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Full-Text Articles in Law
Guerrilla Warfare And The Constitution, Sonja R. West
Guerrilla Warfare And The Constitution, Sonja R. West
Popular Media
Earlier this week, the United States Supreme Court upheld, by a 5-4 vote, the states’ ability to execute death row inmates with a three-drug lethal injection cocktail that critics argue causes excruciating pain. The Court reasoned that states should be allowed to use the drug in question, despite its involvement in several botched executions, in part because states can no longer attain more effective alternatives. In the majority opinion, the justices spin an erroneous tale about “anti-death-penalty advocates” pressuring pharmaceutical companies into refusing to supply other, more humane drugs to the states for use in capital punishment. This alleged radical …
Newsroom: Nason '05 Cited By U.S. Supreme Court, Roger Williams University School Of Law
Newsroom: Nason '05 Cited By U.S. Supreme Court, Roger Williams University School Of Law
Life of the Law School (1993- )
No abstract provided.
Death As A Bargaining Chip: Plea Bargaining And The Future Of Virginia's Death Penalty, John G. Douglass
Death As A Bargaining Chip: Plea Bargaining And The Future Of Virginia's Death Penalty, John G. Douglass
Law Faculty Publications
Virginia now averages less than a single death sentence each year, a far cry from its not-too-distant history as the second most active death penalty state in the nation. The numbers alone tempt us to forecast the death of Virginia's death penalty: a death by disuse. But those numbers leave much of the story untold. The plummeting number of death sentences is only the diminishing tip of a larger, more stable iceberg of capital case litigation. That iceberg is melting very slowly, if at all.
Remember Not To Forget Furman: A Response To Professor Smith, Sam Kamin, Justin F. Marceau
Remember Not To Forget Furman: A Response To Professor Smith, Sam Kamin, Justin F. Marceau
Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship
Professor Robert J. Smith encourages readers, lawyers, and courts to forget Furman v. Georgia and to focus instead on death penalty challenges grounded in the diminished culpability of nearly all capital defendants. We applaud Professor Smith’s call to focus on the mental and emotional characteristics that reduce the blameworthiness of so many of those charged with capital crimes; recognizing diminished culpability as the rule rather than the exception among capital defendants conveys a reality that rarely finds its way into reported cases. We are troubled, however, by Professor Smith’s call to “forget Furman.” We believe the title and the …
Advocacy As An Exercise In Virtue: Lawyering, Bad Facts, And Furman's High-Stakes Dilemma, Linda H. Edwards
Advocacy As An Exercise In Virtue: Lawyering, Bad Facts, And Furman's High-Stakes Dilemma, Linda H. Edwards
Scholarly Works
Two of the conversations benefitting most from Jack Sammons's scholarship are conversations about legal rhetoric and about virtue ethics. Legal rhetoric is the study of the conventions of legal argument, specifically, the art of identifying and evaluating the best available means of persuasion and implementing those means effectively in light of audience, purpose, and occasion. Virtue ethics approaches moral reflection by asking what sort of person a particular moral choice encourages the actor to become. It focuses on consequences to the moral agent herself rather than directly focusing on consequences to others. The goal is to become a virtuous person, …
The Highs And Lows Of Wild Justice, Corinna Barrett Lain
The Highs And Lows Of Wild Justice, Corinna Barrett Lain
Law Faculty Publications
In Part I of this Review, I present a brief summary of Mandery's book, providing readers a glimpse of the fascinating story A Wild Justice tells and the engaging prose with which it is written. In Part II, I do the same for Rosenbaum's book, distilling the argument in Paybackand excerpting illustrative passages to provide readers an idea of what they will be getting. In Part III, I use both books to explore the difference between retribution and revenge, and the role those notions play in the defense of the death penalty today. I conclude that while Rosenbaum is unpersuasive …
Death Penalty Drugs And The International Moral Marketplace, James Gibson, Corinna Barrett Lain
Death Penalty Drugs And The International Moral Marketplace, James Gibson, Corinna Barrett Lain
Law Faculty Publications
Across the country, executions have become increasingly problematic as states have found it more and more difficult to procure the drugs they need for lethal injection.At first blush, the drug shortage appears to be the result of pharmaceutical industry norms; companies that make drugs for healing (mostly in Europe) have refused to be merchants of death. But closer inspection reveals that European governments are the true change agents here. For decades, those governments have tried-and failed-to promote abolition of the death penalty through traditional instruments of international law. Turns out that the best way to export their abolitionist norms was …
On The Argument That Execution Protocol Reform Is Biomedical Research, Paul J. Litton
On The Argument That Execution Protocol Reform Is Biomedical Research, Paul J. Litton
Faculty Publications
Regardless of whether the Supreme Court rightly upheld Oklahoma’s execution protocol in Glossip, Oklahoma officials had inadequate reason to choose midazolam as the anesthetizing agent in its procedure. Their decision is one example illustrating Seema Shah’s point that death penalty states are engaged in “poorly designed experimentation that is not based on evidence.” Shah argues that “an important factor” causing the high rate of botched executions is that lethal injection reform is a type of human subjects research that is going unregulated. Shah argues that research requirements, such as informed consent and IRB review, are necessary to render the research …
A Shot In The Dark: Why Virginia Should Adopt The Firing Squad As Its Primary Method Of Execution, P. Thomas Distanislao, Iii
A Shot In The Dark: Why Virginia Should Adopt The Firing Squad As Its Primary Method Of Execution, P. Thomas Distanislao, Iii
Law Student Publications
This comment recommends that Virginia cease its use of lethal injection because of its high botch rates and growing impracticability due to drug shortages. Instead, the Commonwealth should use the firing squad as a more effective means of execution, thereby leading the nation in a transition towards a more efficient and reliable method.
The Twilight Zone: Perspectives From A Man On Death Row, Leah Stiegler
The Twilight Zone: Perspectives From A Man On Death Row, Leah Stiegler
Law Student Publications
This interview was conducted through a series of written correspondences between Gerald Dean Cruz and Leah Stiegler, the Allen Chair Editor for Volume 49 of the University of Richmond Law Review. This exchange was reproduced, in excerpts, for the sole purpose of giving readers a rare glimpse into the perspective of a death row inmate.
Making Sure We Are Getting It Right: Repairing "The Machinery Of Death" By Narrowing Capital Eligibility, Ann E. Reid
Making Sure We Are Getting It Right: Repairing "The Machinery Of Death" By Narrowing Capital Eligibility, Ann E. Reid
Law Student Publications
This comment argues that, starting with the framework of the federal system, there is a way to reconcile modern concerns about the death penalty with society's need for leverage over those criminals who truly are the worst of the worst-those who present grave threats to society even after incarceration. This reconciliation can be achieved by amending the Federal Death Penalty Act to require prosecutors to establish one additional element before they can secure a capital conviction: future dangerousness of the defendant in prison..