Law Commons^™

Nine Ways Of Looking At Oklahoma City: An Essay On Sam Anderson’S Boom Town, Rodger D. Citron

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Death By Stereotype: Race, Ethnicity, And California’S Failure To Implement Furman’S Narrowing Requirement, Catherine M. Grosso, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Michael Laurence, David C. Baldus, George W. Woodworth, Richard Newell

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the possible racial and ethnic implications of California’s expansive death penalty statute in light of the Eighth Amendment’s requirement that each state statute narrow the subclass of offenders on whom a death sentence may be imposed. The narrowing requirement derives from the holding in Furman v. Georgia over forty-five years ago, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that existing death penalty statutes violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments. Citing statistics demonstrating arbitrary and capricious application of capital punishment, a majority of the Justices concluded that a death sentencing scheme is unconstitutional if it …

Equal Protection Under The Carceral State, Aya Gruber

Publications

McCleskey v. Kemp, the case that upheld the death penalty despite undeniable evidence of its racially disparate impact, is indelibly marked by Justice William Brennan’s phrase, “a fear of too much justice.” The popular interpretation of this phrase is that the Supreme Court harbored what I call a “disparity-claim fear,” dreading a future docket of racial discrimination claims and erecting an impossibly high bar for proving an equal protection violation. A related interpretation is that the majority had a “color-consciousness fear” of remedying discrimination through race-remedial policies. In contrast to these conventional views, I argue that the primary anxiety …

Brief Of The National Association Of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Et Al As Amici Curiae Supporting Petitioner, Mcwilliams V. Dunn (U.S. March 6, 2017) (No. 16-5294)., Janet Moore

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

We submit this brief to make three important points. First, Ake itself clearly and unambiguously held as a matter of due process that indigent capital defendants must be provided with independent expert assistance upon a reasonable showing of need. The Court was unanimous on this point and swept aside aging precedent that had held provision of neutral assistance was adequate.

Second, Ake was hardly a revolutionary decision. As the Court noted, many states already provided expert assistance. In the first six years after Ake, numerous states explicitly held independent expert assistance must be provided upon an adequate showing of need. …

Brief Of The National Association For Public Defense, Et Al As Amici Curiae Supporting Petitioner, Christeson V. Roper (U.S. January 30, 2017) (No. 16-7730)., Janet Moore

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This case involves federal courts doubling down on the effective denial of counsel to a severely mentally impaired capital habeas petitioner on the eve of his execution, thereby preventing the full and fair litigation of an issue that demands this Court’s attention: the role played by a petitioner’s mental impairment in determining whether equitable tolling applies to the statute of limitations for filing a habeas petition. This Court should grant the petition to address whether the denial of adequate funding in this case constituted a constructive denial of the right to counsel required by the capital representation statute, 18 U.S.C. …

Justice Scalia’S Originalism And Formalism: The Rule Of Criminal Law As A Law Of Rules, Stephanos Bibas

All Faculty Scholarship

Far too many reporters and pundits collapse law into politics, assuming that the left–right divide between Democratic and Republican appointees neatly explains politically liberal versus politically conservative outcomes at the Supreme Court. The late Justice Antonin Scalia defied such caricatures. His consistent judicial philosophy made him the leading exponent of originalism, textualism, and formalism in American law, and over the course of his three decades on the Court, he changed the terms of judicial debate. Now, as a result, supporters and critics alike start with the plain meaning of the statutory or constitutional text rather than loose appeals to legislative …

Newsroom: Nason '05 Cited By U.S. Supreme Court, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

The True Legacy Of Atkins And Roper: The Unreliability Principle, Mentally Ill Defendants, And The Death Penalty's Unraveling, Scott E. Sundby

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Loss Of Constitutional Faith: Mccleskey V. Kemp And The Dark Side Of Procedure, Scott E. Sundby

Articles

No abstract provided.

David Baldus And The Legacy Of Mccleskey V. Kemp, Samuel R. Gross

Articles

The first major empirical challenge to racial discrimination in the use of the death penalty in the United States was presented in federal court in the case of William L. Maxwell, who was sentenced to death in Arkansas in 1962 for the crime of rape.1 It was based on a landmark study by Marvin Wolfgang, a distinguished criminologist who had collected data on some 3000 rape convictions from 1945 through 1965 in selected counties across eleven southern states.2 He found that black men who were convicted of rape were seven times more likely to be sentenced to death than white …

Minority Practice, Majority's Burden: The Death Penalty Today, James S. Liebman, Peter Clarke

Faculty Scholarship

Although supported in principle by two-thirds of the public and even more of the States, capital punishment in the United States is a minority practice when the actual death-sentencing practices of the nation's 3000-plus counties and their populations are considered This feature of American capital punishment has been present for decades, has become more pronounced recently, and is especially clear when death sentences, which are merely infrequent, are distinguished from executions, which are exceedingly rare.

The first question this Article asks is what forces account for the death-proneness of a minority of American communities? The answer to that question – …

Supreme Court Report 2007-2008, Julie M. Cheslik, Aimee L. Morrison, Tyler J. Scott

Faculty Works

This article reviews the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court for the 2007-2008 Term that are of particular relevance to state and local governments including those involving voting and elections, speech, class-of-one equal protection claims, immunity, taxation, preemption, and the Fourth and Sixth Amendments.

Against the backdrop of the 2008 presidential election between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain, and an economy plagued by recession and federal bailouts of the finance and mortgage industries, the Court continued in a largely conservative vein, reflecting the policies and predilections of the majority of justices. The Court reasserted its distaste for unfettered …

Slow Dancing With Death: The Supreme Court And Capital Punishment, 1963-2006, James S. Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

This Article addresses four questions:

Why hasn't the Court left capital punishment unregulated, as it has other areas of substantive criminal law? The Court is compelled to decide the death penalty's constitutionality by the peculiar responsibility it bears for this form of state violence.

Why didn't the Court abolish the death penalty in Furman v. Georgia after finding every capital statute and verdict unconstitutional? The Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause was too opaque to reveal whether the death penalty was unlawful for some or all crimes and, if not, whether there were law-bound ways to administer it. So the Court …

The Supreme Court Report 2005-06, Julie M. Cheslik, Jamie Landes, Leah Pollema, Michael Shelton

Faculty Works

This article reviews the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court for the 2005-2006 term focusing on decisions of particular relevance to state and local government. The Court's 2005-06 Term began with much speculation as one, then a second new Justice joined the Court. After the close of the 2004-05 Term, the Court suffered the loss of Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who succumbed to the thyroid cancer that had plagued him during that Term. President Bush ultimately replaced him with Judge John G. Roberts, who began the new Term and authored his fi rst opinion, the traditional 9-0 opinion of a …

Souter Passant, Scalia Rampant: Combat In The Marsh, Samuel R. Gross

Articles

Kansas law provides that unless a capital sentencing jury concludes that the mitigating factors that apply to the defendant’s crime outweigh the aggravating factors, it must sentence the defendant to death. The Kansas Supreme Court held that this law violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments because it “impermissibly mandates the death penalty when the jury finds that the mitigating and aggravating circumstances are in equipoise.” On June 26, in Kansas v. Marsh, the Supreme Court reversed in a 5 to 4 opinion by Justice Thomas.

Less Is Better: Justice Stevens And The Narrowed Death Penalty, James S. Liebman, Lawrence C. Marshall

Faculty Scholarship

In a recent speech to the American Bar Association, Justice John Paul Stevens "issued an unusually stinging criticism of capital punishment." Although he "stopped short of calling for an end to the death penalty," Justice Stevens catalogued a number of its "'serious flaws,'" including several procedures that the full Court has reviewed and upheld over his dissent – selecting capital jurors in a manner that excludes those with qualms about the death penalty, permitting elected state judges to second-guess jurors when they decline to impose the death penalty, permitting states to premise death verdicts on "victim impact statements," tolerating sub-par …

Race, Peremptories, And Capital Jury Deliberations, Samuel R. Gross

Articles

In Lonnie Weeks's capital murder trial in Virginia in 1993, the jury was instructed: If you find from the evidence that the Commonwealth has proved beyond a reasonable doubt, either of the two alternative aggravating factors], and as to that alternative you are unanimous, then you may fix the punishment of the defendant at death or if you believe from all the evidence that the death penalty is not justified, then you shall fix the punishment of the defendant at life imprisonment ... This instruction is plainly ambiguous, at least to a lay audience. Does it mean that if the …

Still Unfair, Still Arbitrary - But Do We Care?, Samuel R. Gross

Other Publications

Welcome. It is a pleasure to see everybody at this bright and cheery hour of the morning. My assignment is to try to give an overview of the status of the death penalty in America at the beginning of the twenty-first century. I will try to put that in the context of how the death penalty was viewed thirty years ago, or more, and maybe that will tell us something about how the death penalty will be viewed thirty or forty years from now.

To Tell What We Know Or Wait For Godot?, Phoebe C. Ellsworth

Articles

Professor Elliott raises two questions about the American Psychological Association's practice of submitting amicus briefs to the courts. First, are our data sufficiently valid, consistent, and generalizable to be applicable to the real world issues? Second, are amicus briefs adequate to communicate scientific findings? The first of these is not a general question, but must be addressed anew each time the Association considers a new issue. An evaluation of the quality and sufficiency of scientific knowledge about racial discrimination, for example, tells us nothing at all about the quality and sufficiency of scientific knowledge about sexual abuse. "Are the data …

Unpleasant Facts: The Supreme Court's Response To Empirical Research On Capital Punishment, Phoebe C. Ellsworth

Book Chapters

Slowly at first, and then with accelerating frequency, the courts have begun to examine, consider, and sometimes even require empirical data. From 1960 to 1981, for example, use of the terms "statistics" and "statistical" in Federal District and Circuit Court opinions increased by almost 15 times.1 Of course, citation rates indicate only that a topic is considered worthy of mention, not that it is taken seriously, or even understood. Nonetheless, in a number of areas, such as jury composition and employment discrimination, the courts have come to rely on empirical data as a matter of course.

In the last 25 …

Zant V. Stephens, Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Supreme Court Case Files

No abstract provided.

Barefoot V. Estelle, Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Supreme Court Case Files

No abstract provided.

Guiding Capital Sentencing Discretion Beyond The "Boiler Plate": Mental Disorder As A Mitigating Factor, James S. Liebman, Michael J. Shepard

Faculty Scholarship

In five decisions handed down on July 2, 1976, the United States Supreme Court held that the death penalty may be imposed for the crime of murder, so long as there are clear standards to guide the sentencing authority and the sanction is not imposed mandatorily. The authors examine the eighth amendment doctrinal framework used by the Court in the July 2 Cases, with particular reference to the requirement that individualized mitigating information be considered in the sentencing decision. Illustrating that requirement, they contend that mental disorder should be considered as a possibly mitigating factor and then suggest a standard …

Florida's Legislative Response To Furman: An Exercise In Futility?, Charles W. Ehrhardt, Harold Levinson

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Capital Punishment In Florida: Analysis And Recommendations, Charles W. Ehrhardt, Phillip A. Hubbart, Harold Levinson, William Mckinley Smiley, Thomas A. Wills

Scholarly Publications

The Supreme Court's decision abolishing the death penalty, at least as it existed in most jurisdictions, hardly represents the final resolution of the controversy over capital punishment. Given substantial public sentiment which apparently favors capital punishment in some form-voiced, for example, in the results of the recent referendum in California-various legislative bodies will face the question of whether capital punishment can and should be legislatively reinstated. In December 1972 the State of Florida became the first jurisdiction to pass judgment on this question. The legislature enacted a bill allowing imposition of the death penalty in certain circumstances. The two articles …

The Reincarnation Of The Death Penalty: Is It Possible?, Yale Kamisar

Articles

Fifty years ago Clarence Darrow, probably the greatest criminal defense lawyer in American history and a leading opponent of capital punishment, observed: The question of capital punishment has been the subject of endless discussion and will probably never be settled so long as men believe in punishment. Some states have abolished and then reinstated it; some have enjoyed capital punishment for long periods of time and finally prohibited the use of it. The reasons why it cannot be settled are plain. There is first of all no agreement as to the objects of punishment. Next there is no way to …