Translate Judicial System - Alexandra BOUY | Library

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Pendant des années, la peine de mort aux États-Unis a semblé connaître un déclin irréversible, voire être en voie d'extinction.

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Les condamnations à mort ont chuté d'environ 90 % depuis le pic atteint au milieu des années 1990, lorsque plus de 300 condamnations étaient prononcées chaque année.

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En 1999, il y a eu près de 100 exécutions dans tout le pays ; en 2021, il y en a eu 11.

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Cette tendance à la baisse commence à s'inverser.

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Sous l'impulsion de procureurs intransigeants et de gouverneurs intransigeants en matière de criminalité, le nombre d'exécutions a bondi de 64 % en 2022 et a de nouveau augmenté en 2023 pour atteindre un total de 24, le chiffre le plus élevé depuis cinq ans.

Perhaps the most crucial player in the death penalty’s resurrection, though, is the U.S. Supreme Court, whose historic role of maintaining guardrails has given way to removing roadblocks. Under the conservative supermajority put in place by President Donald Trump, the justices are far more likely to propel an execution forward than intercede to stop it, including in cases where guilt is in doubt or where the means of carrying it out could result in a grotesque spectacle of pain and suffering.
States are responding. On Thursday, Alabama is scheduled to execute someone using a potentially dangerous method that has never before been used in the U.S. South Carolina announced it is restarting executions after a 12-year pause, a decision which is now the subject of a legal challenge that will be heard by the state’s highest court in February. On Dec. 22, a Utah judge ruled that the state could use a firing squad to execute Ralph Leroy Menzies, who was convicted and sentenced to death in 1988, even though past experiments with this method demonstrated that there was a “ risk of a ‘botched’ execution, such as bullets missing the target placed over a person’s heart.” Earlier in 2023, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed six death warrants (compared to just two during his entire first term in office) and a law that ended a unanimous jury requirement for death sentencing. Florida also enacted a law that allows capital punishment in cases involving sex crimes against children in non-lethal cases; in December, a Florida prosecutor invoked it to seek the death penalty against a man accused of multiple counts of sexual battery against a child under the age of 12. The law flatly contradicts a line of Supreme Court precedent barring the death penalty in cases where “no life was taken.” DeSantis has vowed to defend the legislation against any legal challenge, offering the justices an opportunity to reconsider an entire line of death penalty jurisprudence. Similar laws have been proposed in Tennessee and Missouri.
On Nov. 16, Alabama executed Casey McWhorter, who had just turned 18 when he participated in the 1993 robbery and shooting death of the victim. The jury could not reach a unanimous verdict on the death sentence, but the judge imposed it anyway. In Louisiana, a coalition of prosecutors led by Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry defeated Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards’ effort to commute 56 death row sentences. Landry, a death penalty proponent who has pushed for Louisiana to expand its execution methods to include hangings and firing squads, replaced Edwards as governor in January. “If Jeff Landry wants to do it,” said Cecelia Kappel, the executive director of the Capital Appeals Project in New Orleans, “he will find a way to do it.”
So far, the new wave of completed executions has been confined to the deep South. But death penalty sentences are not, and other parts of the country may soon start carrying them out. Between 2001 and 2021, the number of people on death row in Maricopa County, Arizona, increased by more than half. One of the most avid proponents of capital punishment in the country is Mike Hestrin, the district attorney of Riverside County, California, which now has the second-largest population of people on death row — behind only Los Angeles County, which has increased its death row population by 25 percent over the past two decades.
In 1976, the Supreme Court famously declared that “death is different,” and demanded an extra level of scrutiny because a mistake is irreversible. Historically, in particularly troubling instances involving state misconduct or abysmal defense lawyering, the Court sometimes intervened at the eleventh hour — from 2013 to 2023, it stayed an execution just 11 times and vacated stays of execution 18 times, according to Bloomberg Law.
Since the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her replacement with Amy Coney Barrett in 2020, the Court has stopped an execution only twice and reversed a lower court to permit an execution nine times. In 2023, 26 condemned prisoners asked the Court to hear their cases; 25 were rejected. The message is clear: Prosecutors eager to seek and swiftly impose death sentences can reliably do so without judicial interference.

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Match the legal terms with their correct definitions.

Draggable item		Corresponding Item
Jury		Act of lying under oath in court
Verdict		Group of people sworn to render a verdict in a trial
Perjury		Final decision made in a court case

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Match the following legal professions with their roles.

Draggable item		Corresponding Item
Defense Attorney		Court officer responsible for keeping order in the court
Prosecutor		Lawyer who represents the accused in court
Bailiff		Lawyer who represents the government in criminal cases

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Connect the court roles with their functions.

Draggable item		Corresponding Item
Clerk of Court		Official in charge of files and records in court
Judge		Presides over court proceedings and makes legal decisions
Witness		Person who gives evidence or testimony in court

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Pair the types of laws with their descriptions.

Draggable item		Corresponding Item
Constitutional Law		Laws related to disputes between individuals
Civil Law		Laws related to crimes and punishment for offenders
Criminal Law		Laws derived from the constitution of a country

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What is the main function of the Judicial System?

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What is the highest court in a country usually called?

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What do we call professionals who decide cases in courts?

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What term refers to the previous court decisions that judges refer to?

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What is the main role of the Supreme Court in the judicial system?

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Describe the role of a judge in a trial process.

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How does the appellate court contribute to the judicial system?

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What is a jury’s responsibility in a court trial?

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Comment the following passage : Since the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her replacement with Amy Coney Barrett in 2020, the Court has stopped an execution only twice and reversed a lower court to permit an execution nine times. In 2023, 26 condemned prisoners asked the Court to hear their cases; 25 were rejected.