Dixon Ryan Fox

Dixon Ryan Fox 1887-1945, American historian and educator, b. Potsdam, N.Y. He taught at Columbia from 1912 to 1934, becoming full professor in 1927. From 1934 until his death he was president of Union College and chancellor of Union Univ. His writings include The Decline of Aristocracy in the Politics of New York (1919, repr. 1971); a biography of the historian Herbert L. Osgood, his father-in-law (1924); and Yankees and Yorkers (1940). Fox was a leader of research in social history and with Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., was editor of the excellent "A History of American Life" series. The Completion of Independence, 1790-1830, (1944, repr. 1971), Vol. V in the series, was written by John A. Krout and Fox.

history painting. The visual representation of Irish history was conditioned by ideological outlook and visual convention. Netherlandish artists provided the initial models for descriptive scenes, as in Jan Wyck's Battle of the Boyne (1693), promulgating the imagery of Protestant supremacy. James Barry's London history subjects relate to the history of England, but he touched on the beginnings of the Irish medieval era in St Patrick Baptizing the King of Cashel (1763). The political activity of the late 18th century is recorded in Francis Wheatley's The Dublin Volunteers in College Green (1779) and other paintings. The insurrection of 1798 lacked a strong pictorial record, with the exception of Thomas Robinson's Battle of Ballinahinch. It was in the field of popular prints that key events like the arrest of Lord Edward FitzGerald were recorded. The official ideology of the Act of Union was celebrated formally in Vincent Waldre's three ceiling paintings in St Patrick's Hall, Dublin Castle (early 19th century), which include certain antiquarian details and depict St Patrick, Henry II, and George III.

The breakthrough to a greater interest in Irish history and its representation came with the rise of a Romantic and antiquarian movement, typified by Young Ireland. Thomas Davis appealed to Irish artists to turn to patriotic and historical themes. Daniel Maclise was the principal artist to turn to Irish folklore and history in his early book illustrations of the 1830s and in his great painting The Marriage of Strongbow and Aoife (1854), which was based on antiquarian research. A related history painter in this mode was James Ward, who painted twelve panels in Dublin City Hall on the history of the city, completed by 1919. Other minor 19th‐century artists took themes from contemporary history, such as Henry McManus in Reading the Nation and Edwin Hayes in The Emigrant Ship. By contrast the unionist point of view was represented by images of British ceremony and life in Ireland by Joseph Peacock, Michelangelo Hayes, James Mahony, and Richard Moynan. Few paintings on Irish historical subjects appeared at the exhibitions of the Royal Hibernian Academy, although the 1888 Irish Exhibition at South Kensington did show several.

The conventions of late 19th‐century realism are evident in the Irish subject paintings by Lady Butler ( Elizabeth Thompson) and Aloysius O'Kelly. However, by far the most common representations of Irish history in its many forms were images in popular prints and magazines like The Illustrated London News (from which most of the Famine images come). There was highly politicized imagery in the lithographic illustrations of the Weekly Freeman, United Ireland, and The Irish Pilot of the late 19th century. Mass circulation printing, a result of the industrial revolution, rather than painting, became the main medium for representing Irish history.

The rising of 1916 and the Anglo‐Irish War were mainly represented by film and photography, although some painters made records, such as Kathleen Fox's The Arrest of the College of Surgeons Garrison. Sean Keating's Men of the West (1917) and other images of fighting men provided the clearest representations of the struggle. The building of the Free State's Shannon Scheme at Ardnacrusha was recorded by a series of paintings by Keating, while John Lavery too created records of state events. On the unionist side, Robert Ponsonby Staples depicted the shipyards and Stanford Merrifield recorded Ulster resistance to home rule in the Carson reliefs outside Stormont. The nationalist canon of the representation of Irish history culminated in the Douglas Hyde collection of historical pictures (and prints) housed in the official residence of the president, Aras an Uachtaráin (1944). At the 1966 commemoration of the Rising, Modernist artists, like Charles Harper, showed a new more subjective mode of representing the past. However Tom Ryan adhered to traditional realism. In the later 20th century, Michael Farrell and Robert Ballagh explored Irish historical themes in a questioning and ironic manner. By contrast the violent political and adversarial atmosphere of the Northern Ireland conflict has continued to produce nationalist and unionist murals, as well as more intellectually reflective imagery by artists like Willy Doherty.

Bibliography

Crookeshank, Anne , and The Knight of Glin, The Painters of Ireland 1660–1920 (1978)
Turpin, John , ‘Irish history painting’, The GPA Irish Arts Review Yearbook (1989–90)

John Turpin

Capital Punishment penalizes those convicted of certain classes of crimes by killing them. While many societies practice capital punishment, most developed countries had abolished death sentencing by 2003. The European Union mandates, and international covenants favor, abolition of this practice. Although outlawed in some states, in 2003 capital punishment was legal in thirty‐eight states, the federal government, and the U.S. military.

The word capital comes directly from the Latin capitalis, “of the head.” Across human history, beheading has probably been the most frequent mode of dispatch. Sanctioned methods of execution in the United States have included death by electrocution, poison gas, hanging, and firing squad. Concern regarding their cruelty has led to lethal injection as the preferred method.

Historical interpretations of the Constitution support capital punishment's legality. The Eighth Amendment, applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, prohibits inflicting cruel and unusual punishments, but no Supreme Court majority has interpreted that phrase to prohibit all forms of capital punishment in all circumstances. The phrase “cruel and unusual” historically referred to punishments that were far more serious than the offense involved, to torture, and to forms of execution that prolonged the pain of dying. Further, the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments implicitly sanction capital punishment by stating that one cannot “be deprived of life … without due process of law.”

However, interpretive approaches that stress the evolving character of constitutional norms have enabled the Supreme Court to address the complex moral and empirical questions associated with capital punishment. Since Furman v. Georgia (1972), which nullified all death sentences imposed without statutory guidelines, critics of the death penalty have attacked it on several fronts.

First, it is hypocritical to punish heinous crimes by means of a heinous crime—the deliberate taking of another human life. Second, research does not confirm the claim that capital punishment is an effective general deterrent. Third, once inflicted, the death penalty's irreversibility prevents correcting those instances in which the criminal justice system convicts the wrong person. Over one hundred persons have been freed from America's death rows on grounds of innocence since the mid‐1970s, demonstrating the system has indeed been convicting innocents, and suggesting it may be executing them as well. Though the Court has required a greater degree of reliability in these cases, legislators and governors are increasingly moving beyond the Constitution's minimum protections to assure against mistake. When Illinois had sent thirteen innocents to death row, the risk of mistaken execution led then‐Governor George Ryan to announce a moratorium on executions in 2000 and to eventually commute the death sentences of all those on the Illinois death row in 2003. The state legislature followed, enacting reforms. A moratorium movement has made strides around the country, prompting study commissions focusing not only on the perceived unreliability of the process, but also on concerns about arbitrariness, discrimination, and the comparative cost of the death penalty as opposed to life imprisonment. In speaking engagements, some Supreme Court justices have echoed a number of these concerns.

Fourth, administration of capital punishment in law and practice is inconsistent with retributive theories of punishment.

Fifth, data on those who receive the death penalty show that the criminal justice system does not apply it in proportion to the seriousness of the crime. Rather, it appears to be imposed on a randomly selected subset of those convicted of capital offenses, often the poor. Prosecutorial discretion in charging and the discretionary practice of plea bargaining virtually assure this randomness. As this randomness suggests, no definitive study has isolated a strong racial bias in death sentencing. However, aggregate data convincingly show that the death penalty is more frequently imposed on those who victimize whites than those who victimize blacks.

Sixth, as a class, paroled murderers show lower recidivism rates for their crimes than do most classes of felons. There is no evidence that the death penalty, as opposed to long‐term imprisonment, is an effective specific deterrent. Murderers on death row are more likely to engage in violent crimes within prison than are those serving life terms.

On the other hand, sociological theory, at least since Émile Durkheim, has posited that setting absolute outer limits on deviance is a necessary component of group identification and survival. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, in The Common Law (1881), “The first requirement of a sound body of law is that it should correspond with the actual feelings and demands of the community, whether right or wrong” (1938 ed., p. 41). Public opinion supporting the death sentence appears strong, at 74 percent in 2003. However, when life imprisonment with absolutely no possibility of parole is considered as the alternative punishment, only a slim majority (54 percent) supports death. Sentencing juries, too, increasingly choose a life without parole sentence over the death penalty. By this measure then, support for the death penalty may appear to be slipping. Supporters also urge that by some modern models of social interaction, parties must occasionally threaten to take irrational and extreme actions in order to strengthen their capacity to negotiate resolutions of conflict peacefully. Finally, they contend the precise effects of the death penalty versus less harsh punishment are impossible to measure because due process of law prohibits conducting controlled experiments.

In Gregg v. Georgia (1976) the Court majority upheld death‐sentencing when the legislature created statutory standards to guide the sentencing body's discretion in a separate trial where additional evidence relevant to sentencing could be adduced. A companion case, Woodson v. North Carolina, rejected a mandatory death penalty for all capital murderers, finding the Eighth Amendment evolving standards of decency required the individualized consideration of aggravating and mitigating circumstances. Ring v. Arizona (2002) required that juries, not judges, determine the presence of the aggravating factors that made one death‐eligible, and that these factors be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

Before Furman, most executions had been for murder, some for rape, and a few for kidnapping, treason, espionage, and aircraft piracy. In Coker v. Georgia (1977), the Court barred the death penalty for rape of an adult woman. Today, nearly all death sentences are imposed for homicide.

Looking to objective indicators of the evolving standards of decency, the Court has reserved the death penalty for those most culpable offenders: The actual killer, or the accomplice who attempts to kill, intends to kill, or is a major participant in an accompanying felony and possesses a reckless indifference to human life, is death‐eligible (Tison v. Arizona, 1987). But the mentally retarded (Atkins v. Virginia, 2002), the insane (Ford v. Wainwright, 1986), and those under sixteen at the time of the offense (Thompson v. Oklahoma, 1988) are not.

Between the Gregg decision in 1976 and 1 July 2003, there were 882 persons executed in 33 jurisdictions. Over three‐fourths of these executions occurred below the Mason‐Dixon line, led by Texas (311) and Virginia (89). The pace of executions rose sharply in the 1990s, perhaps in part as a consequence of the 1996 Anti‐Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act's trimming back of federal habeas corpus relief mechanisms. At midyear 2003, over 3,500 persons awaited execution: 98 percent male, and 54 percent of minority race.

Significant decisions in 2002 and in 2003 (regarding ineffective assistance of penalty phase counsel, Wiggins v. Smith), indicate the Court majority is willing to exert controls over the development of capital punishment policies and procedures that they had largely left to state legislatures, courts, and governors. Still, since many state judges and all the others face electoral challenges, conventional political processes will continue to play a major role in shaping future death penalty polices, including possible moratorium measures.

See also Race Discrimination and the Death Penalty.

Bibliography

Hugo Adam Bedau, ed., The Death Penalty in America (1982; 1997).
Death Penalty Information Center, Death Penalty Information Center Home Page. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org

Lief H. Carter; revised by and Margery M. Koosed