Homicides must possess certain characteristics before they become eligible for capital punishment. Over the last several decades, virtually every state has added to its list of possible eligibility criteria. We draw on this rich set of eligibility-law variation to identify the deterrent effects ensuing from expansions in the reach of capital punishment. Eligibility expansions may deter future h...

This article is concerned with the penological perspective of capital punishment in India. It critically examines contentious views honorable courts, policymakers, commentators, human rights activists, and Law Commission India on whether should be abolished or retained as earlier there some alternative to it practiced other nations. In so doing, has analyzed penal provisions different enactment...

On August 6, 2005, newspapers and other media outlets reported that Daryl Atkins had been determined by a Virginia jury not to be retarded and therefore was mentally competent to receive the death penalty. A judge immediately scheduled his execution for December. Atkins, of course, is the convicted murderer whose case three years earlier had led the U.S. Supreme Court, in a landmark ruling, to ...

Many studies have sought to explain the major crime declines experienced in most advanced countries. Key hypotheses relate to: lead poisoning; abortion legalization; drug markets; demographics; policing numbers and strategies; imprisonment; strong economies; the death penalty; gun control; gun concealment; immigration; consumer confidence; the civilizing process, and; improved security. This pa...

The scale of maternal mortality dwarfs the number of ‘disappearances’ and death penalty cases. Yet ‘disappearances’ and death penalty cases attract much more attention from the human rights community than preventable maternal mortality. ‘Disappearances’, for example, have a UN human rights ‘special procedure’, as well as international and regional human rights treaties. And so they should. ‘Dis...

Both assert power over death (Dein & Littlewood, 2000). Individual murderers may seek the death penalty for themselves by committing suicide or attempting fatal self-harm; one in three murders is followed by suicide, and the majority of suicides of murderers occur within hours of the act of killing (West, 1965). Some murderers may also die in acts of simultaneous murder and suicide. Historicall...