in American Law

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Kaufman
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Basic Question ◽  
Legal Cases ◽  
Death Sentences ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Core Feature ◽  
American Law ◽  
Relational Concept ◽  
The Law

Dignity serves many purposes in American law, but the concept is perhaps most vital in decisions on the death penalty. Since 1972, when the Supreme Court briefly banned capital punishment, American jurists have debated whether death sentences violate “the dignity of man.” These legal debates describe dignity as an innately human attribute and a core feature of human nature. In practice, however, courts employ dignity to instantiate a particular model of democratic governance. Legal cases on the death penalty treat dignity as a fundamentally relational concept, less a characteristic of personhood than a state of existing in dialogue with the law. This vision of dignity is more institutional and alienable than conceptions that emphasize unwavering worth. Ultimately, the approach to dignity in death penalty cases displaces an individuated account of the term and raises a basic question about whether dignity can exist in the absence of the law.

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.

Last Chance for Life: Clemency in Southeast Asian Death Penalty Cases

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Pascoe
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Amnesty International ◽  
The Past ◽  
Death Sentences ◽  
The World ◽  
Executive Clemency ◽  
Empirical Methodology ◽  
Systematic Collection

All five contemporary practitioners of the death penalty in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)—Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, and Vietnam—have performed executions on a regular basis over the past few decades. Amnesty International currently classifies each of these nations as death penalty ‘retentionists’. However, notwithstanding a common willingness to execute, the number of death sentences passed by courts that are reduced to a term of imprisonment, or where the prisoner is released from custody altogether, through grants of clemency by the executive branch of government varies remarkably among these neighbouring political allies. This book uncovers the patterns which explain why some countries in the region award commutations and pardons far more often than do others in death penalty cases. Over the period under analysis, from 1991 to 2016, the regional outliers were Thailand (with more than 95 per cent of condemned prisoners receiving clemency after exhausting judicial appeals) and Singapore (with less than 1 per cent of condemned prisoners receiving clemency). Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam fall at various points in between these two extremes. This is the first academic study anywhere in the world to compare executive clemency across national borders using empirical methodology, the latter being a systematic collection of clemency data in multiple jurisdictions using archival and ‘elite’ interview sources. Last Chance for Life: Clemency in Southeast Asian Death Penalty Cases will prove an authoritative resource for legal practitioners, criminal justice policymakers, scholars, and activists throughout the ASEAN region and around the world.

Testing Death Penalty Opinions With General Questions and A Specific Case Scenario: Potential Lessons From China

2021 ◽  
pp. 0306624X2110668
Author(s):  
Bin Liang ◽  
Hong Lu ◽  
Jianhong Liu
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Multivariate Analyses ◽  
Chinese Students ◽  
Case Scenario ◽  
Death Sentences ◽  
Crime Scenarios ◽  
Death Penalty Opinion

Despite rich literature on public opinion on capital punishment, only a few studies examined people’s death penalty support within specific contexts. None have explored if correlates that influence people’s opinion would hold the same effect in general questions and specific case scenarios. Similarly, the Marshall hypotheses have not been tested with specific crime scenarios. Based on a sample of 1,077 students in a quasiexperimental design, this study contrasts Chinese students’ death penalty opinion in general questions with a specific crime scenario, and tests the Marshall hypotheses with the latter. Compared to their support in general questions, students’ support for death sentences dropped significantly in the specific crime scenario. Multivariate analyses showed that different factors influenced people’s decisions in the general questions and in the specific case, and respondents’ choices of preferred punishment in the specific crime scenario failed to lend support to the Marshall hypotheses.

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.

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