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Full-Text Articles in Law
Testing Penry And Its Progeny , Deborah W. Denno
Testing Penry And Its Progeny , Deborah W. Denno
Faculty Scholarship
In Penry v. Lynaugh, the United States Supreme Court held that the Texas death penalty statute was applied unconstitutionally because the trial court gave no instructions allowing the jury to “consider and give effect to” the defendant's mitigating evidence of organic brain damage, moderate retardation, and disadvantaged background. The Court considered these mitigating factors relevant because of society's steadfast belief in the lesser culpability of defendants whose criminal acts are due to a disadvantaged background, or to emotional and mental disorders. The jury must have full consideration of such evidence in order to give its “reasoned moral response” to the …
Deciding To Kill: Revealing The Gender In The Task Handed To Capital Jurors, Joan W. Howarth
Deciding To Kill: Revealing The Gender In The Task Handed To Capital Jurors, Joan W. Howarth
Scholarly Works
Day after day, across this country, ordinary people are summoned to court for a selection process that ultimately leaves them in a room deciding, with other jurors, whether a criminal defendant should be killed. The task handed to these jurors is an awesome, personal, moral decision, encased within the complex legal standards and procedures that constitute modern capital jurisprudence. The doctrine that created and sustains this moment of conscience reflects an ongoing struggle of rule against uncertainty, reason against emotion, justice against mercy, and thus, at one level, male against female. Capital jurisprudence -- the law for deciding whether to …
Hardening Of The Attitudes: Americans' Views On The Death Penalty, Phoebe C. Ellsworth, Samuel R. Gross
Hardening Of The Attitudes: Americans' Views On The Death Penalty, Phoebe C. Ellsworth, Samuel R. Gross
Articles
American support for the death penalty has steadily increased since 1966, when opponents outnumbered supporters, and now in the mid-1990s is at a near record high. Research over the last 20 years has tended to confirm the hypothesis that most people’s death penalty attitudes (pro or con) are based on emotion rather than information or rational argument. People feel strongly about the death penalty, know little about it, and feel no need to know more. Factual information (e.g., about deterrence and discrimination) is generally irrelevant to people’s attitudes, and they are aware that this is so. Support for the death …
Is Electrocution An Unconstitutional Method Of Execution? The Engineering Of Death Over The Century, Deborah W. Denno
Is Electrocution An Unconstitutional Method Of Execution? The Engineering Of Death Over The Century, Deborah W. Denno
Faculty Scholarship
This Article provides the Eighth Amendment analysis of electrocution that the courts thus far have not approached. The analysis has two parts. The first inquires whether, according to available scientific evidence, electrocution amounts to cruel and unusual punishment even if it is administered as planned. The second inquires whether, in light of the frequency with which electrocutions are botched, continuing the practice amounts to cruel and unusual punishment even if the properly administered electrocution would not.
“Endgame”: Competency And The Execution Of Condemned Inmates—A Proposal To Satisfy The Eighth Amendment's Prohibition Against The Infliction Of Cruel And Unusual Punishment, Roberta M. Harding
“Endgame”: Competency And The Execution Of Condemned Inmates—A Proposal To Satisfy The Eighth Amendment's Prohibition Against The Infliction Of Cruel And Unusual Punishment, Roberta M. Harding
Law Faculty Scholarly Articles
The first section of this Article provides a brief historical overview of the proscription against executing the incompetent and the proffered rationales. This section also examines key factors contributing to the increase in the number of mentally dysfunctional condemned inmates. Then the Article explores the traditional competency-to-execute model that remains in use. This analysis will include a discussion of specific issues, such as: the term used to describe the requisite mental affliction, how that term is defined in order to identify who may ultimately benefit from the rule in Ford v. Wainwright, what standard is appropriate to determine whether …
The Sanist Lives Of Jurors In Death Penalty Cases: The Puzzling Role Of Mitigating Mental Disability Evidence, Michael L. Perlin
The Sanist Lives Of Jurors In Death Penalty Cases: The Puzzling Role Of Mitigating Mental Disability Evidence, Michael L. Perlin
Articles & Chapters
No abstract provided.
Depravity Thrice Removed: Using The 'Heinous, Cruel, Or Depraved' Factor To Aggravate Convictions Of Nontriggermen Accomplices In Capital Cases, Richard W. Garnett
Depravity Thrice Removed: Using The 'Heinous, Cruel, Or Depraved' Factor To Aggravate Convictions Of Nontriggermen Accomplices In Capital Cases, Richard W. Garnett
Journal Articles
In Tison v. Arizona, the Tison brothers' appeal from their death sentences, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a nontriggerman convicted of first-degree felony murder could constitutionally be executed if he was a major participant in the crime and if he exhibited a reckless disregard for human life. This decision blurred the bright-line rule announced just five years earlier in Enmund v. Florida, which limited the death penalty to defendants who kill, attempt to kill, or at least intend to kill. Tison thus dramatically increased the exposure of nontriggermen to capital punishment, undercutting the death penalty's limited purpose of identifying …