Abstract
In America, a person convicted of a crime has a right to allocution before being sentenced; the curtailment of or failure to grant this right may be grounds for an appellate court to remand the case for resentencing. The historical question which the judge posed when offering the defendant the opportunity to allocute was more focused: “Do you know of any reason why judgment should not be pronounced upon you?”. The defendant’s response was confined to legal defenses, such as, pardon, pregnancy, insanity, misidentification, or benefit of the clergy. Current justifications for the right are broader: To promote sentencing objectives, the right to allocution allows a judge to gather information that will enable him or her to more accurately mitigate or individualize punishment. In theory, a defendant’s allocution is unbounded; however, for practical purposes, such as the maintaining of decorum in the courtroom or judicial expedience, the defendant’s allocution may be abridged. The implications of the right to allocute and the multiple meanings such a privilege can engender – meanings for the defendant, the judge, the victim(s), the prosecution, onlookers, society as a whole, and Law as an institution – will be the focus of this paper. A semiotic analysis of this post-trial, pre-sentence right will illumine certain existing and potential meanings in Law, while at the same time it does meaning-making in Law.
Only the man who has enough good in him
to feel the justice of the penalty can be punished
William Ernest Hocking
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Green v. United States, 365 U.S. 301 (1961).
- 2.
Celine Chan, A Defendant’s Word on Its Face or Under Oath?, 75 Brook. L. Rev. 579 (2009).
- 3.
Celine Chan, Id.: Brook. L. Rev. 579 (2009).
- 4.
Celine Chan, A Defendant’s Word on Its Face or Under Oath?, 75 Brook. L. Rev. 579 (2009).
- 5.
Broekman, Jan M. (2010) The Roberta Kevelson Seminar on Law and Semiotics Course Book.
- 6.
Black’s Law Dictionary (9th ed. 2009).
- 7.
Alex Scott, Charles S. Peirce’s Theory of Signs, (2004),
http://www.angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/peirce.html, Accessed April 13, 2011.
- 8.
Alex Scott, Charles S. Peirce’s Theory of Signs, (2004),
http://www.angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/peirce.html, Accessed April 13, 2011.
- 9.
Charles Sanders Peirce, A Guess at the Riddle, CP 1.356-357, 1.361, (c. 1890), as cited in Commens Peirce Dictionary: Firstness, First [as a category],
http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/terms/firstness/html, Accessed April 13, 2011.
- 10.
Charles Sanders Peirce, A Letter to Lady Welby, CP 8.329, (1904), as cited in Commens Peirce Dictionary: Firstness, First [as a category], http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/terms/firstness/html, Accessed April 13, 2011.
- 11.
Charles Sanders Peirce, A Guess at the Riddle, CP 1.356-357, 1.361, (c. 1890), as cited in Commens Peirce Dictionary: Firstness, First [as a category],
http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/terms/firstness/html, Accessed April 13, 2011.
- 12.
Charles Sanders Peirce, The List of Categories: A Second Essay, CP 1.302, (c. 1894), as cited in Commens Peirce Dictionary: Firstness, First [as a category],
http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/terms/firstness/html, Accessed April 13, 2011.
- 13.
Alex Scott, Charles S. Peirce’s Theory of Signs, (2004),
http://www.angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/peirce.html, Accessed April 13, 2011.
- 14.
Alex Scott, Charles S. Peirce’s Theory of Signs, (2004),
http://www.angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/peirce.html, Accessed April 13, 2011.
- 15.
Broekman, Jan M. (2010) The Roberta Kevelson Seminar on Law and Semiotics Course Book.
- 16.
Broekman, Jan M. (2010) The Roberta Kevelson Seminar on Law and Semiotics Course Book.
- 17.
Charles Sanders Peirce, Pragmatism, CP 5.469, (1907), as cited in Commens Peirce Dictionary: Firstness, First [as a category], http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/terms/firstness/html, Accessed April 13, 2011.
- 18.
Charles Sanders Peirce, Pragmatism, CP 5.469, (1907), as cited in Commens Peirce Dictionary: Firstness, First [as a category], http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/terms/firstness/html, Accessed April 13, 2011.
- 19.
Alex Scott, Charles S. Peirce’s Theory of Signs, (2004),
http://www.angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/peirce.html, Accessed April 13, 2011.
- 20.
Alex Scott, Charles S. Peirce’s Theory of Signs, (2004),
http://www.angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/peirce.html, Accessed April 13, 2011.
- 21.
Green v. United States, 365 U.S. 301 (1961).
- 22.
United States v. Hill, 368 U.S. 424 (1962).
- 23.
United States v. Hill, 368 U.S. 424 (1962).
- 24.
State v. Chow, 883 P.2d 663 (Hawai App. 1994).
- 25.
Kimberly A. Thomas, Beyond Mitigation: Towards a Theory of Allocution, 75 Fordham L. Rev. 2641, (2007).
- 26.
Kimberly A. Thomas, Beyond Mitigation: Towards a Theory of Allocution, 75 Fordham L. Rev. 2641, (2007).
- 27.
Commonwealth v. Newton, 875 A.2d 1088 (Pa. Super. 2005).
- 28.
Kimberly A. Thomas, Beyond Mitigation: Towards a Theory of Allocution, 75 Fordham L. Rev. 2641, (2007).
- 29.
Celine Chan, A Defendant’s Word on Its Face or Under Oath?, 75 Brook. L. Rev. 579 (2009).
- 30.
Celine Chan, A Defendant’s Word on Its Face or Under Oath?, 75 Brook. L. Rev. 579 (2009).
- 31.
Kimberly A. Thomas, Beyond Mitigation: Towards a Theory of Allocution, 75 Fordham L. Rev. 2641, (2007).
- 32.
Harris v. State, 306 Md. 344 (Md. 1986).
- 33.
Moussaoui will ‘die with a whimper,’ judge says,
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/World/20060504/moussaoui_court_060504/, Accessed April 10, 2011.
- 34.
Joshua Dressler, Cases and Materials on Criminal Law (4th ed. 2007).
- 35.
Idem.
- 36.
Nelson Mandela, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela, Accessed April 20, 2011.
- 37.
Kimberly A. Thomas, Beyond Mitigation: Towards a Theory of Allocution, 75 Fordham L. Rev. 2641, (2007).
- 38.
United States v. Martin, 278 F.3d 988 (9th Cir. 2002)
- 39.
United States v. Martin, 278 F.3d 988 (9th Cir. 2002)
- 40.
Joshua Dressler, Cases and Materials on Criminal Law (4th ed. 2007).
- 41.
Celine Chan, A Defendant’s Word on Its Face or Under Oath?, 75 Brook. L. Rev. 579 (2009).
- 42.
Celine Chan, A Defendant’s Word on Its Face or Under Oath?, 75 Brook. L. Rev. 579 (2009).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Volkert, C. (2015). Can Words Really Set a Man Free?—A Semiotic Analysis of the American Criminal Defendant’s Right to Allocution. In: Broekman, J., Catá Backer, L. (eds) Signs In Law - A Source Book. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09837-1_32
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09837-1_32
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-09836-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-09837-1
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawLaw and Criminology (R0)