death penalty for rapists essay

Rape is wrong but death penalty, castration, not the answer: UN rights chief

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While perpetrators of rape and other forms of sexual violence must be held accountable, capital punishment and torture are not the answer, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Thursday. 

Michelle Bachelet has issued a statement calling on governments to step up action against these crimes, improve access to justice and reparations for victims, and institute prompt criminal investigations and prosecutions for those responsible. 

Outrage and calls for justice 

Her intervention comes in the wake of recent reports of horrific rapes in numerous parts of the world, including Algeria, Bangladesh, India, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan and Tunisia. 

UN Human Rights Chief @mbachelet stands in solidarity and outrage with survivors of #rape, and those demanding justice. Tempting as it may be to impose draconian punishment, she urges we shift the focus on justice and reparation for the victim 👉 https://t.co/yuDdJC7EW0 pic.twitter.com/I0PAptrLCF UN Human Rights UNHumanRights

These incidents have prompted outrage and demands for justice. 

“I share the outrage and stand in solidarity with the survivors, and with those demanding justice. But I am concerned that there are also calls – and in some places laws already being adopted – bringing in cruel and inhuman punishments and the death penalty for perpetrators,” said Ms. Bachelet. 

Castration and capital punishment 

The UN human rights chief provided examples of these laws, such as a legal amendment instituted last month in Kaduna state, located in northwestern Nigeria. 

The law allows surgical castration for male rapists, and the removal of the fallopian tubes of women convicted of the crime: a surgery known as bilateral salpingectomy.  These procedures will be followed by the death penalty if the victim is under 14. 

Earlier this week, the government of Bangladesh approved an amendment which introduces the death penalty for rape, while in Pakistan there have been calls for public hanging and castration.  

Similar demands for the death penalty have been made elsewhere. 

Access to justice is key 

While the main argument for capital punishment in this case is the belief that it deters rape, there is no evidence to support this, according to Ms. Bachelet. 

“Evidence shows that the certainty of punishment, rather than its severity, deters crime”, she said.  

“In most countries around the world, the key problem is that victims of sexual violence do not have access to justice in the first place – whether due to stigma, fear of reprisals, entrenched gender stereotypes and power imbalances, lack of police and judicial training, laws that condone or excuse certain types of sexual violence or the lack of protection for victims.”  

 A greater role for women 

The High Commissioner stressed that the death penalty, or penalties like surgical castration or removal of the fallopian tubes, will not resolve any of the myriad barriers to accessing justice, nor will it serve a preventive role. 

“In fact, the death penalty consistently and disproportionately discriminates against the poor and most marginalized individuals, and often results in further human rights violations,” she stated, while pointing out that surgical castration and salpingectomy violate international human rights law. 

 “I urge States to adopt a victim-centred approach to fighting the scourge of rape and other sexual violence. It is crucial that women are active participants in designing measures to prevent and address these crimes, and that law enforcement and judicial officials receive the requisite training in handling such cases,” she said.  

 “Tempting as it may be to impose draconian punishments on those who carry out such monstrous acts, we must not allow ourselves to commit further violations.”

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Human Rights

Race, Human Rights, and the U.S. Death Penalty

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From enslavement to lynching, race massacres, the genocide against indigenous peoples, Jim Crow segregation, and immigrant exclusion policies, the United States has a long history of human rights abuses arising out of racial violence and discrimination.

Following the ratification of the post-Civil War amendments to the U.S. Constitution that ended chattel slavery and guaranteed equal protection of the law to all Americans, and the landmark Reconstruction Era Civil Rights Act, governmental acts of racial discrimination became unconstitutional and unlawful in this country. While enshrined as the law of the land, those rights are often violated and those violations are often not redressed by the courts. Whether deemed a violation of domestic law or not, those governmental acts of racial discrimination — and toleration of racial discrimination by non-enforcement of prohibitions against it — may violate international human rights law.

International Context on Race and Human Rights

The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination was adopted in 1965 and ratified, with reservations , by the United States in 1994. Article 2 sweepingly “condemn[s] racial discrimination” and commits parties to the treaty to “undertake to pursue by all appropriate means and without delay a policy of eliminating racial discrimination in all its forms.” Article 2, Section 1(a) makes clear that the obligations of the treaty extend beyond federal governments, committing countries “to engage in no act or practice of racial discrimination … and to ensure that all public authorities and public institutions, national and local, shall act in conformity with this obligation.”

Article 6 of the Convention requires countries to “assure to everyone within their jurisdiction effective protection and remedies, through the competent national tribunals and other State institutions, against any acts of racial discrimination.” The failure of Congress to provide effective remedies and the refusal of federal courts to enforce them are themselves violations of international human rights norms, separate and apart from the initial violation by state or local government actors.

Although the United States signed ICERD in 1966, it was not ratified by the Senate until October 1994. The Senate declared the treaty to be “not self-executing,” meaning that its provisions would be unenforceable in U.S. courts unless Congress separately enacted legislation making it part of U.S. domestic law. Congress has not done so, nor has it enacted legislation that would permit individuals who believed their human rights under ICERD had been violated to bring suit in U.S. courts. It also refused to submit disputes under ICERD to the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice without “the specific consent of the United States … in each case.”

According to the American Bar Association Section on Civil Rights and Social Justice, these actions “nullify the treaty’s effect” and demonstrate a “hollow” and “watered-down commitment … toward ICERD’s goal of eliminating global racial discrimination.”

In recent years, international human rights bodies have criticized the United States for endemic racial discrimination throughout its criminal legal system. Following the extrajudicial killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, and during the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests, the United Nations Human Rights Council called for an urgent debate in June 2020 . In that session, the council discussed systemic racism and violations of international human rights law committed by law enforcement officials against Africans and people of African descent around the world, and proposed a “transformative agenda” to “end impunity for human rights violations by law enforcement officials and … ensure that the voices of people of African descent and those who stand up against racism are heard and that their concerns are acted upon.” The session concluded with a resolution calling upon the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights to conduct a thorough report on the matter.

In 2021, the “groundbreaking” racial justice report was released and provided 20 actionable recommendations. Unsatisfied with the progress since, the Office of the High Commissioner released a subsequent report in 2022 identifying “ piecemeal progress in combating systemic racism .” The racial justice report specifically noted “the disproportionate impact of the death penalty, punitive drug policies, arrests, overrepresentation in prisons and other aspects of the criminal justice system on people of African descent in different countries” and quoted Amnesty International’s 2021 Global Report on Death Sentences and Executions that charged that “many cases of those who faced the death penalty [in the United States] in 2021 were also affected by concerns of racial discrimination and bias.”

The 2020 United Nations Universal Periodic Review of the United States’ human rights record includes generalized criticism from several UN bodies regarding the discriminatory nature of the U.S. capital punishment system. The Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, which had previously expressed concern about the existence of capital punishment in 2016, noted that those of African descent were disproportionally affected, citing the fact that they represented over 40% of the U.S. death row population. The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention noted that “African Americans were more likely to be sentenced to longer terms of imprisonment” and expressed concern “about the existence of racial disparities at all stages of the criminal justice system.”

Evidence of Race Discrimination in the U.S. Death Penalty

Everywhere in the world in which the death penalty exists, it is applied disproportionately against racially, religiously, ethnically, and politically disfavored groups. The United States is no exception to that worldwide rule.

The United States death penalty is often referred to as a descendent of the American historical practices of enslavement, lynching, and Jim Crow segregation. Studies have found that states with a greater history of lynchings also tend to have more modern death sentences, and that the link is even stronger between lynchings and death sentences imposed upon Black defendants. [1] A 2022 study documented the “deep historical and contemporary connection [between the death penalty and] white racial hostility toward blacks.” [2] It found that the same “racial resentment of blacks [that] drives support for the death penalty at the individual level” operates at the state level and that “states with higher aggregate levels of racial resentment impose more death sentences,” particularly against African Americans. From slavery to lynching to segregation to the death penalty and mass incarceration, the researchers wrote, “[r]acial attitudes that historically led to discrimination and racial subjugation reproduce themselves within the white population through the institutions and political cultures of a given area.”

Studies show that racial discrimination operates and compounds itself at each stage of a potentially capital case, from policing practices, to charging decisions, to plea negotiations, and on through the process of trial, sentencing, appeal, and execution. [3] A review of a dataset of 2,328 Georgia first-degree murder convictions that produced 1,317 death eligible cases found that two sets of factors operated in combination to determine who would be executed: “victim race and gender, and a set of case-specific features that are often correlated with race.” [4] Indeed, Georgia data showed that “racial disparities persist and … are magnified during the appellate and clemency processes,” with the net result that “the overall execution rate is a staggering seventeen times greater for defendants convicted of killing a white victim.” [5]

Other landmark studies have documented similar phenomena: after rating cases based upon the perceived severity of a murder, African Americans were more likely to be sentenced to death than white defendants irrespective of the race of the victim and the severity of the murder, and a death sentence was more likely to be imposed in a case involving one or more white victims, irrespective of the race of the defendant and the severity of the murder. The combination of race of victim and race of defendant most likely to produce a death verdict at all levels of severity was a Black defendant and a white victim.

Graph from Baldus, et al., Racial Discrimination and the Death Penalty in the Post-Furman Era: An Empirical and Legal Overview with Recent Findings from Philadelphia, Cornell Law Review ( 1998 ).

A study of the death penalty in Philadelphia, [6] which in 2001 had 113 African Americans on death row — 25 more than any other county in the U.S. [7] — found that the odds that a capital trial would result in a death sentence were 3.1 times greater if the defendant was Black; and those odds became 9.3 times greater if the case advanced to a capital penalty phase; and 29.0 times greater if a jury found both aggravating and mitigating circumstances to be present and had to make the discretionary choice between life or death.

To explore the impact of racial bias — overt or implicit — on capital sentencing, other researchers examined whether the defendant’s appearance affected the likelihood of a death sentence. [8] They rated African American capital defendants based upon the degree to which they had prototypically African facial features (i.e., darker skin, broader nose, and thicker lips) and examined sentencing outcomes based upon the race of the victim. They found that a Black defendant’s appearance had no statistically significant difference in sentencing outcomes if the victim also was Black. But in cases in which the victim was white, a Black defendant with archetypical African features was twice as likely to be sentenced to death as a Black defendant with lighter skin, a narrower nose, and thinner lips.

Image from the Philadelphia ​ “ Looking Deathworthy” study, Eberhardt, et al., Looking Deathworthy: Perceived Stereotypicality of Black Defendants Predicts Capital-Sentencing Outcomes, Psychological Science ( 2006 ).

The racist underpinnings of the U.S. death penalty — and its emergence as a successor to extrajudicial lynchings — can be seen most clearly in the historical application of the death penalty for allegations of rape . Between 1930 and 1972, 455 people in the United States were executed for rape. 405 (89.1%) of those executed were Black. 443 of the executions for rape (97.3%) occurred in the states of the former Confederacy. No white man has ever been executed in the U.S. for the rape of a Black woman or child in which the victim was not killed. For most of the 20th century, Virginia permitted the death penalty for rape, attempted rape, and armed robbery that did not result in death. 73 Black men and boys were executed on charges they had committed non-lethal acts. No white person was executed for an offense that did not result in death.

In the “modern era” — since states began re-enacting death penalty laws after the Supreme Court struck down existing death penalty statutes in 1972 — executions have been limited to cases in which a victim was killed. That has eliminated the huge racial bias present in death penalty cases for non-lethal offenses. However, significant race-of defendant and race-of victim bias remains. Executions disproportionately involve white victims, suggesting an inappropriate race-based conception of what constitutes the “worst of the worst” killings. And among the most vulnerable of defendants — juveniles, late adolescents, the intellectually disabled, and those who are innocent and have been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death — significant bias permeates the death penalty system.

More than two thirds (30 of 44) of the known intellectually disabled prisoners who were executed before the Supreme Court banned the practice in Atkins v. Virginia in 2002 were people of color. More than 60% (27 of 44) were Black. Over the next twenty years, U.S. states executed at least 29 more prisoners who most likely were intellectually disabled. More than three-quarters (22, 75.9%) were people of color and 62.1% (18 of 29) were Black. As of December 2022, at least 142 condemned prisoners had their death sentences overturned under Atkins : More than 4 in 5 (118, 83.1%) were people of color and more than two-thirds (96, 67.6%) were Black.

Similarly, nearly two-thirds (65.2%) of the 235 death sentences imposed on juvenile offenders (under age 18) in the United States in the modern era before the Supreme Court struck down that practice in Roper v. Simmons in 2005 were people of color. [9] More than half (52.0%) were Black. 64.7% of the 1,319 death sentences imposed on late adolescent offenders (between ages 18 and 21) in the U.S. in the modern era have been directed at people of color, with more than half imposed on Black adolescents (51.2%). [10] Noting that “Black youth are punished more harshly than Whites” and that “it is clear death as a penalty is not applied equally and fairly among members of the late adolescent class,” the American Psychological Association in August 2022 adopted a resolution calling for an end to the death penalty for individuals aged 18-20.

The National Registry of Exonerations has documented that Black defendants charged with murder are much more vulnerable to wrongful convictions than are their white counterparts. In its 2022 report, Race and Wrongful Convictions in the United States , the Registry found that Black people are about 7½ times more likely to be wrongfully convicted of murder in the U.S. than are whites, and about 80% more likely to be innocent than others convicted of murder. The already disproportionate risk of wrongful conviction, the Registry found, was even worse if the murder victim in a case was white.

Not surprisingly, death-row exonerations highlight the enhanced risk of wrongful conviction that innocent defendants of color face in their capital trials. Nearly two-thirds of wrongfully convicted death-row prisoners who have subsequently been exonerated are individuals of color and more than half are Black. As of March 2023, DPIC had documented 191 death-row exonerations since 1973: one exoneration for every 8.2 executions in the United States in the past half century. DPIC’s exoneration data shows that exonerees of color, and particularly those who are Black, are more likely to be victims of official misconduct and false accusation, more likely to be wrongfully convicted and condemned, and more likely to spend longer periods facing execution or under the continuing shadow of their wrongful conviction than white death-row exonerees.

Reframing the Death Penalty as a Human Rights Issue Rather than a Legitimate Tool of Public Safety

In most of the democratic nations of the world, the death penalty is viewed as a human rights issue. And when the United States looks outward at the death penalty policies and practices of autocratic regimes like Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, North Korea, and Belarus, it, too, tends to frame the issue in terms of human rights. But Americans rarely turn the human rights lens inward towards this nation’s death penalty practices. Instead, internally, the death penalty tends to be discussed as a legitimate criminal legal policy option in promoting and protecting public safety.

However, that is beginning to change as historians, academics, and policy advocates increasingly address the historical use of enslavement and punishment as instruments of social control in the United States and the continuing role the death penalty plays in legitimizing other policies of mass incarceration.

In a 2015 interview with The Marshall Project , Equal Justice Initiative founder and executive director Bryan Stevenson observed that the United States has “never committed itself to a conversation about the legacy of slavery. … Very few people in this country have any awareness of just how expansive and how debilitating and destructive America’s history of slavery is.”

“The whole narrative of white supremacy was created during the era of slavery. It was a necessary theory to make white Christian people feel comfortable with their ownership of other human beings,” Stevenson said. “And we created a narrative of racial difference in this country to sustain slavery, and even people who didn’t own slaves bought into that narrative, including people in the North. … We created a narrative of racial difference to maintain slavery. And our 13th amendment never dealt with that narrative. It didn’t talk about white supremacy. The Emancipation Proclamation doesn’t discuss the ideology of white supremacy or the narrative of racial difference. So I don’t believe slavery ended in 1865, I believe it just evolved. It turned into decades of racial hierarchy that was violently enforced — from the end of reconstruction until WWII — through acts of racial terror.”

During the 2018 dedication of EJI’s lynching memorial , the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Stevenson called capital punishment “the stepchild of lynching. … It was disproportionately used against people of color; it still continues to be shaped primarily by race,” he said.

Stevenson argues that “we’ve used the death penalty to sustain racial hierarchy by making it primarily a tool to reinforce the victimization of white people. The greatest racial disparity of the death penalty is the way in which the death penalty is largely reserved for cases where the victims are white. … And that’s true throughout this country. We’ve used it particularly aggressively when minority defendants are accused of killing white people. And history is replete with defendants being described with the n-word, cases just saturated with racial bigotry, and the courts have largely tolerated that.” He says that the occasional pursuit of the death penalty for hate crimes targeting Black victims does not legitimize the death penalty. “We can’t be distracted by thinking that if they execute one person who committed mass violence that’s some sign of progress. That’s a sign of tactical misdirection to preserve a system that is inherently corrupted by a narrative of racial difference.”

In a 2023 Discussions With DPIC podcast interview, Georgetown University Racial Justice Institute Executive Director Diann Rust-Tierney observed that “for a long time, the death penalty has been misclassified … as if it was a normal public safety tool, notwithstanding the fact that there is no relationship between safety and the death penalty, that we don’t see reduction in the crime or murder in places that use the death penalty.” Rust-Tierney describes the suggestion that the death penalty is a tool of public safety as “fiction.” Rather, she says, “the death penalty really [is] part of something much more terrible. It is part of the racial caste system in the United States.”

“[F]rom its very beginning in history, from the very first time that Africans were brought to the United States to work, it was part of a legal and social system designed to keep various races in their place and to reinforce the institution of slavery,” Rust-Tierney says. “And the most important thing that the death penalty does, and did then, is to tell us the value of different lives. In other words, it places a different value on the life of a victim, depending upon their race, and it places a different value on the life of the defendant based on their race. That’s something we’ve seen historically, and so it was important to understand that the death penalty is not a tool of public safety, but it is in fact, a tool of racial and social oppression.”

Rust-Tierney frames the discussion of capital punishment in the U.S. and worldwide as part of “a global struggle for human rights, a global struggle for democracy.” She notes that the most aggressive death penalty states in the U.S. are engaging in a broad range of anti-democratic practices, making their execution practices state secrets, attempting to bar African Americans from jury service through regulations and rules that limit who can serve on a jury or through the discriminatory use of jury strikes, attempting to overturn the results of local elections in which reform prosecutors have said that they don’t intend to seek the death penalty or are going to seek the death penalty more sparingly, and trying to oppress a significant segment of their population through voter suppression. “The reality,” she says, “is that the death penalty is a tool of oppression. Autocrats and anti-democratic people and dictators use death as punishment, and they wield it where they will, and how they will …. [T]he death penalty is a tool of power.”

Rust-Tierney says “it’s time to stand on the side of either democracy and self determination and human rights on this side or on the side of autocracy and oppression and dictators. And in that stark contrast, you have to oppose the death penalty.”

DPIC Webinars: Webinar on Race and the U.S. Death Penalty ;

German Embassy Panel on Human Rights & the U.S. Death Penalty, Diann Rust Tierney speaks at 54min

DPIC Report: Enduring Injustice

DPIC Webpage: Race Page

DPIC Podcast: Georgetown Racial Justice Institute Director Diann Rust-Tierney on Reconceptualizing the U.S. Death Penalty as a Violation of Fundamental Human Rights

Human Rights Council holds an urgent debate on current racially inspired human rights violations, systemic racism, police brutality and violence against peaceful protests

2022 Report: A/HRC/51/53: Promotion and protection of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of Africans and of people of African descent against excessive use of force and other human rights violations by law enforcement officers through transformative change for

Agenda towards transformative change for racial justice and equality

2021 Report: A/HRC/47/53: Promotion and protection of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of Africans and of people of African descent against excessive use of force and other human rights violations by law enforcement officers

International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination

IACHR Precautionary Measure on Julius Jones

2020 Universal Period Review of United States Human Rights Record

Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide: Discrimination Page

Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide: Arbitrariness Page

Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide: Due Process Page

[1] David Jacobs, Jason T. Carmichael, and Stephanie L. Kent, Vigilantism, Current Racial Threat, and Death Sentences , American Sociological Review 656–77, Vol. 70 (Aug. 2005).

[2] Frank R. Baumgartner, Christian Caron, and Scott Duxbury, Racial Resentment and the Death Penalty , The Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics 1–19 (2022).

[3] Jeffrey Fagan, Garth Davies, and Raymond Paternoster, Getting to Death: Race and the Paths of Capital Cases After Furman , 107 Cornell Law Review 1565-1620 (2022); Scott Phillips and Justin F. Marceau, Whom the State Kills , 55 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 585-656, Issue 2 (Summer 2020).

[4] Fagan et al. , at 1565.

[5] Phillips and Marceau, at 603.

[6] David C. Baldus, George Woodworth, David Zuckerman, and Neil Alan Weiner, Racial Discrimination and the Death Penalty in the Post-Furman Era: An Empirical and Legal Overview with Recent Findings from Philadelphia , 83 Cornell Law Review 1638-1770 (1998).

[7] Robert Dunham, Racial composition of death row in the seventy most populous counties in states with the death penalty , July 16, 2001, document on file with the Death Penalty Information Center.

[8] Jennifer L. Eberhardt, P G. Davies, Valerie J. Purdie-Vaughns, and Sheri Lynn Johnson, Looking Deathworthy: Perceived Stereotypicality of Black Defendants Predicts Capital-Sentencing Outcomes , Psychological Science 383-86, Vol. 17, No. 5 (2006).

[9] For whom race is known. 235 people were sentenced to death for crimes committed before they turned age 18. 115 were Black; 77 were white; 26 were Hispanic; 3 were of other races; and race data was missing for 14.

[10] Again, for whom race is known. 1,319 death sentences were imposed on late adolescent offenders. 640 were Black; 442 were white; 139 were Hispanic; 30 were of other races; and race data was missing for 68 cases.

On rape and capital punishment

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By Franklin Zimring and David T. Johnson, Economic and Political Weekly

Would capital punishment for rapists help protect India’s girls and women? Would a capital trial for these gang rapists help reform the deeply dysfunctional system of criminal justice? The answer to both questions is in the negative.

Franklin E Zimring ( [email protected] ) teaches Law at the University of California at Berkeley and David T Johnson ( [email protected] ) teaches Sociology at the University of Hawaii.

Our essay advocating a formal end to the death penalty in India was published on the same day that the gang rape in Delhi resulted in the New Beginning or the Beginning of victim’s death (“Executing Kasab: A December 2012). Those horrendous the End of the Death Penalty”, EPW, 29 crimes have generated a firestorm of public rage, one by-product of which is a call for capital punishment for rapists. In this article we consider what Delhi and its aftermath can teach us about the death penalty in India. Would “capital punishment for rapists” help protect India’s girls and women? Would a capital trial for these gang rapists help reform the deeply dysfunctional system of criminal justice? And could capital punishment for rape be a dangerous diversion of attention from India’s real problems?

In our view, a death penalty for rapists in India is a truly terrible idea. With tens of thousands of rapes each year but only two executions in the past 15 years, arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement of the death penalty would be a certainty, not least because inefficient, misogynistic, and corrupt police and prosecutors would be put in charge of this lethal lottery. There is also a practical problem: threatening to hang rapists provides incentive for them to kill victims and witnesses in order to avoid identification.

Two Problems

But there are two deeper problems with a death penalty for rape. The first is that it diverts attention from the attitudes and institutions that make modern India unsafe for half her citizens. Changing the subject to capital punishment puts offenders in the public spotlight while leaving in the shadows those police and prosecutors who turn a blind eye to victims’ complaints and those citizens who pass by naked victims without lifting an eyebrow or a finger. In a country where sexual harassment and assault are endemic and where (according to a recent UNICEF report) more than half of young males think wife beating is justified, the belief in capital punishment requires an Olympian leap of faith across the root causes of rape – with eyes wide shut.

The second deep problem is that a death penalty for rape is a giant step backwards for women’s rights. In the world of 2013 there is a close correlation between executions for rape and women’s rights – and it turns out to be negative. The death penalty for rape persists primarily in enclaves such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Pakistan, where women are treated as property and where “honour killings” reflect the perverse valuation of sexual purity over human life. To appropriate the feminist slogan, Indian women need the protection of capital punishment like a fish needs a bicycle.

But does the Delhi victim’s death make the perpetrators of this atrocity worthy candidates for hanging? Probably not. By Indian law, all of the thugs on that bus are liable for murder because their attack caused the victim’s death, yet it appears that none of the six intended to kill. We will probably never know for certain which of the offenders actually caused the injuries that led to the victim’s death. In the context of this uncertainty, Indian courts would have to cheat on their “rarest of the rare” doctrine to identify even a single candidate for state killing. And if the defendants receive effective assistance of counsel (as the law says they must), then a capital trial will be torture for the victim’s relatives. Conversely, if the defendants do not have good counsel, the trial will further embarrass an Indian justice system that has already received much criticism.

‘Status Competition’

The current circumstances of capital punishment in India make it almost inevitable that the victim’s parents will demand that all of their daughter’s rapists be hanged. As long as there is some prospect that a murderer might be executed, every victim’s family will demand that the gravity of their loss be recognised by the highest penalty the law allows – and in India that penalty is death. In this way, capital punishment becomes the top prize in what scholars call a “status competition”, and anything less means their loss has been devalued. This is a cruel contest, for few defendants are sentenced to death in India, and almost none are executed. The mirage of execution demeans the status of all homicide victims who do not receive the grisly prize.

A formal end to executions in India would show mercy not only to prisoners but also to their victims. After capital punishment becomes impossible, lesser punishments no longer feel like an insult to the survivors. The assassination of 77 innocent people in Norway in July 2011 was an act of unimaginable evil – the worst crime in that nation’s long history. But it produced almost no public demand for state killing because Norway abolished death as a criminal sanction many years ago. If India had formally retired its own hangmen, its citizens would no longer experience the vain hope of execution that is compounding the horrors of Delhi.  

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Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Crossing the line: rape-murder and the death penalty.

Phyllis L. Crocker , Cleveland State University Follow

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Publication date, publication title.

Ohio Northern University Law Review

rape, murder, death penalty, capital punishment

When a woman is raped and then murdered, it is among the most horrifying of crimes. It is also, often, among the most sensational, notorious, and galvanizing of cases. In 1964, Kitty Genovese was raped and murdered in Queens, New York. Her murder sparked soul-searching across the country because her neighbors heard her cries for help and did not respond: it made us question whether we had become an uncaring people. During the 1970s and 80s a number of serial killers raped and murdered their victims: including Ted Bundy in Florida and William George Bonin, the “Freeway Killer,” in Southern California. In the 1990s, the sexual assault-murder of seven-year-old Megan Kanka in New Jersey contributed to a firestorm of states passing sex offender notification statutes.Rolando Cruz was released from Illinois death row in 1995, after serving eleven years for a crime he did not commit: the rape and murder of ten-year-old Jeanine Nicarico. The crime itself sent shock waves through the Chicago metropolitan area and pressure to quickly solve it contributed to Cruz's arrest and conviction. In each instance the rape-murder terrified us and made us want to impose the severest of punishments.This essay explores the validity of that conclusion by examining rape-murder as a category of death penalty cases, and by comparing the treatment of rape when it is the only crime to its treatment when it is the underlying felony in a felony-murder death penalty case.

Repository Citation

Phyllis L. Crocker, Crossing the Line: Rape-Murder and the Death Penalty, 26 Ohio Northern University Law Review 689 (2000)

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FACTBOX - From Bangladesh to Iran, countries where rape carries the death penalty

ARCHIVE PHOTO: Indian police stand guard next to barricades installed outside the court where a judge will announce the sentences for four men found guilty of fatally raping a young woman on a bus, in New Delhi September 13, 2013. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi

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Bangladesh approves the use of the death penalty for rapists, joining at least six other countries where rape can be punished by death

By Naimul Karim

DHAKA, Oct 13 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Bangladesh approved the death penalty for rape on Tuesday following nationwide protests over an alleged gang rape and an online video showing a group of men sexually assaulting a woman.

Bangladesh has seen a surge in sexual crime in recent years, with nearly 1,000 incidents reported in the first nine months of this year, more than a fifth of them gang rapes, according to rights group Ain o Salish Kendra.

Under an amendment to the nation's rape law, anyone convicted of raping a woman or child can now be punished with "death or rigorous imprisonment for life."

Here are six other countries where rapists can be punished by death:

An executive order passed in 2018  approved the death penalty for rapists of girls below the age of 12 in India. The decision was taken in response to nationwide outrage over a series of rape cases.

Rapists with previous convictions and perpetrators of sexual assaults that lead to the death of the victim, or leave them in a persistent vegetative state, may also be punished by death, according to the country's criminal law .

2. Pakistan

Under the Pakistan Penal Code , offenders involved in gang rape can be sentenced to either death or life imprisonment.

Last month, Prime Minister Imran Khan said he wanted rapists to be  chemically castrated or publicly executed after the rape of a woman on a highway sparked protests.

3. Saudi Arabia

Rape is a criminal offence under Saudi Arabia's Sharia law and involves a range of penalties such as flogging and execution. At least  150 executions took place in Saudi Arabia in 2019, eight of which were for rape.

With at least 250 executions last year, Iran conducted the second-highest number of executions in the world last year after China, according to Amnesty International. Twelve of the executions were for rape, under the country's Islamic Penal Code.

5. United Arab Emirates

Under UAE law, coerced sex with a woman is punishable by death . The law states that coercion is presumed if the victim is less than 14 years of age at the time of the crime.

The UAE did not record any executions in 2019, but imposed at least 18 death sentences for crimes including murder, rape and armed robbery.

The country's  criminal law states that anyone who rapes a woman or has sexual intercourse with a girl aged below 14 can face death if the victim dies or is seriously injured , if the victim is raped in public or if the perpetrator commits multiple rapes.

Sources: Amnesty International, International Labour Organization, Death Penalty Database

(Reporting by Naimul Karim @Naimonthefield; Editing by Helen Popper. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers the lives of people around the world who struggle to live freely or fairly. Visit http://news.trust.org)

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Tennessee governor OKs bill allowing death penalty for child rape convictions

Gov. Bill Lee speaks during a news conference at the end of the 2024 legislative session, Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has approved legislation allowing the death penalty in child rape convictions, a change the Republican-controlled Statehouse championed amid concerns that the U.S. Supreme Court has banned capital punishment in such cases.

Lee, a Republican, quietly signed off on the legislation last week without issuing a statement.

The new Tennessee law, which goes into effect July 1, authorizes the state to pursue capital punishment when an adult is convicted of aggravated rape of a child. Those convicted could be sentenced to death, imprisonment for life without possibility of parole, or imprisonment for life.

Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis enacted a similar bill nearly a year ago. A few months after being enacted, Florida prosecutors in Lake County announced in December that they were pursuing the death penalty for a man accused of committing sexual battery of a minor under the age of twelve. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the case is considered the first to be pursued under the new law.

Meanwhile, Idaho’s GOP-controlled House approved similar legislation earlier this year, but the proposal eventually stalled in the similarly Republican-dominated Senate.

While many supporters of Tennessee’s version have conceded that even though the Volunteer State previously allowed convicted child rapists to face the death penalty, the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately nullified that law with its 2008 decision deeming it unconstitutional to use capital punishment in child sexual battery cases.

However, they hope the conservative-controlled Supreme Court will reverse that ruling — pointing to the decades long effort that it took to overturn Roe v. Wade , the landmark 1973 case that legalized abortion nationwide but was eventually overruled in 2022.

“Maybe the atmosphere is different on the Supreme Court,” said Republican Sen. Janice Bowling last month while debating in favor of the law. “We’re simply challenging a ruling.”

Lee told reporters Tuesday that he didn’t sign the bill hoping it would be “tested” in court. Instead, he said crimes against children are “some of the most heinous that there are.”

Democratic lawmakers and child advocates worry that the law may instill more fear into child rape victims that speaking out could potentially result in an execution, warning that many children are abused by family members and close friends. Others have alleged that predators could be incentivized to kill their victims in order to avoid a harsher punishment.

Execution law in the U.S. dictates that crimes must involve a victim’s death or treason against the government to be eligible for the death penalty. The Supreme Court ruled nearly 40 years ago that execution is too harsh a punishment for sexual assault, and justices made a similar decision in 2008 in a case involving the rape of a child.

Currently, all executions in Tennessee are on hold as state officials review changes to its lethal injection process. Gov. Lee issued the pause after a blistering 2022 report detailed multiple flaws in how Tennessee inmates were put to death.

No timeline has been provided on when those changes will be completed.

Associated Press writer Jonathan Mattise contributed to this report.

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Death penalty for child rapists approved in GOP state

Governor Bill Lee (R-Tenn.) signed a bill into law last week that authorizes the state to punish individuals convicted of child rape with the death penalty and other forms of capital punishment.

According to The Associated Press, the Tennessee governor quietly signed the legislation last week without releasing a public statement.

The legislation , which is currently scheduled to take effect in July, grants the state authority to pursue the use of capital punishment against individuals convicted of aggravated rape of a child. The capital punishment authorization includes the death penalty, imprisonment for life, and imprisonment for life without possible parole.

The Associated Press reported that Tennessee’s previous law that allowed convicted child rapists to be punished with the death penalty was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008. At the time, the Supreme Court ruled that capital punishment in child sexual battery cases was unconstitutional, according to The Post Millennial.

READ MORE: Illegal immigrant charged for child sex crimes

The Associated Press reported that supporters of the state’s new legislation have expressed optimism that the Supreme Court may reverse its previous ruling if the law is challenged in court. State lawmakers have pointed to the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade as evidence that the court could reconsider the capital punishment ruling.

“Maybe the atmosphere is different on the Supreme Court,” Republican State Senator Janice Bowling said in April. “We’re simply challenging a ruling.”

On Tuesday, Lee explained that he did not sign the legislation last week because he wanted the bill to be “tested” in court but because crimes committed against children are “some of the most heinous that there are.”

According to The Associated Press, Governor Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) signed a similar law last year to authorize the death penalty for child rapists. The Republican-led Idaho House of Representatives also approved a similar bill; however, the bill has not been approved by the Idaho Senate.

The Associated Press reported that all executions in Tennessee were previously put on hold by Lee until state officials finalize changes to Tennessee’s lethal injection process. The pause was initiated by the Republican governor after a 2022 report highlighted flaws in the lethal injection process. A timeline for the finalization of the changes has not yet been announced.

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Tennessee governor OKs bill allowing death penalty for child rape convictions

N ASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has approved legislation allowing the death penalty in child rape convictions, a change the Republican-controlled Statehouse championed amid concerns that the U.S. Supreme Court has banned capital punishment in such cases.

Lee, a Republican, quietly signed off on the legislation last week without issuing a statement.

The new Tennessee law, which goes into effect July 1, authorizes the state to pursue capital punishment when an adult is convicted of aggravated rape of a child. Those convicted could be sentenced to death, imprisonment for life without possibility of parole, or imprisonment for life.

Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis enacted a similar bill nearly a year ago. A few months after being enacted, Florida prosecutors in Lake County announced in December that they were pursuing the death penalty for a man accused of committing sexual battery of a minor under the age of twelve. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the case is considered the first to be pursued under the new law.

Meanwhile, Idaho's GOP-controlled House approved similar legislation earlier this year, but the proposal eventually stalled in the similarly Republican-dominated Senate.

While many supporters of Tennessee's version have conceded that even though the Volunteer State previously allowed convicted child rapists to face the death penalty, the Supreme Court ultimately nullified that law with its 2008 decision deeming it unconstitutional to use capital punishment in child sexual battery cases.

However, they hope the conservative-controlled U.S. Supreme Court will reverse that ruling — pointing to the decades long effort that it took to overturn Roe v. Wade , the landmark 1973 case that legalized abortion nationwide but was eventually overruled in 2022.

“Maybe the atmosphere is different on the Supreme Court,” said Republican Sen. Janice Bowling last month while debating in favor of the law. “We’re simply challenging a ruling.”

Democratic lawmakers and child advocates worry that the law may instill more fear into child rape victims that speaking out could potentially result in an execution, warning that many children are abused by family members and close friends. Others have alleged that predators could be incentivized to kill their victims in order to avoid a harsher punishment.

Execution law in the U.S. dictates that crimes must involve a victim’s death or treason against the government to be eligible for the death penalty. The Supreme Court ruled nearly 40 years ago that execution is too harsh a punishment for sexual assault, and justices made a similar decision in 2008 in a case involving the rape of a child.

Currently, all executions in Tennessee are on hold as state officials review changes to its lethal injection process. Gov. Lee issued the pause after a blistering 2022 report detailed multiple flaws in how Tennessee inmates were put to death.

No timeline has been provided on when those changes will be completed.

Missouri prosecutors to seek death penalty in killing of court employee and police officer

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Missouri prosecutors said Wednesday that they intend to seek the death penalty against a Kansas City-area man who is charged with murder in the killings of a court employee who tried to serve an eviction notice on him and a police officer who responded.

Larry Acree, 70, of Independence, is accused of shooting court employee Drexel Mack on Feb. 29, plus two police officers who came to the scene, including Cody Allen, who was killed. Officers returned fire and arrested Acree, who suffered minor injuries.

Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker’s office filed a notice with the court saying the state will prove there are aggravating circumstances sufficient to warrant the death penalty. Acree is charged with 18 total counts including two of first-degree murder.

According to court papers, Acree owed delinquent taxes dating back to at least 2019. His 9-acre (3.6-hectare) property and three-bedroom home was sold last August for $260,000, and the new owner paid the taxes. A “Notice to Vacate” sign was posted at the property in February, and authorities have said Acree had no right to be there.

At a brief hearing Wednesday, Acree’s attorney, Edward Berrigan of the Missouri State Public Defender’s office, asked for a continuance so that the public defenders who handle death penalty cases could be reassigned, the Kansas City Star reported .

Acree’s next court date is set for July 10 in Independence, a suburb of Kansas City with about 122,000 residents.

Eleven people are currently on death row in Missouri.

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As Trump Campaigns in New York, Biden Points Black Voters to His Rival’s Past

Ahead of Donald Trump’s political event in the Bronx, the Biden campaign released a television ad highlighting Mr. Trump’s treatment of Black people.

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By Reid J. Epstein

Reporting from Washington

• May 23, 2024

President Biden’s campaign on Thursday released a new advertisement aimed at Black voters . It comes as former President Donald J. Trump is planning a political event in the Bronx , a play by his campaign not necessarily to compete in New York State but to highlight Mr. Biden’s weakness with a key group of Democratic voters.

The ad will appear on digital platforms in New York City on Thursday, the Biden campaign said, and on television in battleground-state markets including Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Atlanta, Detroit and Macon, Ga.

What the ad says

It begins with Mr. Trump saying, “Of course, I hate these people” — a remark he made during a 1989 interview on CNN , referring to those who had been accused of a brutal rape of a jogger in what became known as the Central Park Five case.

Five Black and Latino men were wrongly convicted in the case, and at the time, Mr. Trump fueled racist reaction to the attack by taking out full-page advertisements in local newspapers, including The New York Times, calling for the death penalty to be reinstated .

Putting more than a little spin on the ball, the Biden ad uses that context to suggest Mr. Trump was saying in the 1989 interview that he hated all Black people. An ominous voice says: “Donald Trump disrespecting Black folks is nothing new.”

The clip then recounts Mr. Trump’s treatment of Black people: his family business’s documented bias at its rental properties decades ago; his response to the Central Park Five case; and his remarks as president defending white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va.

It closes as it began, with Mr. Trump saying, “Of course, I hate these people.”

What the ad is trying to do

The Biden campaign and its allies have for months struggled to reverse a decline in popularity with Black voters , particularly Black men.

By resurfacing Mr. Trump’s 35-year-old foray into the Central Park Five episode, Mr. Biden is trying to remind voters about a Trump past that they may have forgotten about or never been aware of to begin with.

It fits with the Biden campaign’s effort this week to disqualify Mr. Trump as unfit — Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, on Tuesday called the former president “a known antisemite” — and it reflects a recognition that Mr. Biden’s North-Star message on abortion rights may need broadening to reach all the voters he will need to win in November.

Reid J. Epstein covers campaigns and elections from Washington. Before joining The Times in 2019, he worked at The Wall Street Journal, Politico, Newsday and The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. More about Reid J. Epstein

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