Abstract
The death penalty in Africa is part of a much larger world-historical decline in capital punishment, and the continent falls somewhere between Europe and Latin America’s near-total abolition and the committed retention of East Asia and the Islamic world. The conclusion discusses the prospects of a continent-wide moratorium, the promise of African regional tribunals, and the role of NGOs in bringing human rights litigation. Finally, no discussion on the death penalty is complete without addressing alternatives, such as life imprisonment and mandatory minimum sentencing, as abolition requires consideration of the relative costs, effectiveness, and goals of other forms of criminal punishment.
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Notes
See C. Boulanger and A. Sarat, Putting Culture into the Picture: Toward a Comparative Analysis of State Killing, in Sarat and Boulanger eds., The Cultural Lives of Capital Punishment: Comparative Perspectives (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005) 2–3, 10–11.
Ibid., 3; D.T. Johnson and F.E. Zimring, The Next Frontier: National Development, Political Change, and the Death Penalty in Asia (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2009) 27 (noting decline in executions).
See, for example, P. Carozza, “My Friend Is a Stranger”: The Death Penalty and the Global Ius Commune of Human Rights, Texas Law Review 81 (2003) 1036.
P. Hodgkinson, S. Kandelia, and L. Gyllensten, Capital Punishment: A Review and Critique of Abolition Strategies, in J. Yorke ed., Against the Death Penalty: International Initiatives and Implications (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2008) 258–261.
R. Warden, Illinois Death Penalty Reform: How It Happened, What It Promises, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 95 (2005) 387.
M.O.A. Owori, The Death Penalty in Lesotho: The Law and Practice, British Institute of International and Comparative Law (c. 2004), http://www.biicl.org/files/2298_country_report_lesotho_owori.pdf.
J.D. Mujuzi, Mujuzi, Life Imprisonment in International Criminal Tribunals and Selected African Jurisdictions—Mauritius, South Africa and Uganda (LL.D. Thesis, University of the Western Cape, 2009) 272–275.
J.D. Mujuzi, Issues Surrounding Life Imprisonment after the Abolition of the Death Penalty in Rwanda, Human Rights Law Review 9:2 (2009) 331–332.
See D. van Zyl Smit, Life Imprisonment: Recent Issues in National and International Law, International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 29 (2006) 410–411.
S. Terblanche and G. Mackenzie, Mandatory Sentences in South Africa: Lessons for Australia? Australia and New Zealand Journal of Criminology 41 (2008) 402.
L. Chenwi, Taking the Death Penalty Debate Further: The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, in J. Yorke (ed.) Against the Death Penalty: International Initiatives and Implications (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2008), 96.
Chenwi, Breaking New Ground: The Need for a Protocol to the African Charter on the Abolition of the Death Penalty in Africa, African Human Rights Law Journal 5 (2005) 90, 93, 96.
D. Ehighalua, Nigerian Issues in Wrongful Convictions, University of Cincinnati Law Review, 80:4 (2012) 1143.
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© 2014 Andrew Novak
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Novak, A. (2014). Conclusion: The Future of the Death Penalty in Africa. In: The Death Penalty in Africa: Foundations and Future Prospects. Palgrave Pivot, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137438775_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137438775_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, New York
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