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Criminal Law

Mercer University School of Law

2012

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Law

Death Penalty, Josh D. Moore Dec 2012

Death Penalty, Josh D. Moore

Mercer Law Review

Between June 1, 2011 and May 31, 2012, the Georgia Supreme Court addressed several significant points of law in the context of death penalty litigation. The court grappled with two challenging speedy trial issues, one constitutional and the other statutory, in Phan v. State and Walker v. State, respectively. The court announced a new rule on the calculation of time limitations for impeachable convictions in Clay v. State. The court revisited the subject of burden of proof in mental retardation cases in Stripling v. State. And the court articulated a clear standard for evaluating prejudice in a …


Criminal Law, Franklin J. Hogue, Laura D. Hogue Dec 2012

Criminal Law, Franklin J. Hogue, Laura D. Hogue

Mercer Law Review

The Authors reviewed the most important criminal cases during this reporting period-from June 1, 2011 through May 31, 2012-that will likely have an effect upon the way prosecutors and defense attorneys approach criminal cases in Georgia.


Confronting The Invisible Witness: The Use Of Narrative To Neutralize Capital Jurors’ Implicit Racial Biases, Pamela A. Wilkins Jan 2012

Confronting The Invisible Witness: The Use Of Narrative To Neutralize Capital Jurors’ Implicit Racial Biases, Pamela A. Wilkins

Articles

How can capital defense lawyers craft narratives that neutralize jurors’ unconscious racial and ethnic biases? A well-developed body of research in cognitive psychology indicates that despite even the best of intentions and the absence of conscious prejudice, most Americans harbor unconscious biases against African Americans. These biases influence what we actually perceive, how we interpret what we perceive, and how we act. For reasons related to the content and structure of capital sentencing trials, these unconscious biases are particularly likely to influence capital jurors. In effect, unconscious racial bias acts as an invisible witness against the African American defendant, buttressing …