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Remember Not To Forget Furman: A Response To Professor Smith, Sam Kamin, Justin F. Marceau
Remember Not To Forget Furman: A Response To Professor Smith, Sam Kamin, Justin F. Marceau
Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship
Professor Robert J. Smith encourages readers, lawyers, and courts to forget Furman v. Georgia and to focus instead on death penalty challenges grounded in the diminished culpability of nearly all capital defendants. We applaud Professor Smith’s call to focus on the mental and emotional characteristics that reduce the blameworthiness of so many of those charged with capital crimes; recognizing diminished culpability as the rule rather than the exception among capital defendants conveys a reality that rarely finds its way into reported cases. We are troubled, however, by Professor Smith’s call to “forget Furman.” We believe the title and the …
Beyond A Conceivable Doubt: The Quest For A Fair And Constitutional Standard Of Proof In Death Penalty Cases, Robert M. Hardaway
Beyond A Conceivable Doubt: The Quest For A Fair And Constitutional Standard Of Proof In Death Penalty Cases, Robert M. Hardaway
Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship
The death penalty remains the most contentious issue in criminal law jurisprudence, and continues to be challenged on both constitutional and moral grounds. What is most remarkable about American death penalty jurisprudence is that it has traditionally focused on purely technical and procedural aspects of the imposition of the death penalty, despite the fact that the most vulnerable plank in the arsenal of death penalty defenders is evidence that innocent people have been, and will continue to be, executed. Perhaps no legal principle is more difficult to explain to the layman or first-year law student than that of all the …