Death penalty

"Capital punishment," "Death sentence," and "Execution" redirect here.

Capital punishment, also called the death penalty, is the killing of a person by the state as punishment for a crime. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offenses. Historically, the execution of criminals and political opponents was used by nearly all societies—both to punish crime and to suppress political dissent. Among countries around the world, almost all European and many Pacific Area states (including Australia, New Zealand and Timor Leste), and Canada have abolished capital punishment. In Latin America, most states have completely abolished the use of capital punishment, while some countries, however, like Brazil, allow for capital punishment only in exceptional situations, such as treason committed during wartime. The United States (the federal government and 36 of its states), Guatemala, most of the Caribbean and the majority of democracies in Asia (e.g. Japan and India) and Africa (e.g. Botswana and Zambia) retain it.

In most places that practice capital punishment today, the death penalty is reserved as punishment for premeditated murder, espionage, treason, or as part of military justice. In some countries sexual crimes, such as rape, adultery and sodomy, carry the death penalty, as do religious crimes such as apostasy (the formal renunciation of one's religion). In many retentionist countries (countries that use the death penalty), drug trafficking is also a capital offense. In China human trafficking and serious cases of corruption are also punished by the death penalty. In militaries around the world courts-martial have imposed death sentences for offenses such as cowardice, desertion, insubordination, and mutiny.

Capital punishment is a very contentious issue in some cultures. Supporters of capital punishment argue that it deters crime, prevents recidivism, and is an appropriate form of punishment for the crime of murder. Opponents of capital punishment argue that it does not deter criminals more than life imprisonment, violates human rights, leads to executions of some who are wrongfully convicted, and discriminates against minorities and the poor.

The latest country looking to abolish the death penalty for all crimes was Gabon which announced on September 14, 2007 that they would no longer apply capital punishment. The latest to have effectively done so was Uzbekistan on January 1, 2008.


The death penalty worldwide

Fore more information see...
Capital punishment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Global distribution of death penalty

Death Penalty World Map

Death Penalty World Map [see also the attached file "Death_Penalty_World_Map" below]

Colour scheme:
Blue: Abolished for all crimes
Green: Abolished for crimes not committed in exceptional circumstances (such as crimes committed in time of war)
Orange: Abolished in practice
Red: Legal form of punishment for certain offenses


Other related links

Capital Punishment Statistics - Statistical information and publications about capital punishment in the United States.

Abolish the Death Penalty - Death penalty action and resources from AIUSA, including information on the use of the death penalty in the USA.

Pro-death penalty.com - A resource for pro-death penalty information and resources. Includes case info on upcoming executions, a collection of death penalty links, current news, etc.

NCADP - The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

Death Penalty Links - Information and links to websites on the death penalty.




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[WSJ_law_blog]

A shift appears underway in how Ohio administers the death penalty.

As we noted here, capital punishment came under the microscope last month following the botched execution of Ohio inmate Romell Broom, who was convicted of the 1984 rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl. Those attempting to administer the lethal IV failed to find a suitable vein in Broom’s arm.

Eventually, Ohio governor Ted Strickland called off the execution, granting Broom a two-week reprieve.

The governor has since extended the Broom delay and also suspended two more planned executions, while the state conducts a more detailed review of its execution method: a three-drug combination, which is similar to the one used by a majority of states.

The Strickland administration is all but certain to revise its protocols, WaPost
reports today. “Everything’s on the table at this point,” said Julie Walburn, spokeswoman for the Ohio corrections department.

Mark Dershwitz, a Massachusetts anesthesiologist who advises authorities in Ohio told the Post that by changing its lethal-injection drug dosages the state could ensure that “there’s no chance [defendants] could be made uncomfortable.”

Not all, of course, see the need for reform.

“It is ironic to hear a 53-year-old man and his attorney whine about being pricked with a needle when he is being executed for brutally raping and murdering a 14-year-old child by plunging a knife seven times into her chest,” said Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason. “I am absolutely certain that it was Tryna Middleton that suffered from cruel and unusual punishment.”

Whatever happens in Ohio, “other states will be watching,” Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told the Post. Several states, he said, including Maryland, are working on lethal injection protocols.

[WSJ_law_blog]

We’ll continue on the death-penalty beat, shifting our attention to Texas, where Governor Rick Perry faces questions about the state’s investigation into the Cameron Willingham execution.

To recap, Willingham was convicted of setting a fire to Texas home back in 1991 and killing his three children. Various arson experts questioned the accuracy of the evidence used to convict, but Gov. Perry declined to spare Willingham’s life in 2004. Here’s a recent New Yorker piece on the case.

Now, Gov. Perry faces accusations that some of his aides tried to pressure the chairman of a panel investigating the state’s handling of the case.

As we noted here, the governor recently replaced the head of the Texas Forensic Science Commission and two other members, just 48 hours before the commission was to hear testimony from an arson expert who believes that Willingham was convicted on bad evidence.

Today, the Chicago Tribune reports that top aides to Perry tried to pressure Samuel Bassett, chairman of the panel, over the direction of the inquiry.

Bassett told the Trib that he twice was called to meetings with Perry’s top attorneys. At one of those meetings, Bassett said he was told they were unhappy with the course of the commission’s investigation.

“I was surprised that they were involving themselves in the commission’s decision-making,” Bassett said. “I did feel some pressure from them, yes.” The commission was created by the Texas Legislature in 2005 to improve forensics in Texas as well as investigate specific complaints. The Willingham case was among the panel’s first complaints.

According to Bassett, the Trib reports, the governor’s attorneys questioned the cost of the inquiry and asked why a fire scientist from Texas could not be hired to examine the case instead of the expert from Maryland that the panel settled on. Bassett also said that the governor’s deputy general counsel told Bassett that the Willingham investigation should be a lower priority.

Perry has denied that he has tried to quash the investigation. Still, his handling of the commission’s work has become a political issue, as he faces spirited opposition from US Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison in the 2010 race for governor.

[WSJ_law_blog]

Everywhere you look today, there’s news about the death penalty. By now, we’re guessing that most LBers know that John Allen Muhammad, the mastermind of the sniper attacks that terrorized the nation’s capital region for three weeks in October 2002, was executed Tuesday.

Muhammad died by injection at 9:11 p.m. at Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, prison spokesman Larry Traylor said. Traylor told the AP that Muhammad had no final statement and that Traylor didn’t hear him utter any words during the execution. Click here for the WaPo story on the execution.

But there’s other news out Wednesday on the death penalty as well. Let’s start in Atlanta, where the trials of potential death-penalty defendants are getting delayed, not by an excess of lawyering but by too little of it. The state of Georgia, writes the Atlanta Journal Constitution on Wednesday, doesn’t have the money to pay for public defenders in capital cases — so justice gets postponed.

The death penalty also was the subject of a feature story in the LAT. Out in California, it seems, some defendants are actually asking for the death penalty rather than life in prison. Why? Because death row is better! Really! According to the story, the appeals process takes so long that prisoners are more likely to die of other causes while on death row than to die at the hand of the state. The statistics back it up. According to the LAT:

California has the nation’s largest death row population, with 685 sentenced to die by lethal injection. Yet only 13 executions have been carried out since capital punishment resumed in 1977 and none of the condemned have been put to death since a moratorium was imposed nearly four years ago. Five times as many death row inmates — 71 — have died over that same period of natural causes, suicide or inside violence.

But it’s not just the likelhood of being executed. It’s the conditions, as well:

Though death row inmates at San Quentin State Prison are far from coddled, they live in single cells that are slightly larger than the two-bunk, maximum-security confines elsewhere, they have better access to telephones and they have “contact visits” in plexiglass booths by themselves rather than in communal halls as in other institutions. They have about the only private accommodations in the state’s 33-prison network, which is crammed with 160,000-plus convicts.

Death row prisoners are served breakfast and dinner in their cells, can usually mingle with others in the outdoor exercise yards while eating their sack lunches, and have exclusive control over the television, CD player or other diversions in their cells.

It’s what recently caused murder convict Billy Joe Johnson to ask for the death penalty, rather than life.

“It’s not that he thinks conditions will be better; they are better,” Johnson’s attorney, Michael Molfetta, told the LAT of his client’s request for death row. Johnson, 46, figures that he will be close to 70 by the time his appeals are exhausted, Molfetta said, “and he says he doesn’t care to live beyond that.”

[WSJ_law_blog]

Once the dust settled on AG Eric Holder’s announcement last week that alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed would stand trial in New York, writers started asking the inevitable follow-up question: what, when all is said and done, will the prosecution and possible trial of KSM look like?

According to the WSJ’s Jess Bravin, a threshold question awaits. That is, will KSM confess to orchestrating attacks? A yes to such a move, of course, would make his case relatively easy for prosecutors. Bravin writes that if Mohammed acts to speed his own execution and await what he asserts is glorious martyrdom with a guilty plea in federal court, that would bypass a trial, eliminate the need to select a jury and lead to sentencing probably before the end of 2010.

Perkins Coie’s Harry Schneider, who helped defend Osama bin Laden’s former driver, in a military commission, thinks a confession is the likeliest scenario.

“I think the most likely scenario is these guys don’t make any bones about it and they confess their involvement,” said Schneider, who helped defend Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s former driver, in a military commission. “They are proud of what they did.”

That said, writes Bravin, if Mohammed works with his American lawyers to stall the case, he has plenty of tools at his disposal, criminal lawyers say.

David Kelley, a Manhattan U.S. attorney under George W. Bush now at Cahill Gordon, says “first and foremost” among the issues Mohammed could raise is the conduct of the government.

According to government documents, Mohammed faced waterboarding 183 times while in government detention. Defense lawyers could seek to have the case dismissed because of the harsh treatment. Kelley said it was hard to conceive of a federal judge dismissing the charges, but the judge might take more seriously defense challenges claiming that detainee statements were coerced.

“The government has lots of information about these folks. The challenge is converting that information into admissible information under the rules of evidence,” Mr. Kelley said.

The “forced confession” tactic was echoed in this NYT article from the weekend. If the Justice Department does try to introduce evidence that the defense lawyers argue was coerced by torture, “I think that we’re going to shine a light on something that a lot of people don’t want to look at,” Denny LeBoeuf, an ACLU lawyer who led the group’s efforts in Guantánamo capital cases, told the NYT.

Another point raised in the NYT story: whither the death penalty? The possible problem for prosecutors: New York’s jury pool is generally perceived by prosecutors and defense lawyers to be more liberal than other places.

For example, a Manhattan federal jury twice deadlocked in 2001, resulting in life sentences for two Qaeda operatives who confessed to helping bomb the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, attacks that killed more than 200 people.

[WSJ_law_blog]

When AG Holder came out last week, guns blazing, and said he plans to seek the death penalty for Khalid Sheik Mohammad and four other alleged 9/11 planners, he neglected to mention one small detail: New York does not have a death penalty.

What does that mean? In all likelihood, nothing. Federal law contains a death penalty, and there’s nothing to stop federal prosecutors in New York from trying to invoke it.

But Politico’s Josh Gerstein posits that “by seeking the death penalty in a state which currently does not have it, the attorney general is treading into territory that not long ago triggered an outcry from liberal activists against the Bush administration.”

Turn the clock back to 2002. That’s when Attorney General John Ashcroft ordered a federal death penalty prosecution in Vermont, a state that also didn’t have one. At the time, according to Gerstein, “there were howls of outrage that Ashcroft was abusing federal authority by essentially forcing the death penalty on a state that didn’t have one in local law.”

“If New York itself was to pursue the case, they wouldn’t and couldn’t use the death penalty,” said Richard Dieter, a death penalty critic at the Death Penalty Information Center said to Politico. “That’s how the state law has come down now.”

Of course, points out Gerstein, there are distinctions between the Vermont and New York examples. Critics complained that Ashcroft was pursuing the death penalty over the objection of local U.S. attorneys and in cases where there was no particular federal interest. In the 9/11 case, prosecutors appear to be on board and the national quality of the crimes is evident.

Interestingly, Gerstein writes that when he recently asked Holder how he might differ from the Bush administration in considering death penalty cases, Holder stressed his respect for local federal prosecutors.

“I will say that based on my experience having been a United States Attorney and given the respect that I have for the career people who handle these kinds of matters, the recommendation that I get from the field carries a great deal of weight with me,” the attorney general said.

LBers, any thoughts? Gerstein asks whether the decision to seek the death penalty “offends federalism.” An argument could be made, it seems, that it doesn’t at all. Federal law, of course, extends into state territory all day every day. And federal law encroaches into places that state law chooses not to quite regularly.

But acounterargument could be made, we suppose, that on a matter of significant political and ethical weight, like the death penalty, state autonomy should be granted a bit more deference. Thoughts?