Death Row Phenomenon - Legal Ramifications

Legal Ramifications

As of 2008, arguments about the death row phenomenon have never been successful in avoiding the death penalty for any person in the US, but the US Supreme Court has been aware of the theory and has mentioned it in its decisions. When a serial killer named Michael Bruce Ross agreed to be executed, this had also led to a legal dispute over whether he could ever legally agree to such a thing, as the death row phenomenon might have contributed to his decision.

In Canada, the Supreme Court of Canada cited the death row phenomenon, along with a few other concerns about execution, to declare the risk of a prisoner being executed after he or she is extradited to another country to be a breach of fundamental justice, a legal right under Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the Constitution of Canada. The case was United States v. Burns (2001). Earlier, in 1991, some Supreme Court justices had, in Kindler v. Canada (Minister of Justice), expressed skepticism about the legal argument regarding the phenomenon, writing that the stress was not as severe a punishment as the execution itself, and writing that the prisoners themselves choose to appeal their sentences, thus being responsible for the prolonged stay on death row. In Burns, however, the Court acknowledged that the mere process of execution, including making sure that the sentence is carried out justly, "seems inevitably to provide lengthy delays, and the associated psychological trauma." This cast doubt on whether the risk of execution after extradition, as a whole, could be compatible with the principles of fundamental justice.

In Jamaica, in the case Pratt v. Attorney General for Jamaica, the death penalty was overturned for two prisoners by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, who had made reference to the death row phenomenon. In these judges' opinions, the prisoners had been on death row for too long, and that too many appeals were allowed to the prisoners, who were forced by instinct to attempt to appeal and were thus confined to death row for too long.