Search Results

This introductory chapter explains why this is a critical time for the death penalty in Asia and why Asia will be so significant in determining the future course of the death penalty worldwide. The first section provides a short review of the history of death penalty policy since the end of World War II; it focuses on western Europe, which has been the center of a two-stage change in death penalty practice and theory: first capital punishment was abolished, then the stated reasons for concern about state execution were transformed from criminal justice questions into basic principles about limiting the power of governments to ignore the interests of any of their citizens. The second section outlines some of the unanswered questions that remain about the death penalty. The most fundamental open question is how far the European-led campaign to end execution will go. The third and final section shows why Asia is a critical proving ground for theories about capital punishment and for claims about the future of death as a criminal sanction.

This chapter extends the analysis by profiling the great variety of death penalty policies in Asia, and it also outlines the research strategy employed in the chapters that follow. Its first and second sections provide an overview of the varieties of death penalty policy found in contemporary Asia by examining the region, first cross-sectionally and then temporally. The chapter's third section presents the book's case study methodology and explains the selection of five nations in East and Southeast Asia as the book's central subjects.

This chapter extends the discussion of the Asian vanguard by summarizing some of the most salient similarities and differences in death penalty policy in Taiwan and South Korea. In general terms, the most important difference between Taiwan and South Korea concerns what each regards as the defining countries of comparison and contrast. For South Korea, how to relate to North Korea and how to reunify the Korean peninsula remain the central questions for the first decades of the 21st century. At the same time, Japan continues to be a key reference point with respect to a variety of economic, political, cultural, and legal issues. In Taiwan, by contrast, the defining comparisons tend to be with the People's Republic of China, and the most pressing questions about the future concern Taiwan's relations with the PRC. If the first theme of Taiwan's political history is democratization, the second is the persistence of political tensions with China. As for capital punishment in particular, the most salient comparative frame for Taiwan continues to be the PRC, although the United States has been important, too.

This chapter begins by providing a context for Chinese capital punishment through descriptions of the scale of criminal justice in the PRC and of the political organization of its criminal justice system. The second section estimates execution incidence in the post-Mao reform period, 1976 to the present. The third section contrasts two explanations for the high rates of execution in recent years: Chinese history as an influence on contemporary penal culture, and the political legacy of the past half century. The chapter argues that the proximate causes of China's death penalty exceptionalism are more rooted in the nation's recent history—and in the PRC's founding fathers, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Deng Xiaoping. The fourth section of this case study analyzes the 2007 reinstitution of death sentence review by the Supreme People's Court. The fifth section describes the likely impact of the 2007 reform, the administrative character and costs of the PRC's death penalty system, and the types of reform proposals that may emerge from China's renewed experience with Supreme People's Court review. The sixth and final section of this chapter focuses on the long-term future of capital punishment in China.

On current evidence, the abolition of capital punishment in Asia is not a question of “if” but of “when,” and the critical issues concern the pace and processes of change rather than the direction changes will take or their eventual end point. That said, a large margin of error accompanies efforts to guess the rate at which Asian capital punishment will change. Should we think in terms of a few years, a few decades, or a few centuries? What are the leading indicators of the cessation of executions? And what contingencies could slow the process? These are the central concerns of this concluding chapter.

This chapter looks at the laws of rabbinic criminal execution as a ritual narrative and interprets that ritual, paying close attention to the way it constructs space and speech. It shows that the geography of the ritual dramatizes the connection between the rabbinic judges and the power of execution, while ensuring that the two entities remain distinct. It argues that the Mishnah’s ritual of execution makes claims that go well beyond the condemned criminal — the ritual claims for the Rabbis the power to redeem all Jews from sin and to establish for every individual a place in the world to come. It draws upon parallel rituals of execution: medieval, modern, and contemporary.

Because strategy is complex, the general theorist treads a perilous path between unduly detailed complication, and overmuch reduction for the sake of simplicity. Clarity is of no value if it misleads. The general theory of strategy has to accommodate and employ the ideas presented here as dicta clustered to explain the making of strategy, the execution of strategy, and strategy's consequences. Strategy is made by a process, it is value charged because of its pervasive human dimension, those values are somewhat specific to culture(s) and personally(ies), and it is made by people licensed explicitly or informally as strategists. To execute strategy, a plethora of difficulties must be overcome, and hard choices need to be made concerning the type (or types) of strategy to be followed. Also, geography, technology time, logistics, and the development of suitable military doctrine, all present significant challenges to the quality of strategic performance. And, then there is the product of strategy to understand, which is effect—tactical, operational, then strategic. It is vital to recognize some distinctions between admittedly intimately connected ideas: strategy and war, strategy and strategies as plans, strategy and doctrine, general theory and specific general theory (e.g. the specific general theory of air power), politics and policy, strategy‐making and strategy execution, war and warfare, and context and contingency.

This chapter discusses Edward Coleman, who was the first man to be tried and executed based on the testimony of Oates, as well as a set of events and debates that were related to him. It considers his controversial correspondence with the members of the French Court during the early to mid-1670s, as well as the parliamentary debate over whether his letters should be printed or not. Coleman's trial, execution, and the discourse surrounding his death are also examined.

This chapter provides a short overview of the main events in Fisher's life, notably his association with Henry VII's mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, which led to the development of various foundations within Cambridge University, including St John's College. As a theologian as well as bishop of Rochester, John Fisher engaged in anti‐Lutheran controversy in Latin and English. His opposition to Henry VIII's divorce made him unpopular at court and he was implicated in the Nun of Kent affair. He refused to swear to the Act of Supremacy and his trial and execution for treason followed in June 1535.

This chapter explores some objects in which graphs have a role, some explicit, some not obvious. These graphical objects are presented as mathematical exhibits at a museum. The chapter starts with the Amazing Asteroid, following this with a theorem (Bernstein's Bijection), a couple of games (Chromatic Combat and Devious Dice), an episode of Eluding Execution, a coin-tossing game (Flipping Fun), and an African adventure game (Get the Giraffe). Versions of these explorations have all been successfully used with students at various levels—whether in the classroom, for Math Club, or for independent investigation—but they can be appreciated by wider audiences too. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of how one of the topics in particular is contributing to successful research experiences for undergraduates.

The forced proscription of the Girondin deputies, 2 June, drastically changes the situation. With provincial risings against the Convention, virtual civil war breaks out. Roland remains in hiding, Mme Roland in prison, and their doomed fortunes over the summer are described. The couple's sympathies are officially assumed for the Lyon and Normandy uprisings. Mme Roland's prison letters and memoirs are discussed, as is the role of the couple's allies and visitors. Mme Roland's incarceration at Saint Pélagie, after a false liberation, is described, as is her emotional estrangement from her husband, while defending his record. Summoned as a witness to the Girondins’ trial, she is not called, learns in prison of their execution on 31 October, and is taken to the Conciergerie herself the same day.

With the end of the Terror, government officials and many townspeople expressed abhorrence of the spectacle of execution, and guillotines throughout France were gradually moved from city centers to more remote locations. Although the law insisted that executions be public, and although many still clung to the idea that public punishment served the purposes of exemplary deterrence, contemporary sensibilities frowned on those who actually showed up to watch. Consequently, officials did everything in their power to dissuade the public from attending executions, and to limit the visibility of those who did. Executions were performed at twilight and with little warning; elevated scaffolds were banned. Although the number of executioners in France was reduced to a single practitioner, he continued to perform the vestiges of the penal spectacle until the curtain finally came down in 1939, after which all executions would be performed behind closed doors.

This chapter focuses on the people who enact an execution according to rabbinic law, beginning with those found in the Bible: the blood-avenger, the community, and the witnesses to the crime. It argues that the blood-avenger serves as a focal point for tensions between the individual and the rabbinic authorities. In addressing the role of the community and witnesses, it shows that the Rabbis withdraw the agency of execution from the community and deliver it into the hands of the crime’s witnesses. This transfer of power can be interpreted as a strategy for controlling the power of execution, while at the same time maintaining some distance from the execution itself.

This chapter explores the relationship between rabbinic execution and Roman execution, asking how the rabbinic experience of Roman execution may have shaped the Rabbis’ own laws of execution. It focuses on a text from the Mishnah and Tosefta that features a dispute about the proper method of decapitation according to rabbinic law. It suggests that the barely concealed subtext of this dispute is whether rabbinic power should model itself on Roman power, or reject it entirely. It then considers whether other rabbinic laws of execution may be driven by the same concern. The chapter concludes with some reflections on the quandaries the Rabbis faced as a minority group within the Roman Empire.

Although customary and Roman law are often thought of as two entirely different bodies of law, this chapter charts the intrusion of Roman legal concepts—especially malice aforethought and exemplary deterrence—into customary law. From the twelfth century onward, punishment became increasingly spectacular and violent. New methods of execution, such as drawing and quartering, burning, boiling, beheading, live burial, and the wheel, were invented or borrowed from ancient Rome in order to transform the practice of punishment into a graphic exercise in exemplary deterrence. As the staging of punishment became more complex, fewer jurisdictions were entrusted with the authority to execute capital sentences, with the result that the practice of punishment gradually became less local in character. An increasingly powerful monarchy encouraged judicial discretion as a means of circumventing local irregularities and instituting a more homogenous, national system of punishment.

By the turn of the eighteenth century, spectators from all social classes had developed a fascination with the spectacle of capital punishment. Unusual executions or the execution of particularly noteworthy individuals drew enormous crowds. At the same time, however, a revolution in sensibilities was reimagining human nature to be instinctively prone to compassion, and especially to sympathy with the suffering of others. As the very nature of humanity came to be defined as having “humane” sensibilities, the practice of finding pleasure in the sufferings of others came to be seen as unnatural and inhuman. This chapter traces these two, largely incompatible, and yet nearly simultaneous trends in watching and making sense of executions from the turn of the sixteenth century to the middle of the eighteenth century.