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Full-Text Articles in Law
Mercy By The Numbers: An Empirical Analysis Of Clemency And Its Structure, Michael Heise
Mercy By The Numbers: An Empirical Analysis Of Clemency And Its Structure, Michael Heise
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Clemency is an extrajudicial measure intended both to enhance fairness in the administration of justice, and allow for the correction of mistakes. Perhaps nowhere are these goals more important than in the death penalty context. The recent increased use of the death penalty and concurrent decline in the number of defendants removed from death row through clemency call for a better and deeper understanding of clemency authority and its application. Questions about whether clemency decisions are consistently and fairly distributed are particularly apt. This study uses 27 years of death penalty and clemency data to explore the influence of defendant …
Speeding In Reverse: An Anecdotal View Of Why Victim Impact Testimony Should Not Be Driving Capital Prosecutions, Sheri Johnson
Speeding In Reverse: An Anecdotal View Of Why Victim Impact Testimony Should Not Be Driving Capital Prosecutions, Sheri Johnson
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Jury Sentencing As Democratic Practice, Jenia I. Turner
Jury Sentencing As Democratic Practice, Jenia I. Turner
Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
After a century of reform and experimentation, sentencing remains a highly contested area of the criminal justice system. Scholars as well as the public at large disagree about the proper purposes and functions of punishment, and dissatisfaction with the sentencing status quo is high. Most recent critiques of the sentencing process have focused on the amount of discretion tolerated by the system. This Article goes further in arguing that the source of sentencing discretion is also very important to the legitimacy and integrity of the sentencing process. In the absence of wide consensus on sentencing goals, it is best to …
Beyond The Bright Line: A Contemporary Right-To-Counsel Doctrine, Pamela R. Metzger
Beyond The Bright Line: A Contemporary Right-To-Counsel Doctrine, Pamela R. Metzger
Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
The current right-to-counsel doctrine was developed in the 1970's. It created a bright-line rule still in effect today. The right to counsel attaches only at "critical stages" of a criminal prosecution. Under this critical stage doctrine, the right to counsel only attaches after the initiation of formal adversary proceedings and only applies to confrontations between the accused and the prosecution or law enforcement. In the years following the Supreme Court's development of the critical stage doctrine, national trends of mandatory sentencing and sentencing guidelines revolutionized criminal procedure and dramatically altered the roles of the system's key players.
Now, defense counsel's …
Retribution: The Central Aim Of Punishment, Gerard V. Bradley
Retribution: The Central Aim Of Punishment, Gerard V. Bradley
Journal Articles
When I worked for the Manhattan District Attorney's Office in the early 1980s, criminal sentences were consistently and dramatically too lenient. Though those years marked the ebb tide for the rehabilitative ideal of punishment and indeterminate "zip-to-ten" sentences, only career felons and those convicted of the most serious crimes were candidates for the sentences they justly deserved. Hamstrung by apparently silly rules of constitutional etiquette and bureaucratic sclerosis, the police were eclipsed in the mind of the public by the cold-blooded Everyman, bound only by the law of the jungle and some elusive sense of justice. Ultimately, popular demand required …