Law and Race Commons^™

Racial Discrimination In Jury Selection: The Urgent Need For Sixth Amendment Protections For Black Capital Defendants, Claire Austin

Marquette Benefits and Social Welfare Law Review

In the U.S., death row is made up of a disproportionate number of black persons. In capital trials, black defendants often face all white juries. The deep-rooted racial discrimination in the justice system impacts jury selection because prosecutors use peremptory strikes to remove black jurors from the jury panel. As the law stands today, the Sixth Amendment guarantee of an impartial jury made up of a fair representation of the jury applies only to the pool of jurors called in for jury service, not those who are actually selected to hear the case.

This comment analyzes the Supreme Court decision, …

How They Get Away With Murder: The Intersection Of Capital Punishment, Prosecutor Misconduct, And Systemic Injustice, Rushton Davis Pope

Emory Law Journal

Black defendants are executed at a disproportionately high rate, an injustice quietly persisting in the shadow of America’s dark history of slavery and Jim Crow. While a variety of intersectional factors have perpetuated this injustice, the role of prosecutors who commit misconduct to secure a conviction is significant. Defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty, but when the prosecutors who carry the burden of proving that guilt choose not to play by the rules, they wantonly and recklessly embrace the risk of convicting—even killing—an innocent person.

This Comment focuses on two primary forms of prosecutor misconduct: Batson violations that occur …

The Folly - And Faith - Of Furman, John H. Blume, Sheri Lynn Johnson

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Choosing Those Who Will Die: The Effect Of Race, Gender, And Law In Prosecutorial Decision To Seek The Death Penalty In Durham County, North Carolina, Isaac Unah

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

District prosecutors in the United States exercise virtually unfettered power and discretion to decide which murder cases to prosecute for capital punishment. According to neoclassical theory of formal legal rationality, the process for determining criminal punishment should be based upon legal rules established and sanctioned by the state to communicate the priorities of the political community. The theory therefore argues in favor of a determinate mode of decision-making that diminishes the importance of extrinsic elements such as race and gender in the application of law. In the empirical research herein reported, I test this theory using death eligible cases in …

Capital Punishment's Future, Welsh S. White

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Capital Punishment in America by Raymond Paternoster

Disorder In The Court: The Death Penalty And The Constitution, Robert A. Burt

Michigan Law Review

This article has two purposes. Its first aim is to trace the significance of these shifting characterizations of American society in the Justices' successive approaches to the death penalty by retelling the story of the Court's capital punishment jurisprudence. Its second purpose is to suggest that belief in implacable social hostility destroys the coherence of the judicial role in constitutional adjudication. America may indeed be an irreconcilably polarized society; I cannot dispositively prove or disprove the proposition. I mean only to claim that in constitutional adjudication a judge is obliged to act as if this proposition were false; and, moreover, …