Global Decline of the Mandatory Death Penalty

Andrew Novak is an adjunct professor of African law at American University Washington College of Law and an adjunct professor of criminology, law, and society at George Mason University, where he teaches international and comparative criminal justice. He received a Master of Science in African Politics from the London School of Oriental and African Studies and a Juris Doctor from Boston University School of Law. His articles on the death penalty in Sub-Saharan Africa have appeared in journals such as the Suffolk University Law Review, Loyola Journal of Public Interest Law, Richmond Journal of Global Law and Business, Indiana International and Comparative Law Review, and Boston University International Law Journal.

’Novak provides a thorough comparative study of the movement away from the mandatory death penalty towards discretionary sentencing in Commonwealth countries, about which we know little. While much of the book deals with contemporary jurisprudence, legal analysis is discussed within an historical and sociological context that is informative and engaging.’ Carolyn Hoyle, University of Oxford, UK ’Professor Novak has made an enormous contribution to the eventual abolition of the death penalty, in an incisive study of one of the more insidious aspects of it: its mandatory nature in many states that still retain it. The rationale for the prohibition of mandatory sentences to death - so ably explained in these pages and famously embraced by the US Supreme Court in Woodson v. North Carolina - is quickly establishing itself as a rule of international human rights law.’ Juan E. Mendez, Washington College of Law, USA ’Even after formal abolition of the death penalty in the United Kingdom in the 1960s, the toxic legacy of mandatory execution was a threat to penal justice and human rights in many nations tied to the common law tradition. This book tells the story of the litigation and advocacy that has removed the ugly shadow of mandatory capital punishment from most common law nations.’ Franklin E. Zimring, University of California, Berkeley, USA 'This book is deeply researched, well written, original, and insightful. It makes a major contribution to scholarship showing the death penalty’s downward trajectory, and in a short concluding chapter it also suggests three broad implications that follow from the study.' Law and Politics Book Review

• Chapter 1 Introduction: The Mandatory Death Penalty in Historical and Comparative Perspective; Chapter 2 An Excessive and Arbitrary Punishment: The Mandatory Death Penalty and Discretion in the United States of America; Chapter 3 Restricting the Death Penalty to the “Rarest of the Rare”: The Origins of a Discretionary Death Penalty in India and Bangladesh; Chapter 4 A Successful Experiment: The Abolition of the Mandatory Death Penalty in the Commonwealth Caribbean; Chapter 5 The Holdouts: The Survival of the Mandatory Death Penalty in Malaysia and Singapore; Chapter 6 The New Frontier: Constitutional Challenges to the Mandatory Death Penalty in Sub-Saharan Africa; Chapter 7 The Doctrine of Extenuating Circumstances: The Rise of Judicial Sentencing Discretion in Southern Africa; Chapter 8 Conclusion: After the Mandatory Death Penalty;