Capital Punishment-Strategies for Abolition by Hodgkinson, Peter -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Cover Half-title Title Copyright Contents Figures Tables Notes on the contributors 1 Capital punishment: improve it or remove it?

Review of the debate: the usual suspects

The moratorium movement: progress or procrastination? Deterrence Judge/jury sentencing in capital trials Wrongful conviction and execution of the innocent Racial discrimination Juvenile executions The mentally impaired and the mentally ill Public opinion versus public education

The Council of Europe, the European Union and the United Nations

The European Convention on Human Rights and the origins of the death penalty debate Abolition in Europe

Enigmatic Asia

The Philippines Taiwan: preparing for abolition China

Summary

2 International law and the death penalty: reflecting or promoting change?

Does international law prohibit capital punishment? Crimes subject to the death penalty Reintroduction of the death penalty Fair trial guarantees and the death penalty The ‘death row phenomenon’ Protected categories Method of execution Conclusions

3 Doctors and the death penalty: ethics and a cruel punishment

Introduction Development of ethics against professional participation

Physicians Psychiatrists Nurses

Developments in the 1990s Mental health and the death penalty Professional ethics Legal action by health professionals Issues of further concern

Continuing practice of executing those with learning disabilities Spread of lethal injection and potential for wider medicalisation of executions Limited detail on medical/psychiatric participation in capital punishment around the world Potential rupture between law and ethics Maintaining medical ethics by the displacement of the medical role onto other health professionals or technicians

Conclusion

4 Replacing the death penalty: the vexed issue of alternative sanctions

Introduction Rethinking how we deal with serious offenders: what are the alternatives?

Life imprisonment History of the life sentence Which crimes call for the life sentence Mandatory and discretionary life sentences Authority for release Life imprisonment without the possibility of parole The whole-life sentence in England and Wales Natural life in the United States Consequences of whole-life sentences Long fixed prison sentences Making the transition: overcoming resistance to abolition The costs of long-term imprisonment Regimes and programmes for life sentence prisoners International standards for the treatment of long-term prisoners Initial planning after sentence Work, education and other activities Contacts with family and the outside world Progress through the system Difficult and disruptive prisoners

Conclusions

5 Religion and the death penalty in the United States: past and present

Early efforts at abolition Post-Second World War developments The Furman decision The conversion of the Roman Catholic Church Revival of capital punishment in the 1980s Into the 1990s Shift in momentum in the late 1990s Concluding observations

6 On botched executions

Introduction Methods Findings

Patterns of botched executions An instantaneous, painless and non-lingering death?

Conclusions Appendix 1 Descriptions of botched executions

7 Death as a penalty in the Shari’a

Crimes and penalties in the Shari’a

Hudud crimes Qesas crimes Ta’azir crimes Repentance as a bar to punishment

Conclusion

8 Abolishing the death penalty in the United States: an analysis of institutional obstacles and future prospects

Prison guards and officials Prosecutors Trial juries Trial judges Appellate courts Chief executives Legislatures Law enforcement personnel Murder victims’ families The Bar Political parties Medical profession Academic organisations Religious denominations Civil liberties and civil right groups The media Labour unions International human rights organisations The general public A moratorium strategy Conclusion

9 Capital punishment in the United States: moratorium efforts and other key developments

Introduction The increasing unfairness of the death penalty as implemented in the United States

Counsel Incomprehensible or misleading jury instructions 'Automatic death penalty’ jurors involved in imposing sentence Geographic and racial inconsistencies in imposing the death sentence Failure to consider clemency seriously, even in egregious cases Increasing threats to judicial independence Increasing public awareness of systemic unfairness in death penalty implementation The egregious arbitrariness, capriciousness and unfairness of the capital punishment system, even aside from innocence issues Increased international judicial, diplomatic and business criticism of the United States’ unfair implementation of capital punishment Increasing criticism of death penalty implementation and support for moratoriums, and Governor Ryan’s clemencies for all Illinois death row inmates

Conclusion

10 The experience of Lithuania’s journey to abolition

Introduction The problem of the death penalty in Lithuania after the re-establishment of independence

Opinion polls on the death penalty Description of the survey Analysis of the results Raising public awareness of death penalty issues

Concluding comments

11 The death penalty in South Korea and Japan: ‘Asian values’ and the debate about capital punishment?

Introduction South Korea: from retentionist to de facto abolitionist? Japan: judicial attempts to restrict the use of the death penalty

The issue of public opinion

Conclusion

12 Georgia, former republic of the USSR: managing abolition 13 Capital punishment in the Commonwealth Caribbean: colonial inheritance, colonial remedy?

The capital punishment process in the Caribbean Constitutional arguments Mandatory death penalty Hanging: mediaeval barbarity or lawful punishment? Executions in the modern era in the Caribbean ‘Evolving standards of decency’: the constitutional jurisprudence of the Privy Council in capital cases Delay and ‘the phenomena of alternating hope and despair’ ‘Barbarous regimes’: prison conditions in the Caribbean ‘Some people in Costa Rica’: the effect of decisions of international human rights bodies in domestic law No apology for Mr Reckley: the justiciability of the prerogative of mercy Responses by states to the Privy Council and the future of the death penalty in the Caribbean The Caribbean Court of Justice Legislative amendments Signs of hope

14 Public opinion and the death penalty

What is public opinion? Measuring public opinion?

Public opinion polls Legislative behaviour Executive behaviour International law and practice Juries

Human rights law and public opinion Conclusion

15 Capital punishment: meeting the needs of the families of the homicide victim and the condemned

Crime victim issues in the UK Victims and capital punishment: the US Victim-driven criminal justice Victim impact statements Victim offender mediation/dialogue (VOM/D) Execution witness programme Conclusions

Index

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