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Due Process In Death Penalty Commutations: Life, Liberty, And The Pursuit Of Clemency, Daniel T. Kobil
Due Process In Death Penalty Commutations: Life, Liberty, And The Pursuit Of Clemency, Daniel T. Kobil
University of Richmond Law Review
The idea of the last-minute reprieve granted by a distant, unknowable dispenser of mercy to a man condemned to death has a powerful hold on our imaginations. Fyodor Dostoevsky's eleventh hour pardon by the czar in many ways shaped his literary career. The scene of the haunted Death Row prisoner who awaits word from the governor as a ticking clock punctuates his final hours is a stock vignette of Hollywood crime films. Anyone who has ever seized on the slimmest hope, whose fate has been committed to the hands of another - virtually all of us - can identify with …
The Quality Of Mercy: Race And Clemency In Florida Death Penalty Cases, 1924-1966, Margaret Vandiver
The Quality Of Mercy: Race And Clemency In Florida Death Penalty Cases, 1924-1966, Margaret Vandiver
University of Richmond Law Review
The scholarly literature on capital punishment includes few empirical studies of executive clemency. Commutations in capital cases have been rare since 1972 when the current era of capital punishment began with the United States Supreme Court's ruling in Furman v. Georgia. A large proportion of pre-1972 death sentences were commuted; examination of clemency decisions in those cases promises to reveal much about the history of capital punishment in the United States. The present study attempts to identify factors which influenced decisions to grant commutations of Florida death sentences pre-Furman, focusing particularly on whether the race of defendants and victims influenced …