Death Penalty System Research Articles

What Cecilia Knew

Abstract This article explores how, in 1784 New Orleans, Cecilia Conway—a recaptured maroon woman—asserted that she was pregnant and thereby leveraged the power of her reproductive labor. Her claims about her body briefly slowed down the system of capital punishment activated in response to her marronage by altering the trajectory of the state-sanctioned sexual violence inflicted on her. The conversations between Cecilia and the prison’s authorities that this article unearths constitute an original archive of Cecilia’s assertions while accounting for their heavily mediated and yet remarkable presence. By centering the details of Cecilia’s life, this article helps recast the threat of marronage in colonial Louisiana from simply one of male-led armed rebellion to one of reproduction, thorny kinship networks, and a potential maroon society.

Gender Discrimination in Iran’s Capital Punishment System

This study explores gender discrimination and sex bias in Iran’s capital punishment system, reviewing the story of women on death row in Islamic and totalitarian criminal justice systems. It reaches back to the classical Islam to trace how and why sharia law discriminates against women. It discuses original findings and is the first research to focus on execution of women in Iran. A small but emerging body of literature focuses on capital punishment in Iran but does not examine gender in detail. The role of Iran’s Islamic criminal justice system for women, particularly in the context of changes and gender bias after the Islamic revolution, is examined. There is substantial literature on mariticide (women killing their husbands) and filicide (women killing their children), but insufficient literature on gender discrimination in Iran’s capital punishment system. This study provides a profile of 155 women and examines how decision-making in an Islamic criminal justice system has influenced these cases.

MODERN TRENDS OF THE JORDANIAN LEGISLATOR REGARDING THE ISSUE OF DEBTOR IMPRISONMENT

Following the issuance of Defense Order No. 28 of 2021 in light of the Corona pandemic (to postpone the implementation of decisions to imprison the debtor issued pursuant to the provisions of the Implementation Law), a media storm erupted in the media and social media, inciting Jordanian public opinion against imprisonment of the debtor, prompting the Jordanian legislator to make amendments to The implementation law is one of the most important; Ruling that it is not permissible to imprison the debtor if he is unable to fulfill a contractual obligation, with the exception of real estate leases and work contracts. The problem of the research lies in the legislator’s bias towards the debtor at the expense of the creditor, who in turn will refrain from granting credit and forward transactions, which negatively affects the course of civil and commercial transactions. The study followed the descriptive and analytical approach to the texts of the implementation law and the rulings of the Jordanian judiciary. This study concluded that the debtor imprisonment system contradicts the Jordanian legislator’s approach to emptying prisons of inmates who do not pose a criminal threat to society in order to avoid disrupting them from work and production. The study recommended canceling the debtor's imprisonment on the condition of adopting the civil death penalty system, which represents the paralysis of financial, administrative, and governmental transactions of the procrastinating debtor.

On the Feasibility of Abolishing Death Penalty in China: From the Perspective of Economic Efficiency and Criminological Principle

The death penalty and crime are not necessarily related in different countries, but those sentenced to death must commit crimes, while those who commit crimes are not necessarily sentenced to death. In recent years, many countries have abolished the death penalty system, the global abolition of death penalty accounts for 79%. It seems that the aim of penalty is to change from punishing criminals to educating them to return to normal society. From the perspective of economic principle and economic efficiency, if the cost of abolishing death penalty is greater than the benefit, then the abolition of death penalty is not sustainable.

A Study on Rationality of Retaining Death Penalty in China at this Stage

With the development of the international human rights movement and the humanitarian concept, it seems that the abolition of the death penalty has become an inevitable trend of history, however, the author believes that the abstract discussion of whether the death penalty should be abolished has no practical significance. In this paper, the author explores the current situation of China’s death penalty system and the theoretical and legislative disputes about the abolition of the death penalty at home and abroad. It is concluded that China’s retention of the death penalty at this stage is not only basic on utilitarian, retribution, penalty, humanitarian and other theoretical support but also has a very necessary realistic basis. Based on the above discussion, the author proposes some suggestions for the improvement of China’s death penalty system and hopes that those measures could make China’s death penalty system more perfect and that the substantive rights and procedural rights of Chinese condemned criminal can be effectively guaranteed.

Analysis of the Death Penalty System in the Code of Hammurabi

Analysis of the Death Penalty System in the Code of Hammurabi

일제강점기 사형제도의 운영과 실태 :사형 통계 자료와 사형집행을 중심으로

이글은 일제강점기 사형 통계자료와 사형집행을 통하여 사형제도를 살펴봄으로써 일제의 식민지배 성격의 일단을 검토한 것이다.<BR> 일제강점기 조선 민중은 물론 상당수의 항일독립운동가(정치범)들이 사형 당했음은 잘 알려진 사실이다. 그럼에도 사형수 통계 등 기초적인 사실조차 해명되지 않아, 우선 『조선총독부통계연보』, 『조선총독부관보』, 『조선사법일람』 등 통계 자료를 비교, 분석하여 기본 데이터를 정리하였다. 그 결과 사형집행을 당한 인원수는 총 1,192명으로, 연평균 33명, 월평균 2.8명이었다. 이를 이른바 3시기 즉 제1기 무단통치기, 제2기 문화통치기, 민족말살기로 구분하여, 제1기 606명(약 51%), 제2기 395명(약 33%), 제3기 191명(약 16%)이 사형이 집행된 것으로 파악하고 무단통치기에 집중되었음을 밝혔다.<BR> 이어서 『조선총독부관보』 彙報 “사형집행” 항목에서 사형수의 이름 및 본적(주소), 죄명, 최종 법원 및 선고 날짜, 최종 판결확정 날짜, 사형집행 장소(형무소) 및 날짜 등을 정리하여 총 1,071명의 정보를 확보하였다. 이를 다시 죄명별, 출신지역별, 형무소별로 구분하여 각각의 사형집행 인원수와 그 특징을 정리하였다. 출신지역의 경우, 평안(21%), 경상(14%), 전라(13%) 등의 순으로 나타났는데, 이는 의병활동과 항일무장투쟁의 결과로 이해하였다. 사형 확정일부터 사형집행까지의 소요기간은 평균 94일이 걸렸고, 일반범과 항일독립운동가의 차이는 크게 없었다. 그리고 조선과 일본의 사형집행 인원수를 비교하여 조선이 훨씬 많았음을 밝혔다.<BR> 이를 통해 일제가 식민지 조선인에 대해 과도한 법률적용과 그에 따른 사형집행을 시행하였음을 알 수 있었다. 이는 일반적으로 사형제도가 갖는 응보적인 법적 확신, 위하(威嚇)적인 효과의 기대, 범죄자의 완전한 격리라는 목적도 있었겠지만, 그보다는 식민지배의 통제 강화의 수단으로 활용되었다고 보았다.

The Two Percent: How Florida’s Capital Punishment System Defies the Eighth Amendment

The Two Percent: How Florida’s Capital Punishment System Defies the Eighth Amendment

The effects of mortal salience on sentencing decision and attitude toward the death penalty system

死の顕現化（MS操作）は文化的世界観を防衛しようとする意図を強めるため，その脅威になる者に対しては反発や攻撃などのネガティブ行動を促進する（沼崎他，2012）。刑事事件の図式に置き換えると，「MS操作は社会からの異分子の排斥や治安維持における効用期待に基づく理由を通じて，法を犯した被告人に対する刑罰を重くする」と予測される（予測1）。同時に，死刑制度に対しては（質問そのものが死の顕現化操作にもなるという関係にあるが，直接的には）ポジティブな態度を強めると考えられる（予測2）。大学生153名（MS操作群78名，統制群75名）を対象に質問紙実験を行った結果，予測1および予測2の一部が支持された。MS操作が刑事裁判の手続きに含まれうる蓋然性を考慮すれば，裁判における諸々の判断に対する影響について調べる必要性があると考察した。

Innocence is Not Enough: The Public Life of Death Row Exonerations

Abstract Miscarriages of justice and wrongful convictions are a pervasive reality in America's criminal justice system. In this paper we examine news coverage of miscarriages of justice in the death penalty system and the release of death row inmates to understand what we call the public life of exonerations. We examine the way newspapers tell the story of exonerations and the various tilts and tendencies that characterize their presentations. We focus on the five states which, from 1972–2019, had ten or more exonerations. During that period, they were Florida, Illinois, Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. We conclude that the public discourse surrounding exoneration, while providing evidence of the death penalty system's most consequential flaws, serves as much to preserve that system as to challenge it.

Law and Justice in Japanese Popular Culture: From Crime Fighting Robots to Dueling Pocket Monsters

Law and Justice in Japanese Popular Culture: From Crime Fighting Robots to Dueling Pocket Monsters

Body Count Politics: Quantification, Secrecy, and Capital Punishment in China

As quantification has become socially ubiquitous, the disclosure of numerical data emerges as a key feature of legal reform and global governance. Scholars document how seemingly value-neutral statistical indicators shape, and are shaped by, institutional interests. Although less attention has been paid to cases where states resist numerical disclosure, prohibitions on the disclosure of such indicators also produce social effects. This article extends scholarship on the governance effects of quantification to include secrecy by exploring the case of capital punishment data in China, which is reportedly the world’s leading executioner state. Amid a major death penalty reform effort, China steadfastly refuses international calls to publicly disclose relevant statistics. I analyze capital cases and draw on seventy-three interviews with legal insiders in China’s death penalty system to identify the impact of state efforts to conceal capital punishment indicators while undertaking reforms in three areas: transparency; legal representation; and criminal procedure. I show how tension between the disclosure and nondisclosure of death penalty numbers does not simply suppress data; it also shapes and becomes data, influencing both policy and action in the legal sphere in ways that are seemingly far removed from quantification.

Organ Procurement and Extrajudicial Execution in China: A Review of the Evidence

The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC) has conducted a detailed examination of the allegations of extrajudicial killing for the harvesting of organs by the Chinese Communist Party and the evidence underlying these allegations. The report was produced by VOC China Studies Research Fellow Matthew P. Robertson, a doctoral researcher whose work using statistical forensics to demonstrate the falsification of Chinese organ donor registry data was recently published in the leading journal of medical ethics, BMC Medical Ethics. The report contributes to the literature and policy discussion on coercive organ transplant practices in China in several ways: it presents new primary documentary research and original datasets, integrates established scholarship on China’s death penalty system, and situates previously published works on organ harvesting within a careful discussion of counterfactual scenarios and scientific inference. It also serves as a roadmap to the debate about and evidence of extrajudicial killing for organs in China, while also critically engaging with how that evidence has been interpreted and received. The report challenges international complacency on the topic by examining the signs of ongoing organ trafficking, highlighting the falsification of official datasets, and analyzing the evidence that Uyghur Muslims may be the latest victims of this form of state predation. In examining the extraordinary growth of organ transplantation and rapid availability of organs in China, the report asks one overarching question: What is the most plausible explanation for the source of the organs? The report examines the evidence of blood-testing and medical examinations of Falun Gong practitioners and Uyghurs in custody, and finds that extrajudicial organ sourcing from these populations is the most plausible and parsimonious explanation. As such, readers should adopt it as empirically adequate until either a better explanation or reliable data inconsistent with the hypothesis emerges.

Fear Factor: The Role of Media in Covering and Shaping the Death Penalty

Substantial work has been done on media's coverage of crime, and particularly violent crime. However, very little work has been done on media's relationship to the death penalty, a topic that presents its own set of complex challenges. This article examines the feedback loop between law and media in the capital punishment context. It first discusses the ways in which the perceived requisites of the media, particularly television, shape coverage of capital punishment. These requisites include the need for immediate, discrete and filmic occurrences, the demand for official sources, and the influence of dramatic conventions like stars and villains, a clear moral, and definitive closure. The paper argues that media coverage governed by these requisites gives short shrift to problems of justice and fairness in individual capital cases, and pays even less attention to broader, systemic problems plaguing the American system of capital punishment. The paper then argues that the administration of the death penalty is, in turn, strongly influenced by the media at a number of crucial pressure points. The feedback loop is especially visible at the legislative juncture, when crime control policies are made; at the prosecutorial juncture, when discretion about capital charging is at work; and at the adjudicative juncture, when both judge and jury must make difficult decisions about sentencing.

The latest developments of China’s death penalty reforms

This paper examines the latest development of China rsquo s death penalty reforms in the recent decade The goal of death penalty reforms was to protect human rights of the nbsp accused This paper will show that if the reforms are considered from the perspective of human rights of the accused it is clear that their intent has been frustrated by legal nbsp loopholes in the death penalty system The legal loopholes still allow death sentences for many non violent crimes Although the and Amendments to Criminal nbsp Law nbsp of nbsp the nbsp PRC nbsp greatly nbsp reduces nbsp the nbsp number nbsp of nbsp crimes nbsp publishable nbsp by nbsp death nbsp in nbsp law nbsp further substantive reforms will be suggested

International Law and the Death Penalty in the United States

The United States claims to be the global leader in international human rights, but it continues to impose the death penalty and criticizes other countries for violating international human rights. The U.S. death penalty system allows racial disparities and executes the mentally ill and innocent people. The U.S. also permits ineffective assistance of counsel to the accused and tolerates infliction of suffering by physicians onto the prisoner. What this country does with respect to the death penalty affects the attitudes of other countries toward the United States as well as their willingness to respect human rights. Part One of the article describes the international laws governing the death penalty and how the U.S. is obligated to abide by these rules. Part Two explains the flaws in the application of the death penalty. Part Three proposes that the International Court of Justice enforce good faith immunity for prosecutors and provide adequate compensation for appointed counsel, so their duties can be fulfilled diligently. Also, law officials should understand the United States, as a defender of human rights law, should accept and obey customary international law to support the principles it promotes and continue to educate the public. Part Four of the article exposes the potential consequences of not abiding by the laws governing the international community.

A Broken System: Error Rates in Capital Cases, 1973-1995

A Broken System: Error Rates in Capital Cases, 1973-1995

Dissecting the ABA Texas Capital Punishment Assessment Report of 2013: Death and Texas, a Surprising Improvement

Professor Metze dissects the American Bar Association report, September 2013, entitled Evaluating Fairness and Accuracy in State Death Penalty Systems: The Texas Capital Punishment Assessment Report -- An Analysis of Texas’s Death Penalty Laws, Procedures and Practices. This Report was produced by the ABA’s Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities, specifically the Death Penalty Due Process Review Project, which identified twelve inadequacies in the Texas Capital Punishment System, recommended changes, and evaluated compliance. Now, four years and two legislative sessions later, this paper explores what Texas has done in the interim to improve its death penalty process. Incredibly, the paper concludes that Texas has made great strides in ensuring fairness, reducing the risk of executing the innocent, and preserving public confidence in the criminal justice system. Texas is beginning, in the words of his generation’s poet laureate, to be able to say it did not turn away, failing to hear or see “what sorrow brings” while the condemned silently die.

The Communist Party of China’s Approach to Human Rights and the Death Penalty

Under the Constitution of China, the Communist Party (cpc) does not merely play a leadership role in the political field, but also in the legal arena. Legislation must reflect the Party’s outlook and achieve its policies, including any legal provisions governing particular systems, such as arrangements for the death penalty. After introducing the relationship between the cpc and legislation, this article will discuss the shift in the cpc’s approach to human rights and changes to the death penalty system in the Maoist, Deng Xiaoping and post-Deng eras. In the Maoist era, the government rejected human rights, but its policy on execution – at least on paper – was cautious and even stricter than during the other eras; the cpc recognised and accepted human rights in the Deng era, but emphasised national security and stability. As a result, individual human rights were not fully taken into account. Execution was considered an important measure to control crime and the scope of the relevant legislation was expanded. Post-Deng, human rights have developed gradually. Human rights protection has been incorporated into the Constitution and individual human rights have become more valued, but the cpc still focuses on state security, development and stability, and has not valued the right to life to the same extent as the right to subsistence. Although steps to reform the death penalty are being taken, 46 crimes are still punishable by death. The cpc should change its outlook and focus on the right to life, and abolish the death penalty de facto and de jure.

SISTEM PIDANA MATI MENURUT HUKUM POSITIF DAN HUKUM ISLAM

The capital punishment system is one of the legal system system in which it contains about capital punishment. Even in practice that occurs in various legal systems it is also very diverse. In Indonesia there are actually some differences in the legal system. For example in Indonesia today there are laws that apply formally and Islamic law. The purpose of punishment according to the draft Penal Code is stated in article 54, namely: 1) Prevent the commission of criminal acts by upholding the legal norms for the sake of community protection. 2) To popularize the convict by conducting coaching so as to make him a good and useful person. 3) Resolving conflicts caused by criminal acts, restoring balance and bringing a sense of peace in society. 4) Release the guilt of the convicted person. While the implementation of Islamic law, namely: the primary purpose (al dharury), secondary goals (al haajiy), tertiary goals (al tahsiniyyat). In Islam the death penalty is explicitly described in the Qur'an or hadith, it is found in four cases, namely those who commit adultery Mukhshan, killing intentionally, hirabah and apostasy (out of Islam). And Also known in Islam that the death penalty for ta'zir is if the death penalty is desired by the public, for example for espionage (spy) and a very dangerous recidivist.