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Articles 1 - 20 of 20
Full-Text Articles in Law
Flawed Forensics And The Death Penalty: Junk Science And Potentially Wrongful Executions, Jessica Dwyer-Moss
Flawed Forensics And The Death Penalty: Junk Science And Potentially Wrongful Executions, Jessica Dwyer-Moss
Seattle Journal for Social Justice
No abstract provided.
Localism And Capital Punishment, Stephen F. Smith
Localism And Capital Punishment, Stephen F. Smith
Stephen F. Smith
Professor Adam Gershowitz presents an interesting proposal to transfer from localities to states the power to enforce the death penalty. In his view, state-level enforcement would result in a more rationally applied death penalty because states would be much more likely to make capital charging decisions based on desert, without the distorting influence of the severe resource constraints applicable to all but the wealthiest of localities. As well conceived as Professor Gershowitz’s proposal is, however, I remain skeptical that statewide enforcement of the death penalty would be preferable to continued local enforcement. First, Professor Gershowitz underestimates the benefits of localism …
Correcting A Fatal Lottery: A Proposal To Apply The Civil Discrimination Standards To The Death Penalty, Joseph Thomas
Correcting A Fatal Lottery: A Proposal To Apply The Civil Discrimination Standards To The Death Penalty, Joseph Thomas
Joseph Thomas
Claims of discrimination are treated differently in the death penalty context. Discrimination in employment, housing, civil rights and jury venire all use a burden-shifting framework with the preponderance of the evidence as the standard. Discrimination that occurs in death penalty proceedings is the exception to the rule -- the framework offers less protections; there is only one phase of argumentation, with a heightened evidentiary standard of “exceptionally clear proof.” With disparate levels of protections against discrimination, the standard and framework for adjudicating claims of discrimination in the death penalty is unconstitutional.
Death is different as a punishment. But does discrimination …
Correcting A Fatal Lottery: A Proposal To Apply The Civil Discrimination Standards To The Death Penalty, Joseph Thomas
Correcting A Fatal Lottery: A Proposal To Apply The Civil Discrimination Standards To The Death Penalty, Joseph Thomas
Joseph Thomas
Claims of discrimination are treated differently in the death penalty context. Discrimination in employment, housing, civil rights and jury venire all use a burden-shifting framework with the preponderance of the evidence as the standard. Discrimination that occurs in death penalty proceedings is the exception to the rule -- the framework offers less protections; there is only one phase of argumentation, with a heightened evidentiary standard of “exceptionally clear proof.” With disparate levels of protections against discrimination, the standard and framework for adjudicating claims of discrimination in the death penalty is unconstitutional.
Death is different as a punishment. But does discrimination …
Depravity Thrice Removed: Using The 'Heinous, Cruel, Or Depraved' Factor To Aggravate Convictions Of Nontriggermen Accomplices In Capital Cases, Richard W. Garnett
Depravity Thrice Removed: Using The 'Heinous, Cruel, Or Depraved' Factor To Aggravate Convictions Of Nontriggermen Accomplices In Capital Cases, Richard W. Garnett
Richard W Garnett
No abstract provided.
An Anachronism Too Discordant To Be Suffered: A Comparative Study Of Parliamentary And Presidential Approaches To Regulation Of The Death Penalty, Derek R. Verhagen
An Anachronism Too Discordant To Be Suffered: A Comparative Study Of Parliamentary And Presidential Approaches To Regulation Of The Death Penalty, Derek R. Verhagen
Derek R VerHagen
It is well-documented that the United States remains the only western democracy to retain the death penalty and finds itself ranked among the world's leading human rights violators in executions per year. However, prior to the Gregg v. Georgia decision in 1976, ending America's first and only moratorium on capital punishment, the U.S. was well in line with the rest of the civilized world in its approach to the death penalty. This Note argues that America's return to the death penalty is based primarily on the differences between classic parliamentary approaches to regulation and that of the American presidential system. …
Grave Injustice: Unearthing Wrongful Executions, Mary Kelly Tate
Grave Injustice: Unearthing Wrongful Executions, Mary Kelly Tate
Law Faculty Publications
This book review discusses Richard A. Stack's book, Grave Injustice, which illustrates the flaws in America's use of capital punishment. "Simply put, the death penalty is shown to be a massive policy failure diminishing the legitimacy of the criminal justice system in the world's leading democracy. Stack uses his reportorial skills to distill the complex subject of the American death penalty into a digestible form, yet he never cuts corners with the human dimension. This dimension is always at the center of crime and punishment and, most hauntingly, at the center of the American death penalty and its tragic …
Victim Impact Evidence: An Analysis On The Effect Of Victim Impact Evidence On The Sentencing Stage In Death-Penalty Cases And Potential Reforms, Kyle W. Kahan
Kyle W Kahan
No abstract provided.
Fifteen Years And Death: Double Jeopardy, Multiple Punishments, And Extended Stays On Death Row, Michael J. Johnson
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 …
Death Penalty Drugs: A Prescription That's Getting Harder To Fill, Corinna Barrett Lain
Death Penalty Drugs: A Prescription That's Getting Harder To Fill, Corinna Barrett Lain
Law Faculty Publications
Six states have abolished the death penalty in the past six years—Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland, and New Mexico. We haven’t seen mass moves like that since the 1960s. What gives?
Part of the answer is that those states weren’t executing anyway. More people in those states were dying on death row waiting to be executed than were actually being executed, and the death penalty is breathtakingly expensive to maintain (a point to which I’ll return in a moment).
So why weren’t the states executing? We tend to hear about innocence claims, trench warfare litigation, official moratoriums, study …
Physician Participation In Executions, The Morality Of Capital Punishment, And The Practical Implications Of Their Relationship, Paul J. Litton
Physician Participation In Executions, The Morality Of Capital Punishment, And The Practical Implications Of Their Relationship, Paul J. Litton
Faculty Publications
Evidence that some executed prisoners suffered excruciating pain has reinvigorated the ethical debate about physician participation in lethal injections. In widely publicized litigation, death row inmates argue that the participation of anesthesiologists in their execution is constitutionally required to minimize the risk of unnecessary suffering. For many years, commentators supported the ethical ban on physician participation reflected in codes of professional medical organizations. However, a recent wave of scholarship concurs with inmate advocates, urging the law to require or at least permit physician participation.
Challenging The Death Penalty With Statistics: Furman, Mccleskey And A Single County Case Study, Steven Shatz, Teresa Dalton
Challenging The Death Penalty With Statistics: Furman, Mccleskey And A Single County Case Study, Steven Shatz, Teresa Dalton
Steven F. Shatz
An Analysis Of The Death Penalty Jurisprudence Of The October 2007 Supreme Court Term, Richard Klein
An Analysis Of The Death Penalty Jurisprudence Of The October 2007 Supreme Court Term, Richard Klein
Touro Law Review
No abstract provided.
Criminal Procedure Decisions From The October 2007 Term, Susan N. Herman
Criminal Procedure Decisions From The October 2007 Term, Susan N. Herman
Touro Law Review
No abstract provided.
Data Underlying "Living Death: Ambivalence, Delay, And Capital Punishment", Marianne Wesson, Amy Kingston, Jocelyn Jenks, Laura Mcnabb, Lauren Seger, Genet Tekeste, Edwin Hurwitz
Data Underlying "Living Death: Ambivalence, Delay, And Capital Punishment", Marianne Wesson, Amy Kingston, Jocelyn Jenks, Laura Mcnabb, Lauren Seger, Genet Tekeste, Edwin Hurwitz
Research Data
The documents here archived contain data compilations researched and recorded by me and my research assistants in connection with the article by Marianne "Mimi" Wesson, Living Death: Ambivalence, Delay, and Capital Punishment (Feb. 20, 2013), https://ssrn.com/abstract=2221597.
Our research investigated four study jurisdictions: Arizona, Louisiana, Nevada, and Ohio. The data falls into two categories: analyses of reported appellate cases during designated periods in those jurisdictions; and investigations of the subsequent careers of every individual who resided on death row in one of our jurisdictions in April of 1995. The article further explains the impetus for these investigations, and the conclusions …
Thompson V. Oklahoma: Debating The Constitutionality Of Juvenile Executions, Susan M. Simmons
Thompson V. Oklahoma: Debating The Constitutionality Of Juvenile Executions, Susan M. Simmons
Pepperdine Law Review
No abstract provided.
Sentencing The Mentally Retarded To Death: An Eighth Amendment Analysis, John H. Blume, David Bruck
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 …
The Virtues Of Thinking Small, Corinna Barrett Lain
The Virtues Of Thinking Small, Corinna Barrett Lain
Law Faculty Publications
Professor Lain argues that, in efforts to determine how close American states are to abolishing the death penalty, scholars should "think small," examining the ground level issues that affect its imposition. Among the issues she explores are exonerations of defendants, the legality and obtainability of lethal injection drugs, and the high costs of seeking and imposing capital punishment.
Deconstructing Antisocial Personality Disorder And Psychopathy: Guidelines-Based Approach To Prejudicial Psychiatric Labels, Kathleen Wayland, Sean O'Brien
Deconstructing Antisocial Personality Disorder And Psychopathy: Guidelines-Based Approach To Prejudicial Psychiatric Labels, Kathleen Wayland, Sean O'Brien
Faculty Works
Prejudicial psychiatric labels such as antisocial personality disorder and psychopathy have an inherently prejudicial effect on courts and juries, particularly in cases involving the death penalty. This article explains how and why these labels are inherently aggravating, and also discusses the mental health literature indicating that they are subjective, unreliable and non-scientific. The authors conclude that no competent defense lawyer would pursue a mitigation case based on such a damaging and scientifically questionable psychiatric label. Further, a proper life history investigation conducted in accordance with the ABA Guidelines on the Appointment and Performance of Defense Counsel in Death Penalty Cases …
Empathy For Psychopaths: Using Fmri Brain Scans To Plea For Leniency In Death Penalty Cases, Kimberly D. Phillips
Empathy For Psychopaths: Using Fmri Brain Scans To Plea For Leniency In Death Penalty Cases, Kimberly D. Phillips
Kimberly D Phillips