Law Commons^™

Tinkering Around The Edges: The Supreme Court's Death Penalty Jurisprudence, John Bessler

All Faculty Scholarship

This Essay examines America's death penalty forty years after Furman and provides a critique of the Supreme Court's existing Eighth Amendment case law. Part I briefly summarizes how the Court, to date, has approached death sentences, while Part II highlights the incongruous manner in which the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause has been read. For instance, Justice Antonin Scalia-one of the Court's most vocal proponents of "originalism" conceded that corporal punishments such as handbranding and public flogging are no longer constitutionally permissible; yet, he (and the Court itself) continues to allow death sentences to be imposed. The American Bar Association …

The American Historical Review (April 2012) (Reviewing David Garland, Peculiar Institution: America’S Death Penalty In An Age Of Abolition, John Bessler

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Madness Alone Punishes The Madman: The Search For Moral Dignity In The Court's Competency Doctrine As Applied In Capital Cases, J. Amy Dillard

All Faculty Scholarship

The purposes of the competency doctrine are to guarantee reliability in criminal prosecutions, to ensure that only those defendants who can appreciate punishment are subject to it, and to maintain moral dignity, both actual and apparent, in criminal proceedings. No matter his crime, the “madman” should not be forced to stand trial. Historically, courts viewed questions of competency as a binary choice, finding the defendant either competent or incompetent to stand trial. However, in Edwards v. Indiana, the Supreme Court conceded that it views competency on a spectrum and offered a new category of competency — borderline-competent. The Court held …

History Repeats Itself: The Post-Furman Return To Arbitrariness In Capital Punishment, Lindsey S. Vann

University of Richmond Law Review

Part I of this comment provides a brief review of Furmanandthe circumstances leading to the decision. Part II discusses thefactors indicating current arbitrariness and other recurring factors surrounding the American death penalty. Part III examines the development of the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause since Furman. Finally, Part IV discusses how the Supreme Court should apply its contemporary Eighth Amendment doctrine to the current circumstances surrounding the imposition of the death penalty.

And Death Shall Have No Dominion: How To Achieve The Categorical Exemption Of Mentally Retarded Defendants From Execution, J. Amy Dillard

All Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the Court’s categorical exclusion of mentally retarded defendants from execution and explores how trial courts should employ procedures to accomplish heightened reliability in the mental retardation determination; it maintains that if a mentally retarded defendant is subjected to a death sentence then the Atkins directive has been ignored. To satisfy the Atkins Court’s objective of protecting mentally retarded defendants from the “special risk of wrongful execution,” the article explores whether trial courts should engage in a unified, pre-trial competency assessment in all capital cases where the defendant asserts mental retardation as a bar to execution and how …

Statewide Capital Punishment: The Case For Eliminating Counties' Role In The Death Penalty, Adam M. Gershowitz

Vanderbilt Law Review

The State of Texas is known as the capital of capital punishment.' But is that reputation deserved? In a way, yes. Texas sends more people to death row than any other state, and it executes them far faster. However, in another way, it is incorrect to suggest that "the State" of Texas is a prolific user of capital punishment. Death penalty cases are prosecuted by counties, not the state, and a majority of Texas's counties have never imposed the death penalty. In fact, only a handful of Texas's 254 counties regularly seek the death penalty. Many other states have a …

Documentation, Documentary, And The Law: What Should Be Made Of Victim Impact Videos?, Regina Austin

All Faculty Scholarship

Since the Supreme Court sanctioned the introduction of victim impact evidence in the sentencing phase of capital cases in Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U.S. 808 (1991), there have been a number of reported decisions in which that evidence has taken the form of videos composed of home-produced still photographs and moving images of the victim. Most of these videos were first shown at funerals or memorial services and contain music appropriate for such occasions. This article considers the probative value of victim impact videos and responds to the call of Justice John Paul Stevens, made in a statement regarding the …

Revisiting Beccaria's Vision: The Enlightenment, America's Death Penalty, And The Abolition Movement, John Bessler

All Faculty Scholarship

In 1764, Cesare Beccaria, a 26-year-old Italian criminologist, penned On Crimes and Punishments. That treatise spoke out against torture and made the first comprehensive argument against state-sanctioned executions. As we near the 250th anniversary of its publication, law professor John Bessler provides a comprehensive review of the abolition movement from before Beccaria's time to the present. Bessler reviews Beccaria's substantial influence on Enlightenment thinkers and on America's Founding Fathers in particular. The Article also provides an extensive review of Eighth Amendment jurisprudence and then contrasts it with the trend in international law towards the death penalty's abolition. It then discusses …

Executions, Deterrence And Homicide: A Tale Of Two Cities, Franklin Zimring, Jeffrey Fagan, David T. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

We compare homicide rates in two quite similar cities with vastly different execution risks. Singapore had an execution rate close to 1 per million per year until an explosive twentyfold increase in 1994-95 and 1996-97 to a level that we show was probably the highest in the world. Then over the next 11 years, Singapore executions dropped by about 95%. Hong Kong, by contrast,has no executions all during the last generation and abolished capital punishment in 1993. Homicide levels and trends are remarkably similar in these two cities over the 35 years after 1973, with neither the surge in Singapore …

Death And Harmless Error: A Rhetorical Response To Judging Innocence, Colin Starger

All Faculty Scholarship

Professor Garrett’s impressive empirical analysis of the first 200 post conviction DNA exonerations in the United States (“Garrett Study”) has the potential to affect contemporary debates surrounding our nation’s criminal justice system. This Response explores this potential by harnessing the Study’s data in support of arguments for and against a contested doctrinal proposition — that guilt-based harmless error rules should never apply in death penalty appeals. My analysis starts with the premise that the Study’s real world impact will necessarily depend on how jurists, politicians, and scholars extrapolate the explanatory power of the data beyond the 200 cases themselves. While …

Frequency And Predictors Of False Conviction: Why We Know So Little, And New Data On Capital Cases, Samuel R. Gross, Barbara O'Brien

Articles

In the first part of this article, we address the problems inherent in studying wrongful convictions: our pervasive ignorance and the extreme difficulty of obtaining the data that we need to answer even basic questions. The main reason that we know so little about false convictions is that, by definition, they are hidden from view. As a result, it is nearly impossible to gather reliable data on the characteristics or even the frequency of false convictions. In addition, we have very limited data on criminal investigations and prosecutions in general, so even if we could somehow obtain data on cases …

Abolition In The U.S.A. By 2050: On Political Capital And Ordinary Acts Of Resistance, Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

The United States, like the larger international community, likely will tend toward greater abolition of the death penalty during the first half of the twenty-first century. A handful of individual states – states that have historically carried out few or no executions – probably will abolish capital punishment over the next twenty years, which will create political momentum and ultimately a federal constitutional ban on capital punishment in the United States. It is entirely reasonable to expect that, by the mid-twenty-first century, capital punishment will have the same status internationally as torture: an outlier practice, prohibited by international agreements and …

Without Limitation: 'Groundhog Day' For Incompetent Defendants, J. Amy Dillard

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article offers a brief overview of the standards for determining competency to stand trial. After examining the seminal case of Jackson v. Indiana, which held that the indefinite pre-trial detention of incompetent defendants violates due process, this Article argues that Virginia Code § 19.2-169.3, like statutes in twenty other states, violates a defendant's right to substantive due process, including the right to be free from forcible medication. This Article proposes legislation that will make the process constitutional, while addressing the concerns about the release of dangerous individuals held by the prosecutors and the community.

Finding Redemption: How Picking Up The Phone Can Change A Lawyer's Life, Sean O'Brien

Faculty Works

The winner of the 2006 ABA Ross Essay Contest debated with himself whether to take a phone call from a death row inmate scheduled to be executed in 9 hours who turned out to be calling to request help for other prisoners. "As I hung up the phone, I experienced a profound awareness that no matter what each of us had previously done in our lives, at that moment Doyle Williams was a better human being than I. If a death row inmate can find redemption, maybe a lawyer can too."

Deterrence Versus Brutalization: Capital Punishment's Differing Impacts Among States, Joanna M. Shepherd

Michigan Law Review

Policymakers' false beliefs about capital punishment's universal deterrent effect may have caused many people to die needlessly. If deterrence is capital punishment's purpose then, in the majority of states where executions do not deter crime, executions kill convicts uselessly. Moreover, in the many states where the brutalization effect outweighs the deterrent effect, executions not only kill convicts needlessly but also induce the additional murders of many innocent people. After Part II discusses capital punishment's recent history in the United States, Part III reviews the conflict in recent studies on capital punishment and deterrence. Part IV explores differences in states' applications …

The Innocence Protection Act Of 2004: A Small Step Forward And A Framework For Larger Reforms, Ronald Weich

All Faculty Scholarship

Passage of the Innocence Protection Act in the closing days of the 108th Congress was a watershed moment. To be sure, the bill that finally became law was a shadow of the more ambitious criminal justice reforms first championed five years earlier by Senator Pat Leahy, Congressman Bill Delahunt and others. But the enactment of legislation designed to strengthen — not weaken — procedural protections for death row inmates was rich in symbolic importance and promise.

Writing in the April 2001 issue of THE CHAMPION (Innocence Protection Act: Death Penalty Reform on the Horizon), I said optimistically: "The criminal justice …

Killing The Willing: "Volunteers," Suicide And Competency, John H. Blume

Michigan Law Review

When my client Robert South decided to waive his appeals so that his death sentence could be carried out, I understood why he might make that choice. Robert had a brain tumor that could not be surgically removed. Though not fatal, the tumor disrupted his sleep/wake cycle and had other negative physical consequences, including severe headaches, for his daily existence. He also had chronic post-traumatic stress disorder ("PTSD"), resulting from a profound history of childhood physical, emotional and sexual abuse. Robert suffered from daily recurrent flashbacks of the abuse. He had been on death row for almost a decade, and …

Prescription For Death?: Psychotic Capital Defendants And The Need For Medication, Joseph R. Dunn

Capital Defense Journal

No abstract provided.

Johnson V. Reid No. 04a-87, 2004 Wl 1784349, At *1 (U.S. Aug. 11, 2004)

Capital Defense Journal

No abstract provided.

Nelson V. Campbell 124 S. Ct. 2117 (2004)

Capital Defense Journal

No abstract provided.

Va. Code Ann. S 19.2-163.7*

Capital Defense Journal

No abstract provided.

The Botched Hanging Of William Williams: How Too Much Rope And Minnesota’S Newspapers Brought An End To The Death Penalty In Minnesota, John Bessler

All Faculty Scholarship

This article describes Minnesota's last state-sanctioned execution: that of William Williams, who was hanged in 1906 in the basement of the Ramsey County Jail. Convicted of killing a teenage boy, Williams was tried on murder charges in 1905 and was put to death in February of the following year. Because the county sheriff miscalculated the length of the rope, the hanging was botched, with Williams hitting the floor when the trap door was opened. Three deputies, standing on the scaffold, thereafter seized the rope and forcibly pulled it up until Williams - fourteen and half minutes later - died by …

Standby Me: Self-Representation And Standby Counsel In A Capital Case, Meghan H. Morgan

Capital Defense Journal

No abstract provided.

Men Of A Thousand Days: Death-Sentenced Inmates At Utah State Prison, Sandra Mcgunigall-Smith

Sandy McGunigall-Smith

Studies of the pains of confinement and coping techniques have ignored the experiences of death-sentenced inmates, particularly those in the USA housed under the punitive regimes of supermax facilities. This research is a qualitative, mini-longitudinal study carried out between 1997 and 2001 which examines the particular pains of confinement for inmates in the supermax facility of Utah State Prison and how they coped with life under the sentence of death. The findings suggest that these inmates experienced different pains and utilized different coping techniques than those described in prison literature.

Injustice Casts Shadow On History Of State Executions, John Bessler

All Faculty Scholarship

This article, published in the StarTribune of Minneapolis, discusses the history of lynchings and executions in the State of Minnesota. It specifically discusses miscarriages of justice that have taken place in Minnesota, along with highlighting other problems associated with capital punishment.

Review Of The Hanging Of Ephraim Wheeler : A Story Of Rape, Incest, And Justice In Early America, Michael F. Russo

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Va. Code Ann. S 19.2-327.01

Capital Defense Journal

No abstract provided.

Defense-Based Victim Outreach: Restorative Justice In Capital Cases, Kristen F. Grunewald, Priya Nath

Capital Defense Journal

No abstract provided.

Va. Code Ann. § 9.1-101

Capital Defense Journal

No abstract provided.

United States V. Quinones 313 F.3d 49 (2d Cir. 2002) United States V. Quinones 317 F.3d 86 (2d Cir. 2002)

Capital Defense Journal

No abstract provided.