Civil death (Latin: civiliter mortuus) is the loss of all or almost all civil rights by a person due to a conviction for a felony or due to an act by the government of a country that results in the loss of civil rights. It is usually inflicted on persons convicted of crimes against the state or adults determined by a court to be legally incompetent because of mental disability.
Medieval Europe
In medieval Europe, felons lost all civil rights upon their conviction. This civil death often led to actual death, since anyone could kill and injure a felon with impunity. Under the Holy Roman Empire, a person declared civilly dead was referred to as vogelfrei ('free as a bird') and could even be killed since they were completely outside the law.
Historically outlawry, that is, declaring a person as an outlaw, was a common form of civil death.
Under early English common law a living person could under certain conditions be considered legally dead. The three categories generally recognized as resulting in civil death were profession ("monastery death"), abjuration, and banishment.
United States
In the U.S., the disenfranchisement of felons has been called a form of civil death, as has being subjected to collateral consequences in general. The contention is not generally supported by legal scholars. Civil death as such remains part of the law in New York, Rhode Island, and the Virgin Islands.
China
The deprivation of political rights is a supplementary punishment defined in the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China. While this punishment is usually issued for at least one but not more than five years in conjunction with other crimes, such as counterrevolution, there are situations where the deprivation of political rights can be issued on its own or for longer periods:
- For those sentenced to life imprisonment or capital punishment, the deprivation of political rights is lifelong;
- Those who assemble a crowd for "beating, smashing, or looting" can be issued an exclusive punishment of deprivation of political rights.
Political rights
Political rights are defined in the Criminal Law as:
- the right to vote and to stand for election;
- the rights of freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession, and of demonstration;
- the right to hold a position in a state organization; and
- the right to hold a leading position in any state-owned company, enterprise, institution or people's organization.
See also
- Disfranchisement
- Loss of rights due to felony conviction
- Sex offender registries in the United States
- Social death
- Ghosts… of the Civil Dead
- Homo Sacer, a similar status in ancient Roman Law
References
Citations
- "CIVILITER MORTUUS : on Law Dictionary". www.law-dictionary.org. Archived from the original on 2010-07-07. Retrieved 2008-12-16.
- See e.g. Interdiction of F.T.E., 594 So.2d 480 (La. App. 2d Cir. 1992).
- Manza, Jeff; Uggen, Christopher (2004). "Punishment and Democracy: Disenfranchisement of Nonincarcerated Felons in the United States". Perspectives on Politics. 2 (3): 491–505. doi:10.1017/S1537592704040290 (inactive 18 December 2024). ISSN 1537-5927. JSTOR 3688812.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of December 2024 (link) - ^ Article "Death, Civil;" Encyclopædia Americana, 1830 ed, page 138
- Saunders 1970, p. 989.
- Greenhouse, Linda (July 29, 2010). "Voting Behind Bars". The New York Times.
- Gabriel J. Chin, The New Civil Death: Rethinking Punishment in the Era of Mass Conviction, 160 U. Penn. L. Rev. 1789 (2012)
- Chin, Gabriel "Jack" (June 7, 2018). "Civil death lives!". Collateral Consequences Resource Center. Retrieved 2020-10-05.
- "Civil Death Laws: When Life is Death | Criminal Legal News". www.criminallegalnews.org. Retrieved 2020-10-05.
- "The Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China". Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. 73 (1): 147–148, 161. Spring 1982. Retrieved 2024-05-07.
- "中华人民共和国刑法-英汉对照法律英语". www.chinalawedu.com. Retrieved 2019-05-28.
Sources
- Saunders, Harry David (1970). "Civil Death - A New Look at an Ancient Doctrine". William & Mary Law Review. 11: 988–1003.