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Full-Text Articles in Law
Severe Mental Illness And The Death Penalty: A Menu Of Legislative Options, Richard J. Bonnie
Severe Mental Illness And The Death Penalty: A Menu Of Legislative Options, Richard J. Bonnie
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
In 2003, the American Bar Association established a Task Force on Mental Disability and the Death Penalty to further specify and implement the Supreme Court’s ruling banning execution of persons with intellectual disability and to consider an analogous ban against imposing the death penalty on defendants with severe mental disorders. The Task Force established formal links with the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the National Alliance on Mental Illness and the final report was approved by the ABA and the participating organizations in 2005 and 2006. This brief article focuses primarily on diminished responsibility at the time …
Does The Death Penalty Still Matter: Reflections Of A Death Row Lawyer, David I. Bruck
Does The Death Penalty Still Matter: Reflections Of A Death Row Lawyer, David I. Bruck
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
This talk was given by Professor David Bruck for the Frances Lewis Law Center at Washington and Lee University School of Law, April, 2002. It is a follow-up to “Does the Death Penalty Matter?,” given by Professor Bruck as the 1990 Ralph E. Shikes Lecture at Harvard Law School.
Certain Prosecutors: Geographical Arbitrariness, Unusualness, & The Abolition Of Virginia’S Death Penalty, Bernadette M. Donovan
Certain Prosecutors: Geographical Arbitrariness, Unusualness, & The Abolition Of Virginia’S Death Penalty, Bernadette M. Donovan
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
Virginia’s abolition of the death penalty in 2021 was a historic development. As both a southern state and one of the country’s most active death penalty jurisdictions, Virginia’s transition away from capital punishment represented an important shift in the national landscape. This article considers whether that shift has any constitutional significance, focusing on the effect of Virginia’s abolition on the geographical arbitrariness of the country’s death penalty.
As a starting point, the death penalty in America is primarily regulated by the Eighth Amendment, which bars “cruel and unusual punishments.” The United States Supreme Court has held that the death penalty …
Discretionary Life Sentences For Juveniles: Resolving The Split Between The Virginia Supreme Court And The Fourth Circuit, Daniel M. Coble
Discretionary Life Sentences For Juveniles: Resolving The Split Between The Virginia Supreme Court And The Fourth Circuit, Daniel M. Coble
Washington and Lee Law Review Online
At the age of 17, Donte Lamar Jones shot and killed a store clerk as she laid down on the floor during a robbery. He was spared the death penalty by agreeing instead to die in prison at the end of his life. Two years later in Virginia, 12 individuals were murdered for doing nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Those individuals were killed by Lee Malvo and John Muhammad, better known as the “D.C. Snipers.” While John Muhammad was given the death penalty for his heinous crimes, Lee Malvo, who was 17 during …
Sentence For The Damned: Using Atkins To Understand The “Irreparable Corruption” Standard For Juvenile Life Without Parole, Zachary Crawford-Pechukas
Sentence For The Damned: Using Atkins To Understand The “Irreparable Corruption” Standard For Juvenile Life Without Parole, Zachary Crawford-Pechukas
Washington and Lee Law Review
This Note suggests that guidance should be drawn from the Supreme Court’s death penalty jurisprudence regarding the execution of intellectually disabled offenders. Atkins v. Virginia paved the way for the juvenile sentencing cases as the Supreme Court for the first time found that, under the Eighth Amendment, a selected class of offenders—the intellectually disabled — were not eligible for the state’s harshest penalty—the death penalty— because of their diminished culpability. Atkins similarly left the state courts to figure out how to decide whether an individual offender met this amorphous standard, “intellectually disabled.” As state courts grappled with this standard and …
What Is Life? Geriatric Release And The Conflicting Definitions Of “Meaningful Opportunity For Release”, Anthony Gunst
What Is Life? Geriatric Release And The Conflicting Definitions Of “Meaningful Opportunity For Release”, Anthony Gunst
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
No abstract provided.
The Death Penalty's Darkside: A Response To Phyllis Goldfarb's Matters Of Strata: Race, Gender, And Class Structures In Capital Cases, Kevin Barry, Bharat Malkani
The Death Penalty's Darkside: A Response To Phyllis Goldfarb's Matters Of Strata: Race, Gender, And Class Structures In Capital Cases, Kevin Barry, Bharat Malkani
Washington and Lee Law Review Online
In Matters of Strata: Race, Gender, and Class Structures in Capital Cases, Professor Phyllis Goldfarb examines the ways in which race, class, and gender affect the American criminal justice system generally, and its death penalty system in particular. This Response focuses on one of Goldfarb’s observations: The relationship between slavery and the death penalty. This relationship helps to explain why, over the past four decades, the thirteen states that comprised the former Confederacy have been responsible for nearly all of this nation’s executions. Although the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly failed to address the death penalty’s roots in slavery, …
Post-Trial Plea Bargaining And Predictive Analytics In Public Law, Harold J. Krent
Post-Trial Plea Bargaining And Predictive Analytics In Public Law, Harold J. Krent
Washington and Lee Law Review Online
Adam Gershowitz’s article calling for post-trial plea bargaining in capital cases reasons that governors should commute sentences to life in prison, in exceptional cases, to limit the costs of protracted post-trial litigation over imposition of the death penalty. The commutation power, in his view, resembles pre-trial plea bargaining in that both the state and the criminal defendant can benefit—the state saves resources while the defendant gets off death row.
Gershowitz’s article, therefore, affords a window into the increasing use of predictive analytics in deciding whether to bring or resolve litigation. Sifting through data on all prior capital cases can yield …
Comment On The Prior Convictions Exception: Examining The Continuing Viability Of Almendarez-Torres Under Alleyne, Kevin Flynn
Comment On The Prior Convictions Exception: Examining The Continuing Viability Of Almendarez-Torres Under Alleyne, Kevin Flynn
Washington and Lee Law Review
No abstract provided.
The Prior Convictions Exception: Examining The Continuing Viability Of Almendarez-Torres Under Alleyne, Meg E. Sawyer
The Prior Convictions Exception: Examining The Continuing Viability Of Almendarez-Torres Under Alleyne, Meg E. Sawyer
Washington and Lee Law Review
No abstract provided.
The Prior Convictions Exception—A Comment, Matthew Engle
The Prior Convictions Exception—A Comment, Matthew Engle
Washington and Lee Law Review
No abstract provided.
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 …
Civil Justice Reform In The Fourth Circuit, Carl Tobias
Civil Justice Reform In The Fourth Circuit, Carl Tobias
Washington and Lee Law Review
No abstract provided.
Unconstitutional Judicial Sentences
Unconstitutional Judicial Sentences
Washington and Lee Law Review
No abstract provided.