Law Commons^™

Will The Punishment Fit The Victims? The Case For Pre-Trial Disclosure, And The Uncharted Future Of Victim Impact Information In Capital Jury Sentencing, José F. Anderson

All Faculty Scholarship

The United States Supreme Court decision in Payne v. Tennessee, upholding the use of victim impact statements in capital jury sentencing proceedings, marked one of the most dramatic reversals of a precedent in the history of United States constitutional jurisprudence. The decision in Payne expressly overruled Booth v. Maryland decided only four years earlier. The Booth case rejected the use of victim impact statements in capital sentencing cases that involved juries. In Payne, the Supreme Court made it clear that victims were entitled to offer, and juries were permitted to consider, the effect that a "death eligible" homicide had on …

Representing Black Male Innocence, Joan W. Howarth

Scholarly Works

This Article is a case study of a California capital case. Drawing on cultural studies, the first part develops the social construction of Black male gang member, especially as that identity is understood within white imaginations. The powerful and frightening idea of a Black man who is a gang member, even gang leader, captured the imagination and moral passion of the decisionmakers in this case, recasting and reframing the evidence in furtherance of this idea. In fundamental ways, this idea or imposed identity is fundamentally inconsistent with any American concept of innocence.

The second part uses the case to investigate …

The Jury As Critic: An Empirical Look At How Capital Juries Perceive Expert And Lay Testimony, Scott E. Sundby

Articles

No abstract provided.

Getting To Death: Are Executions Constitutional?, Deborah W. Denno

Faculty Scholarship

This Article addresses the question of when a method of executing a capital defendant amounts to cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. This Article contends that execution methods cases, while reaching the right result, fail to provide a sufficiently comprehensive Eighth Amendment standard for determining the constitutionality of any execution method. The Article proposes a test that better comports with the Court's Eighth Amendment case law and more appropriately considers scientific determinations of excessive pain. To apply this test, the Article studies each state's legislative changes in execution methods during the Twentieth Century as well as accounts of …

Concepts Of Culpability And Deathworthiness: Differentiating Between Guilt And Punishment In Death Penalty Cases, Phyllis L. Crocker

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

The punishment of death is supposed to be reserved for those defendants who commit the most grievous murders and deserve the most extreme punishment. It is constitutionally insufficient to conclude that because a defendant is guilty of committing murder, death is the only deserved punishment. The judgment that a defendant is one of the few who will be sentenced to death requires an inquiry that looks beyond the defendant's guilt to consider whether the defendant is worthy of a death sentence. This article argues that the distinction between a defendant's guilt and deathworthiness is so often obscured that defendants who …