Capital Punishment: Strategies for Abolition

What are the critical factors that determine whether a country replaces, retains or restores the death penalty? Why do some countries maintain the death penalty in theory but in reality rarely invoke it? By asking these questions, the editors hope to isolate the core issues that influence the formulation of legislation so that they can be incorporated into strategies for advising governments considering changes to their policy on capital punishment. They also seek to redress the current imbalance in research, which tends to focus almost exclusively on the experience of the USA, by covering a range of countries such as South Korea, Lithuania, Japan and the British Caribbean Commonwealth. This valuable contribution to the debates around capital punishment contains contributions from leading academics, campaigners and legal practitioners and will be an important resource for students, academics, NGOs, policy makers, lawyers and jurists.

• First truly international study of the death penalty including unique material on Eastern Europe, Asia and the Caribbean • Explores often neglected issues such as needs of victims and the condemned, alternatives to the death penalty and public education • International team of leading experts from range of disciplines including law, criminology, religion and philosophy

Acknowledgements; 1. Capital punishment: improve it or remove it? Peter Hodgkinson; 2. International law and the death penalty: reflecting or promoting change? William A. Schabas; 3. Doctors and the death penalty – ethics and a cruel punishment Robert Ferris and James Welsh; 4. Replacing the death penalty; the vexed issue of alternative sanctions Andrew Coyle; 5. Religion and the death penalty in the United States of America: past and present James J. Megivern; 6. On botched executions Marian J. Borg and Michael L. Radelet; 7. Death as a penalty in the Shari’ah M. Cherif Bassiouni; 8. Abolishing the death penalty in the United States of America: an analysis of institutional obstacles and future prospects Hugo Adam Bedau; 9. Capital punishment in the United States of America – moratorium efforts and other key developments Ronald J. Tabak; 10. The experiences of Lithuania’s journey to abolition Alexsandras Dobryninas; 11. The death penalty in South Korea and Japan: ‘Asian values’ and the debate about capital punishment? Byung-Sun Cho; 12. Georgia – former republic of the USSR – managing abolition Eric Svanidze; 13. Capital punishment in the Commonwealth Caribbean – colonial inheritance, colonial remedy? Julian B. Knowles;14. Public opinion and the death penalty William A. Schabas; 15. Capital punishment – meeting the needs of the families of the homicide victim and the condemned Peter Hodgkinson.