Document d'accompagnement n°3

I - THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA :

The Supreme Court is the highest Court in the judiciary system of the U.S.A.and its powers were established by the third article of the American Constitution as follows : " ... the laws of the United States shall be made under [its] authority... ".

• Its jurisdiction : it is mainly an appeal body and works in all cases related to Government and / or citizens... But it also controls the passing of laws and guarantees "Federalism".
• Its members : the 9 members of the Supreme Court are called "Justices" and are appointed for life by the U.S. President. They can only resign or be impeached.
• Its history : the number of its members may vary from 5 to 10 and since 1869, "Circuit Court Judges" have been appointed who relieve the "Justices" from lots of minor duties.

II - CAPITAL PUNISHMENT :

• Capital Punishment is the legal infliction of the death penalty.
• Its history : before the American Revolution, there were lots of unfair executions in the colonies and the Blacks were more severely punished than the Whites.
• With the Reform Movement led by the "Quakers", several American states abolished the death penalty.
• The methods of execution : in the U.S.A., "death row men" can be excuted in 5 different ways : by hanging (2 states), electrocution (12 states) , the gas chamber (5 states), a firing squad (2 states) or by a lethal injection (27 states -as in the film "Dead Man Walking").
• Its effectiveness : people have diverging opinions about it : some believe death penalty is a better deterrent than a life imprisonment sentence because it is more severe whereas others claim that death penalty is unfair since it is not legal in every state of the U.S.A.
• the moral concerns : the defendants of death penalty say that a society has a right to kill its criminals in defence of its members but anti-death penalty militants protest against the executions of innocent people.
• Women are rarely sentenced to death and executed.
• There is also a large disproportion between the number of White and non-White, poor and rich criminals sentenced to death : 46 % of offenders are Blacks, 36 % are Whites, 16 % are Latins and 1 % are Asians.
• So, all those kinds of discrimination clearly show that death penalty is not an easy subject to tackle with ...

III - THE DEATH PENALTY IN TEXAS (September 12, 1999) :

• The U.S.A. is the only N.A.T.O. country to execute its citizens.
• Since the 1976 Supreme Court decision to reintroduce the death penalty, over 571 people have been executed in that country.
• Texas has executed almost 2 ½ times as many criminals as any other state.
• 100 people were excuted in Texas under Governor George W. Bush.
• There are 465 people on dearth row in Texas, 9 of them women.
• Most Texans are in favour of alternative prison sentences like life sentences or are undecided about capital punishment.
• National statistics have shown that death penalty does not deter but aggravate crime.
• The death penalty is racist and discriminates against the poor, the mentally-ill and the mentally - retarded.
• Juvenile offenders are executed in the U.S.A.(13 in the country, including 7 in Texas).
• Innocent people have been (and will be) executed : between 1900 and 1985, it was found that 350 people were wrongly convicted and sentenced to death, 23 of them were executed.
• The death penalty is costly to Texan taxpayers : in 1992, it amounted to an average of $ 2.3 million per cases (about12 million French Francs).
• FBI crime statistics have shown Texas to be America’s most violent state from 1981 until 1992.
• About 50 % of Texans own guns.
• Today, 1 out of every 10 people in prison in America is in a Texan jail.

IV - UNITED STATES DEATH ROW FACTS :

• Until December 31, 1999, the detah penalty was authorized by 38 states and the Federal Government as well.
• Texas, Florida and California have the largest death row populations .
• 3,527 offenders were under death sentence in the U.S.A. by the end of 1999.
• Jurisdictions without death penalty statutes are : Alaska, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massassuchetts, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
• A lethal injection consists of mixture of a sedative, a muscle relaxant and a heart killer product.
• The offender is usually pronounced dead approximately 7 minutes after the lethal injection.
• "EQUAL JUSTICE U.S.A" was launched in 1990 in Maryland to build public awareness and protest about human rights in the U.S. legal system and to abolish the death penalty.

V - DEATH PENALTY FOR FEMALE OFFENDERS (January 1, 1973 until June 30 , 2000) :

• Recent developments : the execution of Karla Faye TUCKER in Texas on February 3, 1998, accompanied by a huge press coverage in the U.S.A and worldwide.
• The latest female execution was Betty Lou BEETS’s. It took place on February 24, 2000 and it was moderately covered by the press.
• Screening out female offenders in the capital punishment system : women account for
  • 1 in 8 murder arrests
  • 1 in 52 death sentences
  • 1 in 74 persons presently on death row
  • 1 in 4 of 650 persons actually executed today.

Women are rarely arrested for murder, extremely rarely sentenced to death and almost never executed.

VI - JUVENILES AND THE DEATH PENALTY (Executions worlwide since 1990) :

• The use of the death penalty for crimes committed under the age of 18 is prohibited under international human rights standards and yet a few countries ( such as the U.S.A., Bangladesh, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen ) practise the execution of juvenile offenders ( even at the age of 16 or 17 years old ). Such executions are scarce compared with the total number of worldwide executions.
• Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases as a violation of the right to life not to be subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment.
• The background of the majority of the juvenile offendres executed since 1990 was one of serious emotional or material deprivation.
  • Many were regular users of alcohol or drugs with lower average intelligence.
  • Some had organic brain damage.
  • Some had poor or inexperienced legal counsel.
• Juveniles and executions : currently, there are about 70 death row inmates sentenced as juveniles (about 2 % of the total death row but 37 % of these juveniles are in Texas prisons).
• 12 men have been executed for crimes committed as juveniles since 1976.

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