{"title":"A Proposal to Criminalize State Torture in the United States","authors":"Kai Draper","doi":"10.1080/0731129X.2023.2230756","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"As a party to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, the United States is under an obligation to criminalize all state torture. The aim of this article is to show that the United States has failed to fulfill that obligation and should correct that failure by broadening the respective definitions of “torture” in two federal criminal statutes, the War Crimes Act and the Torture Act. The broader definition that is proposed is formulated with an eye to minimizing ambiguity and vagueness, avoiding both overcriminalization and undercriminalization, and facilitating accurate determinations of guilt or innocence.","PeriodicalId":35931,"journal":{"name":"Criminal Justice Ethics","volume":"42 1","pages":"133 - 157"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Criminal Justice Ethics","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0731129X.2023.2230756","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"Social Sciences","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
As a party to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, the United States is under an obligation to criminalize all state torture. The aim of this article is to show that the United States has failed to fulfill that obligation and should correct that failure by broadening the respective definitions of “torture” in two federal criminal statutes, the War Crimes Act and the Torture Act. The broader definition that is proposed is formulated with an eye to minimizing ambiguity and vagueness, avoiding both overcriminalization and undercriminalization, and facilitating accurate determinations of guilt or innocence.