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The death penalty debate intensifies when condemned women are considered, at least in part because of the associations society holds between womanhood and motherhood. Consequently, the concept of motherhood inherently permeates every condemned woman's sentence. Using qualitative document analysis, we examine how pregnancy is accounted for in the death penalty statutes and execution protocols. In half of U.S. states, exceptions exist in the statutes preventing executions of pregnant people, but pregnancy is rarely mentioned in execution protocols. The findings highlight aspects of reproductive injustice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to describe narrative and visual conventions regarding minorities and their relation to crime and the justice system, 139 episodes of various American TV series broadcast for the first time between 1950 and 1977, all of which dealing generally with capital punishment or, quite often, specifically with legal execution, have been analyzed for this study. This corpus was studied within its historical context, with the help of archives documenting the story development of different episodes (notably scripts and interviews given by scriptwriters and producers working during the period). In a context of major social and political changes in the United States, this topic was controversial and might have repelled viewers or sponsors. Indeed, the racial tensions in American society, as well as interracial violence, were rarely staged on the small screen. In most fiction at the time, racial minorities seemed protected from discrimination by a commendably colorblind justice system. If it were not the case, then racism was condemned on the program. This form of “affirmative” action was also at play in the rare mise-en-scène of the legal executions of non-white death-row prisoners (often with the actual executions staged off-screen). Furthermore, minority extras appeared more and more often as actors within the justice system, rather than just victims of it. The archival documents show the reluctance of networks and sponsors toward addressing the topic, and the strategies used to accommodate it, which can allow for several interpretations of the same episode, involving the choice of historical and/or geographical setting and of the oppressed minority for the scene, and the often “balanced” representation of different sides of the issue. As a result, the episodes could potentially satisfy audiences with diverse and opposite views.

A thorough analysis of capital punishment from a political–geographical perspective is lacking in the discipline of geography. This is despite the fact that capital punishment overlaps with numerous geographic approaches, concepts, and areas of study. This study serves as a call to geographers to begin considering capital punishment's wide interaction and interrelation with developed areas of knowledge in the discipline. Specifically, political geographers stand to contribute in novel ways to wider discussions about capital punishment by analyzing executions relative to contemporary work in geography on violent, legal, and carceral spaces. I first introduce the need for geography's engagement with this pressing issue. Then, I clarify several terms needed to understand this violent practice. A third section highlights several pathways of development in the critical geographies of capital punishment. It is organized around four broad themes—critically mapping capital punishment, bodies in motion, politics of access, and executing the "other"—connecting capital punishment to developing concepts, literatures, and subdisciplines in geography. The final two sections outline an epistemological approach to the geographies of capital punishment and how legal and carceral geographies might contribute. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research uses normative juridical approach to study on the analysis of the death penalty executions and the legal policy of death executions in Indonesia. There are delays on death executions for the convicted person since they entitled to using rights namely filing a judicial review (PK/Peninjauan Kembali). Furthermore, the legal loophole in the execution of the death penalty by the publication of the Constitutional Court Number 107 / PUU-XIII / 2015 which assert that the Attorney as the executor can ask the convicted person or his family whether to use their rights or not if the convict clearly does not want to use his rights, the executions will be carried out. Legal policy on threats and the implementation of the death penalty in the draft of criminal code was agreed by draftsman of the bill with the solutions. The draftsman of the bill agrees that the death penalty will be an alternative punishment sentenced as a last resort to protect the society. The bill also regulates that the execution among others include that the execution can be delayed by ten years probations. If the public reaction on the convict is not too large or convict has regret and could fix it or the role in the crime is not very important and there is a reason to reduce punishment, the death penalty may be changed. For pregnant women and the mentally ill convicts the execution can only be carried after the birth and the person has recovered from mental illness. The existence of this solutions is still kept putting the death penalty in criminal law, whereas the effectiveness of the death penalty is scientifically still in doubt to solve crimes and to prevent crimes by the death penalty punishment.

Substantial progress has been made towards worldwide abolition of capital punishment, and there are good reasons to believe that more progress is possible. Since 2000, the pace of abolition has slowed, but by several measures the number of executions in the world has continued to decline. Several causes help explain the decline, including political leadership from the front and an increased tendency to regard capital punishment as a human rights issue rather than as a matter of domestic criminal justice policy. There are significant obstacles in the movement to eliminate state killing in the world, but some strategies could contribute to additional decline in the years to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post hoc analyses of Rector v. Arkansas have regularly highlighted that the defendant requested that part of his last meal be saved so that he could it eat later. While the observation is typically raised as part of arguments that Rector was incompetent and unfit for execution, the more basic fact is that commentators have drawn important inferences about Rector’s mental state from how he treated his last meal. In this essay, we draw upon multiple disciplines in order to apply the same inferential logic to a much broader sample and explore the question of whether traditionally customized last meals might offer signals of defendants’ guilt or innocence. To investigate this, the content of last-meal requests and last words reported for people executed in the United States during a recent five-year period were examined. Consistent with the idea that declination of the last meal is equivalent to a signal of (self-perceived) innocence, those who denied guilt were 2.7 times as likely to decline a last meal than people who admitted guilt (29% versus 8%). Consistent with the complementary theory that people who admit guilt are relatively more “at peace” with their sentence, these individuals requested 34% more calories of food than the rest of the sample (2786 versus 2085 calories). A third finding is that those who denied guilt also tended to eat significantly fewer brand-name food items. Previous discussions of last meals have often lacked quantitative measurements; however, this systematic analysis shows that last meal requests offer windows into self-perceived or self-proclaimed innocence. Knowing one’s last meal request and one’s last words can provide valuable new variables for retrospectively assessing the processes that led to past executions.

Copyright of Dilemas Contemporáneos: Educación, Política y Valores is the property of Dilemas Contemporaneos: Educacion, Politica y Valores and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Previous studies have noted that in some capital cases, victim family members express forgiveness of the offender, empathy for his family, or for his adverse life experiences—but still support the execution. This article attempts to explain the phenomenon by identifying three types of forgiveness and the motives for them, and it explores the applicability of reparative dialogues between murder survivors and offenders. Empirical evidence comes from 52 interviews and/or open-ended questionnaires with survivors whose capital cases ended in an execution in Texas or Virginia. Most of the 52 survivors witnessed the execution, supported the death penalty, and rejected remorse when it was expressed by the offender. Yet some of them forgave the offender, empathized with the offender or his family, or were ambivalent about the death penalty, despite supporting the execution—the “forgive but die” sentiment. This subset of survivors—forgivers and empathizers—who are the most amenable to mediation dialogues are the focus of this study. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study examines the effects of Victim Impact Statements (VISs) and Execution Impact Statements (EISs) on death-qualified mock jurors through a 2 (VIS/no VIS) by 2 (EIS/no EIS) between-subjects design in which participants read a capital murder trial and completed an online survey. The VIS and EIS had no effect on verdicts, but the VIS increased participants’ negative emotions as well as perceptions of the victim and those who gave impact statements. Conversely, the EIS increased positive emotions and perceived remorsefulness of the defendant. Lastly, the VIS and EIS interacted to influence perceptions of the victim. Implications for victims and the legal system are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: The growing macabre fascination with “last meals” offers a window into one’s true consumption desires when one’s value of the future is discounted close to zero. But in contrast to popular anecdotes and individual case studies, we created an empirical catalog of actual last meals – the final food requests of 247 individuals executed in the United States during a recent five-year period. Our content analyses reveal three key findings: (1) the average last meal is calorically rich (2756 calories) and proportionally averages 2.5 times the daily recommended servings of protein and fat, (2) the most frequent requests are also calorie dense: meat (83.9%), fried food (67.9%), desserts (66.3%), and soft drinks (60.0%), and (3) 39.9% requested branded foods or beverages. These findings are respectfully consistent with a model of environmentally contingent temporal discounting, and they are consistent with studies of how food is used to mediate feelings of stress and distress. Given that some people who are warned about the ill effects of obesity might counterintuitively engage in unhealthy overconsumption, the findings also suggest further study relating to the artificial use of mortality salience in campaigns against obesity. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The death penalty is an appropriate sentence for all those involved in the drug trade. This trade can be stopped through the political will of government, the implementation of the military to fight the war against drugs, by treating drug dealers as terrorists, through the expansion of the death sentence, by holding families responsible, through the confiscation of the assets of drug dealers, by breaking up the Taliban links with the drug trade, through considering radical counter-drug measures, and by getting criminal justice scholars involved in creating and implementing solutions to this problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Historisk Tidskrift is the property of Svenska Historiska Foereningen and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article examines the reasons offered by seven New York governors in justification of their decisions to commute death sentences in 159 cases between 1920 and 1970. In doing so, it scrutinizes the common assertion that, in marked contrast to contemporary death penalty cases, merciful considerations once were bountiful in sparing condemned offenders from execution. An examination of the New York governors' reasons for granting clemency and the legal context within which their decisions were made suggests that mercy accounted for few death sentence commutations during this time period and that other considerations predominated. To the extent that the New York experience resembles that of other states historically, the analysis suggests that the comparatively infrequent use of executive clemency in contemporary capital cases may owe more to the significant differences in death penalty laws and their administration during the different eras than to a diminished role for mercy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Capital punishment – specifically public execution – is here investigated not simply as a judicial punishment, but as a lens through which to view the civil and socio-political development of Malawi from the colonial to early independence eras. Public executions were an exceptional measure, employed at times of marked social and political unrest, being ordered by the colonial government in response to the Chilembwe Uprising in 1915 and by Prime Minister Banda in 1965 in the aftermath of the Cabinet crisis and Chipembere Uprising. This article looks at the continuities and changes in the practice and signification of these judicial killings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines, from a legal perspective, why executions in Taiwan declined from 78 in 1990 to zero in 2006. The inquiry focuses on three considerations: the number of laws that authorized employment of the death penalty; the code of criminal procedure; and the manner in which executions were carried out, including the manner in which amnesty was granted. The article argues that the ratification of international covenants and constitutional interpretations did not play a significant role in the decline, and that several factors that did play a role included the annulment or amendment of laws, changes in criminal procedure, establishment of and further amendments to guide- lines for execution and two laws for reducing sentences. This article maintains that the absence of executions in 2006 is a unique situation that will not last because some inmates remain on death row, meaning that executions in Taiwan will continue unless the death penalty is abolished. However, the article concludes that the guarantee of the utmost human right, the right to life, can be sustained in Taiwan through the demands of democratic majority rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this research was to investigate the relationship between several bio-psycho-social variables and selection for the low probability outcome of state-imposed execution as punishment for capital murder. In light of the findings indicating numerous bio-psycho-social vulnerabilities across homicide offender populations, this study sought to reveal any individual characteristics related to bringing such a small subset of convicted and incarcerated homicide offenders to the point of state-sanctioned execution. This research examined the relationships between the intra-psychic variables of psychiatric illness, cognitive ability, and neuropathology, the extrinsic variables of drug and alcohol abuse, physical, sexual, and psychological abuse and neglect during childhood, the involvement of drugs and alcohol during the offenses and the characteristics of the capital offense, and the legal punishment received for the commission of homicide. Those variables were examined to determine whether or not a prototype could be identified that characterized the “typical” executed capital offender. Findings indicated that the variables of cognitive ability, education level, and aspects of criminal history distinguished executed capital offenders from other homicide offender populations. Results also revealed that executed capital offender vulnerabilities among the variables of neuropathology, psychiatric illness, substance abuse, and child abuse may be found in a higher proportion in relation to proportions previously reported among other violent incarcerated populations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]