Law Commons^™

The Meaning Of "Meaningful Appellate Review" In Capital Cases: Lessons From California, Steven Shatz

Steven F. Shatz

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 …

The Implications Of Incorporating The Eighth Amendment Prohibition On Excessive Bail, Scott Howe

Scott W. Howe

In its opinion in McDonald v. City of Chicago, 130 S.Ct. 3020 (2010), concerning the incorporation of the Second Amendment, the Supreme Court included a footnote that listed the Eighth Amendment prohibition on excessive bail as one of the incorporated Bill of Rights protections. Oddly, the Court had never incorporated the bail clause or even explained what protections it conferred. While strange, these circumstances provide a rare opportunity to reason backward from incorporation to the meaning of the incorporated provision. And by pursuing those backward implications, the paper offers novel arguments about the proper understanding of the bail clause.

I …

Killing The Non-Willing: Atkins, The Volitionally Incapacitated, And The Death Penalty, John H. Blume, Sheri Lynn Johnson

Sheri Lynn Johnson

Jamie Wilson, nineteen years old and severely mentally ill, walked into a school cafeteria and started shooting. Two children died, and Jamie was charged with two counts of capital murder. Because he admitted his guilt, the only issue at his trial was the appropriate punishment. The trial judge assigned to his case, after hearing expert testimony on his mental state, found that mental illness rendered Jamie unable to conform his conduct to the requirements of law at the time of the crime—not impaired by his mental illness in his ability to control his behavior, but unable to control his behavior. …

Unconscious Racism And The Criminal Law, Sheri Johnson

Sheri Lynn Johnson

No abstract provided.

Sentencing The Mentally Retarded To Death: An Eighth Amendment Analysis, John H. Blume, David Bruck

John H. Blume

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 …

Killing The Non-Willing: Atkins, The Volitionally Incapacitated, And The Death Penalty, John Blume, Sheri Lynn Johnson

John H. Blume

Jamie Wilson, nineteen years old and severely mentally ill, walked into a school cafeteria and started shooting. Two children died, and Jamie was charged with two counts of capital murder. Because he admitted his guilt, the only issue at his trial was the appropriate punishment. The trial judge assigned to his case, after hearing expert testimony on his mental state, found that mental illness rendered Jamie unable to conform his conduct to the requirements of law at the time of the crime—not impaired by his mental illness in his ability to control his behavior, but unable to control his behavior. …

The Illusory Eighth Amendment, John F. Stinneford

John F. Stinneford

Although there is no obvious doctrinal connection between the Supreme Court’s Miranda jurisprudence and its Eighth Amendment excessive punishments jurisprudence, the two are deeply connected at the level of methodology. In both areas, the Supreme Court has been criticized for creating “prophylactic” rules that invalidate government actions because they create a mere risk of constitutional violation. In reality, however, both sets of rules deny constitutional protection to a far greater number of individuals with plausible claims of unconstitutional treatment than they protect. This dysfunctional combination of over- and underprotection arises from the Supreme Court’s use of implementation rules as a …

The Federal Death Penalty And The Constitutionality Of Capital Punishment, Scott W. Howe

Scott W. Howe

The federal death penalty results in few executions but is central to the larger story of capital punishment in the United States. The explanation for its importance lies with its role in resolving the permissible uses of the death penalty under the Eighth Amendment. In the last decade, federal statutes governing the federal death penalty seem to have exerted outsize influence with the Court in its development of “proportionality” doctrine, the rules by which the Justices confine the use of capital punishment under the Constitution. In rejecting capital punishment for retarded offenders, juvenile offenders and child rapists, the Court in …

New Paths For The Court: Protections Afforded Juveniles Under Miranda; Effective Assistance Of Counsel; And Habeas Corpus Decisions Of The Supreme Court’S 2010/2011 Term, Richard Klein

Richard Daniel Klein

No abstract provided.

Challenging The Death Penalty With Statistics: Furman, Mccleskey And A Single County Case Study, Steven Shatz, Teresa Dalton

Steven F. Shatz

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 Eighth Amendment As A Warrant Against Undeserved Punishment, Scott Howe

Scott W. Howe

Should the Eighth Amendment prohibit all undeserved criminal convictions and punishments? There are grounds to argue that it must. Correlation between the level of deserts of the accused and the severity of the sanction represents the very idea of justice to most of us. We want to believe that those branded as criminals deserve blame for their conduct and that they deserve all of the punishments that they receive. The deserts limitation is also key to explaining the decisions in which the Supreme Court has rejected convictions or punishments as disproportional, including several major rulings in the new millennium. Yet, …

Forgetting Furman: Arbitrary Death Penalty Schemes Across The Nation, Sarah A. Mourer

Sarah Mourer

The legislature has forgotten the lessons taught by Furman v. Georgia and today, the “untrammeled discretion” once held by juries is now held by the judiciary. Many death penalty sentencing procedures are unconstitutional, in violation of both the Sixth and Eighth Amendments, because the judge alone is authorized to sentence the defendant to life or death despite being uninformed of the jury’s factual findings. Pursuant to the Sixth Amendment as articulated in Ring v. Arizona, the factual findings upon which a death sentence rests must be found by the jury, and only the jury. Nevertheless, many jurisdictions permit the judge …

Repudiating The Narrowing Rule In Capital Sentencing, Scott W. Howe

Scott W. Howe

This Article proposes a modest reform of Eighth Amendment law governing capital sentencing to spur major reform in the understanding of the function of the doctrine. The article urges that the Supreme Court should renounce a largely empty mandate known as the “narrowing” rule and the rhetoric of equality that has accompanied it. By doing so, the Court could speak more truthfully about the important but more limited function that its capital-sentencing doctrine actually pursues, which is to ensure that no person receives the death penalty who does not deserve it. The Court could also speak more candidly than it …

Promulgating Proportionality, William W. Berry Iii

William W Berry III

Two lines of cases have dominated the Supreme Court’s Eighth Amendment death penalty jurisprudence: the Furman-Gregg line of cases emphasizes the need to adopt rules to eliminate the arbitrariness inherent in unguided capital sentencing by juries, while the Woodson-Lockett line of cases emphasizes the opposite concern - the need for juries to make individualized sentencing determinations - highlighting the inadequacy of rules. At first glance, these competing aims create some internal tension, if not outright conflict. In his concurrence in Walton v. Arizona, Justice Scalia argued that this conflict was irreconcilable: “[t]he latter requirement [individualized factual determinations] quite obviously destroys …

Evolving Away From Evolving Standards Of Decency, John F. Stinneford

John F. Stinneford

No abstract provided.

The Eighth Amendment, The Death Penalty And Ordinary Robbery-Burglary Murderers: A California Case Study, Steven Shatz

Steven F. Shatz

Managed Health Care In Prisons As Cruel And Unusual Punishment, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins