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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Against The Death Penalty, Charles Jessup
Against The Death Penalty, Charles Jessup
Student Research Submissions
My thesis is an argument against the death penalty. Given that public support for the death penalty in America is at a half-century low (according to the Pew Research Center), the timing could not be more appropriate to examine the death penalty. This research project had a two-step approach: first, ethical theory-based arguments for and against the death penalty were examined. Following that ethical theory-based examination, real-world statistics were applied to these theories to test where they stand in modern society. The findings contained in this research project point to a clear reality that the death penalty in America is …
Sister Helen Prejean And The Death Penalty: Decades Of Fighting Capital Punishment, University Marketing And Communications, Helen Prejean
Sister Helen Prejean And The Death Penalty: Decades Of Fighting Capital Punishment, University Marketing And Communications, Helen Prejean
DePaul Download
Sister Helen Prejean has dedicated her life to opposing the death penalty after she witnessed an execution in her home state of Louisiana. Her efforts have sparked a national dialogue on capital punishment and she has helped shape the Catholic Church’s position on the topic. In 2011, she donated her personal archives to the university to help the DePaul community continue to learn from her work. On this episode of DePaul Download, Sister Helen talks about life’s work and what keeps her going.
Replacing Death With Life? The Rise Of Lwop In The Context Of Abolitionist Campaigns In The United States, Michelle Miao
Replacing Death With Life? The Rise Of Lwop In The Context Of Abolitionist Campaigns In The United States, Michelle Miao
Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy
On the basis of fifty-four elite interviews[1] with legislators, judges, attorneys, and civil society advocates as well as a state-by-state data survey, this Article examines the complex linkage between the two major penal trends in American society during the past decades: a declining use of capital punishment across the United States and a growing population of prisoners serving “life without the possibility of parole” or “LWOP” sentences. The main contribution of the research is threefold. First, the research proposes to redefine the boundary between life and death in relation to penal discourses regarding the death penalty and LWOP. LWOP …
Ideology, Race, And The Death Penalty: "Lies, Damn Lies, And Statistics" In Advocacy Research, Anthony Walsh, Virginia Hatch
Ideology, Race, And The Death Penalty: "Lies, Damn Lies, And Statistics" In Advocacy Research, Anthony Walsh, Virginia Hatch
Journal of Ideology
We use the literature on race in death penalty to illustrate the hold that ideology has on researchers and journalists alike when a social issue is charged with emotional content. We note particularly how statistical evidence become misinterpreted in ways that support a particular ideology, either because of innumeracy or because—subconsciously or otherwise—one’s ideology precludes a critical analysis. We note that because white defendants are now proportionately more likely to receive the death penalty and to be executed than black defendants that the argument has shifted from a defendant-based to a victim-based one. We examine studies based on identical data …
Does Religion Have A Role In Criminal Sentencing?, Jack B. Weinstein
Does Religion Have A Role In Criminal Sentencing?, Jack B. Weinstein
Touro Law Review
No abstract provided.
A Historical Comparative Analysis Of Executions In The United States From 1608 To 2009, Emily Jean Abili
A Historical Comparative Analysis Of Executions In The United States From 1608 To 2009, Emily Jean Abili
UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones
The death penalty has been a contested issue throughout American history. The United States has been executing offenders since Jamestown became a colony in 1608 (Allen & Clubb, 2008). Since that time, many issues have been raised about the death penalty including whether or not it is moral, discriminatory, or a deterrent.
This study examines the history of executions, including lynchings, in the United States from 1608 to 2009 using a variety of sociological theories on law and society. Some of the research questions that guide this project are:
* What is the nature of change in the relative prevalence …
Blameworthiness And Dangerousness: An Analysis Of Violent Female Capital Offenders In The United States And China, Courtney Lahaie
Blameworthiness And Dangerousness: An Analysis Of Violent Female Capital Offenders In The United States And China, Courtney Lahaie
Graduate Research Symposium (2010 - 2017)
The United States and China represent two of the leading nations that retain the death penalty in both law and practice. Research suggests that judges’ sentencing decisions are based primarily on two factors, blameworthiness and dangerousness. Studies involving gender and sentencing in capital punishment cases tend to provide inconsistent findings. The current study uses case narratives to examine the direct and conjunctive effects of various factors on the sentencing decisions of violent female capital offenders in the United States and China. The findings suggest that the concepts of blameworthiness and dangerousness are distinctly defined in the United States and China. …
Engaging Capital Emotions, Douglas A. Berman, Stephanos Bibas
Engaging Capital Emotions, Douglas A. Berman, Stephanos Bibas
All Faculty Scholarship
The Supreme Court, in Kennedy v. Louisiana, is about to decide whether the Eighth Amendment forbids capital punishment for child rape. Commentators are aghast, viewing this as a vengeful recrudescence of emotion clouding sober, rational criminal justice policy. To their minds, emotion is distracting. To ours, however, emotion is central to understand the death penalty. Descriptively, emotions help to explain many features of our death-penalty jurisprudence. Normatively, emotions are central to why we punish, and denying or squelching them risks prompting vigilantism and other unhealthy outlets for this normal human reaction. The emotional case for the death penalty for child …
Celluloid Death: Cinematic Depictions Of Capital Punishment, Roberta M. Harding
Celluloid Death: Cinematic Depictions Of Capital Punishment, Roberta M. Harding
Law Faculty Scholarly Articles
This essay will examine how two filmmakers used the cinema to investigate death penalty issues through the films Dead Man Walking and Last Light. These films were selected because of their similarities: capital punishment is the central theme of both films; the presence of a strong principal character who is the condemned inmate; the utilization of a character who undergoes a spiritual transformation due to interaction with the condemned inmate; the decision to have this character facilitate the humanization of the condemned individual; and the additional role this character plays as the audiences' conscience. There are, however, differences in the …
Race And Capital Punishment, Michael L. Radelet
Race And Capital Punishment, Michael L. Radelet
Trotter Review
Whether it be lynching or legally-imposed capital punishment, the threat or use of death as a punishment has been a powerful means of class and race intimidation throughout American history. In the nineteenth century, statutes that explicitly considered race were not uncommon; in Virginia, for example, the statutes of 150 years ago listed five capital crimes for whites and 70 for black slaves. Today, historians interested in capital punishment use records of state compensations to slave owners to learn how many slaves were executed.