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What's Wrong With Involuntary Manslaughter?, Stephen P. Garvey
What's Wrong With Involuntary Manslaughter?, Stephen P. Garvey
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Efforts to explain when and why the state can legitimately impose retributive punishment on an actor who inadvertently creates an unjustified risk of causing death (and death results) typically rely on one of two theories. The prior-choice theory claims that retributive punishment for inadvertent lethal risk-creation is justified if and only if the actor's inadvertence or ignorance was a but-for and proximate result of a prior culpable choice. The hypothetical-choice theory claims that retributive punishment for inadvertent lethal risk-creation is justified if and only if the actor would have chosen to take the risk if he had been aware of …
Looking Deathworthy: Perceived Stereotypicality Of Black Defendants Predicts Capital-Sentencing Outcomes, Jennifer L. Eberhardt, P G. Davies, Valerie J. Purdie-Vaughns, Sheri Lynn Johnson
Looking Deathworthy: Perceived Stereotypicality Of Black Defendants Predicts Capital-Sentencing Outcomes, Jennifer L. Eberhardt, P G. Davies, Valerie J. Purdie-Vaughns, Sheri Lynn Johnson
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Researchers previously have investigated the role of race in capital sentencing, and in particular, whether the race of the defendant or victim influences the likelihood of a death sentence. In the present study, we examined whether the likelihood of being sentenced to death is influenced by the degree to which a Black defendant is perceived to have a stereotypically Black appearance. Controlling for a wide array of factors, we found that in cases involving a White victim, the more stereotypically Black a defendant is perceived to be, the more likely that person is to be sentenced to death.