The Way in Which European Countries Develop Their Codes of Punishment - Annotated Bibliography Example

The concept of the death penalty is discussed for the relevancy of the Sixth Amendment rights of the accused in criminal prosecution. In this example, the instability of handing out of punishment can be studied and weighed in regard to the effect this has on victims of crime. Because of a certain ambiguity that the rights of the offender have created, the way in which prosecution is developed and how punishment is shown to vary in the way it is established, the way in which victims find solace in the punishment of offenders is not an even distribution of social responsibility toward them.

While punishment is considered a debt to society, the victim of a crime, especially a violent crime, finds a need to become a part of that decision, even if it is only in the perception of participation. Although, in some cases, a victim wants to avoid participation which the hampers prosecution. In creating a study in regard to the Sixth Amendment and how it affects the most serious punishment within the American framework, an examination of the relationship between the prosecutor, the offender and the victim can be investigated.

In this study by Uli Orth, 174 adult victims of crimes that were both in the rape category and in the category of non-sexual assault were studied to determine the nature of the goals the victims held in regard to seeing punishment for their attackers. After working with the participants, Orth concluded that there were five main goals that victims sought in order to create a sense of closure in their trauma.