The Death Penalty: The Penultimate Punishment

By Ariana Foley  In 2017, 2817 people were recorded on death row in the United States (Criminal Justice Project 2017).  Of this number, nearly half have been confined for at least 15 years and the average amount of time from sentencing to death has risen from six years in 1984 to 16.5 in 2011 (Bureau…

Understanding Death Row as a Global Health Issue

By Aesha Baral  When people think of today’s world global health issues, topics such as malaria , malnutrition and natural disasters tend to be a first thought. However, as people are still being placed on death row, with the process of abolition being slow, we need an understanding of how this has become an important…

Flirting with death — why the UK must be more careful than ever

By Eliška Stroehlein In Britain, we have long gazed across the pond with a slight air of morbid fascination, confusion and at times disgust. Yet, if we are being completely honest with ourselves, we also see the United States as a model to follow in many ways. This is true from celebrity culture and cars…

The perils of peremptory challenges

The right of the accused in a criminal prosecution to a trial by jury is enshrined in the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. It is not only a declaration to the defendant that he has a right to a fair trial through the formation of an impartial jury composed…

‘Killing for votes’. A President’s strategy for success: George W. Bush

The American Dream; success determined by your own hard work – blood, sweat and tears. George W. Bush apparently missed the memo and appropriated the blood and tears of others to pave his path to political prosperity. His commitment to the death penalty enhanced his political career, as it enabled him to successfully campaign as…

Born in flames: social justice and the death penalty

It’s in the news: last week, a man ruthlessly murdered an entire family. The details of the crime are sickening, and the victims were innocent and well-loved. As you look at the murderer’s mugshot in the paper, you can’t help but wonder to yourself: how could someone commit such a cold-blooded crime? How could someone…

8 things I’ve learned from the Amicus death penalty training

At this year’s Autumn Amicus Death Penalty Training, 10 of us from King’s College London had the opportunity to take part in a course which was truly inspiring. Speakers from a number of backgrounds – barristers, solicitors and even exonerees – came together throughout two weekends at Pinsent Masons, to discuss the death penalty system…

Why we can Defend the Death Penalty but Oppose US Capital Punishment

Accountability, retribution and justice lie at the heart of our conception of punishment.  From the biblical days of ‘an eye for an eye’ to the modern commitment of proportionality, the idea that the guilty should receive a punishment befitting their crime is uncontroversial and widely held. It may arguably follow, that the punishment for a…

The Troubling Appointment of Jeff Sessions

He enforced a conservative, philosophical judicial stance of “law and order”, characterised most evidently by upholding over 40 death sentences in that time.

Life after Exoneration

It is normal for death-row exonerees to forget life in the ‘real’ world.

Amicus – why we do what we do

Amicus Reflections was created by the King’s College London Amicus Chapter – but what does Amicus mean, and what does it stand for?

The Problem with Problematic Executions

The procedural focus of a botched execution “washes its hands of the inhumane, often torturous pain a victim experiences”.