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Criminal Procedure

Selected Works

Death penalty

Articles 61 - 70 of 70

Full-Text Articles in Law

Fifteen Years And Death: Double Jeopardy, Multiple Punishments, And Extended Stays On Death Row, Michael J. Johnson Jul 2013

Fifteen Years And Death: Double Jeopardy, Multiple Punishments, And Extended Stays On Death Row, Michael J. Johnson

Michael P. Johnson

Fifteen Years and Death is a Note that considers a completely novel application of the Double Jeopardy Clause to excessive time on death row. Traditionally, death penalty opponents have attacked the now fifteen-year average wait time on death row as a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments, but this argument has fallen flat time and time again as courts have been reluctant to find merely living in prison to be “cruel” or “unusual.” Most courts do admit, however, that such time on death row does constitute some sort of punishment. As originally imagined, the Double …

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Challenging The Death Penalty With Statistics: Furman, Mccleskey And A Single County Case Study, Steven Shatz, Teresa Dalton Mar 2013

Challenging The Death Penalty With Statistics: Furman, Mccleskey And A Single County Case Study, Steven Shatz, Teresa Dalton

Steven F. Shatz

In the forty year history of the Supreme Court's modern death penalty jurisprudence, two cases — Furman v. Georgia (1972) and McCleskey v. Kemp (1987) — stand out above all others. Both cases turned on the Court's consideration of empirical evidence, but they appear to have reached divergent — even altogether inconsistent—results. In Furman, the Court relied on statistical evidence that the death penalty was infrequently applied to death-eligible defendants to hold that the Georgia death penalty scheme was unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment. In McCleskey, the Court, despite being presented with statistical evidence that race played a significant role …

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Sentencing The Mentally Retarded To Death: An Eighth Amendment Analysis, John H. Blume, David Bruck Jan 2013

Sentencing The Mentally Retarded To Death: An Eighth Amendment Analysis, John H. Blume, David Bruck

David I. Bruck

Today, on death rows across the United States, sit a number of men with the minds of children. These people are mentally retarded. Typical of these individuals is Limmie Arthur, who currently is imprisoned at Central Correctional Institution in Columbia, South Carolina. Although Arthur is twenty-eight years old, all the mental health professionals who have evaluated him, including employees of the South Carolina Department of Corrections, agree he has the mental capacity of approximately a 10-year-old child. Arthur was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of a neighbor. At his first trial, his court appointed attorneys did not …

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Empathy For Psychopaths: Using Fmri Brain Scans To Plea For Leniency In Death Penalty Cases, Kimberly D. Phillips Dec 2012

Empathy For Psychopaths: Using Fmri Brain Scans To Plea For Leniency In Death Penalty Cases, Kimberly D. Phillips

Kimberly D Phillips

Most of the public agrees that society is safer without psychopaths.
However, a new sentencing strategy for psychopaths facing the death
penalty has erupted from both mental health researchers and defense
lawyers-imploring juries to view a defendant's psychopathy as a
consideration of sentencing mitigation, and, consequently, urging juries to
impose life imprisonment instead of the death penalty.

This article explains the frightening nature of psychopaths, how
neuroscience and neuroimaging intersects with the study of psychopathy,
and, specifically, whether an fiMRI brain scan is appropriate mitigating
evidence in death penalty sentencing hearings when the convicted
defendant is a diagnosed psychopath.

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Statement Of David E. Aaronson In Support Of Hb 1075 To Repeal The Death Penalty, David Aaronson Mar 2011

Statement Of David E. Aaronson In Support Of Hb 1075 To Repeal The Death Penalty, David Aaronson

David Aaronson

No abstract provided.

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Chivalry Is Not Dead: Murder, Gender, And The Death Penalty, Steven Shatz, Naomi Shatz Feb 2011

Chivalry Is Not Dead: Murder, Gender, And The Death Penalty, Steven Shatz, Naomi Shatz

Steven F. Shatz

ABSTRACT Chivalry—that set of values and code of conduct for the medieval knightly class—has long influenced American law, from Supreme Court decisions to substantive criminal law doctrines and the administration of criminal justice. The chivalrous knight was enjoined to seek honor and defend it through violence and, in a society which enforced strict gender roles, to show gallantry toward “ladies” of the same class, except for the women of the knight’s own household, over whom he exercised complete authority. This article explores, for the first time, whether these chivalric values might explain sentencing outcomes in capital cases. The data for …

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An Analysis Of The Death Penalty Jurisprudence Of The October 2007 Supreme Court Term (The Twentieth Annual Supreme Court Review), Richard Klein Dec 2010

An Analysis Of The Death Penalty Jurisprudence Of The October 2007 Supreme Court Term (The Twentieth Annual Supreme Court Review), Richard Klein

Richard Daniel Klein

No abstract provided.

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More Different Than Life, Less Different Than Death, William W. Berry Iii Jan 2010

More Different Than Life, Less Different Than Death, William W. Berry Iii

William W Berry III

The Supreme Court has traditionally divided its application of the Eighth Amendment into two categories, capital and non-capital cases, based on the longstanding notion that “death- is-different.” In the recent case of Graham v. Florida, however, the Supreme Court applied its “evolving standards of decency” standard, heretofore reserved for capital cases, to a non-capital case in holding that the Eighth Amendment prohibited states from sentencing juvenile offenders to life without parole for non-homicide crimes. The dissenting justices argued that this decision marked the end of the Court’s “death-is-different” jurisprudence. This article argues, however, that the decision instead creates the opportunity …

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The Eighth Amendment, The Death Penalty And Ordinary Robbery-Burglary Murderers: A California Case Study, Steven Shatz Aug 2007

The Eighth Amendment, The Death Penalty And Ordinary Robbery-Burglary Murderers: A California Case Study, Steven Shatz

Steven F. Shatz

Beginning with Furman v. Georgia, the Supreme Court's seminal case applying the Eighth Amendment to the death penalty, the Court has developed two principles limiting the states' power to define death-eligibility: the principle from Furman and Zant v. Stephens that states are required to "genuinely narrow" the death-eligible class to avoid the risk of arbitrariness in the imposition of the death penalty and the principle from Enmund v. Florida and Tison v. Arizona that the death penalty is a disproportionate punishment for a particular category of murders when it does not comport with contemporary values and serves no penological purpose. …

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In Search Of Clemency Procedures We Can Live With: What Process Is Due In Capital Clemency Proceedings After Ohio Adult Parole Authority V. Woodard?, Brian S. Clarke Jan 1998

In Search Of Clemency Procedures We Can Live With: What Process Is Due In Capital Clemency Proceedings After Ohio Adult Parole Authority V. Woodard?, Brian S. Clarke

Brian S. Clarke

The United States Supreme Court has denied certiorari for the final time. All state and federal appeals have been exhausted. The execution date has been set. There is only one thing that can save the death row inmate from the ultimate punishment: the proverbial call from the governor and a grant of executive clemency.

This scene, although a veritable Hollywood cliche, is being played out in prisons across America with increasing frequency. As of July 1, 1998, there were 3,474 men and women on death row in America. In 1996, with the passage of the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty …

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