DOCSLIB.ORG

Death Penalty News March 1999 1

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Death Penalty News March 1999 1 DEATH PENALTY March 1999 NEWS AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL 1 Easton Street AI Index: ACT 53/02/99 London WC1X 8DJ Distribution: SC/DP/PO/CO/GR United Kingdom A QUARTERLY BULLETIN ON THE DEATH PENALTY AND MOVES TOWARDS WORLDWIDE ABOLITION PHILIPPINES RESUMES EXECUTIONS “...let us give [the death penalty] a try to see whether it has a deterring effect” Serafin Cuevas, Philippine Secretary of Justice quoted by Agence France Presse, 12 January 1999 The effort to restore respect for human rights the Free Legal Assistance Group had been in the Philippines received a blow on 5 rejected, Leo Echegaray’s execution date was February when Leo Echegaray, a convicted scheduled for 4 January 1999. child rapist, was executed by lethal injection. Local and international human rights His death marked the end of a 23-year de facto groups and the Roman Catholic Church had moratorium on executions. campaigned against the reimposition of the Since the reintroduction of the death death penalty for many years. In March 1998 penalty in law in 1993, the Philippines has a coalition of Philippine non-governmental gone from an abolitionist position to having organizations invited members of the one of the highest death sentencing rates in the US-based “Journey of Hope” group to help world. More than 900 people convicted of raise awareness of arguments against the death capital offences are now under sentence of penalty in the country (see DP News death; in January alone, 51 persons were September 1998). sentenced to death. In late 1998, despite international The congressional decision in appeals and a Philippines Senate resolution December 1993 to reintroduce capital suggesting that President Joseph Estrada punishment for “heinous” crimes was founded commute Leo Echegaray’s sentence or defer on a sense of public frustration at apparently the execution for two years to allow a spiralling rates of violent crime. With public congressional review of the efficacy of the faith in the effectiveness of the criminal justice death penalty law, President Estrada refused system at a low ebb, the reintroduction of the to grant clemency to Leo Echegaray. The death penalty was portrayed as a symbol of the President had been elected earlier in the year authorities’ determination to confront on a platform which included combatting criminality. crime. In September 1994 the Supreme Court The Supreme Court, in an unexpected confirmed the first death sentence passed move three hours before Leo Echegaray’s under the new law, that of Leo Echegaray. scheduled execution, ordered a stay of After all appeals lodged by his lawyers from execution in consideration of a bill pending Death Penalty News March 1999 1 ___________________________________________________________________________ in Congress to review the death penalty law. through the capital, Manila, calling for Leo The stay of execution sparked an emotional, Echegaray’s immediate execution. The broad-based public outcry, with bomb threats march was led by President Estrada’s wife and against the Supreme Court and a march Leo Echegaray’s now 15-year-old rape victim. It was against this setting that Congress Sergio Antonio Duarte Scull and Carlos Rafael on 19 January voted overwhelmingly not to Pérez Prieto were sentenced in January for consider reviewing the death penalty law. The killing four foreigners in Cuba and Francisco Supreme Court then lifted the stay of Portuondo Medina was sentenced to death in execution and a new date of execution was set. March for killing a policeman in 1998. Death On 5 February Leo Echegaray was executed by sentences are sometimes carried out within lethal injection. weeks of trial judgment. Shortly before the execution, 27 USA - EXECUTION OF FOREIGN Philippine women’s organizations issued a NATIONALS CONTINUES joint public statement opposing the death penalty for rape because “the death penalty Two German nationals have been executed in will not put an end to violence against women the US state of Arizona despite a request for and children”. adjudication lodged by the German It is feared that this first execution will government at the International Court of open the door for further executions of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague. In its application prisoners whose death sentences have been for a hearing at the ICJ, the German confirmed by the Supreme Court. Three men government maintained that the brothers Karl convicted of armed robbery with homicide - and Walter LaGrand were tried and sentenced Dante Piandiong, Archie Bulan and Jesus to death without being advised of their right to Morallos -are reportedly scheduled to be consular assistance as required by the Vienna executed on 7 April. Eight other men face Convention on Consular Relations, which the execution this year. USA unconditionally ratified in 1969. Article CUBA EXTENDS SCOPE OF 1 of the Optional Protocol to the Vienna DEATH PENALTY Convention cedes compulsory jurisdiction over disputes arising from the treaty to the On 16 February the Cuban National Assembly ICJ. passed a law to revise the Penal Code, extending the death penalty to include serious The brothers Karl LaGrand, who died involvement in drug trafficking, corruption of by lethal injection on 24 February, and Walter minors and armed robbery. The new law LaGrand who was executed on 3 March by follows President Fidel Castro’s speech in lethal gas, were convicted of murder during an January when he said that drug traffickers attempted robbery in 1982. Karl LaGrand caught in Cuba should face the death penalty. had originally chosen death by lethal gas. The execution was subsequently stayed by the Cuba maintains the death penalty for a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on the grounds large number of offences. At least five people that death by lethal gas constituted cruel and were reportedly executed in 1998. Since unusual punishment in violation of the US reporting of human rights issues in Cuba is Constitution. The US Supreme Court restricted and the authorities do not make overturned the stay and allowed the execution statistics on the death penalty public, the true to proceed. Karl LaGrand ultimately chose figure may be higher. execution by lethal injection instead. At least three men have reportedly been sentenced to death to date in 1999. Death Penalty News March 1999 2 ___________________________________________________________________________ The ICJ had intervened earlier in the death and later exonerated. On 11 March, case of Angel Breard, a national of Paraguay. one of the two men, Anthony Porter, who had Despite an unanimous ICJ order that the US come within two days of execution in government stay that execution pending the September 1998, had his murder conviction Court’s decision, Angel Breard was executed finally thrown out by a judge. Several of the in Virginia on 14 April 1998 (see DP News 11 men released from death row were June 1998). At that time a spokesperson for convicted in part on the basis of confessions the Chairman of the US Senate Foreign that later proved to be unreliable, the same Relations Committee described the Court’s issue on which the lawyers for Andrew intervention as “an appalling intrusion” into Kokoraleis had appealed to the courts. the affairs of the state of Virginia. However, on 3 November 1998 the US government Michigan - The Board of Directors of the issued a formal apology to Paraguay over its Michigan Catholic Conference at their failure to notify Angel Breard of his consular quarterly meeting in March issued a statement rights which stated: “This...was saying the death penalty should not be unquestionably a violation of an obligation reintroduced in the state. The statement owed to the Government of Paraguay...The quotes from the Catechism of the Catholic United States must see to it that foreign Church and adds: “Our century has seen too nationals in the United States receive the many people killed in ‘improving’ society for same treatment that we expect for our citizens us to accept lethal means as anything but a overseas. We cannot have a double failure of human compassion and imagination standard.” that solves nothing.” There are currently over 70 foreign citizens of 26 nationalities under sentence of Missouri - Following a personal appeal from death in the USA. In reportedly almost all Pope John Paul II during his visit to the state cases the arresting authorities have breached capital, St Louis, in January, Governor Mel the consular notification requirement under Carnahan commuted to life imprisonment the Article 36 of the Vienna Convention. death sentence of Darrell Mease, convicted of murdering three people in 1988. The Pope USA - OTHER NEWS had earlier addressed around 100,000 people at a stadium in the city where he said: Illinois - Andrew Kokoraleis was executed by “Modern society has the means of protecting lethal injection on 17 March. He had been itself without definitively denying criminals sentenced to death in 1987 for rape, the chance to reform. I renew the appeal I aggravated kidnapping and murder. The US made most recently at Christmas for a Supreme Court on 16 March rejected an consensus to end the death penalty, which is appeal to stay the execution which had been both cruel and unnecessary.” brought before it following an emergency stay granted the previous day by Justice Moses Harrison of the Illinois Supreme Court COUNCIL OF EUROPE because of doubts about Andrew Kokoraleis’ RESPONDS TO THREATS TO guilt in this case. RESUME EXECUTIONS Andrew Kokoraleis was executed amid increasing pressure for a moratorium on Several organs of the Council of Europe have executions in Illinois following the recent responded firmly to threats by high officials in release from death row of another two Albania and Ukraine to resume executions in condemned prisoners. They were the tenth defiance of commitments made when the two and eleventh such inmates to be released in countries joined the organization.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Outlaw: Wilderness and Exile in Old and Middle
    THE ‘BESTLI’ OUTLAW: WILDERNESS AND EXILE IN OLD AND MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Sarah Michelle Haughey August 2011 © 2011 Sarah Michelle Haughey THE ‘BESTLI’ OUTLAW: WILDERNESS AND EXILE IN OLD AND MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE Sarah Michelle Haughey, Ph. D. Cornell University 2011 This dissertation, The ‘Bestli’ Outlaw: Wilderness and Exile in Old and Middle English Literature explores the reasons for the survival of the beast-like outlaw, a transgressive figure who highlights tensions in normative definitions of human and natural, which came to represent both the fears and the desires of a people in a state of constant negotiation with the land they inhabited. Although the outlaw’s shelter in the wilderness changed dramatically from the dense and menacing forests of Anglo-Saxon England to the bright, known, and mapped greenwood of the late outlaw romances and ballads, the outlaw remained strongly animalistic, other, and liminal, in strong contrast to premodern notions of what it meant to be human and civilized. I argue that outlaw narratives become particularly popular and poignant at moments of national political and ecological crisis—as they did during the Viking attacks of the Anglo-Saxon period, the epoch of intense natural change following the Norman Conquest, and the beginning of the market revolution at the end of the Middle Ages. Figures like the Anglo-Saxon resistance fighter Hereward, the exiled Marcher lord Fulk Fitz Waryn, and the brutal yet courtly Gamelyn and Robin Hood, represent a lost England imagined as pristine and forested.
    [Show full text]
  • The Death Penalty: History, Exonerations, and Moratoria
    THEMES & DEBATES The Death Penalty: History, Exonerations, and Moratoria Martin Donohoe, MD Today’s topic is the death penalty. I will discuss is released to suffocate the prisoner, was introduced multiple areas related to the death penalty, including in 1924. its history; major Supreme Court decisions; contem- In 2001, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled that porary status; racial differences; errors and exonera- electrocution violates the Constitution’s prohibition tions; public opinion; moratoria; and ethics and mo- against cruel and unusual punishment, stating that it rality. I will also refute common myths, including causes “excruciating pain…cooked brains and blis- those that posit that the death penalty is humane; tered bodies.” In 2008, Nebraska became the last equally applied across the states; used largely by remaining state to agree. “Western” countries; color-blind; infallible; a deter- In the 1970s and 1980s, anesthesiologist Stanley rent to crime; and moral. Deutsch and pathologist Jay Chapman developed From ancient times through the 18th Century, techniques of lethal injection, along with a death methods of execution included crucifixion, crushing cocktail consisting of 3 drugs designed to “humane- by elephant, keelhauling, the guillotine, and, non- ly” kill inmates: an anesthetic, a paralyzing agent, metaphorically, death by a thousand cuts. and potassium chloride (which stops the heart beat- Between 1608 and 1972, there were an estimated ing). Lethal injection was first used in Texas in 1982 15,000 state-sanctioned executions in the colonies, and is now the predominant mode of execution in and later the United States. this country. Executions in the 19th and much of the 20th Cen- Death by lethal injection cannot be considered tury were carried out by hanging, known as lynching humane.
    [Show full text]
  • JPP 22-1 to Printers
    RESPONSE A Few Words on the Last Words of Condemned Prisoners Robert Johnson ast words are the existential centerpiece of executions. The prisoner, Lby his last words, gives meaning to the execution as the culmination of his life (see Johnson et al., 2013). His life has come to this place, the death house, a remarkable fact about which remarks are warranted. Whether eloquent or inarticulate, terse or rambling, the prisoner’s last words are the last word about his life. Even saying nothing is saying something in this context, communicating that the person at this fateful juncture of his life is rendered speechless by the enormity of the violence that awaits him, made mute by the unspeakable cruelty of the killing process. I do not use the words enormity and unspeakable here without cause. In the execution chamber, a healthy person, often young and fully under the control of the authorities, is put to death by an execution team that works from a rigid script, captive to rote, unfeeling procedure (see Johnson, 1998). The execution team performs in front of an audience of people – for the most part, offcial witnesses and correctional offcials –who look on and do nothing, say nothing. They watch the prisoner die, then fle out and go home, carrying the scent of the death house with them out into the free world. That scent, which my feld research on the execution process led me to describe in a poem as “a / devil’s brew of / mildew, fesh, and / fear”, has a way of lingering in the sense memories of those touched by executions (Johnson, 2010, p.
    [Show full text]
  • FROM CAPITAL PUNISHMENT AS a LAWFUL SANCTION to a PEREMPTORY, INTERNATIONAL LAW NORM BARRING EXECUTIONS John D
    University of Baltimore Law ScholarWorks@University of Baltimore School of Law All Faculty Scholarship Faculty Scholarship 2018 THE ABOLITIONIST MOVEMENT COMES OF AGE: FROM CAPITAL PUNISHMENT AS A LAWFUL SANCTION TO A PEREMPTORY, INTERNATIONAL LAW NORM BARRING EXECUTIONS John D. Bessler University of Baltimore School of Law, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.law.ubalt.edu/all_fac Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation John D. Bessler, THE ABOLITIONIST MOVEMENT COMES OF AGE: FROM CAPITAL PUNISHMENT AS A LAWFUL SANCTION TO A PEREMPTORY, INTERNATIONAL LAW NORM BARRING EXECUTIONS, 79 Montana Law Review 8 (2018). Available at: https://scholarworks.law.ubalt.edu/all_fac/1065 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at ScholarWorks@University of Baltimore School of Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@University of Baltimore School of Law. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ARTICLES THE ABOLITIONIST MOVEMENT COMES OF AGE: FROM CAPITAL PUNISHMENT AS A LAWFUL SANCTION TO A PEREMPTORY, INTERNATIONAL LAW NORM BARRING EXECUTIONS John D. Bessler* ABSTRACT The anti-death penalty movement is rooted in the Enlightenment, dating back to the publication of the Italian philosopher Cesare Beccaria’s treatise, Dei delitti e delle pene (1764). That book, later translated into English as An Essay on Crimes and Punishments (1767), has inspired anti-death penalty * Associate Professor, University of Baltimore School of Law; Adjunct Professor, Georgetown University Law Center; Of Counsel, Berens & Miller, P.A, Minneapolis, Minnesota. The author, who will be a visiting scholar/research fellow at the Human Rights Center of the University of Minnesota Law School in 2018, recently wrote The Death Penalty as Torture: From the Dark Ages to Abolition (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2017).
    [Show full text]
  • Criminal Justice: Capital Punishment Focus
    Criminal Justice: Capital Punishment Focus Background The formal execution of criminals has been used in nearly all societies since the beginning of recorded history. Before the beginning of humane capital punishment used in today’s society, penalties included boiling to death, flaying, slow slicing, crucifixion, impalement, crushing, disembowelment, stoning, burning, decapitation, dismemberment and scaphism. In earlier times, the death penalty was used for a variety of reasons that today would seem barbaric. Today, execution in the US is used primarily for murder, espionage and treason. The Death Debate Those in support of capital punishment believe it deters crimes and, more often than not believe that certain crimes eliminate one’s right to life. Those who oppose capital punishment believe, first and foremost, that any person, including the government, has no right to take a life for any reason. They often believe that living with one’s crimes is a worse punishment than dying for them, and that the threat of capital punishment will not deter a person from committing a crime. Costs and Procedures On average, it costs $620,932 per trial in federal death cases, which is 8x higher than that of a case where the death penalty is not sought. When including appeals, incarceration times and the execution in a death penalty case, the cost is closer to $3 million per inmate. However, court costs, attorney fees and incarceration for life only totals a little over $1 million. Recent studies have also found that the higher the cost of legal counsel in a death penalty case the less likely the defendant is to receive the death penalty, which calls the fairness of the process into question.
    [Show full text]
  • Capital Punishment, Execution Publicity and Murder in Houston, Texas Lisa Stolzenberg
    Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology Volume 94 Article 4 Issue 2 Winter Winter 2004 Capital Punishment, Execution Publicity and Murder in Houston, Texas Lisa Stolzenberg Stewart J. D'Alessio Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/jclc Part of the Criminal Law Commons, Criminology Commons, and the Criminology and Criminal Justice Commons Recommended Citation Lisa Stolzenberg, Stewart J. D'Alessio, Capital Punishment, Execution Publicity and Murder in Houston, Texas, 94 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 351 (2003-2004) This Criminology is brought to you for free and open access by Northwestern University School of Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology by an authorized editor of Northwestern University School of Law Scholarly Commons. 0091-4169/04/9402-0351 THE JOURNALOF CRIMINAL LAW & CRIMINOLOGY Vol. 94, No. 2 Copyright 0 2004 by Northwestern University, School of Law Prined in U.S.A. CAPITAL PUNISHMENT, EXECUTION PUBLICITY AND MURDER IN HOUSTON, TEXAS LISA STOLZENBERG & STEWART J. D'ALESSIO* Punishment is not inflicted by a rational man for the sake of the crime that has been committed-after all one cannot undo what is past-butfor the sake of the future, to prevent either the same man or, by the spectacle of his punishment, someone else, from doing wrong again. - Plato, Protagoras I. INTRODUCTION Healthy debate persists as to the deterrent effect of capital punishment. Although an expansive and diverse body of research has accumulated that examines the effect of executions or execution publicity on murder rates, this research affords few definitive conclusions.
    [Show full text]
  • LWVLL Position Statement to Abolish Death Penalty 4-30-2016
    The League of Women Voters of Lincoln and Lancaster County Supports Abolition of the Death Penalty in Nebraska We believe the State of Nebraska should not be executing or threatening to execute its own people. Almost all developed countries of the world have already abolished the death penalty. The League of Women Voters of Lincoln and Lancaster County joins the call for abolition of the death penalty. Our reasons for urging abolition of the death penalty: 1. The death penalty is applied arbitrarily. 2. Innocent people have been convicted and executed in Nebraska 3. The costs associated with trying and executing an individual greatly exceed the cost of life sentences without parole. 4. Repeated studies regarding the death penalty have shown that the death penalty is no more a deterrent than life imprisonment without parole. The League of Women Voters of Lincoln and Lancaster County concurs with the National League of Women Voters of the United States and the League of Women Voters of Illinois’ position on abolition of the death penalty and joins with the following states in concurrence: Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Wisconsin. This position was adopted by a concurrence process February 11, 2016. It was further reviewed and approved at the Lincoln/Lancaster Annual General Membership Meeting on April 30, 2016 to be consistent with the LWVNE position statement and to be incorporated into the League of Women Voters of Lincoln and Lancaster County Impact on Issues. Supporting documentation and references can be found at our website www.lincolnleague.org 1 1.
    [Show full text]
  • The Peformative Grotesquerie of the Crucifixion of Jesus
    THE GROTESQUE CROSS: THE PERFORMATIVE GROTESQUERIE OF THE CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS Hephzibah Darshni Dutt A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2015 Committee: Jonathan Chambers, Advisor Charles Kanwischer Graduate Faculty Representative Eileen Cherry Chandler Marcus Sherrell © 2015 Hephzibah Dutt All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT Jonathan Chambers, Advisor In this study I argue that the crucifixion of Jesus is a performative event and this event is an exemplar of the Grotesque. To this end, I first conduct a dramatistic analysis of the crucifixion of Jesus, working to explicate its performativity. Viewing this performative event through the lens of the Grotesque, I then discuss its various grotesqueries, to propose the concept of the Grotesque Cross. As such, the term “Grotesque Cross” functions as shorthand for the performative event of the crucifixion of Jesus, as it is characterized by various aspects of the Grotesque. I develop the concept of the Grotesque Cross thematically through focused studies of representations of the crucifixion: the film, Jesus of Montreal (Arcand, 1989), Philip Turner’s play, Christ in the Concrete City, and an autoethnographic examination of Cross-wearing as performance. I examine each representation through the lens of the Grotesque to define various facets of the Grotesque Cross. iv For Drs. Chetty and Rukhsana Dutt, beloved holy monsters & Hannah, Abhishek, and Esther, my fellow aliens v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in instructing catechumens, wrote, “The dragon sits by the side of the road, watching those who pass.
    [Show full text]
  • The Crucifixion - Medical Account
    The Crucifixion - Medical Account The Passion of Christ from a Medical Point of view C. Truman Davis, M.D., M.S . (Originally published in Arizona Medical Association’s Arizona Medicine , March, 1965.) In this paper, I shall discuss some of the physical aspects nailed to the top of the cross would have given it of the passion, or suffering, of Jesus Christ. We shall somewhat the characteristic form of the Latin cross. follow Him from Gethsemane, through His trial, His scourging, His path along the Via Dolorosa; to His last The physical passion of the Christ begins in dying hours on the cross. This led me first to a study of Gethsemane. Of the many aspects of this initial the practice of crucifixion itself; that is, the torture and suffering, I shall only discuss the one of physiological execution of a person by fixation to a cross. Apparently, interest; the bloody sweat. It is interesting that the the first known practice of crucifixion was by the physician of the group, St. Luke, is the only one to Persians. Alexander and his generals brought it back to mention this. He says, “And being in agony, He the Mediterranean world - Egypt and Carthage. The prayed the longer. And his sweat became as drops of Romans apparently learned the practice from the blood, trickling down upon the ground”. Carthaginians and (as with almost everything the Romans did) rapidly developed a very high degree of efficiency Every attempt imaginable has been used by modern and skill in carry it out. A number of Roman authors scholars to explain away this phrase, apparently under (Livy, Cicero, Tacitys) comment on it.
    [Show full text]
  • The Physical Death of Jesus Christ: the “Swoon Theory” and the Medical Response
    Providence College DigitalCommons@Providence Spring 2015, Faith and Science Liberal Arts Honors Program 5-5-2015 The Physical Death of Jesus Christ: The “Swoon Theory” and the Medical Response Kate Hill Providence College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.providence.edu/faith_science_2015 Part of the Christianity Commons, and the Medicine and Health Sciences Commons Hill, Kate, "The Physical Death of Jesus Christ: The “Swoon Theory” and the Medical Response" (2015). Spring 2015, Faith and Science. 1. https://digitalcommons.providence.edu/faith_science_2015/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Liberal Arts Honors Program at DigitalCommons@Providence. It has been accepted for inclusion in Spring 2015, Faith and Science by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Providence. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Physical Death of Jesus Christ: The “Swoon Theory” and the Medical Response Kate Hill HON 481 – 002 Honors Colloquium: Faith and Science Final Paper May 5, 2015 Hill, 1 The Crucifixion and the Resurrection are arguably two of the most important occurrences in the life of Jesus Christ. Although there are many dominations of Christianity in the world today, all Christians hold at least one belief in common: Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died on the cross, rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven. There are some skeptics, however, who argue that Jesus never actually died on the cross. Because Jesus’ death and resurrection are part of the foundation of the Christian religion, if this hypothesis were true, it would call the entire Christian system of beliefs into question.
    [Show full text]
  • The Romance of Revenge: Capital Punishment in America Samuel R
    University of Michigan Law School University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository Articles Faculty Scholarship 1993 The Romance of Revenge: Capital Punishment in America Samuel R. Gross University of Michigan Law School, [email protected] Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/articles/1424 Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/articles Part of the Criminal Law Commons, Criminal Procedure Commons, Law and Society Commons, and the Legal History Commons Recommended Citation Gross, Samuel R. "The Romance of Revenge: Capital Punishment in America." Stud. L. Pol. & Soc'y 13 (1993): 71-104. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles by an authorized administrator of University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE ROMANCE OF REVENGE: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN AMERICA Samuel R. Gross Before serving on the Royal Commission [on Capital Punishment] ... I should probably have said that I was in favor of the death penalty, and disposed to regard abolitionists as people whose hearts were bigger than their heads. Four years of close study of the subject gradually dispelled that feeling. In the end I became convinced that the abolitionists were right in their conclusions-though I could not agree with ali their arguments-and that so far from the sentimental approach leading into their camp and the rational one into that of the supporters, it was the other way about. -Sir Ernest Gowers (1956, p.
    [Show full text]
  • Stoning Single Nigerian Mothers for Adultery: Applying Feminist Theory to an Analysis of Gender Discrimination in International Law Sarah Crutcher
    Hastings Women’s Law Journal Volume 15 | Number 2 Article 6 1-1-2004 Stoning Single Nigerian Mothers for Adultery: Applying Feminist Theory to an Analysis of Gender Discrimination in International Law Sarah Crutcher Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/hwlj Part of the Law and Gender Commons Recommended Citation Sarah Crutcher, Stoning Single Nigerian Mothers for Adultery: Applying Feminist Theory to an Analysis of Gender Discrimination in International Law, 15 Hastings Women's L.J. 239 (2004). Available at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/hwlj/vol15/iss2/6 This Note is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Hastings Women’s Law Journal by an authorized editor of UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Stoning Single Nigerian Mothers for Adultery: Applying Feminist Theory to an Analysis of Gender Discrimination in International Law Sarah Crutcher* I. INTRODUCTION A. THE CURRENT STATE OF NIGERIAN MOTHERS IN ISLAMIC SHARIA COURTS In Nigeria, an Islamic court in the northern town of Funtua sentenced a woman to be stoned to death for having sex outside of marriage.' Amina Lawal Kurami ("Lawal") was first sentenced in March 2003 after giving birth to her daughter more than nine months after divorcing - an indication of guilt under the law. 2 Her sentence was to be carried out as soon as her baby was weaned.3 Had it gone forward, the sentence would have been administered publicly: after burying Lawal in dirt up to her neck, the male villagers would throw stones at her head until she died, a process which has been known to take hours.4 The man she named as her baby's father denied the validity of his paternity, and was consequently acquitted for lack of evidence .5 Since 1999, a dozen states in northern Nigeria, mainly populated by Muslims, have adopted the strict moral and legal code of Islam, Sharia 6 into their legal system.
    [Show full text]