Foreigners on America's Death Rows

Foreigners on America's Death Rows
Author: John Quigley
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2018-05-03
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1108656595

Capital cases involving foreigners as defendants are a serious source of contention between the United States and foreign governments. By treaty, foreigner defendants must be informed upon arrest that they may contact a consul of their home country for assistance, yet police and judges in the United States are lax in complying. Foreigners on America's Death Row investigates the arbitrary way United States police departments, courts, and the Department of State implement well-established rights of foreigners arrested in the US. Foreign governments have taken the United States into international courts, which have ruled that the US must enforce the treaty. The United States has ignored these rulings. As a result, foreigners continue to be executed after a legal process that their home governments justifiably find to be flawed. When one country ignores the treaty rights of another as well as the decisions of international courts, the established order of international relations is threatened.

Medellín v. Texas

Medellín v. Texas
Author: Alan Mygatt-Tauber
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2022-08-31
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0700633618

In 1993, José Medellín, an eighteen-year-old Mexican national who lived most of his life in the United States, was arrested for his participation in the gang rape and murder of two girls in Houston, Texas. Despite telling police that he was born in Mexico, he was never informed of his right to contact the Mexican Consulate, a right guaranteed to him by Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. The Mexican government filed suit against the United States in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which ruled that the United States had violated the rights of both Mexico and Medellín, along with fifty-one other Mexican nationals in other cases. The ICJ instructed the United States to provide “review and reconsideration” of the convictions and sentences of the fifty-two Mexican nationals. Armed with this new decision, Medellín sought a writ of habeas corpus, which was denied by the lower courts. He petitioned for a writ of certiorari, which the Supreme Court granted, twice. While President George W. Bush sided with the ICJ, the State of Texas, under Solicitor General Ted Cruz, argued against the president. Despite a nearly universal belief among court watchers and legal scholars that Texas would lose, the Court in a 6–3 decision ruled in favor of Texas and against Medellín in June 2008. Medellín was executed just two months later. In this volume Alan Mygatt-Tauber tells the story of Medellín v. Texas, showing how the Court’s 2008 ruling grappled with the complex question of how a united republic that respects the dual sovereignty of its constituent parts struggles to comply with its international obligations. But this is also a story of international human rights and the anomalous position of the United States regarding the death penalty compared to other nations. In the closing chapters, the author explores the aftermath of the execution, including the continued effort of Mexico to seek justice for its nationals. Mygatt-Tauber offers a detailed examination of the case at every stage of proceedings—trial, appeal, at the International Court of Justice, and in both trips to the Supreme Court. He provides never-before-revealed information about the thinking of the Bush White House in the decision to comply with the ICJ’s judgment and to withdraw from the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention that granted the ICJ jurisdiction.

America through Foreign Eyes

America through Foreign Eyes
Author: Jorge G. Castañeda
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2020-05-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0190224517

Do Americans care what foreigners think about the United States? This book makes the case that they should. In these pages, Jorge Castañeda writes from his unique vantage point as a former Foreign Minister of Mexico who has lived, studied, and worked in America. He offers an impressionistic, analytical, and intuitive review of his experience in the country over the last half-century, and shows how foreigners can provide perspective on the United States' true nature. Castañeda brings a different viewpoint to issues ranging from purported American exceptionalism, uniformity, race and religion, culture, immigration, and the death penalty. Visitors and analysts, from Dickens to Naipaul, have generally asked the right questions and described America's most salient features and mysteries. But, they have not always followed through with answers and explanations. Castañeda draws from his work with American civil society and government authorities to provide both insight and context. Americans have long seen their country as "exceptional," standing outside of history, but by comparing its contemporary politics and culture with those of other countries, Castañeda shows how increasing nationalism and nostalgia are actually making the US more like other countries. Castañeda admits that most Americans have never cared much about what a foreigner thinks about their country, but the dynamic is shifting. The outside world means more to the US than ever before, and Americans should care about what foreigners think since they are now so sensitive to what foreigners do. Since Trump's election in 2016, American politics increasingly resemble those of Europe, Latin America, and parts of Asia, such that pining for a lost and glorious past is as American as it is British, Mexican, Chinese, or Italian. Now, the questions that serious, knowledgeable, and sympathetic foreigners address to Americans may be the ones Americans ask--or should ask--for themselves.

Foreigners on America's Death Row

Foreigners on America's Death Row
Author: John Quigley
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2018-05-03
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1108428231

Investigates how foreigners charged with capital murder in the United States are deprived of rights by police and courts.

Unwelcomed Immigrants in America

Unwelcomed Immigrants in America
Author: Oscar Hughes Price
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 486
Release: 2015-10-23
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1514401312

Oscar Hughes Price was born in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, where he finished his basic, general school studies. He experienced the tip end of the Duvaliers regimes. He migrated to the United States in his mid-twenties. He briefly attended the Community College of Baltimore County in Dundalk, Maryland, pursuing a degree in heating air-conditioning recovery. Price is married and is a father to three children.

Capital Punishment in Japan

Capital Punishment in Japan
Author: Petra Schmidt
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2002
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9789004124219

This book provides an overview of capital punishment in Japan in a legal, historical, social, cultural and political context. It provides new insights into the system, challenges traditional views and arguments and seeks the real reasons behind the retention of capital punishment in Japan.

European Union Contested

European Union Contested
Author: Elisabeth Johansson-Nogués
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2019-11-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3030332381

The European Union's foreign policy and its international role are increasingly being contested both globally and at home. At the global level, a growing number of states are now challenging the Western-led liberal order defended by the EU. Large as well as smaller states are vying for more leeway to act out their own communitarian principles on and approaches to sovereignty, security and economic development. At the European level, a similar battle has begun over principles, values and institutions. The most vocal critics have been anti-globalization movements, developmental NGOs, and populist political parties at both extremes of the left-right political spectrum. This book, based on ten case studies, explores some of the most important current challenges to EU foreign policy norms, whether at the global, glocal or intra-EU level. The case studies cover contestation of the EU's fundamental norms, organizing principles and standardized procedures in relation to the abolition of the death penalty, climate, Responsibility to Protect, peacebuilding, natural resource governance, the International Criminal Court, lethal autonomous weapons systems, trade, the security-development nexus and the use of consensus on foreign policy matters in the European Parliament. The book also theorizes the current norm contestation in terms of the extent to, and conditions under which, the EU foreign policy is being put to the test.

Racism and Xenophobia in Early Twentieth-Century American Fiction

Racism and Xenophobia in Early Twentieth-Century American Fiction
Author: Wisam Abughosh Chaleila
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2020-12-29
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1000328228

"The Melting Pot," "The Land of The Free," "The Land of Opportunity." These tropes or nicknames apparently reflect the freedom and open-armed welcome that the United States of America offers. However, the chronicles of history do not complement that image. These historical happenings have not often been brought into the focus of Modernist literary criticism, though their existence in the record is clear. This book aims to discuss these chronicles, displaying in great detail the underpinnings and subtle references of racism and xenophobia embedded so deeply in both fictional and real personas, whether they are characters, writers, legislators, or the common people. In the main chapters, literary works are dissected so as to underline the intolerance hidden behind words of righteousness and blind trust, as if such is the norm. Though history is taught, it is not so thoroughly examined. To our misfortune, we naively think that bigoted ideas are not a thing we could become afflicted with. They are antiques from the past – yet they possessed many hundreds of people and they surround us still. Since we’ve experienced very little change, it seems discipline is necessary to truly attempt to be rid of these ideas.

Don't Kill in Our Names

Don't Kill in Our Names
Author: Rachel King
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2003
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780813531823

"Rachel King offers us the stories of families who understand the powerful reality that taking another life in the name of justice only perpetuates the tragedy. I encourage others to read these stories to better understand their journey from despair and anger to some level of peace and even forgiveness."--Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ, author of Dead Man Walking Could you forgive the murderer of your husband? Your mother? Your son? Families of murder victims are often ardent and very public supporters of the death penalty. But the people whose stories appear in this book have chosen instead to forgive their loved ones' murderers, and many have developed personal relationships with the killers and have even worked to save their lives. They have formed a nationwide group, Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation (MVFR), to oppose the death penalty. MVFR members are often treated as either saints or lunatics, but the truth is that they are neither. They are ordinary people who have responded to an extraordinary and devastating tragedy with courage and faith, choosing reconciliation over retribution, healing over hatred. Believing that the death penalty is a form of social violence that only repeats and perpetuates the violence that claimed their loved ones' lives, they hold out the hope of redemption even for those who have committed the most hideous crimes. Weaving third-person narrative with wrenching first-hand accounts, King presents the stories of ten MVFR members. Each is a heartrending tale of grief, soul searching, and of the challenge to choose forgiveness instead of revenge. These stories, which King sets in the context of the national discussion over the death penalty debate and restorative versus retributive justice, will appeal not only to those who oppose the death penalty, but also to those who strive to understand how people can forgive the seemingly unforgivable. Rachel King is a legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington national office where she lobbies on crime policy. She is currently working on a book about the families of death row inmates.

The Death Penalty

The Death Penalty
Author: Roger Hood CBE QC (Hon) DCL FBA
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 2168
Release: 2008-03-27
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0191021733

The 4th edition of this authoritative study of the death penalty, now written jointly with Carolyn Hoyle, brings up-to-date developments in the movement to abolish the death penalty worldwide. It draws on Roger Hood's experience as consultant to the United Nations for the UN Secretary General's five-yearly surveys of capital punishment and on the latest information from non-governmental organizations and the academic literature. Not only have many more countries abolished capital punishment but, even amongst those that retain it, the majority have been carrying out fewer executions. Legal challenges to the mandatory capital punishment have been successful, as has the pressure to abolish the death penalty for those who commit a capital crime when under the age of 18. This edition has more to say about the prospects that China will restrict and control the number of executions 'on the road to abolition'. Yet, despite such advances, this book reveals many human rights abuses where the death penalty still exists. In some countries a wide range of crimes are still subject to capital punishment, and the authorities too often fail to meet the safeguards embodied in international human rights treaties to safeguard those facing the death penalty. There is evidence of police abuse, unfair trials, lack of access to competent defence counsel, excessive periods of time spent on in horrible conditions on 'death row', and public, painful forms of execution. The authors engage with the latest debates on the realities of capital punishment, especially its justification as a uniquely effective deterrent; whether it can ever be administered equitably, without discrimination or error; and what influence relatives of victims should have in sentencing and on the public debate. For the first time, it also discussing the problem of devising an alternative to capital punishment, especially life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.