Law Commons^™

Injustice Casts Shadow On History Of State Executions, John Bessler

All Faculty Scholarship

This article, published in the StarTribune of Minneapolis, discusses the history of lynchings and executions in the State of Minnesota. It specifically discusses miscarriages of justice that have taken place in Minnesota, along with highlighting other problems associated with capital punishment.

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

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

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. …

Review Of The Hanging Of Ephraim Wheeler : A Story Of Rape, Incest, And Justice In Early America, Michael F. Russo

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Virginia's Capital Jurors, Stephen P. Garvey, Paul Marcus

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Next to Texas, no state has executed more capital defendants than Virginia. Moreover, the likelihood of a death sentence actually being carried out is greater in Virginia than it is elsewhere, while the length of time between the imposition of a death sentence and its actual execution is shorter. Virginia has thus earned a reputation among members of the defense bar as being among the worst of the death penalty states. Yet insofar as these facts about Virginia's death penalty relate primarily to the behavior of state and federal appellate courts, they suggest that what makes Virginia's death penalty unique …

Killing For The State: The Darkest Side Of American Nursing, Dave Holmes, Cary H. Federman

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The aim of this article is to bring to the attention of the international nursing community the discrepancy between a pervasive ‘caring’ nursing discourse and the most unethical nursing practice in the United States. In this article, we present a duality: the conflict in American prisons between nursing ethics and the killing machinery. The US penal system is a setting in which trained healthcare personnel practices the extermination of life. We look upon the sanitization of death work as an application of healthcare professionals’ skills and knowledge and their appropriation by the state to serve its ends. A review of …

Atkins V. Virginia: A Psychiatric Can Of Worms, Douglas Mossman Md

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This article provides a psychiatric perspective on the problems Atkins raises for courts that handle death penalty cases. In contrast to the overarching aim of the majority's opinion in Atkins - making the administration of capital punishment more equitable - the Supreme Court's latest prescription of psychiatric help may only add a new layer of complexity and confusion to the already capricious process through which the U.S. criminal justice system imposes death sentences. The article briefly review's the Supreme Court's 1989 Penry decision, focusing on the role that evidence of mental retardation played in death penalty cases before Atkins was …

The Innocence Revolution And Our "Evolving Standards Of Decency" In Death Penalty Jurisprudence, Mark A. Godsey, Thomas Pulley

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

One cannot adequately consider whether the current administration of the death penalty in America measures up to modern notions of decency without doing so in light of the revolution that has occurred over the past decade in the American criminal-justice system - the Innocence Revolution. Up through the 1990s, as a society, we believed our criminal-justice system was highly accurate, but the recent advent of DNA testing and other advanced technologies has demonstrated the naiveté of such beliefs. This article will discuss the history of the Innocence Revolution, examine the impact of that revolution on our society, and ask: "What …

Roots "Resolving The Death Penalty: Wisdom From The Ancients", Robert Blecker

Articles & Chapters

Lest it be cruel and unusual, the U.S. Supreme Court has held, capital punishment must be consistent with the evolving standards of decency of a maturing society. Although controversy swirls around our current sense of decency, this Society's changing standards are largely the product of deeply embedded traditions and an unchanging cultural core. Thus, virtually every heated death penalty debate today requires us not only to take the temperature of the people, but also to appreciate their temperament.

ROOTS: Resolving the Death Penalty: Wisdom from the Ancients reflects the current controversy back onto the core of Western Culture - the …

Victim Characteristics And Victim Impact Evidence In South Carolina Capital Cases, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen P. Garvey, Martin T. Wells

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The use of victim impact evidence (VIE) has been a standard feature of capital trials since 1991, when the Supreme Court lifted the previously existing constitutional bar to such evidence. Legal scholars have almost universally condemned the use of VIE, criticizing it on a variety of grounds. Yet little empirical analysis exists that examines how VIE influences the course and outcome of capital trials. We analyze the influence of VIE based on interviews with over two-hundred jurors who sat on capital trials in South Carolina between 1985 and 2001.

First, we describe the VIE introduced at sentencing trials, using a …

Victim Characteristics And Victim Impact Evidence In South Carolina Capital Cases, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen P. Garvey, Martin T. Wells

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article is available at:

http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/facpub/290/.

The use of victim impact evidence (VIE) has been a standard feature of capital trials since 1991, when the Supreme Court lifted the previously existing constitutional bar to such evidence. Legal scholars have almost universally condemned the use of VIE, criticizing it on a variety of grounds.

Yet little empirical analysis exists that examines how VIE influences the course and outcome of capital trials. Moreover, the handful of empirical analyses that do exist rely on data gathered in simulation studies. Although valuable contributions have emerged from these experimental studies, such studies have often-rehearsed …

Ten Years Of Payne: Victim Impact Evidence In Capital Cases, John H. Blume

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

A little over a decade ago, in Payne v. Tennessee, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for capital sentencing juries to consider “victim impact evidence” (VIE). Reversing its prior decisions in Booth v. Maryland and South Carolina v. Gathers, a six to three majority of the Court held that “if the State chooses to permit the admission of victim impact evidence and prosecutorial argument on that subject, the Eighth Amendment erects no per se bar.” Part I of this Article will discuss the Court’s prior decisions in Booth and Gathers, and Parts II and III will …

The Cognitive Components Of Punishment, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Forest Jourden

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Victim Impact Statements In Capital Trials: A Selected Bibliography, Jean M. Callihan

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Rethinking The Death Penalty: Can We Define Who Deserves Death?, Martin Leahy, Robert Blecker, William M. Erlbaum, Jeffrey Fagan, Norman Greene, Jeffrey Kirchmeier, David Von Drehle

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

The Capital Jury And Empathy: The Problem Of Worthy And Unworthy Victims, Scott E. Sundby

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Death Penalty And Adversarial Justice In The United States, Samuel R. Gross

Book Chapters

In a volume devoted to comparing adversarial and inquisitorial procedures in Western countries, the subject of the death penalty is an anomaly. Any system of adjudication must address several basic tasks: how to obtain information from parties and witnesses, how to evaluate that information, how to utilize expert knowledge, how to act in the face of uncertainty, how to review and reconsider decisions. By comparing how competing systems deal with these tasks we can hope to learn something about the strengths and weaknesses of alternative approaches to common problems. The death penalty, however, is not an essential function of a …

What They Say At The End: Capital Victims' Families And The Press, Samuel R. Gross, Daniel J. Matheson

Articles

Perhaps the most common complaint by American crime victims and their families is that they are ignored-by the police, by the prosecutors, by the courts and by the press. However true that may be for capital cases in general, there is at least one consistent exception: the great majority of newspaper accounts of executions include at least some description of the reactions of the victims' families and of any surviving victims. It seems to have become an item on the checklist, part of the "who, what, where, when, why, and how" of execution stories. When no family members are available, …

Atkins, Adolescence, And The Maturity Heuristic: Rationales For A Categorical Exemption For Juveniles From Capital Punishment, Jeffrey A. Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

In Atkins v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court voted six to three to bar further use of the death penalty for mentally retarded offenders. The Court offered three reasons for banning the execution of the retarded. First, citing a shift in public opinion over the thirteen years since Penry v. Lynaugh, the Court in Atkins ruled that the execution of the mentally retarded is "cruel and unusual punishment" prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. Second, the Court concluded that retaining the death penalty for the mentally retarded would not serve the interest in retribution or deterrence that is essential to capital …

Rethinking The Death Penalty: Can We Define Who Deserves Death – A Symposium Held At The Association Of The Bar Of The City Of New York May 22, 2002, Martin J. Leahy, Norman L. Greene, Robert Blecker, Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier, William M. Erlbaum, David Von Drehle, Jeffrey A. Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

In light of the defects of the capital punishment system and recent calls for a moratorium on executions, many are calling for serious reform of the system. Even some who would not eliminate the death penalty entirely propose reforms that they contend would result in fewer executions and would limit the death penalty to a category that they call the "worst of the worst." This program asks the question: Is there a category of defendants who are the "worst of the worst?" Can a crime be so heinous that a defendant can be said to "deserve" to be executed? Would …

Reflections On The Killing State: A Cultural Study Of The Death Penalty In The Twentieth Century United States, Dwight Aarons

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.