|
| ||
|
|
||
Capital Punishment (capital + punishment)
Selected AbstractsIMAGES OF GOD AND PUBLIC SUPPORT FOR CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: DOES A CLOSE RELATIONSHIP WITH A LOVING GOD MATTER?,CRIMINOLOGY, Issue 4 2006JAMES D. UNNEVER This study argues that the nature and intensity of a person's relationship with God creates a transposable cognitive schema that shapes people's views toward public policies such as executing convicted murderers. In this context, we investigate whether Americans who report having a close personal relationship with a loving God are less likely to support the death penalty. We hypothesize that such a relationship tempers the tendency to see punitiveness as an appropriate response to human failings. Individuals who hold a loving God image are more likely to believe that God responds to those who have "failed" or "sinned" by demonstrating unconditional love, forgiveness, and mercy. Accordingly, support for capital punishment is problematic because it contradicts the image of a merciful, forgiving deity; God's purpose,and admonition to believers,is to demonstrate compassion toward those who have trespassed against others. We test these possibilities using the 2004 General Social Survey (GSS). Controlling for a range of religious factors and other known predictors of death penalty attitudes, the results show that Americans with a personal relationship with a loving God are less likely to support capital punishment for convicted murderers. [source] EXECUTING THE INNOCENT AND SUPPORT FOR CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: IMPLICATIONS FOR PUBLIC POLICYCRIMINOLOGY AND PUBLIC POLICY, Issue 1 2005JAMES D. UNNEVER Research Summary: The issue of whether innocent people have been executed is now at the center of the debate concerning the legitimacy of capital punishment. The purpose of this research was to use data collected by the Gallup Organization in 2003 to investigate whether Americans who believed that an innocent person had been executed were less likely to support capital punishment. We also explored whether the association varied by race, given that African Americans are disproportionately affected by the death penalty. Our results indicated that three-quarters of Americans believed that an innocent person had been executed for a crime they did not commit within the last five years and that this belief was associated with lower levels of support for capital punishment, especially among those who thought this sanction was applied unfairly. In addition, our analyses revealed that believing an innocent person had been executed had a stronger association with altering African American than white support for the death penalty. Policy Implications: A key claim of death penalty advocates is that a high proportion of the public supports capital punishment. In this context, scholars opposing this sanction have understood the importance of showing that the public's support for executing offenders is contingent and shallower than portrayed by typical opinion polls. The current research joins this effort by arguing that the prospect of executing innocents potentially impacts public support for the death penalty and, in the least, creates ideological space for a reconsideration of the legitimacy of capital punishment. [source] Retributivist Arguments against Capital PunishmentJOURNAL OF SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY, Issue 2 2004Thom Brooks First page of article [source] Status Disparities in the Capital of Capital PunishmentLAW & SOCIETY REVIEW, Issue 4 2009Scott Phillips Numerous studies have examined the influence of victim race on capital punishment, with a smaller number focused on victim gender. But death penalty scholars have largely ignored victim social status. Drawing on Black's (1976) multidimensional theoretical concept, the current research examines the impact of victim social status on the district attorney's decision to seek the death penalty and the jury's decision to impose a death sentence. The data include the population of cases indicted for capital murder in Harris County (Houston), Texas, from 1992 to 1999 (n=504). The findings suggest that victim social status has a robust influence on the ultimate state sanction: Death was more likely to be sought and imposed on behalf of high-status victims who were integrated, sophisticated, conventional, and respectable. The research also has implications beyond capital punishment. Because victim social status has rarely been investigated in the broader sentencing literature, Black's concept provides a theoretical tool that could be used to address such an important omission. [source] The Cultural Lives of Capital Punishment: Comparative Perspectives by Austin Sarat and Christian BoulangerPOLAR: POLITICAL AND LEGAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW, Issue 2 2008Mateo Taussig-Rubbo No abstract is available for this article. [source] IMAGES OF GOD AND PUBLIC SUPPORT FOR CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: DOES A CLOSE RELATIONSHIP WITH A LOVING GOD MATTER?,CRIMINOLOGY, Issue 4 2006JAMES D. UNNEVER This study argues that the nature and intensity of a person's relationship with God creates a transposable cognitive schema that shapes people's views toward public policies such as executing convicted murderers. In this context, we investigate whether Americans who report having a close personal relationship with a loving God are less likely to support the death penalty. We hypothesize that such a relationship tempers the tendency to see punitiveness as an appropriate response to human failings. Individuals who hold a loving God image are more likely to believe that God responds to those who have "failed" or "sinned" by demonstrating unconditional love, forgiveness, and mercy. Accordingly, support for capital punishment is problematic because it contradicts the image of a merciful, forgiving deity; God's purpose,and admonition to believers,is to demonstrate compassion toward those who have trespassed against others. We test these possibilities using the 2004 General Social Survey (GSS). Controlling for a range of religious factors and other known predictors of death penalty attitudes, the results show that Americans with a personal relationship with a loving God are less likely to support capital punishment for convicted murderers. [source] EXECUTING THE INNOCENT AND SUPPORT FOR CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: IMPLICATIONS FOR PUBLIC POLICYCRIMINOLOGY AND PUBLIC POLICY, Issue 1 2005JAMES D. UNNEVER Research Summary: The issue of whether innocent people have been executed is now at the center of the debate concerning the legitimacy of capital punishment. The purpose of this research was to use data collected by the Gallup Organization in 2003 to investigate whether Americans who believed that an innocent person had been executed were less likely to support capital punishment. We also explored whether the association varied by race, given that African Americans are disproportionately affected by the death penalty. Our results indicated that three-quarters of Americans believed that an innocent person had been executed for a crime they did not commit within the last five years and that this belief was associated with lower levels of support for capital punishment, especially among those who thought this sanction was applied unfairly. In addition, our analyses revealed that believing an innocent person had been executed had a stronger association with altering African American than white support for the death penalty. Policy Implications: A key claim of death penalty advocates is that a high proportion of the public supports capital punishment. In this context, scholars opposing this sanction have understood the importance of showing that the public's support for executing offenders is contingent and shallower than portrayed by typical opinion polls. The current research joins this effort by arguing that the prospect of executing innocents potentially impacts public support for the death penalty and, in the least, creates ideological space for a reconsideration of the legitimacy of capital punishment. [source] Executions, Deterrence, and Homicide: A Tale of Two CitiesJOURNAL OF EMPIRICAL LEGAL STUDIES, Issue 1 2010Franklin E. Zimring We compare homicide rates in two quite similar cities with vastly different execution risks. Singapore had an execution rate close to one per million per year until an explosive 20-fold increase in 1994,1995 and 1996 to a level that we show was probably the highest in the world. Then, over the next 11 years, Singapore executions dropped by about 95 percent. Hong Kong, by contrast, had no executions at all during the last generation and abolished capital punishment in 1993. Homicide levels and trends are remarkably similar in these two cities over the 35 years after 1973, with neither the surge in Singapore executions nor the more recent steep drop producing any differential impact. By comparing two closely matched places with huge contrasts in actual execution but no differences in homicide trends, we have generated a unique test of the exuberant claims of deterrence that have been produced over the past decade in the United States. [source] Horror Crime or Bad Habit?JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY, Issue 4 2008Blasphemy in Premodern Europe In public debates the issue of blasphemy is often marked as a modern phenomenon. In fact, blasphemous speech acts were also an integral part of everyday life in the Middle Ages and in Early Modern Europe. Cursing and swearing, oaths and other blasphemous utterances were used in all strata of society. While enraged preachers condemned this mortal sin and various laws threatened with capital punishment, the common practice was different as most blasphemies passed with minor punishments or even without any kind of prosecution. Attacks on the honour of God were constituent elements of everyday conflict behaviour. Blasphemy therefore must not be misinterpreted as indication of religious indifference or even unbelief, but rather as different usage of the religious sphere in premodern times. [source] Status Disparities in the Capital of Capital PunishmentLAW & SOCIETY REVIEW, Issue 4 2009Scott Phillips Numerous studies have examined the influence of victim race on capital punishment, with a smaller number focused on victim gender. But death penalty scholars have largely ignored victim social status. Drawing on Black's (1976) multidimensional theoretical concept, the current research examines the impact of victim social status on the district attorney's decision to seek the death penalty and the jury's decision to impose a death sentence. The data include the population of cases indicted for capital murder in Harris County (Houston), Texas, from 1992 to 1999 (n=504). The findings suggest that victim social status has a robust influence on the ultimate state sanction: Death was more likely to be sought and imposed on behalf of high-status victims who were integrated, sophisticated, conventional, and respectable. The research also has implications beyond capital punishment. Because victim social status has rarely been investigated in the broader sentencing literature, Black's concept provides a theoretical tool that could be used to address such an important omission. [source] The Ironies of Helping: Social Interventions and Executable SubjectsLAW & SOCIETY REVIEW, Issue 2 2009Kerry Dunn Law and society scholars have theorized about the link between capital punishment and the hegemony of individualism, but few offer empirical investigations to illustrate how individualism makes capital punishment possible (and vice versa) in the contemporary United States. In order to fill this gap, we analyze the legal and human service records that were compiled in the construction of one executable subject, Daniel Farnsworth. Using a critical discourse approach, we look at what was said and not said about Daniel in the records created by various helping agencies. In our analysis, we demonstrate how the helping agencies involved in Daniel's life repeatedly relied on an individuating psychological paradigm that led them to produce decontextualized catalogs of his actions and characteristics. Next, we illustrate how these pathologizing accounts were, ironically, later invoked in court in the name of preserving his life. Finally, we explain how "helping" discourses, along with the rules that regulate capital defense practice, straightjacket defense attorneys into reinforcing individualism in this context. [source] Does Capital Punishment Deter Homicide?: A Case Study Of Epistemological ObjectivityMETAPHILOSOPHY, Issue 3 2001Rosalind S. Simson This paper uses the debate about whether capital punishment deters homicide as a case study for examining the claim, made by many feminists and others, that the traditional ideal of objectivity in seeking knowledge is misguided. According to this ideal, knowledge seekers should strive to gather and assess evidence independently of any influences exerted by either their individual and societal circumstances or their moral values. This paper argues that, although the traditional ideal rests on some valid precepts, it is neverthelesss untenable. the author goes on to propose an alternative epistemological ideal , one that retains these valid precepts but also recognizes an important and legitimate role for people's circumstances and moral values in their efforts to find knowledge. [source] Threat, Authoritarianism, and Selective Exposure to InformationPOLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 2 2005Howard Lavine We examined the hypothesis that threat alters the cognitive strategies used by high authoritarians in seeking out new political information from the environment. In a laboratory experiment, threat was manipulated through a "mortality salience" manipulation used in research on terror management theory (Pyszczynski, Solomon & Greenberg, 2003). Subjects (N = 92) were then invited to read one of three editorial articles on the topic of capital punishment. We found that in the absence of threat, both low and high authoritarians were responsive to salient norms of evenhandedness in information selection, preferring exposure to a two-sided article that presents the merits of both sides of an issue to an article that selectively touts the benefits of the pro or con side of the issue. However, in the presence of threat, high but not low authoritarians became significantly more interested in exposure to an article containing uniformly pro-attitudinal arguments, and significantly less interested in a balanced, two-sided article. Finally, a path analysis indicated that selective exposure to attitude-congruent information led to more internally consistent policy attitudes and inhibited attitude change. Discussion focuses on the role of threat in conditioning the cognitive and attitudinal effects of authoritarianism. [source] The Aum Cult leader Asahara's mental deviation and its social relationsPSYCHIATRY AND CLINICAL NEUROSCIENCES, Issue 1 2006HARUO AKIMOTO md Abstract, This paper is a further discussion of the author's previous reports on the crimes committed by the Asahara-Aum Cult. First, the motivations of Asahara-Aum crimes, in particular those of murders, and their abnormality beyond the realm of criminology are ascertained. Second, psychopathology of the leader, Asahara, was considered, and it was assumed that Asahara was affected with the syndrome of pseudologia phantastica which was confirmed by his strange attitude during his trials. Third, the mental status of Asahara after the first trial was investigated, and some evidence was found that his mental status was so severe as to be ,unfit to plead' that psychiatric evaluation and treatment would be necessary. Fourth, the reasons for making people, in particular scientific elites, fascinated with Asahara and the Aum Cult were scrutinized and some clues were described. Finally, the problem that Aum has survived under the name of Aleph, how heavy capital punishment for Leader Asahara is appropriate, and that reparations for victims of Asahara-Aum crimes are urgent from the standpoint of social psychiatry, are discussed. [source] Assessing the "evolving standards of decency:" perceptions of capital punishment for juvenilesBEHAVIORAL SCIENCES & THE LAW, Issue 2 2006Rachel Kalbeitzer M.S. This study examines whether public opinion parallels recent judicial and statutory changes limiting the applicability of capital sentences to offenders younger than 18 years old. Two hundred and thirty-five undergraduate students were administered a vignette of a capital case and asked to render a sentence of death or life in prison without parole. Results revealed that age of the defendant was not a significant predictor of sentence type; participants sentenced 16- and 17-year-old defendants similarly to 18- and 25-year-old defendants. Therefore, public opinion appears inconsistent with legal and legislative changes to abandon the practice of executing juveniles. Findings also suggested that perceived level of the defendant's responsibility and general opinion about capital sentences significantly predicted sentence type; perceptions of greater responsibility were associated with an increased likelihood of a death sentence. However, participants did not perceive differences in responsibility between juvenile and adult defendants. In addition, participants were more comfortable sentencing defendants to death compared with life in prison. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Death penalty support for special offender populations of legally convicted murderers: juveniles, the mentally retarded, and the mentally incompetent,BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES & THE LAW, Issue 2 2004Denise Paquette Boots M.A. The U.S. Supreme Court recently re-examined the constitutionality of the death penalty in the context of two of three special offender populations of murderers (juveniles, mentally retarded, and mentally incompetent). The Court reaffirmed the imposition of the death penalty for juveniles 16 and 17, while reversing itself on the mentally retarded. In reaching its decision, the Court relied on society's "evolving standards of decency." Using Likert-type items, this study is the first to have prospective jurors assess support for the death penalty for these specific offender groups. The public's support for the execution of each of the groups is then compared with existing case law. Descriptive statistics and regression analyses indicate that, as expected, the levels of support for the applicability of capital punishment to the various special offender populations are much lower than that for the general adult offender. Moreover, these findings are congruent with the holdings of the Court with one notable exception: a slight majority of respondents supported executing the mentally incompetent. Reasons for the public's apparent departure from the Supreme Court holding prohibiting the execution of mentally incompetent convicted murderers are discussed. The Court's continued role in protecting marginalized populations from "cruel and unusual punishment" is explored in the context of strong public sentiment demanding justice and finality despite changes in offenders' mental capacity. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||