The General Sense of Justice

Lethal State ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 23-56
Author(s):  
Seth Kotch
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
African American ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Black People ◽  
General Sense ◽  
State Actors ◽  
North Carolinians ◽  
Sense Of Justice

This chapter explores the enduring relationship between lynching and capital punishment in North Carolina in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Lynching was an essential way North Carolinians communicated their racial animus to official state actors, who responded with legal lynchings—the unfair trials of African American defendants before all-white juries. The threat of lynching hung over many death penalty trials. The starkly racist application of the death penalty pleased lynch mobs because of its hostility to Black people, and pleased state officials because of its apparent orderliness.

The Influence of Latino Ethnicity on the Imposition of the Death Penalty

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 421-431
Author(s):  
Sheri Lynn Johnson
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Racial Disparities ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Archival Studies ◽  
Related Literature ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Era

With respect to African Americans, the history of racial discrimination in the imposition of the death penalty is well-known, and the persistence of racial disparities in the modern era of capital punishment is well-documented. In contrast, the influence of Latino ethnicity on the imposition of the death penalty has been studied very little. A review of the limited literature reveals evidence of discrimination against Latinos. Archival studies generally find ethnicity-of-victim discrimination, and some of those studies find ethnicity-of-defendant discrimination disadvantaging Latino defendants; these findings parallel the findings of the much more robust literature investigating bias against African American defendants and victims. The controlled experimental studies generally show both ethnicity-of-defendant and ethnicity-of-victim discrimination disadvantaging Latinos. Related literature investigating stereotypes, animosity, and discrimination in other criminal justice decisions further suggests the likelihood of ethnicity discrimination in the imposition of capital punishment, as well as the need for further research.

The Making of the Modern Death Penalty in Jim Crow North Carolina

2019 ◽  
pp. 192-214
Author(s):  
Seth Kotch
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
North Carolina ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
The State ◽  
Religious Convictions ◽  
The Impact

focuses on the transition from local public hangings to state-controlled electrocutions in North Carolina in the early twentieth century. The chapter addresses the impact of this shift on African American communities. Although the death penalty had long served as an instrument of racial control, the ritual of a local hanging nevertheless had allowed the condemned and black witnesses a public space to express religious convictions and honor the condemned’s suffering. Once the state seized control of this ritual, African Americans were largely excluded as witnesses. The modern death penalty thus came to represent the racial subjugation of Jim Crow, indeed having more in common with lynchings than legal hangings had.

An Emotional Craving

Lethal State ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 153-179
Author(s):  
Seth Kotch
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
North Carolinians

As the death penalty was falling out of use in North Carolina, the civil rights movement was underway. In 1972, the Supreme Court ruled in Furman v. Georgia that the death penalty as practiced was unconstitutional. Politically conservative North Carolinians who viewed the Supreme Court as a weapon of liberal overreach reacted by reinstating the mandatory death penalty and ultimately adopting the bifurcated sentencing protocol now in use around the country. The renewed interest in the death penalty emerged from the tough-on-crime rhetoric adopted by conservatives and the Republican Party during and after the civil rights movement. North Carolina resumed executions in 1984.

Lethal State

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seth Kotch
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mandatory Sentencing ◽  
Racial Hierarchies ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Essential Insight ◽  
Orderly State

For years, American states have tinkered with the machinery of death, seeking to align capital punishment with evolving social standards and public will. Against this backdrop, North Carolina had long stood out as a prolific executioner with harsh mandatory sentencing statutes. But as the state sought to remake its image as modern and business-progressive in the early twentieth century, the question of execution preoccupied lawmakers, reformers, and state boosters alike. In this book, Seth Kotch recounts the history of the death penalty, including lynching, in North Carolina from its colonial origins to the present. He tracks the attempts to reform and sanitize the administration of death in a state as dedicated to its image as it was to rigid racial hierarchies. Through this lens, Lethal State helps explain not only Americans' deep and growing uncertainty about the death penalty but also their commitment to it. Kotch argues that Jim Crow justice continued to reign in the guise of a modernizing, orderly state and offers essential insight into the relationship between race, violence, and power in North Carolina. The history of capital punishment in North Carolina, as in other states wrestling with similar issues, emerges as one of state-building through lethal punishment.

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.

Without Howling, Without Squirming

Lethal State ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 57-83
Author(s):  
Seth Kotch
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
The State ◽  
Electric Chair ◽  
Gas Chamber

This chapter explores the drive to make execution painless for the condemned and easy for executioners and witnesses. When the state of North Carolina took responsibility for capital punishment from county sheriffs, it introduced the electric chair. When that failed to produce a swift and spectacle-free death, the state constructed a gas chamber. The search for a reliable, quiet, and painless method of execution sapped most of the activist energy around the death penalty, transforming its form but never its function.

‘To Stay the Murderer’s Hand and the Rapist’s Passions, and for the Safety and Security of Civil Society’: The Emergence of Racial Disparities in Capital Punishment in Jim Crow New Orleans

2019 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 297-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey S Adler
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Racial Disparities ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Racial Disparity ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Core Component ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Micro Analysis

Abstract This essay examines capital punishment in New Orleans between 1920 and 1945. Building on a quantitative analysis of case-level data culled from police, court, and prison records, it explores the emergence of racial disparities in death-penalty sentencing and charts the increasing use of capital punishment as a mechanism of racial control. The paper focuses on four surprising and counter-intuitive patterns in the application of the death penalty. First, shifts in the use of capital punishment during this era bore no connection to patterns of violent crime. Second, changes in death-penalty sentencing were only loosely related to overall trends in homicide conviction. Third, and most surprising, Orleans Parish jurors, particularly during the 1920s, sent white killers to the gallows at a higher rate than African American killers. And fourth, the analysis of case-level records reveals dramatic shifts in death-penalty sentencing during the 1930s, particularly the development of a pronounced racial disparity in the application of capital punishment. Prosecutors also exploited the threat of capital charges to secure guilty pleas from African American suspects, and thus changes in death-penalty sentencing contributed to racial disparities in incarceration. In short, this micro-analysis helps to explain when and why the death penalty became a core component of Jim Crow criminal justice.

scholarly journals PIDANA MATI DALAM PERSPEKTIF HUKUM PIDANA DAN HUKUM PIDANA ISLAM

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 125
Author(s):  
Roni Efendi
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Crime Rates ◽  
Law System ◽  
Legal Standing ◽  
Pros And Cons ◽  
Sense Of Justice

Debatable of the death penalty actually based on the issue of justice, humanity and the prevention of the possibility of crime. The reasons for the rejection of the death penalty are not justified in the view of life as well as humanitarian factors and the imposition of capital punishment will not be able to prevent crime and reduce crime rates. But for those who agree with the imposition of capital punishment because of the sense of justice and peace that is in the community. The portrait is just a glimpse of the issue that colored the discourse on the pros and cons of the existence of capital punishment. Between the retensionist and the abilitionist against true the death penalty has an argument each based on his theoretical framework and norms. Indonesia as one of the countries with the European Continental legal system still apply the death penalty in punishment system beside Saudi Arabia with qhisash which  applid in Islamic Law system. Both countries have a legal standing built on the meta norms, their theories and philosophies each of course has its own urgency to be discussed in the midst of countries that condemn the existence of capital punishment. Here's an article that analyzes comparative relation to the application of thedeath penaltyin both countries that embraces the different legal system, from this comparative study will contribute thoughts in the reform of criminal law in Indonesia.

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.

EKSISTENSI PENERAPAN HUKUMAN MATI DI INDONESIA

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
R Ahmad Muhammad Mustain Nasuha
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Criminal Code ◽  
The State ◽  
Court Decision ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
Draft Bill

This study aims the death penalty in Indonesia. We know where the death penalty is contrary or not in terms of the constitution and Islamic law, then we can conclude that if the legal implementation of the death penalty in Indonesia continue to be done or should be abolished. Based on research and the analysis conducted, conclude that Indonesia According to the Indonesian Constitution that the death penalty in Indonesia is constitutional. Constitutional Court Decision No. 2-3 / PUU-V / 2007 states that the imposition of the death penalty was constitutional. Any law governing capital punishment is not contrary to the Constitution of the State of Indonesia. However the legislation in Indonesia death penalty is still recognized in some legislation. There are three groups of rules, namely: Criminal Dead in the Criminal Code, Criminal die outside the Criminal Code, Criminal die in the Draft Bill. According to Islamic law that the death penalty could be applied to some criminal act or jinazah, either hudud qishahs, diyat or ta'zir among others to: Apostate, Rebel, Zina, Qadzaf (Allegations Zina), Steal (Corruption), Rob (Corruption), Murder.

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