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About 1 in 10 murders in the United States are committed by a woman. Meanwhile, only about 1 in 50 death row inmates are women. This initially suggests that women are favored in capital cases. There have been two predominant viewpoints attempting to explain the statistical imbalance: on the one hand there is Rapaport’s theory of gender-related crime in relation to existing legal directives on what warrants a capital sentence; and on the other hand is Streib’s theory of chivalry, that women are receiving lenient treatment in capital cases because they are women. This study has examined both theories, and tested their validity, by analyzing statistics and other material supporting or opposing their respective claims. The entire study has been carried out through a feminist theoretical perspective, questioning how “gender” plays an active part in capital cases, and relating committed crime to the victim, subsequently finding that even though Rapaport and Streib advance different theories, neither theory supports a claim that favoritism is incorrect.

No / Recent research by Andrew Reynolds has interrogated the archaeological record for evidence of Anglo-Saxon execution cemeteries (Reynolds 2009). This paper will discuss how osteological evidence can aid our interpretation of Anglo-Saxon capital punishment and give insight into the type of evidence that might aid in the identification of corporal punishment from skeletal populations. The importance of correctly interpreting skeletal trauma is essential, but this can be supported by scrutinising the palaeodemographic profile of execution populations, burial position, an understanding the decomposition process and the significance of post-depositional disturbance of burials. It will lay down a framework for the successful identification of corporal and capital p unishments, with reference to Anglo-Saxon documentary sources. / Full text of the author's final draft is unavailable due to copyright restrictions.

A 2008 Gallup poll places public support for the death penalty at 64 percent. Stemming from an observation of how little is known about the death penalty, this study sheds light on six key areas of the death penalty: cruel and unusual punishment, deterrence potential, innocence, discrimination, cost, and the challenges created for the legitimacy of America's moral leadership internationally in conjunction with our evolving standards of decency. Following a review of existing literature, six conclusions were made. The first is the methods of execution authorized in this country are not administered "painlessly," and in accordance to the Eighth Amendment. The second is there is n~ evidence to support the claim that the death penalty has a deterrent effect. The third is innocent people have been sentenced to death. The fourth is the death penalty is being applied based on legally improper criteria (race, gender, and socioeconomic class). The fifth is from a strictly financial perspective the death penalty is unreasonable. Lastly is that maintaining our moral leadership as well as the death penalty cannot be done in the eyes of the international community, and the death penalty is on the decline. This study expands upon existing literature regarding the aforementioned six key areas of interests, through the use of a non-experimental, descriptive research survey. Results suggest that although an overwhelming majority of subjects are not knowledgeable about the death penalty, 45 percent still support the death penalty. Education may be the key to bringing a decline in support for the death penalty; those who have taken a class on the death penalty, or are currently taking one support the death penalty 17.4-19.9 percent (respectively) less than those who have never taken a class on the death penalty. In conclusion, support for the death penalty may be related to a lack of knowledge.

When the United States Supreme Court approved the reinstatement of the death penalty in the United States in 1976, it did so based on the promise of new safeguards against comparative excessiveness and relative disproportionality resulting from jury sentencing in capital cases. As Justice Stevens noted in 2008, one of these safeguards – meaningful appellate review of death sentences – is, in practice, non-existent. This thesis examines the use of this purported safeguard by the Ohio Supreme Court, in the form of comparative proportionality review, to determine the degree to which Ohio capital cases are ‘relatively proportionate’ in the time period after the state adopted life without parole as a sentencing option in 1996. Specifically, this thesis employs two approaches to identifying ‘similar’ cases – the overall aggravation approach (through logistic regression analysis) and the fact specific approach – and then compares each death sentence to its group of ‘similar’ cases to determine whether it is relatively proportionate, given the death sentencing ratio of its comparable group. After establishing that at least forty per cent of Ohio cases were relatively disproportionate, the thesis argues that Ohio’s current approach violates the requirements of the Eighth Amendment. In particular, the Court’s failure to examine cases sentenced to life as part of its proportionality review and its use of the precedent-seeking approach has the outcome of ignoring death sentences that are comparatively excessive. Finally, the thesis concludes by offering a normative model by which Ohio can improve its administration of comparative proportionality review. The thesis advocates the use of a ‘purposive’ approach, defining ‘similarity’ on the basis of the intended purpose of punishment, and suggesting that just deserts retribution provides the best approach for determining ‘similarity’.

Whether the capital sentencing statute in Texas provides a vehicle for jurors to give effect to mitigation evidence has been a critical factor when the United States Supreme Court has sought to determine its constitutionality. Unlike the majority of other American jurisdictions which maintain capital punishment as a penalty, Texas utilizes a particularly unique scheme which places an assessment of the defendant’s dangerousness at the center of the sentencing decision. Using data gathered from personally conducted interviews with forty-six former capital jurors and trial transcripts from each trial in which they served, this thesis demonstrates how the current sentencing scheme in Texas fails to provide jurors with an adequate vehicle for considering mitigation evidence. Beginning with an analysis of the process of jury selection this study examines the various ways in which the sentencing scheme is explained to potential jurors by the judge, prosecution, and defense attorneys. Of crucial importance is how the mitigation instruction is reconstituted by trial judges and prosecutors into an extension of the defendant’s potential future dangerousness. Emerging from this analysis is the central role that the interpretation of the sentencing statute by legal actors play in determining how jurors view the evidence presented throughout the trial, as well as what factors they believe they are legally permitted to consider in sentencing. The findings of this study strongly suggest that the focus of the sentencing scheme on the defendant’s dangerousness inhibits jurors’ ability to view mitigation evidence unrelated to the crime as mitigating. Thus, the Texas capital sentencing statute in its application appears to prevent jurors from giving effect to personal mitigation, an essential element of a constitutionally satisfactory death penalty statute.

The situation of the influence of human rights issues related to capital punishment has for long been a matter of debate, especially regarding the retention and abolition of the death penalty. Various countries have, during the 20th century, changed their laws and approach on capital punishment with the implementation and adoption of human rights conventions. Opinions and actions taken from international actors like the United Nations and Amnesty International will be analyzed in this thesis as these could contribute in the understanding of the human rights movement which, during the last century, has changed many countries strict retentionist approach on capital punishment to an abolitionist view.   The People’s Republic of China and the Philippines will be implemented as case studies in this thesis which aims to investigate if and how human rights issues are influencing capital punishment in these two countries. The concept of legitimacy will be used as theoretical framework in order to identify changes within three sub-concepts of legitimacy namely morality, legality, and constitutionality. These concepts will, with the help of legitimacy, offer an explanation of how the case studies have handled human rights issues in relation to the death penalty. The arguments behind the decision making of laws, regulations and policies in China and the Philippines will also be of interest in the answering of the research question as these arguments could act as changes within legality and constitutionality. Regarding the moral stand behind the practice of capital punishment, the concept of morality will assist this thesis in the explaining and understanding of the ethics behind the choice of the death penalty.   The findings of this thesis demonstrate that social structures such as history, culture, politics, and norms are important aspects in the decision- and law making of capital punishment in China and the Philippines. Obstacles identified are linked to the approach on the death penalty from the governments which, in both case studies, have a history of neglecting human rights issues. However, as China has started to reconsider their stand on capital punishment, the Philippine regime has implemented an even stricter approach on the death penalty which demonstrates that the matter of human rights issues regarding capital punishment, in the two case studies, is a complicated battle between retention and abolition and the contest of legitimacy.

Cette thèse a trait à la représentation de la peine capitale pendant la période moderne et se situe au carrefour des domaines poétique, politique et éthique. Trois auteurs majeurs qui appréhendent l’imaginaire de l’exécution de manière contrastée sont pris en considération — Hugo, Baudelaire et Camus. L’examen des stratégies de représentation qu’ils élaborent afin de promouvoir ou de dénoncer le couperet révèle que, après 1789, la littérature opère comme le support privilégié d’un questionnement sur l’efficacité de la justice létale et sur sa négation de l’intégrité et de la communication humaines. Réciproquement, l’image moderne de la décapitation met le langage littéraire face à sa difficulté à représenter des événements qui outrepassent à la fois solidarité sociale et entendement humain. En identifiant et en analysant le dialogue noué entre trois écritures qui explorent cette dynamique réciproque, l’on démontre qu’elles mettent à mal deux présupposés; l’un pénal, et l’autre littéraire. D’une part, malgré leur désaccord quant à la recevabilité de la peine capitale et quant à la fonction de la littérature, chacun des auteurs concernés invalide, de manière explicite ou implicite, les prémisses progressistes qui légitimèrent la guillotine depuis la Révolution française jusqu’à l’abolition. D’autre part, cette invalidation des prétendues vertus de l’échafaud figure dans des textes qui compliquent l’opposition conventionnelle entre une littérature essentiellement soucieuse d’esthétique et une autre inquiète des questions politiques. Loin de conforter cet antagonisme, les œuvres étudiées ouvrent le paradigme restreint de la littérature dite engagée à des formes inattendues de discours éthiques. / This dissertation pertains to the representation of capital punishment in the modern period. It sets out to answer the question “How does post-Revolutionary literature act in the face of Western society’s most violent legal practice, the death penalty?” It focuses on three canonical authors who portray the imaginaire of execution in contrasting ways and investigates the intersection of poetics, politics, and ethics. The writings forged by Hugo, Baudelaire, and Camus to promote or denounce capital punishment show that literature served as a medium that questions the law’s negation of human values and communication after 1789. Conversely, the modern image of decapitation confronts language with the limits of its power to represent events that exceed social solidarity and human understanding. By placing the three writers in a transhistorical dialogue that explores this reciprocal dynamics, I demonstrate that they undo two preconceptions: one penal, and the other literary. First, despite their disagreement on the legitimacy of lethal justice and the function of literature, the authors invalidate, explicitly or implicitly, the premises that legitimated the guillotine from the French Revolution until the abolition of capital punishment in 1981: the supposed painlessness and immediacy of beheading, and the machine’s ability to maintain order in society. Second, this invalidation of the supposed virtues of head severance emerges from texts that complicate the apparent divide between strictly aesthetic literature and politically committed writing. On the contrary, these works open up the restrictive category of littérature engagée to new, unexpected forms of ethical discourses. [1697 carac.]

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and their role as mitigators in capital sentencing is an important, yet relatively unexplored, topic in criminological literature. Using data from the North Carolina Capital Sentencing Project, this study explores the role of ACEs as mitigating factors for youthful and non-youthful capital offenders: whether youthful offenders are less likely to be sentenced to death, whether or not ACEs are effective as mitigating factors, and whether ACE mitigators are more effective for youthful or non-youthful offenders. Results show that youthful capital offenders are less likely to be sentenced to death than adult capital offenders, and while ACE variables effectively mitigate against a death sentence, they do not mitigate more effectively for youthful offenders than non-youthful offenders. These findings, along with policy implications and directions for future research, are then discussed.