Capital Punishment

The United States is the only Western democratic nation to practice capital punishment in the 21st century. Lethal injection was introduced in the late 1970s as a more palatable alternative to evidently brutal methods of execution such as electrocution, hanging, and firing squads. Today, executions are staged as a quasi-medical procedure in which the inmate/patient is put to sleep – and put to death – on a gurney, hooked up to an IV machine, sometimes with the direct participation of medical professionals such as anesthesiologists. Medical knowledge and authority is both invoked to justify the practice of lethal injection and also strictly limited in its capacity to critique, or even to optimize, this practice.  In the Supreme Court case, Baze v Rees (2008), prisoners on Kentucky’s death row called for the use of medical technology and expertise to minimize pain during execution.  The court denied their request, but in response to a dissenting opinion, many states introduced manual “consciousness checks” which function as both a both biopolitical ritual of care and a necropolitical ritual of social death. Following Foucault, this chapter analyses the current practice of lethal injection in the US as a form of ‘grotesque sovereignty’ or Ubu-esque power.

Published in The Edinburgh Companion to the Critical Medical Humanities. Ed. Anne Whitehead and Angela Woods. Edinburgh University Press, 2016.

I denne boken tar Audun Kjus oss til 1200-tallet og til innføringen
av dødsstraff og strafferett i Norge. Boken handler om lovgivning,
henrettelsesmåter og kongelig benådning. Samtidig får vi
et innblikk i middelalderens ideologi og forestillingsverden.
Originaltekster og sentrale illustrasjoner bidrar til å levendegjøre
denne delen av norsk historie.

The “Holy Heads“ of Peter and Paul, attested in the 11th century within a secondary altar of the Laurentius-Oratory in the Patriarchium Lateranense and later on inside the main altar of the Sancta Sanctorum, increased their status exponentially after having been transferred by Pope Urban V (1368-70) into the Lateran Basilica. Imbedded in two huge, lavishly decorated anthropomorphic reliquiaries realized by the Sienese goldsmith Giovanni di Bartolo they were inclosed high up, in the “safe“ of the new tabernacle above the main altar of the Cathedral of Rome. The new mise-en-scène emphasized their role as symbols of the double apostolicity of Rome and of the Roman Church restored after the (temporary) return of the Papacy from Avignon. In the late 14th and15th Century the Capita apostolorum became one of the most prestigious and popular treasures of relics in Rome in competition with the Veronica at the Vatican. As objects of desire the holy remains of the skulls of Peter and Paul in their precious containers – displayed only few times a year – attracted not only pilgrims, but also thieves. A lost fresco cycle in the transept realized shortly after the attempt to steal some jewels and gems from the reliquiaries of Peter and Paul in occasion of their display at Easter 1438  should have deterred potential theives with its representation of the cruel punishments bestowed on the alleged culprits.

espanolDesde la Antiguedad la pena de muerte es aplicada como castigo analogo a la accion cometida contra la vida y los credos religiosos. La religion habia asimilado esta sancion como una forma de salvaguardar a los no pecadores, de aquellas personas consideradas como peligrosas para la fe. Su discusion es de larga data y las posiciones a favor y en contra, siempre se'han hecho presentes, En America Latina, las altos indices de criminalidad llevan a que sectores sociales exijan se discuta sobre la necesidad de la aplicacion de la pena capital, como forma de combatir. la inseguridad, lo que desde lo teorico contrapone las teorias retributivas y utilitarias, asi como la normativa internacional en materia de proteccion de derechos humanos. EnglishSince ancient times, death penalty has been applied as a punishmentthat deserves those who attempt against lile and against religious beliefs, Religion had assimilated sanction as a way to preserve it from sinners, people considered as da...

This study examines the relationship between popular music; specifically, death penalty songs, and aggregate death penalty opinion change utilizing an exploratory time series analysis. An assumption of this study is that the public is made conscious of the death penalty as a salient issue through the popular media, e.g., newspaper stories, magazine articles, movies, television programs, and music. Results of this study support the hypotheses that public consciousness about the death penalty as well as changes in aggregate death penalty opinion are associated with the content of popular media in the form of death penalty songs. As the number of death penalty songs increases in a year, death penalty support decreases two years later.

In the mid-1990s, as public trust in big government was near an all-time low, 80% of Americans told Gallup that they supported the death penalty. Why did people who didn’t trust government to regulate the economy or provide daily services nonetheless believe that it should have the power to put its citizens to death?

That question is at the heart of Executing Freedom, a powerful, wide-ranging examination of the place of the death penalty in American culture and how it has changed over the years. Drawing on an array of sources, including congressional hearings and campaign speeches, true crime classics like In Cold Blood, and films like Dead Man Walking, Daniel LaChance shows how attitudes toward the death penalty have reflected broader shifts in Americans’ thinking about the relationship between the individual and the state. Emerging from the height of 1970s disillusion, the simplicity and moral power of the death penalty became a potent symbol for many Americans of what government could do—and LaChance argues, fascinatingly, that it’s the very failure of capital punishment to live up to that mythology that could prove its eventual undoing in the United States.

mistakenly views the promotion of patient autonomy as one of the proper ends of medicine. Rather, I propose, we should view respect for a patient's autonomy as a constraint on the pursuit of the proper ends of medicine, rather than as one of the proper ends itself. With this revised understanding of the proper ends of medicine, we can conclude that it is inconsistent with the proper ends of medicine for a physician to participate in an execution by lethal injection. Bioethics

This paper reviews death penalty perspectives from the United States, Mexico and international law. The United States practices the death penalty on not only its citizens, but those of other nations who commit capital crimes. Mexico is a death penalty abolitionist state that takes significant issue with the United States over executing Mexican nationals. The paper analyzes the cultural, legal and political conflict between the two countries surrounding the application of the death penalty on Mexican nationals.

The death penalty remains a contentious issue even though it has been abolished in countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, European Union member nations and some Asian countries such as Cambodia, East Timor and Nepal. Many argue that the irrevocability of the death penalty, in the face of potential erroneous convictions, can never justify its imposition. The Philippines, the first Asian country that abolished the death penalty in 1987, held the record for the most number of mandatory death offenses (30 offenses) and death eligible offenses (22 offenses) after it was reimposed in 1994. Majority of death penalty convictions were decided based on testimonial evidence. While such cases undergo automatic review by the Supreme Court, the appellate process in the Philippines is not structured to accept post-conviction evidence, including DNA evidence. Because of the compelling nature of post-conviction DNA evidence in overturning death penalty convictions in the United States, different groups advocated its use in the Philippines. In one such case, People v Reynaldo de Villa, the defendant was charged with raping his 13-year-old niece that supposedly led to birth of a female child, a situation commonly known as 'criminal paternity'. This paper reports the results of the first post-conviction DNA test using 16 Short Tandem Repeat (STR) DNA markers in a criminal paternity case (People v Reynaldo de Villa) and discusses the implications of these results in the Philippine criminal justice system.

A number of representative polls have been conducted on the death penalty in recent decades, mainly in the United States, but also in many other countries. Their quality and the usability of their data were different; however, there were some surveys whose authors were interested not only in the percentage of supporters and opponents of the death penalty in a given society at the time of the survey, but also in whether this rate varies in different strata of society and, if so, why. Several polls were conducted, in which, in addition to socio-cultural factors, respondents were asked about their general attitudes (values, religiosity, political preferences, etc.), and some research was also conducted in order to uncover the reasons behind the responses of the interviewees. From all of this, one can gain a clear picture as regards the socio-cultural characteristics of people in general, who are more in favour of the death penalty, as well as regarding what general attitudes respondents have and for what reasons they formed their (either pro- or anti-death penalty) views. The subsequent presentation of the Hungarian surveys will help one to see whether distance in time affects the perception of the social need for capital punishment, and how such need changes over time. Overall, the aim of this study is to present a comprehensive (country- and culture-independent) human approach to the death penalty; that is, the goal is not to examine how many people have supported or opposed the death penalty in a particular country in a given period of time, but to find out what factors influence commitment to or against capital punishment and the causes thereof, and what factors can change people’s attitudes towards the death penalty.

A thorough analysis of capital punishment from a political-geographical perspective is lacking in the discipline of geography. This is despite the fact that capital punishment overlaps with numerous geographic approaches, concepts, and areas of study. This study serves as a call to geographers to begin considering capital punishment's wide interaction and interrelation with developed areas of knowledge in the discipline. Specifically, political geographers stand to contribute in novel ways to wider discussions about capital punishment by analyzing executions relative to contemporary work in geography on violent, legal, and carceral spaces. I first introduce the need for geography's engagement with this pressing issue. Then, I clarify several terms needed to understand this violent practice. A third section highlights several pathways of development in the critical geographies of capital punishment. It is organized around four broad themes-critically mapping capital punishment, bodies in motion, politics of access, and executing the "other"-connecting capital punishment to developing concepts, literatures, and sub-disciplines in geography. The final two sections outline an epistemological approach to the geographies of capital punishment and how legal and carceral geographies might contribute.

Appeals for mercy in criminal trials in the light of U.S. case law
Abstract
This article offers a synthetic presentation and a critical examination of appeals for mercy in a criminal trial. Judgments of American courts of ap-peals, both federal and state, are examined. U.S. case law is found to be reinforcing the view that the accused and their defense attorney may use the argumentum ad misericordiam, especially in capital cases, while a pros-ecutor may resort to arguments questioning the mercy appeal as inappro-priate for a particular defendant. Many specific issues are claimed to ex-pose U.S. case-law inconsistencies which are the source of confusion. The reason behind inconsistences is the lack of any coherent and correct un-derstanding of the concept of mercy, including specifically its relation to similar concepts, such as compassion, sympathy or pity. A merciful act is found to be of an intellectual and emotional nature. It is claimed that, ab-sent in compassion and pity, an element of reasonableness, which is pre-sent in mercy, consists in taking into account all of circumstances of a par-ticular case, i.e. circumstances related to a defendant and an act commit-ted by such defendant. Although mercy cannot be reduced to naive senti-mentality or tenderness, it still includes compassion and pity. A judge’s and jurors’ ability to give compassion is conducive to, or perhaps even neces-sary for proper consideration of the significance of at least some mitigating factors. The view is shared of those American judges who admit that mercy can have a place in a criminal trial. However, mercy cannot be an alterna-tive to justice, but should only be seen as a complementary element as far as sentencing in extraordinary cases is concerned. Significant differences between the legal systems in Poland and in the United States (including specifically the absence of a jury and a death penalty in Poland) prevents any further discussion on whether the potential of the argumentum ad mis-ericordiam can be exploited in our domestic criminal process to the same extent as it is in U.S. case law.

This  study  examines  the  life  of  Crips  cofounder  Stanley “Tookie”  Williams  and  the  controversy  surrounding  his multiple  nominations  for  the  Nobel  Peace  Prize.  After being sentenced to death for a quadruple murder, Williams underwent a period of radical transformation and became an internationally recognized ambassador for peace. From San  Quentin’s  death  row,  Williams  supported  several  in-ternationally  recognized  gang  peace  initiatives  including the  1992  Watts  truce,  the  1993  Summit  on  Urban  Peace and Justice, Hands Across America, and the  2004 Tookie Protocol  for  Peace.  This  article  explores  the  challenges Williams faced in his evolution from a gang member to a peace activist, his role in these projects, and how neoliberal criminal  justice  reforms  undermined  his  global  efforts  to promote grassroots peace coalitions.

It is proposed that several biases in social judgment result from a failure-first noted by Francis Bacon-to consider possibilities at odds with beliefs and perceptions of the moment. Individuals who are induced to consider the opposite. therefore, should display less bias in social judgment. In two separate but conceptually parallel experiments, this reasoning was applied to two domainsbiased assimilation of new evidence on social issues and biased hypothesis testing of personality impressions. Subjects were induced to consider the opposite in two ways: through explicit instructions to do so and through stimulus materials that made opposite possibilities more salient. In both experiments the induction of a consider-the-opposite strategy had greater corrective effect than more demandladen alternative instructions to be as fair and unbiased as possible. The results are viewed as consistent with previous research on perseverance, hindsight, and logical problem solving, and are thought to suggest an effective method of retraining social judgment.

A recent YouGov poll conducted to mark 50 years since the last hangings in Britain showed continuing falls in the level of public support for capital punishment . No politician would today consider trying to get a free vote in Parliament for restoration. Nevertheless, 45 per cent of respondents remained in favour of capital punishment. In this meticulously researched book, Lizzie Seal traces the development of public opinion on the matter from the beginning of the 20th century to the recent period and the continually divided nature of public opinion is one of her key themes.

Race has played a disturbing role in the death penalty’s application throughout its history in the United States. During slavery, discrimination was explicitly written in many states’ laws, with a number of capital offenses reserved solely for black slaves. Racial bias continued during the Jim Crow era, in which black defendants often received little due process, as trials and executions sometimes both took place in a single day. Today, the race of the victim has a significant impact on who gets the death penalty, with the implication that black lives matter less.

The birth of criminology as a science at the end of the XIXth century led to the development of many observations and experiments. The purpose of all these researches was to find, in a positivist point of view, some means to fight or to eliminate crime. As a consequence, jurists deeply renewed their approaches of penal law and the function of penalty. I’ll try here to understand how some new penal notions were developed after WW2, which led to a new intellectual frame when the abolitionist debate began its rise at the end of the 1950s.

Mental health evaluations at capital sentencing represent a complex and specialized arena of practice. The moral culpability focus of capital sentencing is distinct from guilt-phase considerations of criminal responsibility, and has a specialized literature. Capital violence risk assessment is uniquely oriented to a prison context, relying on past adjustment to incarceration, as well as group statistical data speci®c to capital offenders and other inmate groups. Personality testing is a more complex consideration in capital sentencing evaluations. The implications of interviewing the defendant, as well as the parameters and documentation of an interview, make full disclosure and informed consent of particular importance. Defense-and prosecution-retained experts are subject to speci®c ethical vulnerabilities. These are examined in this paper through the lens of current professional standards.

Essential topos of the work of Cesare Beccaria, and legacy of the most important of On Crimes and Punishments, is the condemnation of the death penalty, accompanied by the peroration of life imprisonment as an effective alternative. In this contribution I intend to support the possibility of going beyond Beccaria, calling for the abolition of life imprisonment as the fulfillment of the abolitionist choice of capital punishment undertaken thanks to his work.

S'appuyant sur le dépouillement de nombreuses archives, l'ouvrage présente l'histoire de l'application de la peine de mort par les cours d'assises en France métropolitaine. Partant des pulsions punitives présentes dans l'opinion publique, il montre comment les enquêtes judiciaires « construisent » des affaires où la peine de mort est encourue, et les tensions à l'oeuvre dans les procès. La part de la peine de mort dans la répression criminelle, l'évolution du rythme des condamnations, les profils des condamnés à mort sont successivement examinés. Le processus gracieux, qui permet de sauver la tête d'une majorité de condamnés à mort, est étudié dans son fonctionnement et ses variations. La détention de ces condamnés particuliers soulève de nombreuses difficultés, entre souci d'humanité et impératif de sécurité. Le propos s'attache à retracer l'expérience de la préparation à la mort, avant d'aborder les différentes dimensions de l'exécution par guillotine. Une place est aussi accordée à la destinée des condamnés graciés et leur éventuelle réinsertion.

Offentlige henrettelser var hyppige i 1700-tallets første halvdel, og her indførtes danmarkshistoriens hårdeste straffelove. Bage denne rå og barbariske side af Holbergs samtid lå en fremmedartet religiøst-magisk forestillingsverden, hvor høj som lav frygtede Guds vrede. Det var Gud, som krævede dødsstraf for djævleforskrivelse, sædelighedsforbrydelser og drab, og Gud ville straffe landet, hvis ikke enevoldsstaten straffede synderne. Henrettelsen sås samtidig som den dødsdømtes udsoning med Gud og kunne udvikle sig til bevægede ceremonier.
Med udgangspunkt i et omfattende strafferetligt materiale er Tyge Kroghs værk om oplysningstiden og det magiske en indtrængende mentalitetshistorisk studie i 1700-tallets menneskesyn.
Udgivet af Samleren, København 2000

Numerous studies indicate that racial minorities are both more likely to be executed for murder and that those who murder them are less likely to be executed than if they murder whites. Death penalty opponents have long attempted to use these studies to argue for a moratorium on capital punishment. Whatever the merits of such arguments, they overlook the fact that such discrimination alters the costs of murder; racial discrimination imposes higher costs on minorities for murdering through tougher sentences, and it imposes lower costs on whites for murdering minorities by dispensing weaker sentences. These cost differentials constitute an injustice not simply to actual minority defendants in capital cases, nor simply to the actual minority victims of murder, but to all members of minority communities. I here offer two arguments for a moratorium on capital punishment: The first draws upon evidence of racial discrimination against minority defendants in capital cases, and claims that such discrimination modifies the costs of murder in such a way that minority individuals do not enjoy equal status under the law. The second draws upon the evidence regarding racial discrimination in relation to the race of victims, and claims that such discrimination modifies the costs of murder in such a way that minority individuals do not enjoy the equal protection of the law. Thus, by not assigning equal costs to murder, the American criminal justice system fails to provide racial minorities the equality under the law and discounts the value of their lives and liberties. A moratorium is the least unjust response to such a social injustice. I also reply to the criticism that a moratorium prevents us from executing deserving murderers.

Anaesthesia during lethal injection is essential to minimise suffering and to maintain public acceptance of the practice. Lethal injection is usually done by sequential administration of thiopental, pancuronium, and potassium chloride. Protocol information from Texas and Virginia showed that executioners had no anaesthesia training, drugs were administered remotely with no monitoring for anaesthesia, data were not recorded and no peer-review was done. Toxicology reports from Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina showed that post-mortem concentrations of thiopental in the blood were lower than that required for surgery in 43 of 49 executed inmates (88%); 21 (43%) inmates had concentrations consistent with awareness. Methods of lethal injection anaesthesia are flawed and some inmates might experience awareness and suffering during execution.

In the wake of numerous cruel and troubling execution methods, lethal injection seemed to be the answer to this country’s centuries-long search for a medically humane means of putting an inmate to death. However, lethal injection is currently being subjected to an unprecedented degree of scrutiny due to various factors, including botched executions, problematic protocols, and drug shortages and restrictions.  An historical overview puts these circumstances in context.  In 1977, a year after Gregg v. Georgia, Oklahoma became the first state to adopt lethal injection, despite the fact that the procedure had never been medically or scientifically studied on human beings. Even without proper medical justification, 38 more states adopted lethal injection between 1977 and 2009. As more states began utilizing lethal injection, the method faced more challenges, leading to a decrease in the number of executions being performed. The Supreme Court attempted to address these challenges in Baze v. Rees (2008), in which the Court upheld the constitutionality of Kentucky’s lethal injection protocol. Contrary to some commentators’ predictions, executions continued their downward trend post-Baze. In 2015, the Supreme Court faced another lethal injection challenge in Glossip v. Gross, which involved Oklahoma’s use of midazolam as a lethal injection drug. The Court held 5–4 that three death row inmates failed to establish that midazolam created "a substantial risk of severe pain" when used as the first of three drugs in state's lethal injection procedure. This chapter discusses the Glossip Court’s unwillingness to address key aspects of death penalty history and the blame the Court places on unidentified “anti-death-penalty advocates” for the factors driving lethal injection’s troubles – troubles which threaten the future of the death penalty.

In 1692 and 1693, in Salem, Massachusetts, more than 150 colonists were accused of witchcraft, resulting in 19 being hanged and one man being crushed to death. Contributions to these events included: historical, religious and cultural belief systems; social and community concerns; economic, gender, and political factors; and local family grievances. Child witnessing, certainty of physician diagnosis, use of special evidence in the absence of scholarly and legal scrutiny, and tautological reasoning were important factors, as well. For forensic psychiatry, the events at Salem in 1692 still hold contemporary implications. These events of three centuries ago call to mind more recent daycare sexual abuse scandals.

Cet ouvrage se donne pour tâche d’examiner les discours les plus emblématiques produits par la philosophie moderne au sujet de la peine de mort. Assumant d’emblée le point de vue abolitionniste, notre intention n’est nullement de « peser le pour et le contre », mais de poser la question suivante : dans quelle mesure est-il possible de fonder rationnellement le refus catégorique de la peine capitale ? À cet égard, le détour par l’histoire de la philosophie nous montre à quel point la raison est avant tout divisée contre elle-même. En effet, au terme d'un travail visant à mettre à l’épreuve la cohérence interne des partisans de la peine de mort (Locke, Kant, Stuart Mill), ainsi que de ses adversaires (Beccaria, Bentham), il nous est apparu impossible de conclure à un simple défaut de rationalité de la part des uns ou des autres. Ce que l'on constate au contraire, c'est que chaque démonstration se déploie à partir d'un certain nombre de principes éthiques indémontrables. Bien plus, chaque grand courant de la philosophie pénale est susceptible de donner lieu à des prises de position radicalement opposées. Mais pour peu que l'on se refuse à concevoir un abîme insurmontable entre la raison d'une part, et la sensibilité d'autre part, la philosophie morale peut bénéficier d'une approche dans laquelle le raisonnement et « le cœur » se complètent, au lieu de constituer une alternative. À cet égard, c'est dans l'œuvre de Jean-Jacques Rousseau qu’il nous a semblé possible de repérer les éléments permettant de fonder au mieux l’abolition.

Published May 2022 ...

This is the story of Robert Rice Howard (1832–1906), the man known as Nosey Bob. It is also an important chapter in the story of the changing attitudes towards capital punishment in Australia, as the country transformed from generally enthusiastic spectators at executions into campaigners for the abolition of the death penalty. These interconnected stories are told through the men, and the one woman, who met Nosey Bob under the worst possible circumstances between his first employment by the Department of Justice in 1876 and his retirement as the executioner for New South Wales in 1904. Once a household name, Nosey Bob was the most infamous public servant in Sydney: a noseless hangman who sparked fear and fascination everywhere he went. Howard has only ever been cast as an extra in someone else’s play, making frightening appearances in a felon’s final scene on the gallows. Here, for the first time, he has taken the lead.

There has been little consideration, in either the caselaw or the scholarly literature, of the potential impact of neuroimaging on cases assessing whether a seriously mentally disabled death row defendant is competent to be executed. The Supreme Court's 2007 decision in Panetti v. Quarterman significantly expanded its jurisprudence by ruling that such a defendant had a constitutional right to make a showing that his mental illness ''obstruct[ed] a rational understanding of the State's reason for his execution.'' This article considers the impact of neuroimaging testimony on post-Panetti competency determination hearings, and looks at multiple questions of admissibility of evidence, adequacy of counsel, availability of expert assistance, juror attitudes, trial tactics, and application of the Daubert doctrine, and also considers the implications of the lesser-known Panetti holding (that enhances the role of expert witnesses in all competency-to-be-executed inquiries). It warns that the power of the testimony in question has the capacity to inappropriately affect fact-finders in ways that may lead ''to outcomes that are both factually and legally inaccurate and constitutionally flawed.''

Like Judge Jeffreys of the Bloody Assizes (1685), the ‘hanging judge’ has become a stock character in popular historical imagination.  In the late nineteenth century, Tasmania conjured its own Judge Jeffreys in the form of Chief Justice Pedder. As the senior law officer in Van Diemen’s Land during the convict era, Sir John Pedder sentenced over 200 offenders to the gallows. From the 1870s, a series of newspaper ‘histories’ cast Pedder as the island’s hanging judge, and this folk reputation continued to resonate with popular audiences into the twentieth century. By contrast, the chief justice enjoyed a reputation for humanity and compassion during his lifetime. This article traces Pedder’s posthumous construction as a Tasmanian Judge Jeffreys, and argues that its enduring appeal owes more to a compelling literary trope than to the evidence of the colonial archive.

This study's primary aim was to evaluate factors that influence attitudes toward the insanity defense in a sample of 578 college undergraduates. In addition to a comprehensive demographics survey, participants completed the Insanity Defense Attitude Scale-Revised (IDAS-R) and the Attitude Toward the Death Penalty (ATDP) Scale. Favorable attitude toward capital punishment and misperceptions about overuse of the insanity defense were related to negative attitudes toward the insanity defense. Hierarchical regression analyses demonstrated that possessing a favorable attitude toward capital punishment was the most robust predictor of a negative attitude toward the insanity defense. These findings provide valuable information about factors that create and maintain biases against the insanity defense and suggest areas of inquiry that could aid attorneys in selecting unbiased jurors.

Andrew Rabin, "Capital Punishment and the Anglo-Saxon Judicial Apparatus: A Maximum View?" in Jay Paul Gates and Nicole Marafioti, eds. Capital and Corporal Punishment in Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2014), pp. 181-200. FULL ARTICLE AVAILABLE BY REQUEST

In this essay I take up the question of how death can be a penalty, given that each of us will eventually die. I argue that capital punishment in the United States rests on contradictory demands for painless death delivered humanely through pharmaceuticals and yet denies the accused the possibility of natural death. The death penalty must be at once humane and punishing. Analyzing what we mean by ‘botched’ executions, along with the language of the Supreme Court in upholding lethal injection as a humane application of the death penalty, I argue that the fantasy of instant death is at the heart of the tension between death as painless and death as penalty. In the end, I turn to Derrida’s Death Penalty Seminar Volume One, particularly his discussion of Kant’s defence of the capital punishment, and the pivotal role of time in his discussion. Finally, I suggest that the fantasies of instantaneous death and our technological mastery of it result in the fantasy of the ‘good’ punishing death.

This article discusses the constitutional debate on death penalty in Indonesia. This debate resurfaces when a group of death row inmates lodged a judicial review to the Constitutional Court against death penalty articles under the 1997 Narcotics Law, used by the criminal court to sentence them.

The Movement for Black Lives: Philosophical Perspectives brings philosophical analysis to bear on the aims, strategies, policy positions, and intellectual-historical context of M4BL. Leading scholars tackle such themes as: "Black Lives Matter" as a political speech act, M4BL's conception of the value of Black lives, the gender dynamics of the Movement, the relation of M4BL to other Black liberation movements and transitional justice movements, the Movement's new forms of leadership and organization, and the impact of racism on the normative assessment of the criminal justice system. The volume broaches a wide range of pressing issues in the philosophy of language, social and political philosophy, philosophy of race, philosophy of gender, and the philosophy of punishment. It is vital reading for students and scholars in the humanities and social sciences interested in race, inequality, and social justice movements.

ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies

Vol 14, No 4 (2015)

Table of Contents

Themed Section:
The Sexual Politics of Austerity

Introduction: The Sexual Politics of Austerity
Cesare Di Feliciantonio, Gavin Brown
https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1259/1109


Marriage and the Spare Bedroom: Exploring the Sexual Politics of Austerity
Gavin Brown
https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1098/1121


Low Income LGBTGNC (Gender Nonconforming) Struggles Over Shelters As Public Space
Michelle Billies
https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1125/1123


The Sexual Politics of Neoliberalism and Austerity in an ′Exceptional′ Country: Italy
Cesare Di Feliciantonio
https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1104/1122


Queer Responses to Austerity: Insights from the Greece of Crisis
Konstantinos Eleftheriadis
https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1159/1128



Themed Section:
Geographies of Capital Punishment in the United States: The Execution of Troy Davis

Introduction: Geographies of Capital Punishment in the United States - The Execution of Troy Davis.
Joshua F Inwood
https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1082/1129


If I am Troy Davis, I Failed Troy Davis: Abolishing the Death Penalty through an Antiracist People’s Geography
Nik Heynen
https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1084/1130

Bare Life, Dead Labor, and Capital(ist) Punishment
James Andrew Tyner, Alex Colucci
https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1155/1131


Life and Death in the Racial State: Collateral Consequences and the Execution of Troy Davis.
Joshua F Inwood, Melanie Barron
https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1083/1133


Justice versus justice: Geographies of the Death Penalty and Place-Based Activism in the Troy Davis Case
Audrey Kobayashi
https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1072/1135



Research

Reframing urban controlled spaces: Community gardens in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv-Jaffa
Efrat Eizenberg, Tovi Fenster
https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1161/1136


Latin America’s Large-Scale Urban Challenges: Development Failures and Public Service Inequalities in Lima, Peru
Antonio Ioris
https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1189/1138


Palestinian, Arab, American, Muslim: “Looping Effects” of Categories and Meaning
Anna Mansson McGinty
https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1156/1139


With the Current, Against the Wind: Constructing Spatial Activism and Radical Politics in the Tel-Aviv Gay Center
Chen Misgav
https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1160/1140


For Slow Scholarship: A Feminist Politics of Resistance through Collective Action in the Neoliberal University
Alison Mountz, Anne Bonds, Becky Mansfield, Jenna Loyd, Jennifer Hyndman, Margaret Walton-Roberts, Ranu Basu, Risa Whitson, Roberta Hawkins, Trina Hamilton, Winifred Curran
https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1058/1141


Making Space for Critical Pedagogy in the Neoliberal University: Struggles and Possibilities
The University of Kentucky Critical Pedagogy Working Group, Carrie Mott, Sandra Zupan, Anne-Marie Debbane, R. L.*
https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1296/1143


Inner-Suburban Neighbourhoods, Activist Research, and the Social Space of the Commercial Street
Heather McLean, Katharine Rankin, Kuni Kamizaki
https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1295/1144


„Naturgesetze der Kultur“: Die Wiener Geographen und die Ursprünge der „Volks- und Kulturbodentheorie“
Norman Henniges
https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1076/1146

This paper looks at the ethical theory of W.D. Ross. In Ross’s theory, there are some actions which are intrinsically good which make up our prima facie duties. These duties are obligations which should be respected unless we find that other prima facie duties override them. I apply this theory to Louis P. Pojman's paper on Capital Punishment, "In Defense of the Death Penalty", and argue against the use of Capital Punishment.

From the early Middle Ages to the twentieth century, capital punishment in France, as in many other countries, was staged before large crowds of spectators. Paul Friedland traces the theory and practice of public executions over time, both from the perspective of those who staged these punishments as well as from the vantage point of the many thousands who came to "see justice done". While penal theorists often stressed that the fundamental purpose of public punishment was to strike fear in the hearts of spectators, the eagerness with which crowds flocked to executions and the extent to which spectators actually enjoyed the spectacle of suffering suggests that there was a wide gulf between theoretical intentions and actual experiences. Moreover, public executions of animals, effigies, and corpses point to an enduring ritual function that had little to do with exemplary deterrence. In the eighteenth century, when a revolution in sensibilities made it unseemly for individuals to take pleasure in or even witness the suffering of others, capital punishment became the target of reformers. From the invention of the guillotine, which reduced the moment of death to the blink of an eye, to the 1939 decree which moved executions behind prison walls, capital punishment in France was systematically stripped of its spectacular elements.

Partly a history of penal theory, partly an anthropologically-inspired study of the penal ritual, Seeing Justice Done traces the historical roots of modern capital punishment, and sheds light on the fundamental "disconnect" between the theory and practice of punishment which endures to this day, not only in France but in the Western penal tradition more generally.