Death Penalty

Frederick, B. J. & Fradella, H. F. (In press). Leopold and Loeb. SAGE Social History of Crime and Punishment in America (pp.___-___). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage

by Brian Jay Frederick

Co-authored with Dr Henry F. Fradella, J.D.

Encyclopedia entry for the "SAGE Social History of Crime and Punishment in America." Article discusses... more Encyclopedia entry for the "SAGE Social History of Crime and Punishment in America." Article discusses Leopold & Loeb, convicted of the murder of a young boy in a wealthy neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois.

The EU's Normative Power - Strength or Weakness?

by Tornike Metreveli

The paper tries to critically reflect on the concept of the European Union’s Normative Power as advocated by Ian... more The paper tries to critically reflect on the concept of the European Union’s Normative Power as advocated by Ian Manners. By drawing on comparative analysis, the paper seeks to illustrate that the EU’s normative power can be its greatest strength and its greatest weakness.

L'abolition de la peine de mort pour les mineurs aux États-Unis : Quelques remarques à propos de l'arrêt Roper v. Simmons du 1er mars 2005

by Nadia Bernaz

When Willie Francis Died: The "Disturbing" Story Behind One of the Eighth Amendment's Most Enduring Standards of Risk

by Deborah Denno

Published in in Death Penalty Stories.  New York: Foundation Press 17-94 (John H. Blume & Jordan M. Steiker eds., 2009)

In the 2008 case, Baze v. Rees, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Kentucky’s lethal injection... more In the 2008 case, Baze v. Rees, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Kentucky’s lethal injection protocol.  Four of the seven opinions looked to the 1947 Supreme Court case of Louisiana ex rel. Francis v. Resweber for Eighth Amendment Cruel and Unusual Punishments precedent in the death penalty context.  Resweber upheld Louisiana’s determination to send Willie Francis—a poor, African American teenager who had survived the State’s first electrocution attempt—to the electric chair a second time.  This chapter provides an in-depth examination of the Resweber case telling Francis’s personal story, the efforts of his attorneys, Bertrand de Blanc and J. Skelly Wright, to prevent his execution, and the precedential effect of Resweber, particularly in Baze.  At the time Resweber was decided the Supreme Court still considered de jure segregation constitutional and held that the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause did not apply to State actions such as a second execution attempt by Louisiana.  Ultimately, this Chapter argues that, in light of the passage of six decades, which heralded massive changes in criminal law and procedure, the use of Resweber as modern Eighth Amendment guidance—especially in Baze—is troubling.

In addition to the legal account, this Chapter details personal reactions to Francis’s story obtained through interviews with members of Francis’s family and residents of Francis’s hometown of St. Martinville, Louisiana, as well as numerous letters that people from all over the country wrote Francis while he was waiting in jail.  These letter writers discussed many topics, including their reflections on racial injustice in America and the need for religious redemption, not only for Francis but also for his judgers and this country.  Yet a number of letters were deeper, more private.  Francis, it seems, was not only an imprint of the social and legal times, but also a projected muse of sorts to whom individuals could confide their heartfelt thoughts and wishes—about God, death, health, hopes, family, even romance. 


Key terms:  Fifth Amendment, Fourteenth Amendment, Double Jeopardy, Due Process, Incorporation, Gilbert Ozenne, L.O. Pecot, James Dudley Simon, NAACP, A.P. Tureaud, Joseph A. Thornton, U.J. Esnault, Dennis D. Bazer, In re Kemmler, Malloy v. South Carolina, Wilkerson v. Utah, Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter, Monte Lemann

Deep-Fried Liver

by Trevor Elliott

People always say that we can’t take the life of another human being even if he did rape and kill 12-year-old little... more People always say that we can’t take the life of another human being even if he did rape and kill 12-year-old little girls. Well think about it this way, would you want the man who killed your daughter(s) or granddaughter(s) still living in a jail cell and still having the ability to appeal that judgment a few times before he dies after 60+ years in prison, or possibility of parole

The Death Penalty in Virginia

by Christopher Allen-Shinn

I wrote this paper while enrolled in PLS 136 State & Local Politics at Thomas Nelson Community College in Fall 2008.

This paper presents a brief study of the death penalty in Virginia with an emphasis on the analysis of potential... more This paper presents a brief study of the death penalty in Virginia with an emphasis on the analysis of potential public policy alternatives to the present political course.

Amnesty International and the Death Penalty: Toward Global Abolition

by Alexander Karn

Chapter in Gordon Morris Bakken, ed., Invitation to an Execution: A History of the Death Penalty in the United States (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2010): 115-135.

La pena de muerte en la Siria-Palestina del Bronce Final

by Juan-Pablo Vita

J. A. Belmonte and J. Oliva (eds.), Esta Toledo, aquella Babilonia. Convivencia e interacción en las sociedades del Oriente y del Mediterráneo Antiguos, Cuenca 2011, 301-313.

Je serai fusillé demain. Les dernières lettres des patriotes belges et français fusillés par l'occupant. 1914-1918

by Emmanuel Debruyne

Retribution and Capital Punishment

by Thom Brooks

in Mark D. White (ed.), Retributivism: Essays on Theory and Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 232-45.

This chapter argues that contrary to popular wisdom (and clear pronouncements by classic retributivists such as Kant),... more This chapter argues that contrary to popular wisdom (and clear pronouncements by classic retributivists such as Kant), retributivists should oppose capital punishment for murderers. He concedes that murderers may deserve to be executed, and that this can be carried out fairly and humanely. Rather, his argument focuses on epistemic problems with ascertaining guilt, which have been made more prominent and visible by recent advances in forensic science (such as DNA testing). Even after guilt was found beyond a reasonable doubt during a fair trial, and confirmed in all subsequent appeals, these scientific advances have been able to clearly demonstrate the innocence of dozens of convicted murderers on death row. This chapter rejects several other arguments against capital punishment offered as retributivist before outlining and defending his own against actual and potential criticisms.

Challenging the American Dream

by Marta Fernández Morales

Abolition of the Death Penalty for Drug Trafficking in The Gambia

by Andrew Novak

Will be published in the Commonwealth Law Bulletin, March 2012 (proofs only; not for citation)

The Gambia, the smallest mainland country in Africa, is increasingly a transit point for illicit drug traffic between... more The Gambia, the smallest mainland country in Africa, is increasingly a transit point for illicit drug traffic between Latin America and Europe. As part of President Yayeh Jammeh's attempts to crack down on the drug trade, in October 2010, the Gambian legislature passed a mandatory sentence of death for persons possessing more than 250 grams of cocaine or heroin. The law was not constitutionally operable, however, because of Article 18(2) of the Gambian constitution, which forbids the death penalty for crimes other than aggravated or premeditated murder. Consequently, the death penalty for drug trafficking was abolished in April 2011.

“Memories and Allegories of the Death Penalty: Back to the Medieval Future?”

by Jody Enders

In Thinking Allegory Otherwise. Ed. Brenda Machosky, 37-59. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009.

Drawing on several stunningly visual fifteenth-century burnings at the stake, I argue that medieval law made conscious... more Drawing on several stunningly visual fifteenth-century burnings at the stake, I argue that medieval law made conscious use of mnemonic techniques not only to stage, pictorialize, and allegorize the death penalty but to "re-allegorize" the execution of criminals in such a way as to make images of justice unforgettable. Centuries before Michel Foucault ever spoke of the "spectacle of the scaffold," the Northern French city of Metz, for example, brought to the scaffold of an infanticidal mother a wooden doll which they placed in her charred arms along with "a painting of a child around her neck in order to signify the crime that she had committed." This unusual combination of a painting from the visual arts and a prop from the world of theater sheds new light on both the nature of any legal "exhibit" and on the symbolic systems of law itself. Just as one of the canonical functions of poetry is to “make new again” a tired old cliché or a metaphor, so too here do pictorialization, memory, theatricality, and staging reanimate and "re-allegorize" one of the great dead metaphors of the law: to "make an example of someone”—and do so in ways that lend new meaning to the term legal representation. Moreover, in a country like the U.S. where our own vernacular makes room for a term like "burned in effigy" and where the Bush administration emphasized what kind of spectacular dissemination of carnage the Iraqi people need to see in order to believe allegedly justifiable deaths (such as the deaths of the sons of Saddam Hussein), this process is not quite as medieval as one might suspect.

Los fusilamientos en la literatura popular de Santiago de Chile, c.1880-1930

by Nacho Pérez

Published in electronic review Pensamiento Critico No. 3, Chile, 2003.

This articles studies the view the popular classes had of those condemned to death at the end of the nineteenth... more This articles studies the view the popular classes had of those condemned to death at the end of the nineteenth century. The impact that the trial, the law sentence and the subsequent execution of prisoners had on popular literature of that time is analysed together with its relation to popular urban culture representations, From this point of view, the executions can be understood as a discursive field in which the punitive logic of the State collided with the symbolic inversion of the criminal, converted into a popular hero or canonized after the execution itself.The intense debate that executions brought about among the lower classes of Santiago can be interpreted as a public ritual under a sacrificial matrix that has a close relationship with the symbolism of violent deaths and the cult of the animitas in Chile. From this point of view, the evolution of popular opinion from that of an initial repulsion to that of the posthumous canonization of those condemned can be read as the different stages by which the condemned becomes a sacrificial hero than incarnated the internal violence of society and who's destiny is to become the nexus between earthly misery and the miraculous abundance of the heavens.

Saving Kenneth Foster: Speaking *with* Others in the Belly of The Beast of Capital Punishment

by Bryan McCann

Co-authored with Jennifer Asenas, Kathleen Feyh, and Dana Cloud

Published in Communication Activism: Vol. 3: Struggling for Social Justice Amidst Difference (eds. Frey, Carragee)

Joseph Ritson, Percy Shelley and the Making of Romantic Vegetarianism

by Tim Morton

Published in Romanticism 12.1 (2006), 52–61.

Percy Shelley's copy of Joseph Ritson's groundbreaking book on vegetarianism reveals a lot about his politics and... more Percy Shelley's copy of Joseph Ritson's groundbreaking book on vegetarianism reveals a lot about his politics and philosophy.

Rule of Law Abolitionism (Journal of Law, Politics, & Society v. 42)

by Benjamin Yost

In the 1980s and 90s, the abolition of capital punishment was virtually unthinkable.  However, a new form of... more In the 1980s and 90s, the abolition of capital punishment was virtually unthinkable.  However, a new form of abolitionism – which I call Rule of Law abolitionism – has occasioned a shift in abolitionist sentiment.  In this paper, I elucidate the logic of the Rule of Law abolitionist argument, distinguishing it from what I call doctrinal and moral abolitionism.  I also assess its strengths and weaknesses.  On the basis of this critique, I indicate the route Rule of Law abolitionism should travel to achieve its potential as a factor in the demise of the death penalty.

Question prioritaire de constitutionnalité et question préjudicielle à la Cour de Justice de l’Union Européenne, toujours dans l’impasse…

by Philippe Mouron

Revue française de droit constitutionnel, n° 87, à paraître

Commentaire de la décision du Conseil constitutionnel n° 2010-79 QPC du 17 décembre 2010 - Question prioritaire de... more Commentaire de la décision du Conseil constitutionnel n° 2010-79 QPC du 17 décembre 2010 - Question prioritaire de constitutionnalité - question préjudicielle - loi de transposition d'une directive communautaire précise et inconditionnelle - expulsion - abolition de la peine de mort

The complexities of capital punishment: Effect on families

by Elise P.

Paper for a masters level class on the death penalty

Capital punishment establishes an adversarial system that deeply impacts both the victims’ and the offenders’... more Capital punishment establishes an adversarial system that deeply impacts both the victims’ and the offenders’ families.  Not only does the victim’s family, or covictims, lose their loved one to murder, but the offender’s family loses their loved on as well.  This unexpected and traumatic loss can have severe consequences on both families, altering the ability to cope with grief.  This research paper examines the various effects of the death penalty on these two family systems and discusses the empirical argument for a change in the American criminal justice system.  Several social scientists now study these adverse effects on families and stress the need for restorative justice, in which all parties are involved.  Upon review of the limited research available on the coping skills and closure found in the current model of justice, these social scientists conclude that the most ideal solution not only to the psychological and criminological impacts of capital punishment, but to the root of crime in general, is in reconciliation rather than retribution.

Caring to Death: Health Care Professionals and Capital Punishment

by Cary Federman

The aim of this article is to describe the role of health care professionals in the capital punishment process. The... more The aim of this article is to describe the role of health care professionals in the capital punishment process. The relationship between the protocol of capital punishment in the United States and the use of health care professionals to carry out that task has been overlooked in the literature on punishment. Yet for some time, the operation of the medical sciences in prison have been `part of a disciplinary strategy' `intrinsic to the development of power relationships'. Many capital punishment statutes require medical personnel to be present at, if not actively involved in, executions. Through analyses of these statutes, show the degree to which these professionals have become part of the state's executive apparatus.