The Motif of the ‘Bloodbath of Toruń’ in Voltairean Writings Concerning the Dissident Question of 1767/68 and the First Partition of Poland

The ‘Tumult of Toruń’ of 1724, which resulted in the sentencing to death of the mayor and a dozen or so townsmen (the so-called ‘bloodbath’ or ‘bloody court’), brought about a veritable deluge of publications. It has become widely accepted in literature that these writings fundamentally impacted the development in Western public opinion of the notion that eighteenth-century Poland was an intolerant country. In 1767–71, Voltaire placed his pen at the service of the Russian empress, and his propaganda texts provided support for the diplomatic and military offensive of the court of Saint Petersburg in Poland. One of the more significant themes that appeared in the papers commissioned by the Russians and also in the philosopher’s correspondence was that of the ‘Tumult of Toruń’ of July 1724 and the death sentences that were passed against the city’s mayor and a dozen or so townspeople.

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

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.

De doodstraf in het Scheldedepartement en de provincie Oost-Vlaanderen in de Franse en Hollandse tijd, 1796-1830

Summary The French revolutionary legislature imposed capital punishments for a number of serious crimes such as gang robbery, murder, poisoning, parental murder, infanticide, homicide and theft, arson and coin counterfeiting. These capital punishments reached their peak in the years 1798-1803, being the last two years of the Directoire and the first years under Napoleon. A total of 231 death sentences were handed down in the Scheldt Department and the Province of East Flanders, 70 in default and 161 contradictory, of which 129 were executed. Most death sentences were imposed for a property crime. Crimes against individuals then came only second.

Prisoners’ Experiences of LWOP

Chapter 4 sheds light on the punishment’s extreme severity. It is commonly assumed that LWOP differs from traditional death sentences because it preserves prisoners’ lives. Drawing on the 299 letters written by men and women serving LWOP in California, this chapter reveals other meanings of death, complicating conventional categorizations of punishments. Prisoners’ testimonies point to the certainty of dying behind bars as well as to the concomitant impossibility to quantify the time left to serve. Death also takes on a more embodied dimension, provoked by ageing and diseased bodies, as well as through the removal of parenthood and parenting. Death under LWOP is characterized by an indifference for prisoners’ human capacity to change.

Settling and Pleading for LWOP

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).

Introduction

The introductory chapter lays out the puzzle surrounding life without the possibility of parole (LWOP). LWOP holds a unique place in the landscape of extreme forms of punishment. It stands at the intersection between the death penalty and long-term imprisonment. While recognized as being particularly cruel since at least Beccaria, relatively few empirical studies have focused on LWOP’S extreme severity. Despite growing awareness and evidence of LWOP’S cruelty, the punishment has become a rather ordinary practice in the American sentencing toolkit. The expansion and proliferation of LWOP in America stands in sharp contrast with the rest of the world where the punishment is deemed reprehensible. LWOP’S growth in the United States is particularly remarkable for the apparent dispassion with which the American public and various penal state actors have embraced and accepted such a practice. Other than prisoners-led organizations, like The Other Death Penalty Project, there are very few strong and vocal activist groups campaigning against the punishment. By contrast, strong and vocal groups have campaigned against prison overcrowding and death sentences. While sharing features with both imprisonment and the death penalty, LWOP’S extreme severity has not triggered similar attention and reaction. Instead, the punishment has even been actively promoted by a number of criminal justice actors including those who traditionally challenge degrading and inhumane treatments. This book investigates how, using the development of LWOP in the Californian death penalty context as an example, extreme forms of imprisonment can become normalized.

The Contradictions of Reform: Prosecuting Infant Murder in the Nineteenth-Century United States

“The Contradictions of Reform” analyses the complications of reform of legislation regulating punishment for women convicted of infanticide in Connecticut between 1790 and 1860, within the context of broader social, cultural, and legal understandings of the crime within the US. These changes are investigated through a close reading of petitions for clemency to Connecticut's General Assembly in which women convicted of the crime petitioned the state legislature seeking reduced sentences. The article argues that although the nineteenth century opened with legislation that promised death to all women convicted of infanticide, in practice courts and juries never imposed the penalty. Instead, juries proved reluctant to convict and/or death sentences were not imposed, even if juries found women guilty. In the early decades of the nineteenth century, the Connecticut Assembly reformed existing infanticide law in response to a number of social debates about the merits of the death penalty, particularly for women. The article argues, however, that these reforms counter-intuitively resulted in less favorable outcomes for those convicted of the crime, as they found themselves facing lengthy prison sentences. Such an outcome was unlikely in the early decades of the nineteenth century. The article, therefore, demonstrates, the “contradictions of reform.”

CORRUPTION AND ITS EFFECT ON NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT: A CASE STUDY OF NIGERIAN NATIONAL PETROLEUM CORPORATION (2000-2018)

The major objective of this study is to examine the effects of financial corruption on national development in Nigeria (1999-2017). The continuous outcry of the citizens on the evils of corruption and its consequences on national development motivated this study. Data were drawn chiefly from primary sources and subjected to statistical computations of scaling and percentages. The major findings of the study revealed that to a large extent corruption leads to poverty in Nigeria. Also to a large extent increase in oil revenues do not translate to poverty reduction in Nigeria. The study equally, found that to a large extent the oil industry causes underdevelopment and increase poverty in Nigeria. This study therefore advances that stiffer sanctions must be imposed on those found guilty of corrupt practices including death sentences. This will serve as deterrent to others. Since corruption is a relationship of ‘give and take’, both the giver and the receiver must be prosecuted as well. There is the need to strengthen institutions such as the civil service, parliament and the judiciary, which in turn will create interlocking systems of oversight and self-regulation. All of these institutions have to be free of corruption themselves and active players in the fight against corruption and good governance should be entrenched.

A Test for Soviet Internationalism: Foreign Students in the USSR in the Early 1960s

For leftist movements internationalism, as a principle of Marxism-Leninism, has always been of great importance. The paper discusses Soviet internationalism in relation to foreign students in the USSR in the early 1960s. The author emphasizes some characteristics of the first stages of ideological struggle between Soviet and Chinese communists in connection with the international youth movement and dwells on three demonstrations of foreign students in the Soviet Union. The first one took place on August 5, 1962 in Red Square and was arranged by a militant leftist Japanese student organization Zengakuren against Soviet nuclear tests. After returning home, their leader Nemoto filed a lawsuit against the Soviet police. However, this campaign failed to provoke anti-Soviet hysteria, but revealed lack of unity between the movements. On December 18, 1963, a demonstration of African students took place in Red Square following the death of Assare-Addo, a medical student from Ghana. This incident is considered against the background of conflicts with African students and a diplomatic crisis in the end of 1961, caused by student demonstrations in Guinea, which were supported by Guinean students in the Soviet Union. During the third demonstration on March 17, 1964, about 50 Moroccan students broke into the Moroccan embassy in Moscow and organized a sit-in to protest the death sentences against 11 people in Morocco who had allegedly planned to assassin King Hassan II. Thus, the correlation between socialist statehood and the principle of internationalism showed a certain pattern: when there is a state, internationalism is put to a serious test. The first protests of foreign students in the USSR clearly prove this point.