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The Emotional Economy Of Capital Sentencing, Stephen P. Garvey Dec 2014

The Emotional Economy Of Capital Sentencing, Stephen P. Garvey

Stephen P. Garvey

You often hear that one reason capital jurors condemn capital defendants is that jurors don't empathize with defendants. And one reason they don't empathize is that the process of capital sentencing is rigged against empathy. Using data from the South Carolina segment of the Capital Jury Project, I try to examine the role emotion plays in capital sentencing. Without entering here all the important and necessary caveats, I find that the self-reported emotional responses jurors have toward capital defendants run the gamut from sympathy and pity at one extreme, to disgust, anger, and fear at the other. What causes these …


But Was He Sorry? The Role Of Remorse In Capital Sentencing, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen P. Garvey, Martin T. Wells Dec 2014

But Was He Sorry? The Role Of Remorse In Capital Sentencing, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen P. Garvey, Martin T. Wells

Stephen P. Garvey

What role does remorse really play in capital sentencing? We divide this basic question in two. First, what makes jurors come to believe a defendant is remorseful? Second, does a belief in the defendant's remorse affect the jury's final judgment of life or death? Here we present a systematic, empirical analysis that tries to answer these questions. What makes jurors think a defendant is remorseful? Among other things, we find that the more jurors think that the crime is coldblooded, calculated, and depraved and that the defendant is dangerous, the less likely they are to think the defendant is remorseful. …


Jury Responsibility In Capital Sentencing: An Empirical Study, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen P. Garvey, Martin T. Wells Dec 2014

Jury Responsibility In Capital Sentencing: An Empirical Study, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen P. Garvey, Martin T. Wells

Stephen P. Garvey

The law allows executioners to deny responsibility for what they have done by making it possible for them to believe they have not done it. The law treats members of capital sentencing juries quite differently. It seeks to ensure that they feel responsible for sentencing a defendant to death. This differential treatment rests on a presumed link between a capital sentencer's willingness to accept responsibility for the sentence she imposes and the accuracy and reliability of that sentence. Using interviews of 153 jurors who sat in South Carolina capital cases, this article examines empirically whether capital sentencing jurors assume responsibility …


Forecasting Life And Death: Juror Race, Religion, And Attitude Toward The Death Penalty, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen P. Garvey, Martin T. Wells Dec 2014

Forecasting Life And Death: Juror Race, Religion, And Attitude Toward The Death Penalty, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen P. Garvey, Martin T. Wells

Stephen P. Garvey

Determining whether race, sex, or other juror characteristics influence how capital case jurors vote is difficult. Jurors tend to vote for death in more egregious cases and for life in less egregious cases no matter what their own characteristics. And a juror's personal characteristics may get lost in the process of deliberation because the final verdict reflects the jury's will, not the individual juror's. Controlling for the facts likely to influence a juror's verdict helps to isolate the influence of a juror's personal characteristics. Examining each juror's first sentencing vote reveals her own judgment before the majority works its will. …


Death-Innocence And The Law Of Habeas Corpus, Stephen P. Garvey Dec 2014

Death-Innocence And The Law Of Habeas Corpus, Stephen P. Garvey

Stephen P. Garvey

The legal space between a sentence of death and the execution chamber is occupied by an intricate network of procedural rules. On average, it currently takes between six and seven years to traverse this space, but this interval is expected to shrink. Federal habeas corpus, an important part of this space, is studded more and more with procedural obstacles that bar the federal courts from entertaining the merits of a defendant's claims. By design, these barriers foreclose federal review in order to protect the state's interests in the finality of its criminal convictions, as well as to display healthy respect …


Virginia's Capital Jurors, Stephen P. Garvey, Paul Marcus Dec 2014

Virginia's Capital Jurors, Stephen P. Garvey, Paul Marcus

Stephen P. Garvey

Next to Texas, no state has executed more capital defendants than Virginia. Moreover, the likelihood of a death sentence actually being carried out is greater in Virginia than it is elsewhere, while the length of time between the imposition of a death sentence and its actual execution is shorter. Virginia has thus earned a reputation among members of the defense bar as being among the worst of the death penalty states. Yet insofar as these facts about Virginia's death penalty relate primarily to the behavior of state and federal appellate courts, they suggest that what makes Virginia's death penalty unique …


Future Dangerousness In Capital Cases: Always "At Issue", John H. Blume, Stephen P. Garvey, Sheri Lynn Johnson Dec 2014

Future Dangerousness In Capital Cases: Always "At Issue", John H. Blume, Stephen P. Garvey, Sheri Lynn Johnson

Stephen P. Garvey

Under Simmons v. South Carolina, a capital defendant who, if not sentenced to death, will remain in prison with no chance of parole is constitutionally entitled to an instruction informing the jury of the fact, but only if the prosecution engages in conduct that places the defendant's future dangerousness "at issue." Based on data collected from interviews with South Carolina capital jurors, Professors Blume, Garvey and Johnson argue that future dangerousness is on the minds of most capital jurors, and is thus "at issue" in virtually all capital trials, regardless of the prosecution's conduct. Accordingly, the authors argue that the …


Knockin' On Heaven's Door: Rethinking The Role Of Religion In Death Penalty Cases, Gary J. Simson, Stephen P. Garvey Dec 2014

Knockin' On Heaven's Door: Rethinking The Role Of Religion In Death Penalty Cases, Gary J. Simson, Stephen P. Garvey

Stephen P. Garvey

Religion has played a prominent role at various points of capital trials. In jury selection, peremptory challenges have been exercised against prospective jurors on the basis of their religion. At the sentencing phase, defendants have offered as mitigating evidence proof of their religiosity, and the prosecution has introduced evidence of the victim's religiosity. In closing argument, quotations from the Bible and other appeals to religion have long been common. During deliberations, jurors have engaged in group prayer and tried to sway one another with quotes from scripture. Such practices have not gone unquestioned. Rather remarkably, however, the questions have almost …


Harmless Error In Federal Habeas Corpus After Brecht V. Abrahamson, John H. Blume, Stephen P. Garvey Dec 2014

Harmless Error In Federal Habeas Corpus After Brecht V. Abrahamson, John H. Blume, Stephen P. Garvey

Stephen P. Garvey

The law of habeas corpus has changed again. This time it was the law of harmless error. Before Brecht v. Abrahamson, the courts applied the same harmless error rule on direct appeal and in federal habeas corpus. Under that rule, embraced for constitutional errors in Chapman v. California, a conviction tainted by a constitutional error susceptible to harmless error analysis could be upheld only if the state demonstrated that the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. After Brecht, the venerable Chapman rule still applies to constitutional errors identified and reviewed on direct appeal, but an ostensibly "less onerous" standard …


Aggravation And Mitigation In Capital Cases: What Do Jurors Think?, Stephen P. Garvey Dec 2014

Aggravation And Mitigation In Capital Cases: What Do Jurors Think?, Stephen P. Garvey

Stephen P. Garvey

The Capital Jury Project in South Carolina interviewed jurors who sat in forty-one capital murder cases. The Project asked jurors a range of questions relating to crime, the defendant, the victim, the victim's family, the jurors' deliberations, the conduct of counsel, and background characteristics of the jurors. In this essay, Professor Stephen P. Garvey presents and examines data from the Project relating to the importance jurors attach to various aggravating and mitigating factors. The results suggest that jurors have a discernible moral compass. According to the data, jurors found especially brutal killings, killings with child victims, future dangerousness, and lack …


Lifting The Veil On Punishment, Stephen P. Garvey Dec 2014

Lifting The Veil On Punishment, Stephen P. Garvey

Stephen P. Garvey

When the state punishes a person, it treats him as it ordinarily should not. It takes away his property, throws him in prison, or otherwise interferes with his liberty. Theories of punishment try to explain why such harsh treatment is nonetheless morally permissible, if not morally obligatory. Such theories often seem to take for granted that the state in question is an upright one. Among other things, the states in which we live fail, one might reasonably believe, to distribute wealth and power fairly among their citizens. Nor are the criminal justice systems they superintend flawless, not least of which …


The Deadly Paradox Of Capital Jurors, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen P. Garvey, Martin T. Wells Dec 2014

The Deadly Paradox Of Capital Jurors, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen P. Garvey, Martin T. Wells

Stephen P. Garvey

We examine support for the death penalty among a unique group of respondents: one hundred and eighty-seven citizens who actually served as jurors on capital trials in South Carolina. Capital jurors support the death penalty as much as, if not more than, members of the general public. Yet capital jurors, like poll respondents, harbor doubts about the penalty's fairness. Moreover, jurors--black jurors and Southern Baptists in particular--are ready to abandon their support for the death penalty when the alternative to death is life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, especially when combined with a requirement of restitution. Support for the …


Questions Of Mercy, Stephen P. Garvey Dec 2014

Questions Of Mercy, Stephen P. Garvey

Stephen P. Garvey

My aim in this brief introduction is to organize the Symposium articles around two questions, recognizing that doing so means ignoring other important questions to which the articles attend. I also aim to paint in broad strokes, thus also ignoring much of the argumentative subtlety and nuance contained in the articles. With those caveats on the table, the questions are these: First, does mercy have any legitimate role to play in the administration of the criminal law of a liberal state? Second, if mercy does have some such role to play, for what reasons, or upon what grounds, can mercy …


The Qualitative Dimension Of Fourth Amendment "Reasonableness", Sherry F. Colb Dec 2014

The Qualitative Dimension Of Fourth Amendment "Reasonableness", Sherry F. Colb

Sherry Colb

Supreme Court doctrine protects two seemingly distinct kinds of interests under the heading of privacy rights: one "substantive," the other "procedural." The Fourth Amendment guarantee against "unreasonable searches and seizures" has been generally interpreted to protect procedural privacy. Searches are typically defined as governmental inspections of activities and locations in which an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy from observation. In the typical case, this reasonable expectation of privacy may be breached only where the government has acquired a quantitatively substantial objective basis for believing that the search would uncover evidence of a crime. Substantive privacy rights have not …


What Is A Search? Two Conceptual Flaws In Fourth Amendment Doctine And Some Hints Of A Remedy, Sherry F. Colb Dec 2014

What Is A Search? Two Conceptual Flaws In Fourth Amendment Doctine And Some Hints Of A Remedy, Sherry F. Colb

Sherry Colb

No abstract provided.


Profiling With Apologies, Sherry F. Colb Dec 2014

Profiling With Apologies, Sherry F. Colb

Sherry Colb

No abstract provided.


Probabilities In Probable Cause And Beyond: Statistical Versus Concrete Harms, Sherry F. Colb Dec 2014

Probabilities In Probable Cause And Beyond: Statistical Versus Concrete Harms, Sherry F. Colb

Sherry Colb

No abstract provided.


Insane Fear: The Discriminatory Category Of "Mentally Ill And Dangerous", Sherry F. Colb Dec 2014

Insane Fear: The Discriminatory Category Of "Mentally Ill And Dangerous", Sherry F. Colb

Sherry Colb

This article considers the constitutional and moral implications of the distinction the law draws between different classes of dangerous people, depending upon their status as mentally ill or mentally well. Those who are mentally well benefit from the right to freedom from incarceration unless and until they commit a crime. By contrast, dangerous people who are mentally ill are subject to potentially indefinite "civil" preemptive confinement. In a relatively recent case, Kansas v. Hendricks, the United States Supreme Court upheld the post-prison civil confinement of Leroy Hendricks, a man who had served prison time after pleading guilty to child molestation. …


Innocence, Privacy, And Targeting In Fourth Amendment Jurisprudence, Sherry F. Colb Dec 2014

Innocence, Privacy, And Targeting In Fourth Amendment Jurisprudence, Sherry F. Colb

Sherry Colb

No abstract provided.


A World Without Privacy: Why Property Does Not Define The Limits Of The Right Against Unreasonable Searches And Seizures, Sherry F. Colb Dec 2014

A World Without Privacy: Why Property Does Not Define The Limits Of The Right Against Unreasonable Searches And Seizures, Sherry F. Colb

Sherry Colb

No abstract provided.


Standing Room Only: Why Fourth Amendment Exclusion And Standing Can No Longer Logically Coexist, Sherry F. Colb Dec 2014

Standing Room Only: Why Fourth Amendment Exclusion And Standing Can No Longer Logically Coexist, Sherry F. Colb

Sherry Colb

No abstract provided.


Some Thoughts On The Conduct/Status Distinction, Sherry F. Colb Dec 2014

Some Thoughts On The Conduct/Status Distinction, Sherry F. Colb

Sherry Colb

No abstract provided.


Stopping A Moving Target, Sherry F. Colb Dec 2014

Stopping A Moving Target, Sherry F. Colb

Sherry Colb

No abstract provided.


Assuming Facts Not In Evidence: A Response To Russell M. Coombs, Reforming New Jersey Evidence Law On Fresh Complaint Of Rape, Sherry F. Colb Dec 2014

Assuming Facts Not In Evidence: A Response To Russell M. Coombs, Reforming New Jersey Evidence Law On Fresh Complaint Of Rape, Sherry F. Colb

Sherry Colb

No abstract provided.


Federal Habeas Corpus, Kevin M. Clermont Dec 2014

Federal Habeas Corpus, Kevin M. Clermont

Kevin M. Clermont

No abstract provided.


Procedure's Magical Number Three: Psychological Bases For Standards Of Decision, Kevin M. Clermont Dec 2014

Procedure's Magical Number Three: Psychological Bases For Standards Of Decision, Kevin M. Clermont

Kevin M. Clermont

So many procedural doctrines appear, after research and teaching, to trifurcate. An obvious example is that kind of standard of decision known as the standard of proof: what in theory might have been a continuum of standards divides in practice into the three distinct standards of preponderance of the evidence, clear and convincing evidence, and proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Other examples suggest both that I am not imagining the prominence of three and that more than coincidence is at work. Part I of this essay describes the role of the number three in procedure, with particular regard to standards …


Plea Bargaining And The Right To The Effective Assistance Of Counsel: Where The Rubber Hits The Road In Capital Cases, John H. Blume Dec 2014

Plea Bargaining And The Right To The Effective Assistance Of Counsel: Where The Rubber Hits The Road In Capital Cases, John H. Blume

John H. Blume

No abstract provided.


Twenty-Five Years Of Death: A Report Of The Cornell Death Penalty Project On The "Modern" Era Of Capital Punishment In South Carolina, John H. Blume Dec 2014

Twenty-Five Years Of Death: A Report Of The Cornell Death Penalty Project On The "Modern" Era Of Capital Punishment In South Carolina, John H. Blume

John H. Blume

In 1972, the United States Supreme Court determined that the death penalty, as then administered in this country, violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Many states, including South Carolina, scurried to enact new, "improved" capital punishment statutes which would satisfy the Supreme Court's rather vague mandate. In 1976, the High Court approved some of the new laws, and the American death penalty was back in business. After a wrong turn or two, including a statutory scheme which did not pass constitutional muster, the South Carolina General Assembly passed the current death penalty statute in 1977. The …


Racial Epithets In The Criminal Process, Sheri Lynn Johnson, John H. Blume, Patrick M. Wilson Dec 2014

Racial Epithets In The Criminal Process, Sheri Lynn Johnson, John H. Blume, Patrick M. Wilson

John H. Blume

The evidence of modern bias is often difficult to document and, even when documented, still capable of racially neutral interpretations. In contrast, the use of racial epithets is neither subtle nor ambiguous. Prior to the research that generated this article and our representation of two clients whose cases involved racial epithets, we would have assumed that the use of a racial epithet by a decision-maker in a criminal trial would be rare, but that assumption turns out to be wrong. We also would have assumed that the use of an epithet by any of the decision makers would lead to …


Don't Take His Eye, Don't Take His Tooth, And Don't Cast The First Stone: Limiting Religious Arguments In Capital Cases, John H. Blume, Sheri Lynn Johnson Dec 2014

Don't Take His Eye, Don't Take His Tooth, And Don't Cast The First Stone: Limiting Religious Arguments In Capital Cases, John H. Blume, Sheri Lynn Johnson

John H. Blume

Professors John H. Blume and Sheri Lynn Johnson explore the occurrences of religious imagery and argument invoked by both prosecutors and defense attorneys in capital cases. Such invocation of religious imagery and argument by attorneys is not surprising, considering that the jurors who hear such arguments are making life and death decisions, and advocates, absent regulation, will resort to such emotionally compelling arguments. Also surveying judicial responses to such arguments in courts, Professors Blume and Johnson gauge the level of tolerance for such arguments in specific jurisdictions. Presenting proposed rules for prosecutors and defense counsel who wish to employ religious …