Death Penalty of the Mentally Ill - The Attitude of the Courts in the United States on the Legal, Ethical and Moral Question of its Administration

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Ongom Cwinya-ai
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
The United States ◽  
Moral Question

The Use of the Death Penalty

1969 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter C. Reckless
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
The United States ◽  
Death Sentence ◽  
Dramatic Reduction ◽  
Public Sentiment ◽  
Discernible Effect ◽  
The World ◽  
Important Trend

Undoubtedly the most important trend in capital punishment has been the dramatic reduction in the number of offenses statutorily punishable by the death penalty. About two hundred years ago England had over two hundred offenses calling for the death penalty; it now has four. Some countries have abolished capital punishment completely; a few retain it for unusual offenses only. The trend throughout the world, even in the great number of countries that retain the death penalty, is definitely toward a de facto, not a de jure, form of abolition. In the United States, where the death penalty is possible in three-fourths of the states, the number of executions has declined from 199 in 1935 to an average of less than three in the last four years. This change is related to public sentiment against the use of the death penalty and even more directly to the unwillingness of juries and courts to impose a first-degree sentence. The increasing willingness of governors to commute a death sentence and of courts to hear appeals also contributes to this decline. A review of the evidence indicates that use of the death penalty has no discernible effect on the commission of capital offenses (especially murder).

Public Opinion and Capital Punishment: A Close Examination of the Views of Abolitionists and Retentionists

1983 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 116-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phoebe C. Ellsworth ◽  
Lee Ross
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Response Rate ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Supreme ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Legal Implications

A survey designed to examine the attitudinal and informational bases of people's opinions about the death penalty was administered to 500 Northern California residents (response rate = 96 percent). Of these, 58.8 percent were proponents of capital punishment, 30.8 percent were opponents, and 10.4 percent were undecided. When asked whether they favored mandatory, discretionary, or no death penalty for various crimes, respondents tended to treat these options as points on a scale of strength of belief, with mandatory penalties favored for the most serious crimes, rather than considering the questions of objectivity and fairness that have influenced the United States Supreme Court's considerations of these options. For no crime did a majority favor execution of all those convicted, even when a mandatory penalty was endorsed. Respondents were generally ignorant on factual issues related to the death penalty, and indicated that if their factual beliefs (in deterrence) were incorrect, their attitude would not be influenced. When asked about their reasons for favoring or opposing the death penalty, respondents tended to endorse all reasons consistent with their attitudes, indicating that the attitude does not stem from a set of reasoned beliefs, but may be an undifferenti ated, emotional reflection of one's ideological self-image. Opponents favored due process guarantees more than did Proponents. A majority of respondents said they would need more evidence to convict if a case was capital. Theoretical and legal implications of the results are discussed.

Advanced Introduction to Mental Health Law

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael L. Perlin ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
United States ◽  
General Practice ◽  
Intellectual Disabilities ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
The United States ◽  
Health Law ◽  
Legal Scholar ◽  
Dynamic Relationship ◽  
Criminal Matters

Written by esteemed legal scholar Michael L. Perlin, this indispensable Advanced Introduction examines the long-standing but ever-dynamic relationship between law and mental health. The author discusses and contextualises how the law, primarily in the United States but also in other countries, treats mental health, intellectual disabilities, and mental incapacity, giving examples of how issues such as the rights of patients, the death penalty and the insanity defense permeate constitutional, civil, and criminal matters, and indeed the general practice of law.

Four

2020 ◽  
pp. 75-102
Author(s):  
Bruno Maçães
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Political Correctness ◽  
Alternative Explanation ◽  
American Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Love Affair ◽  
American Life ◽  
American Experience ◽  
Traditional Structures

This chapter assesses whether America deserves to be placed alongside those Asian societies which, for all their progress, remain more or less shackled by tradition. The United States has been for more than a hundred years the very image of modernity. In the postwar decades, it appealed to European intellectuals such as Sartre on account of its deracinated life. The music, the literature, the architecture of those years were an extravaganza of countercultural passion, breaking with every convention. If people now feel that Americans are after all too conventional, there is reason to suspect that something else is happening and that their love affair with religion, guns, and the death penalty is to be explained from sources other than the persistence of traditional structures. The chapter offers an alternative explanation, looking in turn at these three peculiarities of American culture. It also considers an element of contemporary American life where differences with an older European sensibility seem clear enough: political correctness. Ultimately, one can see that a distinctive mark cuts across American experience as a whole, becoming more visible in those areas where it breaks away from its European past. One may call it the marker of a new civilization.

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