The administration of capital punishment is beset by a further difficulty – accuracy. Due to the irrecoverable nature of death, all aspects of the judicial process, ranged from forensic investigations to trials, should be scrupulously scrutinised to ensure its propriety. The rights to life is the basic and absolute human dignity – which has been recognized by plenty international human rights instruments, including the ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ (United Nations, 1948) – that is part of the very essence of legislation and must be respected and should not be undermined by all judicial system. In contrast to common beliefs, innocent and error do not exist as a rare case in capital trials. A study carried out by Liebman et al. (2002)
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Inadequate legal representation and substandard capital defence services in court proceeding, however, increase the enormity of miscarriage of justice. Contrarily, highly qualified, well paid, privately hired lawyers – or rarely, lawyers providing pro bono legal services – significantly increase the chance of overturning flawed death verdicts (Liebman et al., 2002). One example would be Brandon Washington’s case, which the court-appointed lawyer had not even raised an appellate review after the death sentence passed upon him, had won a reversal in the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals after an intervention by a human rights lawyer (Bright, …show more content…
In spite of the fact that the means of execution had been vastly reduced and restricted in most countries over centuries of the democratic developments, even in countries which are still carrying out execution to this date, yet many policies and terms remained imprecise. For example, although the United States has banned the use of ‘cruel and unusual punishments’ in 1791 according to the ‘Eighth Amendments’ in order to avoid infliction (Schabas, 2002), remaining undefined, the term ‘cruel and unusual’ is opened to infinite possibility of vague interpretations and triggers debates whether it points to capital punishment. Besides, in 1995, the American Congress fortified the death penalty in the country by restricting circumstances which courts could bestow opportunity for federal reviews of contested verdicts raised in state courts (Steiker and Steiker, 2006). The application of stringent standards for appellate review has exaggerated the difficulty for reversal (Joy and McMunigal, 2003). The capital punishment system, collapsing under the weight of these procedural problems, has been depriving individuals’
Inadequate legal representation and substandard capital defence services in court proceeding, however, increase the enormity of miscarriage of justice. Contrarily, highly qualified, well paid, privately hired lawyers – or rarely, lawyers providing pro bono legal services – significantly increase the chance of overturning flawed death verdicts (Liebman et al., 2002). One example would be Brandon Washington’s case, which the court-appointed lawyer had not even raised an appellate review after the death sentence passed upon him, had won a reversal in the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals after an intervention by a human rights lawyer (Bright, …show more content…
In spite of the fact that the means of execution had been vastly reduced and restricted in most countries over centuries of the democratic developments, even in countries which are still carrying out execution to this date, yet many policies and terms remained imprecise. For example, although the United States has banned the use of ‘cruel and unusual punishments’ in 1791 according to the ‘Eighth Amendments’ in order to avoid infliction (Schabas, 2002), remaining undefined, the term ‘cruel and unusual’ is opened to infinite possibility of vague interpretations and triggers debates whether it points to capital punishment. Besides, in 1995, the American Congress fortified the death penalty in the country by restricting circumstances which courts could bestow opportunity for federal reviews of contested verdicts raised in state courts (Steiker and Steiker, 2006). The application of stringent standards for appellate review has exaggerated the difficulty for reversal (Joy and McMunigal, 2003). The capital punishment system, collapsing under the weight of these procedural problems, has been depriving individuals’