Vocabulary notes:

puisne judge	молодший суддя
custody	контроль, опіка
the Great Seal	велика державна печатка

Letters Patent	публічно-правовий акт наділення прав
the Privy Council	таємна рада (у Великій Британії)
the Chancery Division	канцлерське відділення (Вищого суду правосуддя у Великобританії)
circuit judge	окружний суддя

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Legalese

Although lawyers come from a variety of backgrounds and do a variety of work, as a profession they often appear rather remote and difficult to understand. Perhaps one reason for this is legalese – the strange and incomprehensible language so many lawyers seem to write and speak. This is not just a feature of English-speaking lawyers. People all over the world complain that they cannot understand court proceedings or legal documents.

Of course all professions have their own jargon. The use of some special words can be justified because they refer to matters which are important to a particular profession but not important to most people in everyday life. But sometimes it seems that jargon is a way of creating a mystery about a profession of distinguishing people on the inside (economist, doctors, teachers) from those on the outside.

In recent times lawyers have made efforts to make their profession less mysterious. After all, their job is supposed to be to clarify matters for the public, not to make them more complicated! This is particularly so in the United States where lawyers openly advertise their services to the public and where special clothes and wigs, still a feature of the English system, have mostly disappeared. But it seems likely that legalese will survive for a long time to come. One reason for this is that old documents and reports of old cases have great importance in law, particularly in common law systems. Another reason is that rewriting laws is a slow and painstaking process. The words must try to cover every eventuality, because people are always looking for a legal loophole, a way of avoiding a legal duty by making use of an ambiguity or an omission in law. Consequently if there is an existing law which has worked for a long time, even a law which contains old language in long and complex sentences, it is easier to retain the old law than write a new one. Even when a government draws up a new law it is often guided by the working of an older law.

. Read & comprehend the text.

SEVEN MYTHS WHICH SUPPORT THE DEATH PENALTY

Myth 1.The death penalty is deterrent to murder.

The death penalty may, in fact, add to the violent nature of society and increase the murder rates. The FBI Uniform Crime Reports Division publication, Crime in the US, released in 1980, showed murder rates in states which have abolished the death penalty averaged 5.1 per 100.000 population while states still using the death penalty averaged 9.1 per 100.000. This data is consistent with a study on deterrence by the Council on Crime and Delinquency in 1992.

The state may be used as an instrument of suicide by self-destructive persons who lack the will to take their own lives.

Murder is a horrible crime and this in and of itself is a powerful deterrent. State sanctioning of murder reduces the horror of murder, but our society is not improved by habituation to the taking of lives.

Myth 2.The death penalty is handed out to the worst criminals who have committed the worst crimes.

The truth is that the death penalty is reserved for a particular group of people who commit murder rather than punishment for a particular kind of murder that is committed. As such, the death penalty is arbitrary and capricious.

It is a form of racism and classism that punishes severely those who kill people society holds in high regard. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, in his opinion in Godfrey vs. Georgia (1980) writes, “The task of eliminating arbitrariness in the infliction of capital punishment is proving to be one which our criminal justice system – and perhaps any criminal justice system – is unable to perform.

Myth 3. Victim’s families want the death penalty.

“My brother, William S. Abner, age 54, was fatally shot in the back by a business associate in 1974. My opposition to the death penalty is grounded in my Christian faith that the redemptive love of God is for all people and that no human being has the right to take the life of another. Our dealings with each other should be such that the redemptive love of God can work in our lives and that is not possible if we kill each other.” Tennala A. Gross of Greenville.

“May 6, 1995, marked the twentieth anniversary of the murder of my daughter Betsy, in Raleigh. After waiting almost eight years for a trial in her case, which resulted in a sentence of two consecutive life sentences, I was relieved to know that her murderer would be in prison for the foreseeable future. I do not “deserve” to live, but am persuaded against capital punishment because of what it does to us individually and to our community as a whole. The basis for my conviction is my belief in the sacredness of human life. The process of deciding legally to terminate the life of a convicted person seems to draw everyone into a vortex in which personal responsibility is shifted to someone or something else. It develops an energy as system which is difficult for an individual to resist or escape. A Roman Circus atmosphere envelopes those who stand outside a prison as the time of scheduled execution approaches, and their celebration of the death of another human being desensitizes all of us to human pain and suffering. I would rather their energies be used to meet the needs of the survivors of the victim of that executed person’s crimes. The elimination of the death penalty frees us as individuals and society from a Dance of Death into a creative Affirmation of Life.” Betty Parks of Fletcher, North Carolina.

“I have always opposed the death penalty. Although both my husband and my mother-in-law were murdered, I refuse to accept the cynical notion that their killer deserves the death penalty”, Coretta Scott King.

Myth 4. The American public favors the death penalty.

Polls that gauge a high favorable response to the death penalty generally ask for simple thumbs up or thumbs down response to the question, “do you favor the death penalty?” This question again tests our gut reactions to the death sentence. When offered a range of sentencing options, respondents in public option polls have consistently shown a preference for imprisonment rather than execution.

Myth 5. The Bible calls for the death sentence when it says “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”.

According to the same chapter in the Bible capital punishment is demanded also if a person hits his or her parents, steals a person (a verse that is used to support slavery as well), curses his or her father or mother, keeps an ox that has been known to gore people, or participates in sorcery, bestiality, idolatry, or adultery. Other crimes that received the death sentence according to scripture include gluttony, disobedience, and drunkenness. Most who interprets “eye for an eye” literally also use these verses to refer to homosexuality as a crime which was punishable by death if the death penalty were used according to the literalist or conservative view of the scriptures we would not have many people left standing to institute the punishment.

In truth the Hebrew text “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” was a limitation on mass killings of clans out of vindication. Until the law was put into effect the practice had been for a family that had one person murdered to retaliate on entire family or clan, “An eye for an eye” meant that people could not take more than one life for a life, even if the person who was murdered was pregnant and about to give birth. In practice, “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” death penalty was used only when there had been two witnesses that had seen the murder taking place. These witnesses had to inform the person about to commit murder that he/she would receive the death penalty if he/she committed murder. If after that warning, the person proceeded in a premeditated fashion then the death penalty could be used. Because of these limitations, the death penalty was rarely used in Hebrew culture.

The Christian scripture adds another dimension. The people supporting the death penalty have to be sinless. The scriptures go on to explain that sinlessness in these cases does not mean merely that the people supporting capital punishment have never committed murder, but that they have never held hate or anger in their hearts at any time. Those who interpret the scriptures of “an eye for an eye” to give the right for vengeance are told to forgive their enemies and bless those who have harmed them. In general, the death penalty flies in the face of the Christian message that all are to be forgiven and are able to be redeemed.

Other religions limit or demand the abolition of the death penalty. There are other, more spiritually supportive means of ending violent crime, such as prevention and restoration. Most religions that recognize God as Creator are in unison on making the growth of spirituality the significant focus of action. If God made something such as a person, then it is sacred. No matter what that person does, that person’s life is still sacred. This is a spiritual premise that underlies most Creator-God religions.

Myth 6. The death penalty offers a “true form of justice”.

For many, “true justice” means revenge in equal measure – if you kill, you will be killed. But we do not support such a system in America. We do not steal from thieves or rape rapists. Ethically this is “stooping to the level of the perpetrator.” It places the government in a reactionary rather than a leadership role. Inevitably, this reactionary attitude is reflected in the citizens. Historically “true justice” has a much different meaning than revenge. This different interpretation places the state in a much different position from selling reactionary sound bites to thinking out preventative and cost-effective solutions to deter crime. It demands that the state place itself in the role of leadership and caretaker rather than exploiter of citizens.

This true justice has to be restorative, has to regard each person as unique, has to dignify humanity, has to be assigned with mercy, has to bring healing to everyone involved, and has to demonstrate a nature that the government wants imitated in daily life.

Restorative justice helps in healing both the victim’s family and the perpetrator so that the criminal roots of the problem is taken care of, and the victims and victim’s families have a way to heal fully. It also sets an example for the citizens of the state. Restorative Justice also focuses on preventative measures in society such as adequate childcare and parenting programs, mental health systems, foster parent systems, and effective drug treatment facilities. In almost all of the cases of the people who are on death row, appropriate intervention in one of these areas could have made all of the difference and stopped them from becoming murderers. However, in society where these systems are seen as “tax burdens,» we may ask if true justice is possible.

Myth 7. The death penalty costs less than life in prison without parole.

The death sentence is a greater tax burden then the preventative measures discussed in Myth 6. Dr. Philip cook and Donna Swenson of Duke University released a report in April of 1993 called “The Cost of Processing Murder Cases in North Carolina”. It compared the costs of prosecuting murder cases capitally and noncapitally in North Carolina spends approximately 2.16 million dollars per actual execution. The overall costs to the state for having the death sentence are 4 million dollars a year higher than if it only sought life sentences in first degree murder cases.

According to the Duke study, the costs to the tax payers for first degree murder prosecution and conviction that results in execution is $ 165,000 higher than if the same person had been sentenced to life prison. With more than 140 people on North Carolina’s death row this is quite an inordinate additional expense for a penalty that has not been shown to be a deterrent. Speeding up the appeals process was found to have no significant effect on the number of dollars spent.

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Crimes and Punishments

“No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. On the contrary, whatever the punishments, once a specific crime has appeared for the first time, its reappearance, is more likely than its initial emergence could have been.” (Hannah Arendt)

“The severity of the punishment must also be in keeping with the kind of obligation which has been violated, and not (only) with the interests of public security.” (Simone Weil)

On the television screen, a middle-aged woman is telling a reporter about the death of her daughter; her voice and facial expression oscillate between tremulous grief and controlled rage. Three years ago, on a spring evening, her twenty-year-old daughter was walking home from the bus stop after a day of college classes. A young man stopped her at knife point and demanded her purse; she gave it to him and then started to scream. He stabbed her in the chest. She was dead on arrival at the nearest hospital emergency room. Because there were several witnesses, the police were able to arrest the killer on the same night. Six months later, he pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter and received a sentence of zero-to-seven years. In just thirty months, he was released from prison for good behaviour.

“I just can’t get over this”, says the slain girl’s mother. “I will never get over this. To know that the price of my child’s life was less than three years, that this man is free now to do the same thing to someone else – I can’t reconcile myself to it. I can’t believe any more that there is such a thing as justice in the world. Everything I tried to live by, everything I brought up my children to respect: things just don’t work that way.” The woman tells the reporter she is active in an organization for crime victims and their relatives. “We all know we have to get on with our lives,” she says, “but that isn’t easy to do under the circumstances. I felt as though my girl was killed twice - once by that scum, and once by the judge who said, well, you only have to go to jail for a few years. They killed her memory, saying that was all her life was worth.” The outraged mother spoke of justice, not revenge, but revenge was obviously one element in an ideal of justice to which she had adhered, without giving the matter much conscious thought, until the day when the issue was transformed from an abstraction into a painful personal reality. This sense of justice is so fundamental to our psychological well-being that it rarely intrudes upon our consciousness; like many basic assumptions, it remains largely unexamined unless and until it is sorely violated. The symbolic “scales of justice” have a real meaning for most citizens, who believe that the legal system exists to maintain a moral and social equilibrium, and to restore, the equilibrium when it has been violently disturbed.

There is, of course, a wide range of opinion on what constitutes appropriate redress. For those, whoseconcept of justice is concerned primarily with the criminal’s rights and prospects for rehabilitation, any extended punishment is simply another crime. For those focused totally on the victim’s rights, only executions or other severe penalties will suffice to restore a sense of moral balance. Between these extremes lies a broad concept of justice that demands a greater measure of retribution than the American legal system currently dispenses, a spectrum of retribution that excludes both execution and the release of a killer from prison in less than three years. This intermediate sense of justice – one that is, I believe, shared by the largest proportion of the public – has been outraged by the inadequate response of the legal system to the rising incidence of violent crime during the past twenty years. Such outrage is unquestionably the single most important factor in the emotional resurgence of support for capital punishment today; it must be addressed by those who refuse, as I do, to include death in their concept of retributive justice.

It is true that a measure of popular enthusiasm for the death penalty exists independently of the general level of crime arid violence in society. Otherwise, there would be no support for capital punishment in Western Europe, England, and Canada, whose crime rates make them appear as nearly pastoral realms in comparison to the United States. In view of the relatively greater personal safety they enjoy, it’s not surprising that those Europeans who favor capital punishment expend less passion on the issue than the Americans do.

A significant exception to this lack of passion is apparent when Europeans begin to talk about the need to “get tough” with perpetrators of political violence. The United States has been relatively unaffected by the kind of highly visible terrorist acts that have influenced public opinion in England, France, Italy and Germany. Even our most traumatic political assassinations have generally been; perceived as isolated acts rather than as full-scale ruptures in the fabric of society. This perception of violence as a phenomenon for which the instigators are personally and individually accountable reflects a characteristically American attitude that extends far beyond issues of crime and punishment. (Wild Justice by Susan Jacoby).

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The authority of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine comprises:

1) introducing amendments to the Constitution of Ukraine within the limits and by the procedure envisaged by Chapter XIII of this Constitution;

2) designating an All-Ukrainian referendum on issues determined by Article 73 of this Constitution;

3) adopting laws;

4) approving the State Budget of Ukraine and introducing amendments to it; controlling the implementation of the State Budget of Ukraine and adopting decisions in regard to the report on its implementation;

5) determining the principles of domestic and foreign policy;

6) approving national programmes of economic, scientific and technical, social, national and cultural development, and the protection of the environment;

7) designating elections of the President of Ukraine within the terms envisaged by this Constitution;

8) hearing annual and special messages of the President of Ukraine on the domestic and foreign situation of Ukraine;

9) declaring war upon the submission of the President of Ukraine and concluding peace, approving the decision of the President of Ukraine on the use of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and other military formations in the event of armed aggression against Ukraine and so on.

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The President of Ukraine issues decrees and directives that are mandatory for execution on the territory of Ukraine. The powers of the President of Ukraine terminate prior to the expiration of term in cases of:

1) resignation;

2) inability to exercise his or her powers for reasons of health;

3) removal from office by the procedure of impeachment;

4) death.

In the event of the pre-term termination of authority of the President of Ukraine the execution of duties of the President is vested in the Prime Minister of Ukraine.

The President of Ukraine:

- ensures state independence, national security and the legal succession of the state;

- addresses the people with messages on the domestic and foreign situation of Ukraine;

- represents the state in international relations, administers the foreign political activity of the State, conducts negotiations and concludes international treaties of Ukraine;

- terminates the authority of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine

- appoints the Prime Minister of Ukraine with the consent of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine; terminates his authority and adopts a decision on his resignation;

- appoints to office and dismisses from office the Procurator General of Ukraine

- appoints one-half of the composition of the Council of the National Bank and of the National Council of Ukraine on Television and Radio Broadcasting;

- revokes acts of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and acts of the Council of Ministers of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea;

- is the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine;

- adopts the decision on the declaration of a state of war, on the use of the Armed Forces in the event of armed aggression against Ukraine;

- appoints one-third of the composition to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine;

- adopts decisions on the acceptance for citizenship of Ukraine and its termination, and on the granting of asylum in Ukraine;

- signs laws adopted by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and so on.