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Articles 1 - 27 of 27
Full-Text Articles in Law
More Than Just A Factfinder: The Right To Unanimous Jury Sentencing In Capital Cases, Richa Bijlani
More Than Just A Factfinder: The Right To Unanimous Jury Sentencing In Capital Cases, Richa Bijlani
Michigan Law Review
For some defendants, sentencing may be even more harrowing than a determination of guilt or innocence. Those facing capital punishment have the most to lose at the sentencing phase. The Supreme Court is not ignorant to this reality, finding in Ring v. Arizona that “the Sixth Amendment would be senselessly diminished” if it had no application to death penalty proceedings. Yet under its permissive jurisprudence, the Court has suggested that the Sixth Amendment is satisfied in the death penalty context even if its protections vanish postconviction. This Note argues instead that the Sixth Amendment—specifically the jury right—should protect defendants more …
All Bathwater, No Baby: Expressive Theories Of Punishment And The Death Penalty, Susan A. Bandes
All Bathwater, No Baby: Expressive Theories Of Punishment And The Death Penalty, Susan A. Bandes
Michigan Law Review
A review of Carol S. Steiker and Jordan M. Steiker, Courting Death: The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment.
Rethinking The Timing Of Capital Clemency , Adam M. Gershowitz
Rethinking The Timing Of Capital Clemency , Adam M. Gershowitz
Michigan Law Review
This Article reviews every capital clemency over the last four decades. It demonstrates that in the majority of cases, the reason for commutation was known at the conclusion of direct appeals—years or even decades before the habeas process ended. Yet when governors or pardon boards actually commuted the death sentences, they typically waited until the eve of execution, with only days or hours to spare. Leaving clemency until the last minute sometimes leads to many years of unnecessary state and federal habeas corpus litigation, and this Article documents nearly 300 years of wasted habeas corpus review. Additionally, last-minute commutations harm …
The Banality Of Wrongful Executions, Brandon L. Garrett
The Banality Of Wrongful Executions, Brandon L. Garrett
Michigan Law Review
What is so haunting about the known wrongful convictions is that those cases are the tip of the iceberg. Untold numbers of unnoticed errors may send the innocent to prison — and to the death chamber. That is why I recommend to readers a trilogy of fascinating new books that peer deeper into this larger but murkier problem. Outside the rarified group of highly publicized exonerations, which have themselves done much to attract attention to the causes of wrongful convictions, errors may be so mundane that no one notices them unless an outsider plucks a case from darkness and holds …
Missing Mcveigh, Michael E. Tigar
Missing Mcveigh, Michael E. Tigar
Michigan Law Review
The bombing that killed at least 169 people became an event by which time was thereafter measured — at least in Oklahoma. Ninety minutes after the bombing, a state trooper arrested Timothy McVeigh on a traffic charge; within hours, he was linked to the bombing, and the legal process began. Terry Nichols, who had met McVeigh when they were in the army together, was arrested in Herington, Kansas, where he lived with his wife and daughter. The Tenth Circuit chief judge designated Richard Matsch, chief judge for the District of Colorado, to preside over the case. Judge Matsch came to …
Capital Defense Lawyers: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, Sean D. O'Brien
Capital Defense Lawyers: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, Sean D. O'Brien
Michigan Law Review
Professor Welsh S. White's book Litigating in the Shadow of Death: Defense Attorneys in Capital Cases collects the compelling stories of "a new band of dedicated lawyers" that has "vigorously represented capital defendants, seeking to prevent their executions" (p.3). Sadly, Professor White passed away on New Year's Eve, 2005, days before the release of his final work. To the well-deserved accolades of Professor White that were recently published in the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, I can only add a poignant comment in a student blog that captures his excellence as a scholar and educator: "I wanted to …
Deterrence Versus Brutalization: Capital Punishment's Differing Impacts Among States, Joanna M. Shepherd
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 …
Killing The Willing: "Volunteers," Suicide And Competency, John H. Blume
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 …
The Limits Of Legal Language: Decisionmaking In Capital Cases, Jordan M. Steiker
The Limits Of Legal Language: Decisionmaking In Capital Cases, Jordan M. Steiker
Michigan Law Review
To make the case for the proposed changes, I will first describe briefly in Parts I and II the structure of pre- and post-Furman capital decisiorurtaking and the weaknesses of those approaches. I then will set forth in Part III the specific rationales for each proposed reform.
The scheme I propose raises a significant constitutional question. Can the death penalty be retained as a punishment if we abandon the pretense of providing meaningful guidance through detailed sentencing instructions? Would the reestablishment of relatively unstructured penalty phase deliberations similar to, but also importantly different from, those characteristic of pre-Furman …
Revenge For The Condemned, Sara Sun Beale, Paul H. Haagen
Revenge For The Condemned, Sara Sun Beale, Paul H. Haagen
Michigan Law Review
A Review of V.A.C. Gatrell, The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People 1770-1868
Legitimating Death, Louis D. Bilionis
Legitimating Death, Louis D. Bilionis
Michigan Law Review
This article arrives at the surprising conclusion that a meaningful Eighth Amendment death penalty jurisprudence lives on, that it is a quite intelligible jurisprudence, and that it is driven by a coherent methodology with firm roots in the traditions of constitutional adjudication.
To reach that conclusion, it is helpful first to have some sense of what the Supreme Court has been doing in the death penalty area lately. Part I thus presents a topical review of the Court's recent work, identifying the themes that now dominate, pointing out the concerns those themes raise, and asking whether any sense can be …
Capital Punishment's Future, Welsh S. White
Capital Punishment's Future, Welsh S. White
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Capital Punishment in America by Raymond Paternoster
The Death Penalty In The Nineties: An Examination Of The Modern System Of Capital Punishment, Thomas L. Shaevsky
The Death Penalty In The Nineties: An Examination Of The Modern System Of Capital Punishment, Thomas L. Shaevsky
Michigan Law Review
A Review of The Death Penalty in the Nineties: An Examination of the Modern System of Capital Punishment by Welsh S. White
The Breath Of The Unfee'd Lawyer: Statutory Fee Limitations And Ineffective Assistance Of Counsel In Capital Litigation, Albert L. Vreeland Ii
The Breath Of The Unfee'd Lawyer: Statutory Fee Limitations And Ineffective Assistance Of Counsel In Capital Litigation, Albert L. Vreeland Ii
Michigan Law Review
This Note argues that fee limitations deprive indigent defendants of their right to effective assistance of counsel. Part I of this Note reviews state court decisions that address Sixth Amendment challenges to fee limitations, yet fail to address the broader concerns about the appointed counsel system. Part II considers the inherent disincentives and burdens fee limitations impose on attorneys and suggests that the limits threaten the indigent accused's right to effective assistance of counsel. A comparison of the fee limitations and the time required to prepare and try a capital case reveals the gross inadequacy of statutory fee provisions. In …
Capital Punishment And The American Agenda, John Pierce Stimson
Capital Punishment And The American Agenda, John Pierce Stimson
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Capital Punishment and the American Agenda by Franklin E. Zimring and Gordon Hawkins
Disorder In The Court: The Death Penalty And The Constitution, Robert A. Burt
Disorder In The Court: The Death Penalty And The Constitution, Robert A. Burt
Michigan Law Review
This article has two purposes. Its first aim is to trace the significance of these shifting characterizations of American society in the Justices' successive approaches to the death penalty by retelling the story of the Court's capital punishment jurisprudence. Its second purpose is to suggest that belief in implacable social hostility destroys the coherence of the judicial role in constitutional adjudication. America may indeed be an irreconcilably polarized society; I cannot dispositively prove or disprove the proposition. I mean only to claim that in constitutional adjudication a judge is obliged to act as if this proposition were false; and, moreover, …
The Capital Punishment Conundrum, Eric Schnapper
The Capital Punishment Conundrum, Eric Schnapper
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Life in the Balance: Procedural Safeguards in Capital Cases by Welsh S. White
Capital Punishment: For Or Against, Jan Gorecki
Capital Punishment: For Or Against, Jan Gorecki
Michigan Law Review
A Review of The Death Penalty -- A Debate by Ernest van den Haag and John Conrad
Capital Punishment: Criminal Law And Social Evolution, Michigan Law Review
Capital Punishment: Criminal Law And Social Evolution, Michigan Law Review
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Capital Punishment: Criminal Law and Social Evolution by Jan Gorecki
The Death Penalty In America, Michigan Law Review
The Death Penalty In America, Michigan Law Review
Michigan Law Review
A Review of The Death Penalty in America (Third Edition) by Hugo Adam Bedau
Berger's Defense Of The Death Penalty: How Not To Read The Constitution, Hugo Adam Bedau
Berger's Defense Of The Death Penalty: How Not To Read The Constitution, Hugo Adam Bedau
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Death Penalties: The Supreme Court's Obstacle Course by Raoul Berger
Prosecutorial Peremptory Challenge Practices In Capital Cases: An Empirical Study And A Constitutional Analysis, Bruce J. Winick
Prosecutorial Peremptory Challenge Practices In Capital Cases: An Empirical Study And A Constitutional Analysis, Bruce J. Winick
Michigan Law Review
As presently construed, the Constitution does not prohibit the death penalty. The states and the federal government may punish the commission of certain crimes with death, so long as the extreme penalty is not imposed on a mandatory basis and so long as the procedures used in imposing a death sentence meet constitutional scrutiny.
A demonstration that the prosecutor used the peremptory challenge in the manner described in a single case probably would be insufficient to support a constitutional challenge in the federal courts and in the vast majority of state courts. In these courts a prosecutor's use of the …
Desert And Deterrence: An Assessment Of The Moral Bases Of The Case For Capital Punishment, Richard O. Lempert
Desert And Deterrence: An Assessment Of The Moral Bases Of The Case For Capital Punishment, Richard O. Lempert
Michigan Law Review
The controversy over the death penalty has generated arguments of two types. The first argument appeals to moral intuitions; the second concerns deterrence. Although both types of argument speak to the morality of systems of capital punishment, the first debate has been dominated by moral philosophers and the second by empirical social scientists. For convenience I shall at times refer to the approach of the moral philosophers as the moral case for (or against) capital punishment or as the argument from morality.
For Capital Punishment, Michigan Law Review
For Capital Punishment, Michigan Law Review
Michigan Law Review
A Book Notice about For Capital Punishment by Walter Berns
Criminal Law-Proof Of The Corpus Delicti By The Use Of Extra-Judicial Confessions, Theodore Sachs
Criminal Law-Proof Of The Corpus Delicti By The Use Of Extra-Judicial Confessions, Theodore Sachs
Michigan Law Review
Defendant, a physician, was accused of the murder of his cancer-ridden patient by the injection of 40 c.c. of air into a vein of the patient's arm shortly before her death. The defendant had noted on the patient's medical chart the fact of the injection and that of her death, apparently a few minutes later. He subsequently dictated the same facts to his nurse, and later made similar admissions to local enforcement authorities and others making such statements on the day of his arrest and immediately thereafter. At the trial, a pathologist, called as an expert witness on behalf of …
Crimes-Right Of Jury To Recommend Mercy
Crimes-Right Of Jury To Recommend Mercy
Michigan Law Review
In a trial for murder, under a statute which provided that if the jury found the accused guilty of murder they might recommend him or her to the mercy of the court, thus reducing the punishment from death to life imprisonment, the court instructed the jury, ''You cannot of your own free will recommend or not recommend [mercy] because you are opposed to capital punishment." Exception was taken on the grounds that this circumscribed the statutory privilege of the jury to recommend mercy. Held, the instruction was erroneous and constituted grounds for new trial. State v. Blakely (S. C. …
Mild Punishments, Robert Mcmurdy
Mild Punishments, Robert Mcmurdy
Michigan Law Review
If life, freedom, or hope be taken from man, he is ashes. Therefore we ought not to take away any of them lightly. But some, restraint or punishment is necessary. We often miss our aim, however,'by prescribing punishments that are too severe, whereupon human nature revolts, so that it is "impossible to combine certainty with severity," a lesson we have long since learned from the experience of England.