Law Commons^™

The Limits Of Legal Language: Decisionmaking In Capital Cases, Jordan M. Steiker

Michigan Law Review

To make the case for the proposed changes, I will first describe briefly in Parts I and II the structure of pre- and post-Furman capital decisiorurtaking and the weaknesses of those approaches. I then will set forth in Part III the specific rationales for each proposed reform.

The scheme I propose raises a significant constitutional question. Can the death penalty be retained as a punishment if we abandon the pretense of providing meaningful guidance through detailed sentencing instructions? Would the reestablishment of relatively unstructured penalty phase deliberations similar to, but also importantly different from, those characteristic of pre-Furman …

Celluloid Death: Cinematic Depictions Of Capital Punishment, Roberta M. Harding

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This essay will examine how two filmmakers used the cinema to investigate death penalty issues through the films Dead Man Walking and Last Light. These films were selected because of their similarities: capital punishment is the central theme of both films; the presence of a strong principal character who is the condemned inmate; the utilization of a character who undergoes a spiritual transformation due to interaction with the condemned inmate; the decision to have this character facilitate the humanization of the condemned individual; and the additional role this character plays as the audiences' conscience. There are, however, differences in the …

"As The Gentle Rain From Heaven": Mercy In Capital Sentencing, Stephen P. Garvey

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Our constitutional law of capital sentencing does not understand Shakespeare's "gentle rain from heaven." Mercy confuses and befuddles it. The jury that sentenced Albert Brown to death was instructed that "'mere ... sympathy"' should not play on its judgment. Brown claimed this instruction violated his Eighth Amendment rights, but the Supreme Court disagreed. Some five years later, Justice Scalia dissented when the Court reversed Derrick Morgan's death sentence. According to Justice Scalia, the Court had held that no "merciless" juror could sit in judgment of a capital defendant. The Constitution, he thought, demanded no such thing. These dissents, one embracing …

Revenge For The Condemned, Sara Sun Beale, Paul H. Haagen

Michigan Law Review

A Review of V.A.C. Gatrell, The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People 1770-1868

Jury Responsibility In Capital Sentencing: An Empirical Study, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen P. Garvey, Martin T. Wells

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The law allows executioners to deny responsibility for what they have done by making it possible for them to believe they have not done it. The law treats members of capital sentencing juries quite differently. It seeks to ensure that they feel responsible for sentencing a defendant to death. This differential treatment rests on a presumed link between a capital sentencer's willingness to accept responsibility for the sentence she imposes and the accuracy and reliability of that sentence. Using interviews of 153 jurors who sat in South Carolina capital cases, this article examines empirically whether capital sentencing jurors assume responsibility …

Cruelty And Original Intent: A Socratic Dialogue, Kent Greenfield

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Toward The Abolition Of The Death Penalty, Shigemitsu Dando

Indiana Law Journal

This Article was delivered by Justice Dando as the Jerome Hall Lecture at Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington on April 14, 1996.

Mitigation, Mercy, And Delay: The Moral Politics Of Death Penalty Abolitionists, Anthony V. Alfieri

Articles

No abstract provided.

A (Genuinely) Modest Proposal Concerning The Death Penalty, Craig M. Bradley

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Reply To Daniel Polsby (Symposium: The New York Death Penalty In Context), Samuel R. Gross

Articles

I'd like to offer a few words in response to Professor Polsby's articulate, forceful and amusing essay in favor of capital punishment.

Mature Adjudication: Interpretive Choice In Recent Death Penalty Cases, Bernard Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

Capital punishment presents a "hard" case for adjudication. It provokes sharp conflict between competing constitutional interpretations and invariably raises questions of judicial bias. This is particularly true in the new Republic of South Africa, where the framers of the interim constitution deliberately were silent regarding the legality of the death penalty. The tension is of equivalent force in the United States, where recent expressions of core constitutional rights have raised potentially irreconcilable conflicts in the application of capital punishment.

Two recent death penalty decisions – the South African Constitutional Court opinions in State v. Makwanyane and the United States Supreme …

Constitutional Concerns About Capital Punishment: The Death Penalty Statute In New York State, Richard Klein

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.