Author: John D. Bessler
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781611639261
Category : Capital punishment
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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The Death Penalty as Torture: From the Dark Ages to Abolition was named a Bronze Medalist in the World History category of the Independent Publisher Book Awards and a finalist in the Eric Hoffer Book Awards (2018). During the Dark Ages and the Renaissance, Europe's monarchs often resorted to torture and executions. The pain inflicted by instruments of torture--from the thumbscrew and the rack to the Inquisition's tools of torment--was eclipsed only by horrific methods of execution, from breaking on the wheel and crucifixion to drawing and quartering and burning at the stake. The English "Bloody Code" made more than 200 crimes punishable by death, and judicial torture--expressly authorized by law and used to extract confessions--permeated continental European legal systems. Judges regularly imposed death sentences and other harsh corporal punishments, from the stocks and the pillory, to branding and ear cropping, to lashes at public whipping posts. In the Enlightenment, jurists and writers questioned the efficacy of torture and capital punishment. In 1764, the Italian philosopher Cesare Beccaria--the father of the world's anti-death penalty movement--condemned both practices. And Montesquieu, like Beccaria and others, concluded that any punishment that goes beyond absolute necessity is tyrannical. Traditionally, torture and executions have been viewed in separate legal silos, with countries renouncing acts of torture while simultaneously using capital punishment. The UN Convention Against Torture strictly prohibits physical or psychological torture; not even war or threat of war can be invoked to justify it. But under the guise of "lawful sanctions," some countries continue to carry out executions even though they bear the indicia of torture. In The Death Penalty as Torture, Prof. John Bessler argues that death sentences and executions are medieval relics. In a world in which "mock" or simulated executions, as well as a host of other non-lethal acts, are already considered to be torturous, he contends that death sentences and executions should be classified under the rubric of torture. Unlike in the Middle Ages, penitentiaries--one of the products of the Enlightenment--now exist throughout the globe to house violent offenders. With the rise of life without parole sentences, and with more than four of five nations no longer using executions, The Death Penalty as Torture calls for the recognition of a peremptory, international law norm against the death penalty's use.
Author: William Schabas
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 9781555532680
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 334
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1890 edition. Excerpt: ...said Mr. Fogg. "Well, your honor," replied the pilot, " I can risk neither my men, nor myself, nor yourself, in so long a voyage on a boat of scarcely twenty tons, at this time of the year. Besides, we would not arrive in time, for it is sixteen hundred and fifty miles from Hong Kong to Yokohama." "Only sixteen hundred," said Mr. Fogg. "It is the same thing." Fix took a good long breath. " But," added the pilot, " there might perhaps be a means to arrange it otherwise." Fix did not breathe any more. "How?" asked Phileas Fogg. " By going to Nagasaki, the southern extremity of Japan, eleven hundred miles, or only to Shanghai, eight Imndred miles from Hong Kong. In this last journey, we wold not be at any distance from the Chinese coast, which v uld be a great advantage, all the more so that the currents run to the north." "Pilot," replied Phileas Fogg, "I must lake the American mail steamer at Yokohama, and not at Shanghai or Nagasaki." "Why not? "replied the pilot " The San Francisco stewnet does not start from Yokohama. She stops there and at Nagasaki, but her port of departure is Shanghai." You are certain of what you are saying? " "Certain." "And when does the steamer leave Shanghai? "On the llth, atseven oclock in the evening. We have then four days before us. Four days, that is ninety-six hours, and with an average of eight knots an hour, if we have good luck, if the wind keeps to the southeast, if the sea is calm, we can make the eight hundred miles which separate us from Shanghai." "And you can leave--" " la an hour, time enough to buy my provisions and hoist sail." " It is a bargain--you are the master of the boat? " " Yes, John Bunsby, master of the Tankadere." " Do you wish some earnest money? " " If it does not inconvenience...
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309254167
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 144
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Many studies during the past few decades have sought to determine whether the death penalty has any deterrent effect on homicide rates. Researchers have reached widely varying, even contradictory, conclusions. Some studies have concluded that the threat of capital punishment deters murders, saving large numbers of lives; other studies have concluded that executions actually increase homicides; still others, that executions have no effect on murder rates. Commentary among researchers, advocates, and policymakers on the scientific validity of the findings has sometimes been acrimonious. Against this backdrop, the National Research Council report Deterrence and the Death Penalty assesses whether the available evidence provides a scientific basis for answering questions of if and how the death penalty affects homicide rates. This new report from the Committee on Law and Justice concludes that research to date on the effect of capital punishment on homicide rates is not useful in determining whether the death penalty increases, decreases, or has no effect on these rates. The key question is whether capital punishment is less or more effective as a deterrent than alternative punishments, such as a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Yet none of the research that has been done accounted for the possible effect of noncapital punishments on homicide rates. The report recommends new avenues of research that may provide broader insight into any deterrent effects from both capital and noncapital punishments.
Author: Lynden Harris
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 147802142X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 250
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Upon receiving his execution date, one of the thousands of men living on death row in the United States had an epiphany: “All there ever is, is this moment. You, me, all of us, right here, right now, this minute, that's love.” Right Here, Right Now collects the powerful, first-person stories of dozens of men on death rows across the country. From childhood experiences living with poverty, hunger, and violence to mental illness and police misconduct to coming to terms with their executions, these men outline their struggle to maintain their connection to society and sustain the humanity that incarceration and its daily insults attempt to extinguish. By offering their hopes, dreams, aspirations, fears, failures, and wounds, the men challenge us to reconsider whether our current justice system offers actual justice or simply perpetuates the social injustices that obscure our shared humanity.
Author: Leon Shaskolsky Sheleff
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780814205310
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 508
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Author: Petra Schmidt
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004124219
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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This book provides an overview of capital punishment in Japan in a legal, historical, social, cultural and political context. It provides new insights into the system, challenges traditional views and arguments and seeks the real reasons behind the retention of capital punishment in Japan.
Author: David Garland
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814732801
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 244
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Over the past three decades, the United States has embraced the death penalty with tenacious enthusiasm. While most of those countries whose legal systems and cultures are normally compared to the United States have abolished capital punishment, the United States continues to employ this ultimate tool of punishment. The death penalty has achieved an unparalleled prominence in our public life and left an indelible imprint on our politics and culture. It has also provoked intense scholarly debate, much of it devoted to explaining the roots of American exceptionalism. America’s Death Penalty takes a different approach to the issue by examining the historical and theoretical assumptions that have underpinned the discussion of capital punishment in the United States today. At various times the death penalty has been portrayed as an anachronism, an inheritance, or an innovation, with little reflection on the consequences that flow from the choice of words. This volume represents an effort to restore the sense of capital punishment as a question caught up in history. Edited by leading scholars of crime and justice, these original essays pursue different strategies for unsettling the usual terms of the debate. In particular, the authors use comparative and historical investigations of both Europe and America in order to cast fresh light on familiar questions about the meaning of capital punishment. This volume is essential reading for understanding the death penalty in America. Contributors: David Garland, Douglas Hay, Randall McGowen, Michael Meranze, Rebecca McLennan, and Jonathan Simon.
Author: Ernest Van den Haag
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1489927875
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 314
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From 1965 until 1980, there was a virtual moratorium on executions for capital offenses in the United States. This was due primarily to protracted legal proceedings challenging the death penalty on constitutional grounds. After much Sturm und Drang, the Supreme Court of the United States, by a divided vote, finally decided that "the death penalty does not invariably violate the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause of the Eighth Amendment." The Court's decisions, however, do not moot the controversy about the death penalty or render this excellent book irrelevant. The ball is now in the court of the Legislature and the Executive. Leg islatures, federal and state, can impose or abolish the death penalty, within the guidelines prescribed by the Supreme Court. A Chief Executive can commute a death sentence. And even the Supreme Court can change its mind, as it has done on many occasions and did, with respect to various aspects of the death penalty itself, durlog the moratorium period. Also, the people can change their minds. Some time ago, a majority, according to reliable polls, favored abolition. Today, a substantial majority favors imposition of the death penalty. The pendulum can swing again, as it has done in the past.
Author: Louis P. Pojman
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 0585080682
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 189
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Two distinguished social and political philosophers take opposing positions in this highly engaging work. Louis P. Pojman justifies the practice of execution by appealing to the principle of retribution: we deserve to be rewarded and punished according to the virtue or viciousness of our actions. He asserts that the death penalty does deter some potential murderers and that we risk the lives of innocent people who might otherwise live if we refuse to execute those deserving that punishment. Jeffrey Reiman argues that although the death penalty is a just punishment for murder, we are not morally obliged to execute murderers. Since we lack conclusive evidence that executing murderers is an effective deterrent and because we can foster the advance of civilization by demonstrating our intolerance for cruelty in our unwillingness to kill those who kill others, Reiman concludes that it is good in principle to avoid the death penalty, and bad in practice to impose it.
Author: James Anson Farrer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Capital punishment
Languages : en
Pages : 306
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