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Articles 1 - 19 of 19
Full-Text Articles in Law
Death, Desuetude, And Original Meaning, John F. Stinneford
Death, Desuetude, And Original Meaning, John F. Stinneford
John F. Stinneford
One of the most common objections to originalism is that it cannot cope with cultural change. One of the most commonly invoked examples of this claimed weakness is the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause, whose original meaning would (it is argued) authorize barbaric punishment practices like flogging and branding, and disproportionate punishments like the death penalty for relatively minor offenses. This Article shows that this objection to originalism is inapt, at least with respect to the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause. As I have shown in prior articles, the original meaning of “cruel and unusual” is “cruel and contrary to …
Dying To Appeal: The Long-Lasting And Ineffective Appeal Process Of The Death Sentence, Marlene Brito
Dying To Appeal: The Long-Lasting And Ineffective Appeal Process Of The Death Sentence, Marlene Brito
Marlene Brito
The appeal process for death sentences in Florida must be revised to correct the ineffectiveness that is currently in place. The long-lasting procedure allows inmates to indefinitely delay their execution and live via the appeal process for over fifteen years because the statute does not provide a definite time limit. The comment discusses the death penalty in the United States, the jury override law and its consequences, the appeal process itself, and proposes an amendment to section 921.141, Florida Statutes.
Legislative Response To Furman V. Georgia - Ohio Restores The Death Penalty, Jeffrey T. Heintz
Legislative Response To Furman V. Georgia - Ohio Restores The Death Penalty, Jeffrey T. Heintz
Akron Law Review
THE ABOVE REPRESENTS the first inclusion of a prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments in any charter of any colony in the New World. Believed to be traceable to the Magna Charta, such a prohibition is now embodied in our eighth amendment. It has been the subject of much litigation and construction, most recently in Furman v. Georgia, where the death penalty, as then imposed, was declared to be invalid as cruel and unusual. Some states, including Ohio, have responded with new statutes controlling imposition of the death penalty in order to circumvent the Furman proscriptions. Only time will tell …
Death Penalty; Cruel And Unusual Punishment; Individualized Sentencing Determination; Lockett V. Ohio; Bell V. Ohio, James C. Ellerhorst
Death Penalty; Cruel And Unusual Punishment; Individualized Sentencing Determination; Lockett V. Ohio; Bell V. Ohio, James C. Ellerhorst
Akron Law Review
“In Bell v. Ohio and Lockett v. Ohio the United States Supreme Court found the sentencing provisions of the Ohio capital punishment statute to be incompatible with the eighth and fourteenth amendments which prohibit cruel and unusual punishment. These two opinions represent the most recent attempt by the Supreme Court to explain what elements must be included in a constitutionally valid capital punishment statute.”
Too Young For The Death Penalty: An Empirical Examination Of Community Conscience And The Juvenile Death Penalty From The Perspective Of Capital Jurors, William J. Bowers, Benjamin Fleury-Steiner, Valerie P. Hans, Michael E. Antonio
Too Young For The Death Penalty: An Empirical Examination Of Community Conscience And The Juvenile Death Penalty From The Perspective Of Capital Jurors, William J. Bowers, Benjamin Fleury-Steiner, Valerie P. Hans, Michael E. Antonio
Valerie P. Hans
As our analysis of jury decisionmaking in juvenile capital trials was nearing completion, the Missouri Supreme Court declared the juvenile death penalty unconstitutional in Simmons v. Roper. The court held that the execution of persons younger than eighteen years of age at the time of their crime violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. This decision patently rejected the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Stanford v. Kentucky, which permitted the execution of sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds. In deciding Simmons, the Missouri Supreme Court applied the U.S. Supreme Court's reasoning in Atkins v. Virginia to the juvenile death …
Capital Jurors As The Litmus Test Of Community Conscience For The Juvenile Death Penalty, Michael E. Antonio, Benjamin Fleury-Steiner, Valerie P. Hans, William J. Bowers
Capital Jurors As The Litmus Test Of Community Conscience For The Juvenile Death Penalty, Michael E. Antonio, Benjamin Fleury-Steiner, Valerie P. Hans, William J. Bowers
Valerie P. Hans
This fall, the United States Supreme Court will consider the constitutionality of the juvenile death penalty in Simmons v. Roper. The Eighth Amendment issue before the Court in Simmons will be whether the juvenile death penalty accords with the conscience of the community. This article presents evidence that bears directly on the conscience of the community in juvenile capital cases as revealed through extensive in-depth interviews with jurors who made the critical life-or-death decision in such cases. The data come from the Capital Jury Project, a national study of the exercise of sentencing discretion in capital cases conducted with the …
Blind Justice, Andrea Lyon
Temporal Arbitrariness: A Back To The Future Look At A Twenty-Five-Year-Old Death Penalty Trial, Mary Kelly Tate
Temporal Arbitrariness: A Back To The Future Look At A Twenty-Five-Year-Old Death Penalty Trial, Mary Kelly Tate
University of Richmond Law Review
No abstract provided.
Mercy By The Numbers: An Empirical Analysis Of Clemency And Its Structure, Michael Heise
Mercy By The Numbers: An Empirical Analysis Of Clemency And Its Structure, Michael Heise
Michael Heise
Clemency is an extrajudicial measure intended both to enhance fairness in the administration of justice, and allow for the correction of mistakes. Perhaps nowhere are these goals more important than in the death penalty context. The recent increased use of the death penalty and concurrent decline in the number of defendants removed from death row through clemency call for a better and deeper understanding of clemency authority and its application. Questions about whether clemency decisions are consistently and fairly distributed are particularly apt. This study uses 27 years of death penalty and clemency data to explore the influence of defendant …
Jones, Lackey, And Teague, Richard Broughton
Jones, Lackey, And Teague, Richard Broughton
Richard Broughton
In a recent, high-profile ruling, a federal court finally recognized that a substantial delay in executing a death row inmate violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishments. Courts have repeatedly rejected these so-called “Lackey claims,” making the federal court’s decision in Jones v. Chappell all the more important. And yet it was deeply flawed. This paper focuses on one of the major flaws in the Jones decision that largely escaped attention: the application of the non-retroactivity rule from Teague v. Lane. By comprehensively addressing the merits of the Teague bar as applied to Lackey claims, and making …
Executing On An Empty Tank: Protecting The Supply Of Lethal Injection Drugs From Public Records Requests, Ira K. Rushing
Executing On An Empty Tank: Protecting The Supply Of Lethal Injection Drugs From Public Records Requests, Ira K. Rushing
Ira K Rushing
With the US Supreme Court holding the death penalty and lethal injection as Constitutional, there has been a new strategy for condemned prisoners. Using public information requests to discover the identities of the suppliers of lethal injection drugs and others in ancillary roles, the media has broad range to publish this information. This has led to many suppliers and compounding pharmacies to withhold supplies of the drugs to states using them in executions. This paper lays out a history of the death penalty in Mississippi that has gotten us to this point. It then attempts to provide persuasive arguments on …
The Twilight Zone: Perspectives From A Man On Death Row, Leah Stiegler
The Twilight Zone: Perspectives From A Man On Death Row, Leah Stiegler
Law Student Publications
This interview was conducted through a series of written correspondences between Gerald Dean Cruz and Leah Stiegler, the Allen Chair Editor for Volume 49 of the University of Richmond Law Review. This exchange was reproduced, in excerpts, for the sole purpose of giving readers a rare glimpse into the perspective of a death row inmate.
A Survey Of The History Of The Death Penalty In The United States, Sheherezade C. Malik, D. Paul Holdsworth
A Survey Of The History Of The Death Penalty In The United States, Sheherezade C. Malik, D. Paul Holdsworth
Law Student Publications
Since the founding of Jamestown Colony in 1607, few topics in American life and culture have generated as much controversy, both in terms of persistence and volatility, as the death penalty. Foreign policy, economic recessions, and social movements come to the forefront of national discussion in their own respective ebbs and flows. Capital punishment, however, has been a staple of the American criminal justice system since the early inhabiting of the continent, and has remained a permanent vehicle through which we can enact retribution on the most heinous criminal offenders in our society, ridding ourselves of the worst among us.
A Shot In The Dark: Why Virginia Should Adopt The Firing Squad As Its Primary Method Of Execution, P. Thomas Distanislao, Iii
A Shot In The Dark: Why Virginia Should Adopt The Firing Squad As Its Primary Method Of Execution, P. Thomas Distanislao, Iii
Law Student Publications
This comment recommends that Virginia cease its use of lethal injection because of its high botch rates and growing impracticability due to drug shortages. Instead, the Commonwealth should use the firing squad as a more effective means of execution, thereby leading the nation in a transition towards a more efficient and reliable method.
Making Sure We Are Getting It Right: Repairing "The Machinery Of Death" By Narrowing Capital Eligibility, Ann E. Reid
Making Sure We Are Getting It Right: Repairing "The Machinery Of Death" By Narrowing Capital Eligibility, Ann E. Reid
Law Student Publications
This comment argues that, starting with the framework of the federal system, there is a way to reconcile modern concerns about the death penalty with society's need for leverage over those criminals who truly are the worst of the worst-those who present grave threats to society even after incarceration. This reconciliation can be achieved by amending the Federal Death Penalty Act to require prosecutors to establish one additional element before they can secure a capital conviction: future dangerousness of the defendant in prison..
Death As A Bargaining Chip: Plea Bargaining And The Future Of Virginia's Death Penalty, John G. Douglass
Death As A Bargaining Chip: Plea Bargaining And The Future Of Virginia's Death Penalty, John G. Douglass
Law Faculty Publications
Virginia now averages less than a single death sentence each year, a far cry from its not-too-distant history as the second most active death penalty state in the nation. The numbers alone tempt us to forecast the death of Virginia's death penalty: a death by disuse. But those numbers leave much of the story untold. The plummeting number of death sentences is only the diminishing tip of a larger, more stable iceberg of capital case litigation. That iceberg is melting very slowly, if at all.
The Irrelevance Of Prisoner Fault For Excessively Delayed Executions, Russell L. Christopher
The Irrelevance Of Prisoner Fault For Excessively Delayed Executions, Russell L. Christopher
Washington and Lee Law Review
Are decades-long delays between sentencing and execution immune from Eighth Amendment violation because they are self-inflicted by prisoners, or is such prisoner fault for delays simply irrelevant to whether a state-imposed punishment is cruel and unusual? Typically finding delay to be the state’s responsibility, Justices Breyer and Stevens argue that execution following upwards of forty years of death row incarceration is unconstitutional. Nearly every lower court disagrees, reasoning that prisoners have the choice of pursuing appellate and collateral review (with the delay that entails) or crafting the perfect remedy to any delay by submitting, as Justice Thomas has invited complaining …
Advocacy As An Exercise In Virtue: Lawyering, Bad Facts, And Furman's High-Stakes Dilemma, Linda H. Edwards
Advocacy As An Exercise In Virtue: Lawyering, Bad Facts, And Furman's High-Stakes Dilemma, Linda H. Edwards
Scholarly Works
Two of the conversations benefitting most from Jack Sammons's scholarship are conversations about legal rhetoric and about virtue ethics. Legal rhetoric is the study of the conventions of legal argument, specifically, the art of identifying and evaluating the best available means of persuasion and implementing those means effectively in light of audience, purpose, and occasion. Virtue ethics approaches moral reflection by asking what sort of person a particular moral choice encourages the actor to become. It focuses on consequences to the moral agent herself rather than directly focusing on consequences to others. The goal is to become a virtuous person, …
On The Argument That Execution Protocol Reform Is Biomedical Research, Paul J. Litton
On The Argument That Execution Protocol Reform Is Biomedical Research, Paul J. Litton
Faculty Publications
Regardless of whether the Supreme Court rightly upheld Oklahoma’s execution protocol in Glossip, Oklahoma officials had inadequate reason to choose midazolam as the anesthetizing agent in its procedure. Their decision is one example illustrating Seema Shah’s point that death penalty states are engaged in “poorly designed experimentation that is not based on evidence.” Shah argues that “an important factor” causing the high rate of botched executions is that lethal injection reform is a type of human subjects research that is going unregulated. Shah argues that research requirements, such as informed consent and IRB review, are necessary to render the research …