В Америке совершили «юбилейную» казнь.

В Северной Каролине казнен 57-летний Кеннет Ли Бойд, приговоренный к смерти за убийство жены и тестя в марте 1988 года. Бойд стал тысячным преступником, казненным с 1976 года, когда в США возобновили применение высшей меры наказания после девятилетнего перерыва. Первая казнь после отмены моратория состоялась в январе 1977, когда в штате Юта был расстрелян Гари Гилмор, осужденный за убийство. Пик высшей меры в США пришелся на 80-90-е годы. Лидером в этой области стал Техас, где казнили 355 приговоренных. При бывшем губернаторе штата Джордже Буше смертную казнь привели в исполнение 154 раза.

Губернатор имеет возможность помиловать приговоренного вплоть до самой последней минуты, в комнате исполнения наказания для этого стоит специальный телефон. Однако в четверг губернатор Северной Каролины Майк Изли отказался помиловать приговоренного к смерти Кеннета Ли Бойда. Ранее Верховный Суд также отклонил просьбу о помиловании, поданную адвокатами Бойда.

Помилования в США происходят очень редко: за все время пощадили 229 заключенных - это меньше четверти из числа тех, кто подавал прошение о помиловании; 167 из них пощадили единовременно - тогда губернатор Иллинойса Джордж Райан назвал смертную казнь ошибочной и, следовательно, аморальной и в 2000 году спас от смерти всех заключенных.

Около тюрьмы, где Бойду ввели смертельную инъекцию, собрались около 100 противников высшей меры наказания. Они зажгли свечи и зачитали имена 999 казненных.

Накануне казни свою озабоченность в связи с применением в США высшей меры наказания выразил Евросоюз, назвав ее «жестокой и негуманной мерой». Во всех странах, входящих в ЕС, смертная казнь отменена. Однако пресс-секретарь Белого Дома Скотт Маклеллан уверен, что «в конечном итого смертная казнь помогает спасти невинные жизни и служит сдерживающим инструментом».

По данным опроса общественного мнения, смертную казнь в качестве наказания для осужденных за убийство человека поддерживают сейчас 65% американцев.

Exam practice.

Read and translate the text.

What is a miscarriage of justice?

A miscarriage of justice can be defined in several different ways. Most commonly, it refers to the conviction of a person in a court of law, for a crime of which he or she is later proven innocent. A miscarriage of justice can also apply in the reverse manner, that of a guilty person being set free when there is overwhelming evidence, or later proof, that he or she was actually guilty of the crime of which they were accused. The phrase is not solely restricted to crimes against persons or property, for it can also apply to civil cases where punishment consists largely of financial compensation. In short, a miscarriage of justice is any situation where an individual is somehow incarcerated, executed, or punished due to the error of the legal system.

Miscarriages of justice are frighteningly common. Since the 1990s – when the science of identifying DNA evidence was perfected to an acceptable degree of reliability – many convicted murderers and rapists have been declared innocent of the crimes of which they were convicted. The use of DNA evidence has become a major argument for those who oppose the penalty. In many cases, blood or fluid evidence which originally led to a proclamation of guilt – prior to the creation of DNA science – can now be used to prove an individual’s innocence.

Miscarriages of justice can come about for reasons other than tainted evidence or judicial mistakes. Under some scenarios, police have coerced confessions from innocent parties, or withheld critical evidence from defense attorneys. Miscarriages of justice have also taken place due to bias – preconceived opinions of guilt – due to race, color, lifestyle, or even appearance. In totalitarian countries numerous individuals have been convicted in show trials, with confessions of guilt arising via the use of torture. In this latter instance, the “conviction” is frequently used as a tool to imprison or kill political dissidents.

Those who are the victims of miscarriage of justice may serve decades in prison or even be executed. Some countries, most notably the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Norway, and Spain, provide compensation to those who have been improperly incarcerated. Such payments, pardons, or acquittals are of small solace to those who have spent many years behind bars, and are of even less value to those who are acquitted posthumously. The United States pays compensation to the wrongly convicted on a case-by-case basis. Overturning a wrongful conviction is extremely difficult, as courts and judges usually display a marked tendency to avoid the impression that a judicial system is imperfect.

Famous examples of miscarriages of justice include Joan of Arc, who was accused of heresy in 1431 and posthumously acquitted in 1456. She was canonized by the Catholic Church in 1920. In America, in 1954, Dr. Sam Sheppard was accused and convicted of killing his wife. Sheppard served ten years in prison before the United States Supreme Court permitted the new trial that led to his acquittal. His case went on to become the inspiration for the long-running TV series, and feature film, known as The Fugitive.

Read and retell the text.

Pensioner crimewave marks rise of the ‘Saga lout’.

It is being dubbed the “grey crimewave” or the rise of the “Saga lout”. New statistics reveal that ever higher numbers of pensioners are being arrested and ending up in Britain’s jails.

The prison system already struggling to cope with the demands of its own ageing population of lifers and long-term inmates, is struggling to cope with a new wave of elderly crooks. But experts are divided over whether or not the growing trend is due to people on low pensions turning to crime through necessity, or simply a tougher attitude by the courts to the elderly in the dock.

In England and Wales, the rate of prisoners aged over 60 has risen 185 per cent in ten years. Prisoners aged over 60 are the fastest growing age group in prison. According to Bill Tupman, a criminologist at Exeter University, the increase in the elderly prison population is due to harsher sentencing policies which has resulted in the courts sending a larger proportion of criminals aged over 60 to prison to serve longer sentences. Police and courts are now “less likely to take pity on poor old granddad in the deck”.

Over-60s are now the fastest-growing section of prison population. There currently almost 2,500 people of this age group in British prisons, making up 3% of the total, up from 2% in 2003. Kingston prison in Portsmouth has become the first in the country to provide a special “elderly wing” with stairlifts and other adaptations.

The “grey crime’ trend appears to be an international one. The number of Japanese prisoners aged 60 or older has doubled over the past decade. The rate of crimes by elderly people is 12,3% and it is so far the highest among industrialized countries (USA: 5.4%, Germany: 3%, and South Korea: 3.5%). The crimes most often done by these people are 65% theft and 3.7% violence. There is one prison in Japan that has special facilities for the elderly: Onomichi prison in Hiroshima prefecture. Here staircases, baths and other parts of the prison are set up to make life easier for older inmates.

In the Netherlands, where the same steep rise in offending pensioners has been monitored, along with the same pattern of offences, researchers found that a startlingly high percentage of over-60s appearing in court had undiagnosed dementia. It was only recently that the growth of criminal behavior among Dutch elderly people drew the attention of the media. Some newspaper articles of the past year: 86-year-old man with no previous record is caught shoplifting; an elderly couple, never having had anything to do with the law2, sells weed to the youngsters of their village; 78-year-old man suspected of cocaine smuggling; senior citizen (84) confesses to several cases of arson.

With a steep increase in criminals aged over 65, Germany is planning to build them a special prison. Plans for the jail in Lower Saxony come at a time when elderly criminals have been in the news. Just weeks ago, police busted a fairly successful gang of bank robbers who had taken in ?400,000 ($541,000) in the last five years. The three men, who demonstrated their seriousness to bank employees with pistols, sledge hammers and hand grenades, were aged 63, 72 and 74. In Berlin, police seized a 75-year-old grandmother who specialised in sticking-up savings banks and in Dusseldorf, a 70-year-old woman was caught after four bank robberies. One female pensioner in western Germany has decided to fill the autumn of her life with something other than baking pies or watching the sunset from the warmth of her back porch. She is out gathering some cold, hard cash by robbing banks, at least four in the last four years. From the images captured on security cameras, "pistol granny," as she's been christened by tabloids, has passed her 70th birthday already.

Since 1995, the number of criminals aged over 60 in the German criminal justice system has risen by 28 per cent. Lower Saxony alone has 8000 pending court cases in which the accused are over 60. This means that the "Opa Gefaengnis" - the grandpa jail, as the media has dubbed it - must cater to inmates less interested in rehabilitation and more concerned with arthritis treatments and incontinence.

Japan, France and Israel have all commissioned research into the rise of the pensioner-criminal. In August, a report by the French Centre d’Analyse Stratégique said the country’s criminal system would need to be overhauled to handle the growth in older criminals; police would require specific training on how to track “grey crime”, and jails would have to be modified to cater for inmates with Alzheimer’s disease and other illnesses.

“The ageing of the population is going to lead to an almost automatic rise in crime by senior citizens”, the report concluded.