Supreme Court of the United States Commons^™

Boynton V. Virginia And The Anxieties Of The Modern African-American Customer, Amber Baylor

Faculty Scholarship

In 1958, Bruce Boynton was arrested for ordering food in a Whites-Only diner and charged with criminal trespass. Sixty years later, African Americans continue to face arrest and threat of arrest in commercial establishments based on discriminatory trespass claims. When store owners or employees decide to exclude would-be patrons from their establishment for discriminatory reasons, both overt and implicit, they rely on the police to enforce this form of discrimination. This article considers the legacy of Boynton v. Virginia, particularly the resonance of Boynton’s unaddressed claim, that the state enforcement of discriminatory trespass allegations is an Equal Protection …

Minority Practice, Majority's Burden: The Death Penalty Today, James S. Liebman, Peter Clarke

Faculty Scholarship

Although supported in principle by two-thirds of the public and even more of the States, capital punishment in the United States is a minority practice when the actual death-sentencing practices of the nation's 3000-plus counties and their populations are considered This feature of American capital punishment has been present for decades, has become more pronounced recently, and is especially clear when death sentences, which are merely infrequent, are distinguished from executions, which are exceedingly rare.

The first question this Article asks is what forces account for the death-proneness of a minority of American communities? The answer to that question – …

Slow Dancing With Death: The Supreme Court And Capital Punishment, 1963-2006, James S. Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

This Article addresses four questions:

Why hasn't the Court left capital punishment unregulated, as it has other areas of substantive criminal law? The Court is compelled to decide the death penalty's constitutionality by the peculiar responsibility it bears for this form of state violence.

Why didn't the Court abolish the death penalty in Furman v. Georgia after finding every capital statute and verdict unconstitutional? The Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause was too opaque to reveal whether the death penalty was unlawful for some or all crimes and, if not, whether there were law-bound ways to administer it. So the Court …

The Decline Of The Juvenile Death Penalty: Scientific Evidence Of Evolving Norms, Jeffery Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

Shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Atkins v. Virginia holding that the execution of mentally retarded persons violated the Eighth Amendment, legal scholars, advocates, and journalists began to speculate that the Court would next turn its attention to the question of the execution of persons who were juveniles – below eighteen years of age – at the time they committed homicide. Following the Atkins decision, four Justices expressed the view that the rationale of Atkins also supported the conclusion that execution of juvenile offenders was unconstitutional. A constitutional test of capital punishment for juveniles was inevitable. …

An "Effective Death Penalty"? Aedpa And Error Detection In Capital Cases, James S. Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

On June 11, 2001, the United States of America executed Timothy McVeigh. Dwarfed among the many unspeakable evils that Mr. McVeigh wrought is a speakable one I will address here, namely, the so-called Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 ("AEDPA").

Abbreviated, AEDPA's political history is as follows: In November 1994, the "Gingrich Congress" was elected on its Contract with America platform. One of the planks of that platform – one of the few that actually ended up passing Congress – was the so-called "Effective Death Penalty Act." That proposal had little to do with the death penalty and, …

Brecht V. Abrahamson: Harmful Error In Habeas Corpus Law, James S. Liebman, Randy Hertz

Faculty Scholarship

For the past two and one-half decades, the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts have applied the same rule for assessing the harmlessness of constitutional error in habeas corpus proceedings as they have applied on direct appeal of both state and federal convictions. Under that rule, which applied to all constitutional errors except those deemed per se prejudicial or per se reversible, the state could avoid reversal upon a finding of error only by proving that the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. The Supreme Court adopted this stringent standard in Chapman v. California to fulfill the federal …

Of Laws And Men: An Essay On Justice Marshall's View Of Criminal Procedure, Daniel C. Richman, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

As a general rule, criminal defendants whose cases made it to the Supreme Court between 1967 and 1991 must have thought that, as long as Justice Thurgood Marshall occupied one of the nine seats, they had one vote for sure. And Justice Marshall rarely disappointed them – certainly not in cases of any broad constitutional significance. From his votes and opinions, particularly his dissents, many were quick to conclude that the Justice was another of those "bleeding heart liberals," hostile to the mission of law enforcement officers and ready to overlook the gravity of the crimes of which the defendants …

Guiding Capital Sentencing Discretion Beyond The "Boiler Plate": Mental Disorder As A Mitigating Factor, James S. Liebman, Michael J. Shepard

Faculty Scholarship

In five decisions handed down on July 2, 1976, the United States Supreme Court held that the death penalty may be imposed for the crime of murder, so long as there are clear standards to guide the sentencing authority and the sanction is not imposed mandatorily. The authors examine the eighth amendment doctrinal framework used by the Court in the July 2 Cases, with particular reference to the requirement that individualized mitigating information be considered in the sentencing decision. Illustrating that requirement, they contend that mental disorder should be considered as a possibly mitigating factor and then suggest a standard …