The Global Decline Of The Mandatory Death Penalty: Constitutional Jurisprudence And Legislative Reform In Africa, Asia, And The Caribbean

The Global Decline of the Mandatory Death Penalty Historically, at English common law, the death penalty was mandatory for the crime of murder and other violent felonies. Over the last three decades, however, many former British colonies have reformed their capital punishment regimes to permit judicial sentencing discretion, including consideration of mitigating factors. Applying a comparative analysis to the law of capital punishment, Novak examines the constitutional jurisprudence and resulting legislative reform in the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South and Southeast Asia, focusing on the rapid retreat of the mandatory death penalty in the Commonwealth over the last thirty years. The coordinated mandatory death penalty challenges—which have had the consequence of greatly reducing the world’s death row population—represent a case study of how a small group of lawyers can sponsor human rights litigation that incorporates international human rights law into domestic constitutional jurisprudence, ultimately harmonizing criminal justice regimes across borders. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the study and development of human rights and capital punishment, as well as those exploring the contours of comparative criminal justice. Novak provides a thorough comparative study of the movement away from the mandatory death penalty towards discretionary sentencing in Commonwealth countries, about which we know little. While much of the book deals with contemporary jurisprudence, legal analysis is discussed within an historical and sociological context that is informative and engaging. Carolyn Hoyle, University of Oxford, UK Professor Novak has made an enormous contribution to the eventual abolition of the death penalty, in an incisive study of one of the more insidious aspects of it: its mandatory nature in many states that still retain it. The rationale for the prohibition of mandatory sentences to death—so ably explained in these pages and famously embraced by the US Supreme Court in Woodson v. North Carolina—is quickly establishing itself as a rule of international human rights law. Juan E. Mendez, Washington College of Law, USA Even after formal abolition of the death penalty in the United Kingdom in the 1960s, the toxic legacy of mandatory execution was a threat to penal justice and human rights in many nations tied to the common law tradition. This book tells the story of the litigation and advocacy that has removed the ugly shadow of mandatory capital punishment from most common law nations. Franklin E. Zimring, University of California, Berkeley, USA To Dr. Alexandro