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When Balance And Fairness Collide: An Argument For Execution Impact Evidence In Capital Trials, Wayne A. Logan
When Balance And Fairness Collide: An Argument For Execution Impact Evidence In Capital Trials, Wayne A. Logan
Scholarly Publications
A central precept of death penalty jurisprudence is that only the "death worthy" should be condemned, based on a "reasoned moral response" by the sentencing authority. Over the past decade, however, the Supreme Court has distanced itself from its painstaking efforts in the 1970s to calibrate death decision making in the name of fairness. Compelling proof of this shift is manifest in the Court's decisions to permit victim impact evidence in capital trials, and to allow jurors to be instructed that sympathy for capital defendants is not to influence capital decisions. This Article examines a novel strategy now being employed …
Through The Past Darkly: A Survey Of The Uses And Abuses Of Victim Impact Evidence In Capital Trials, Wayne A. Logan
Through The Past Darkly: A Survey Of The Uses And Abuses Of Victim Impact Evidence In Capital Trials, Wayne A. Logan
Scholarly Publications
This Article examines the recent history of victim impact evidence in capital sentencing, as permitted by the United States Supreme Court's landmark 1991 decision in Payne v. Tennessee, which overruled two other recent holdings of the Court squarely prohibiting such evidence.