Death Row Research Articles

The Japanese Prosecutorial Justice and Its Limited Exclusionary Rule

The basic structure of the Japanese criminal justice system is modeled after the Continental criminal justice system emphasizing substantial justice and truth-finding. It often draws admiring attention from the West because of its lower crime rate and higher clearance rate. It is also viewed as “benevolent” due to the lenient disposition of trivial crimes (bizai shobun) by police, routine suspension of prosecution, suspended sentences and short sentences at trial Japanese police have been praised for the rarity of corruption and brutality and for the support and cooperation received from the public. This phenomenon is often explained as a result of the unique traditional Japanese legal culture which emphasizes respect to authority and reintegration into the community. Despite the praise from the West, however, this “heaven for a cop has recently been criticized from within the Japanese legal professional community because of its harsh institutional and cultural treatment of criminal suspects and defendants. A leading Japanese criminal law scholar has criticized Japanese criminal trials as “regrettable” because of the dominant role of investigators in the criminal process. A number of torture and physical violence cases have been revealed. Public trust in the Japanese criminal justice system has also been shaken by the disclosure of a number of highly-publicized retrial cases in which individuals, mistakenly convicted of murders and wrongly sentenced to death, were acquitted after decades on death row. As a result, fundamental reform of the system has been strongly recommended.

Death Penalty and Rights of Inmates on The Death Row under Indonesia Criminal Justice System

Indonesia has executed approximately 84 inmates in the death row since 1998. Indonesia actively performed death execution until 2016. After 2016, although no execution has been done, there was a death penalty dropped in 2018. In relation to that, death penalty is stipulated in Indonesia Criminal Code (KUHP and other penal codes outside KUHP) and this makes Indonesia as a retentionist country. Death penalty delivers a death row. Death row is a prolonged death execution, which usualy measured in years. This situation caused a double-punishment, where the convicted must serve in an isolation room in prison, while waiting to be executed. This waiting period seems unavoidable due to some factors. Using normative-empirical research method, this research aims to bring the fact that in Indonesia, there are several factors that have been causing a death row. In this research, this situation is tested using state responsibility principle and some international conventions Indonesia has ratified. The absence of provision related to maximum death execution time after verdict is binding without further objections, together with the hierarchical system of court trial in Indonesia is the cause factor for the prolonged death execution. To encounter this situation The Government of Indonesia is proposed to (1) for short term goal, regulate strictly about the implementation of death execution; (2) for long term goal, to abolish capital punishment from the justice system.

Dementia and the Death Penalty.

As death row prisoners age, a new set of issues arises regarding their competence to be executed. Can a prisoner with dementia who no longer remembers the crime be put to death? What if the dementia has progressed to the point that the prisoner no longer understands that he or she faces execution, or why? These issues were considered by the U.S. Supreme Court in its recent decision in Madison v. Alabama. Implicitly rejecting the cruelty of executing a highly impaired prisoner, the court clarified the conditions that could preclude execution and the degree of impairment that must be present.

Belgesel Tiyatroda Karşı Duruş olarak Bellek The Laramie Project ve The Exonerated

Focusing on major differences between nostalgic and documentary memory in contemporary plays, this paper argues how The Laramie Project (2001) by Moises Kaufmann and The Exonerated (2002) by Jessica Blank and Eric Jensen reinvigorate the concept of memory as an alternative political stand on stage. Memory plays use historical documentation as a forerunner of their dramatic material. In this respect, The Exonerated tells the story of six wrongfully convicted death row inmates through testimonies of the freed convicts, court recordings, and other documents. The Laramie Project belongs to another category of verbatim plays, which is still centered on edited interviews and testimonies but it is characterized by the elimination of the protagonist. It reconstructs and rewrites the story of brutally murdered Matthew Shepard to question this tragedy and disclose the reasons for his murder, but Shepard himself is not represented as a character on stage. The Laramie Project is similar to The Exonerated, but their methodology and construction have fundamentally different incentives and elements. Their emphasis on identity politics and insistence upon a more extended public discussion of politics and social issues separates them from other genres and trends. The way memory is stripped of its nostalgic layers in these documentary plays aims to foster a new understanding of dramatic constructions while challenging mainstream accounts and shifting to side of the silenced figures. Although there is little overlap between the contents and messages of the plays, a key point in both of these works is their emphasis on current issues through a variety of memory forms. Their accent on harsh realities of history is especially pronounced when audience members are invited to witness the flaws of our society. It might be a wrongfully convicted person, a screened and scrutinized life of a transvestite, or a brutally murdered homosexual, but in the end, documentary drama shows us the urgent need to look back to understand the present. Our mistakes are all buried in the magical box of the past. They can be our guides for tomorrow as long as we do not glorify them.

Somewhere Between Death Row and Death Watch: How Courts Have Precluded Capital Defendants From Raising Execution-Related Claims

For as long as the death penalty remains a viable punishment in the United States, safeguarding defendants’ rights from sentencing through execution is crucial. As part of that effort, this Essay focuses on a portion of the capital appellate process that is often overlooked and, in practice, effectively divests defendants of significant constitutional claims. As illustrated by the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decisions in Bucklew v. Precythe and Dunn v. Price, defendants face a significant procedural predicament in raising warrant- and execution- related claims. On one hand, courts have explained that execution-related claims are not ripe, or premature, when raised before a defendant is under an active death warrant. On the other, as in Bucklew and Dunn, when the defendant is under an active death warrant, courts are skeptical of the merits of these claims and determine the defendant raised the claim too late, suspecting a game of delay. Yet, defendants are faced with increasingly short and arbitrary warrant periods. Thus, as this Essay explains, the proper time for defendants to raise warrant- and execution-related claims is caught somewhere between death row and death watch. Courts have essentially precluded defendants from properly raising and being heard on these critical issues. Addressing this concern, this Essay canvasses potential solutions, exploring the advantages and disadvantages of each. Ultimately, this Essay concludes that the best solution is for states to enact and courts to enforce uniform warrant procedures. In doing so, this Essay proposes statutory language that would implement this solution. However, as states’ former attempts to enact such procedures show, enforcement by courts is crucial for this solution to be effective and properly safeguard defendants’ rights in last-minute, execution-related appeals.

Decades in Death’s Twilight

The average amount of time that death row inmates spend on death row has ballooned over the past decade, and for death row inmates in the state of Texas, the entire duration of that increased time will be spent in solitary confinement. This raises the following question: Is solitary confinement now considered to be part of the punishment, one that may be worse than the death penalty itself? This article discusses the history of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons and cites scientific literature which posits that long-term solitary confinement can cause serious psychological damage. It examines “death row syndrome,” a term that refers to the psychological illness or disorder exhibited by an inmate who has spent a prolonged period of time in harsh conditions on death row. The article reviews the Polunsky Unit, which currently houses Texas’s death row and has been described as one of the worst prisons in the United States. The article also discusses the long history of Lackey claims, which allege that prolonged confinements under a death sentence breach the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. The unresolved dissent within the Supreme Court regarding this subject is presented and discussed. This article contends that the prolonged solitary confinement of a Texas inmate on death row is a violation of the Eighth Amendment, and concludes that the only solution is to end the practice of automatic and permanent solitary confinement.

Emerging Trends from the Resentencing of Capital Offenders in Malawi

In 2007, the High Court of Malawi, sitting as a constitutional court, declared that the mandatory sentence of death for murder was unconstitutional. At the time of the High Court’s invalidation of the mandatory death penalty, Malawi’s prisons had over 190 prisoners serving their sentences as a result of the imposition of the mandatory death penalty. Some of these prisoners were on death row, while others had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment. When the mandatory death penalty was declared unconstitutional, the High Court also directed that all prisoners serving their sentences for murder should be brought before the High Court so that they could receive individual sentences taking into account the circumstances of the offense, the offender, as well as the interests of the victim(s). This paper interrogates the application of the sentencing discretion that was introduced with the outlawing of the mandatory death penalty in Malawi. Specifically, the paper analyzes decisions that have emerged from the resentencing of capital offenders in so far as judges have either considered or refused to consider the relevance of post-conviction factors during the resentencing. It is this paper’s central finding that a refusal to consider post-conviction factors, as some judges held, was not only unjustified but was also contrary to Malawi’s Criminal Procedure and Evidence Code and the Constitution of the Republic of Malawi. This refusal, the paper argues, resulted in sentencing discrepancies as well as a failure to properly utilize the discretion vested in the courts for purposes of sentencing.

Prisoners and Animals: An Historical Carceral Geography

This paper explores some of the key historical-geographical resonances across human and nonhuman carceral geographies that appear in my book, Carceral Space, Prisoners and Animals. In it I propose a contribution to carceral geography from a broader vantage point than has yet been done, developing a ‘trans-species carceral geography’ that includes spaces of nonhuman captivity, confinement, and enclosure alongside that of the human. The linkages across prisoner and animal carcerality that I place into conversation draw from a number of institutional and industrial domains, including the prison, the farm, the research lab, and the zoo. In this paper I specifically focus on the shared carceral logics and ‘animalization’ of populations of humans and animals at these sites, as well as key entangled historical-geographies of the prison’s death row and the animal slaughterhouse that are at once structural, operational, and technological.

Psychological Survival in Isolation: Tussling with Time on Death Row

A person’s relationship with time is ruptured by his or her imprisonment. It no longer has value as a scarce resource to be spent carefully in pursuit of individual goals but becomes a hyper-inflated currency, vast quantities of which must be frittered away in the face of an ever-diminishing return. Despite its centrality to their lived experience, little is known about how prisoners engage with an aspect of their existence that cannot be touched, heard, smelled, seen, or tasted but that nevertheless bombards the senses. Solitary prisoners, with so few diversions, feel time’s passage all the more painfully; it has a smothering quality that frustrates easy passage through the day. Koestler (1942, p. 107) drew on the image of the grave to describe how it felt awaiting execution in solitary confinement in Spain: “The cell was like a vault enclosed in three-fold armour-plating; the three-fold wall of silence, loneliness and fear.” Piercing this armour-plating is an enormous challenge. Without the distraction that company brings, temporal pressures build and threaten to overwhelm.

The Demographics of Florida's Death Penalty

As the federal appeals court with jurisdiction over Florida and Alabama—two leaders in capital punishment in the United States, the Eleventh Circuit reviews several claims each year related to capital punishment. Florida, a long-time leader in capital punishment in the United States, is home to one of the largest death row populations in the country. Thus, understanding Florida’s capital sentencing scheme is important in understanding capital punishment nationwide. This Article reviews the demographics of Florida’s death row population as well as how defendants are sentenced to death and ultimately executed in Florida. In doing so, the Article finds that while age is not a factor upon which murder/manslaughter defendants are discriminated in the sentencing process, gender and race are. Focusing on the death penalty, the gender discrimination appears consistent; however, the racial discrimination does not. The racial, age, and ethnic makeup of Florida’s death row and, more specifically, those who are executed in Florida is almost completely unpredictable. Further, in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Hurst v. Florida and the Supreme Court of Florida’s decisions on remand in Hurst and other related decisions, which, together, caused a paradigm shift in capital sentencing, this Article examines how the Supreme Court of Florida’s post-Hurst framework—which the Eleventh Circuit, in reviewing several federal habeas claims since Hurst, has also been called upon to review and implement–affected Florida’s death row empirically. For example, the Article finds that the Court’s decisions regarding the retroactivity of Hurst split Florida’s death row in half.

Disparity of the Waiting Period of the Capital Punishment Execution for Narcotics and Murder Cases in the Perspective of Human Rights

Disparity of the waiting period of the capital punishment execution for narcotics and murder cases occurs as the legal consequence of the policy of the Indonesian Public Prosecution Service for prioritizing the execution of death row inmates in narcotics cases. The problem is how the analysis is in the perspective of Human Rights for such disparity of the waiting period for the execution of the death row inmates as a result of the Prosecutor's policy to prioritize the execution of the death row inmates in narcotics cases. This study uses a juridical normative method with the legislation and case approaches. The study's result concludes that disparity of the waiting period for the execution of death row inmates in narcotics and murder cases represents no protection and respect for human rights. There should be an implementing regulation that governs the waiting period of the execution of death row inmates to avoid the disparity, so that execution of death row inmates will be carried out to represent the human rights protection. Keywords: Disparity, Waiting Period of Execution, Death Row Inmate, Human Rights

Foreigners on America's Death Rows: The Legal Combat Over Access to a Consul by John Quigley

Reviewed by: Foreigners on America's Death Rows: The Legal Combat Over Access to a Consul by John Quigley Sandra Babcock (bio) John Quigley, Foreigners on America's Death Rows: The Legal Combat Over Access to a Consul (Cambridge, 2018), ISBN 9781108428231, 282 pages. Had it not been for the persistence of capital punishment in the United States, Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (VCCR) would likely have remained an obscure treaty provision, little known and honored in the breach throughout the country. After all, the treaty generated little controversy in the two decades after the US Senate gave its advice and consent to ratification. Dedicated largely to the functions and immunities of consular posts, the treaty contains only a few provisions bearing on the rights of detained individuals. Article 36, however, provides that detained foreign nationals have the right to communicate with consular officials and to have consular posts notified of their detention—and further stipulates that the authorities must advise detained nationals of those rights "without delay."1 As of 1993, no US scholars—with the sole exception of Luke T. Lee2—had written about the implementation of Article 36 with respect to detained foreign nationals.3 In the early 1990s, a series of capital cases changed all that. In Foreigners on America's Death Rows, John Quigley has meticulously documented the slow awakening of US-based litigators to widespread violations of Article 36 in the cases of foreign nationals sentenced to death in the United States. Written in a style designed to be accessible to practitioners unfamiliar with international law, the book provides an exhaustive analysis of the diplomatic debates over the text of Article 36, the intent of the drafters, and the often-flawed analysis of the text by US courts. Professor Quigley has actively participated in litigation in both domestic and international courts over violations of Article 36. The book effectively combines scholarly research with the insights he has gained over decades of engagement in the cases of foreign nationals on death row. It is essential reading for any practitioner, scholar, or jurist grappling with the interpretation of Article 36. If the US Supreme Court ever grants certiorari to decide whether individuals have enforceable rights under the treaty (a question it has thrice refused to address directly), judicial clerks will be reaching for Foreigners on America's Death Rows to inform their bench memos. Along with Professor Quigley and a handful of other lawyers, I have been litigating violations of the Vienna Convention in capital cases for over two [End Page 1003] decades. In 1992, I became the first lawyer to litigate an Article 36 violation in a capital case. I was counsel to the Government of Mexico in Avena and Other Nationals (Mexico. v. United States) in the International Court of Justice4 and have been involved in the US Supreme Court cases of Medellín v. Texas5 and Sanchez-Llamas v. Oregon6 as well as dozens of other cases in state courts—many of which are discussed in Foreigners on America's Death Rows. I thought I would have little to learn from Quigley's text, but I was wrong. The brilliance of Foreigners on America's Death Rows derives from Quigley's synthesis of diplomatic archives and legal records to support his argument that the rights enshrined in Article 36 are integral to the fairness of criminal prosecutions. As I read through it, I kept wishing that Professor Quigley had published the text before the litigation in Avena, and before the US courts adopted a series of poorly reasoned decisions denying individual remedies for violations of consular rights. The material on which he based much of the book did not yet exist, but it is hard for the informed reader to escape the sense of opportunities lost. Part I of Foreigners on America's Death Rows grounds the reader in the longstanding custom of consular assistance and its eventual codification into Article 36. The first chapter describes the evolution of consular practice in the United States under customary law. Focusing on intervention by US consular staff in support of Americans detained abroad, Quigley uses historical examples...

Barely Missing Everything by Matt Mendez

Reviewed by: Barely Missing Everything by Matt Mendez Elizabeth Bush Mendez, Matt Barely Missing Everything. Dlouhy/Atheneum, 2019 [320p] Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-5344-0445-8 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-5344-0447-2 $10.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 8-10 Juan doesn't believe he has a shot at the good life or even the stable, mediocre life. This seems to be confirmed when he's apprehended by police as he runs away from a busted party—the only kid charged that night—and when he discovers a letter stashed away by his mother that suggests his father is facing imminent execution on death row. There's a glimmer of hope, though: his basketball coach has promised to hook him up with a scholarship to a community college team in Arizona (not a glamorous gig, but one that will get him out of El Paso and on to a more promising life), if only he can pass all his classes, including algebra. However, just when he thinks he's got stuff under control, with a decent relationship with his grandfather, a passing grade in algebra, and an opportunity to sneak off to the federal prison and make peace with the man he believes to be his father, it all unravels—from the mistimed moment that his clueless mother shows up at school to take him shopping, to the split-second decision to hide his friends' videocam from a local gang, which seals his tragedy. Juan's story is bleak indeed, but Mendez has been carefully tracking several key players throughout, and Juan's end is also his mother's beginning, as she manages to finally learn from a lifetime of self-pitying mistakes that began in her own teen years. This may not be the conclusion readers foresee or even want, but it's a cautiously optimistic message that changing course is not an impossibility. EB Copyright © 2019 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Služba zatvorskih sveštenika za Pravoslavne hrišćane u Crnoj Gori od kraja 19. vijeka do 1915. godine

With the development of the legal system in Montenegro, during the last two decades of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century, the issue of chaplain's service in prisons was regulated as a specific segment. The paper presents the developmental trajectories of the legal formulation and the competence of service of the Orthodox priests in prisons in Montenegro, in the case of spiritual needs of the members of the Orthodox faith. The persons from the church structures who performed a duty of naming prison chaplains were specified - Metropolitans Ilarion and Mitrofan, as well as the acting priests from Cetinje and Podgorica, for the prisons which existed in those two towns. The paper also provides an analysis of the text of the Legal act on the duties of priests in prisons and the sermon of moralities given for the death row convicts. Since this is the first scientific study based on the authentic historical documentation, it represents a significant contribution to a comprehensive overview of the development and structure of the legal system in Montenegro until 1918.

Your Mother Asks If You’re Seeing Anyone and No Longer Means a Therapist

Your Mother Asks If You’re Seeing Anyone and No Longer Means a Therapist Cindy King (bio) It’s tough to find a cardiologist who datespatients from the Ward of Cracked Hearts, butthere’s always the bariatric surgeonwho thinks you could drop a few pounds. If it’s too latefor the death row inmate, try the child predator; you toocould date the would-be senator, or even the President of the United States.If you can’t have the priest, don’t give up.You too could fall for the charismatic cult leader. You toocould try the celibate polygamist. Admittedly,you’d have to share, and you wouldn’t know for sureif you’re actually dating, or whether you’d ever “consummate,”but who’s in it for that kind of thing anyway, unless,of course, you’d finally give me a grandchild.You didn’t spend years in braces only to settlefor a dental assistant, did you?We didn’t correct your overbite just so you could eatyour dinners alone. It took sacrifice to cultivate your eligibility, yearsof home perms and hand-me-downs, decades of clearance rack cosmetics.And yet the people you called friends were privilegedenough to discover your brain and not your body. BTW, didyou see that profile pic of the head floating in a jar?Though I’m not sure if it’s really enough to love.But love you will as everyone doestoward infinite grace, the axe [End Page 168] into the olive branch, verisimilitudeto abstraction, even the sarcophagus toward mummy dust,the intellect to its dementia. And I will support you as the mantleabove the fireplace supports the little box, houseto your spouse’s ashes. [End Page 169] Cindy King Cindy King’s work has appeared in the Sun, Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review, River Styx, Black Warrior, and elsewhere. She is the author of the chapbook Easy Street (Dancing Girl Press), and Zoonotic, forthcoming from Tinderbox Editions. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at Dixie State University. Copyright © 2019 University of Nebraska Press

The Death Penalty in Malawi: An Assessment against Regional and International Human-rights Standards

Despite the global trend towards the abolition of the death penalty, Malawi has no plans to do so. However, the country is under an obligation to ensure that the use of the death penalty is restricted in line with regional and international human-rights law. A survey of the application of the death penalty in Malawi reveals that while there are some restrictions on its use, the law and practice are not fully aligned with the regional and international standards. This is particularly the case with the scope of capital crimes, the right to seek mercy and the death row phenomenon. Malawi needs to address these shortfalls and move progressively towards the abolition of the death penalty. The task of this article is to make known some findings on how Malawi fares in this regard. The paper first discusses the regional and international human rights standards for the death penalty then it considers the Malawian Constitution and the restrictions on the death penalty under Malawian law. It concludes with an assessment of the extent to which Malawi conforms to international law insofar as the death penalty is concerned.

Missing Voices and Aging in Prison: Religiosity’s Influence on Positive Aging through Forgiveness

Background: This study investigated the influence of positive psychological predictors, religiosity and forgiveness, on subjective and objective successful aging outcomes among incarcerated males. Methods: Male prison inmates (N=261), aged 45 to 82 and incarcerated in eight state-managed correctional facilities, were sampled from the prison census database (Oklahoma Department of Corrections or DOC). Exclusion criteria, per the Oklahoma DOC, were those housed in medical or psychiatric units, currently in solitary confinement, or sentenced to death row. Results: The final mediation model fit the data well: MLR χ2 (df = 101, N = 256) = 7.40, p = .014, CFI = .98; RMSEA = .04 and SRMR = .03. With the exception of two direct effects, forgiveness mediated the relationship between religiosity and seven successful aging outcomes. Significant tests of total indirect effects through the three latent variable forgiveness mediators on each outcome were found; no specific indirect effects were significant. Analyses controlled for age, race, education, and crime type. Conclusions: Findings encourage continued investigations into the religiosity—forgiveness—health connection and specifically recommend forgiveness promoting interventions for all. Interventions to help older prison inmates age positively should include a focus on forgiveness relative to earlier life trauma and abuse.

The hippocratic paradox: A surgeon's journey to death row and back.

The hippocratic paradox: A surgeon's journey to death row and back.

Kuasa Wacana dan Dialogis Tokoh “aku” dalam Le Dernier Jour d’un condamné

This article discusses the work of Victor-Marie Hugo entitled Le dernier jour d'un condamné " (1829). This novel tells about a death row inmate (the "I" character) who experiences an inner struggle about his desire to be free. The power of discourse and dialogue carried out by the character in the novel is the focus of analysis in this paper. The concept of power of discourse refers to Michel Foucault's thoughts and dialogical concepts adopted from Mikhail Bakhtin. This study seeks to dismantle hidden ideas as social criticism presented by the “I” character. The words that describe the anxieties of “I” seem to form a dialogue between the text and the reader. Literary readers are invited to take part in the struggle of my character's thinking about his freedom. The meaning dispute of freedom discourse that wrestles in thought becomes a condition for the formation of dialogue between the reader and the text. Therefore, the dialogic perspective makes a social literary text so that the discourse is not isolated in structure.

Rajeunir, c’est vieux comme le monde…

Legends and myths regarding eternal youth exist since Antiquity. Prior to the 19th century those wishing to rejuvenate used baths or blood injections, searching to the Fountain of Youth or calling for an alchemist claiming to have found the Elixir of Youth. In the 19th century, Charles Edouard Brown Séquard (1819-1894), after the discovery of the function of the endocrinal glands and testicular secretions, inject himself with an extract from guinea pigs and dogs. He found himself rejuvenated! In the beginning of the 20th century, several surgeons transplanted human testicles coming from death row prisoners inmates or voluntary donors. The transplantation of monkey testicles by Serge Voronoff (1866-1951) had a important aftermath and more than 300similar interventions took place. The simple ligation of the vas deferens (vasectomy) was recommended by Eugen Steinach (1866-1944). Sigmund Freud was one of the "beneficiaries". Steinach also advised the irradiation of the ovaries for female rejuvenation. In 1935, Alexis Carrel (1873-1944) and Charles Lindbergh (1902-1974) built a pump to feed and regenerate targeted organs. The discovery of pluripotent stem cells and senolytic molecules are building up new hopes on the matter.