Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Publication
Articles 1 - 11 of 11
Full-Text Articles in Law
Life After Sentence Of Death: What Becomes Of Individuals Under Sentence Of Death After Capital Punishment Legislation Is Repealed Or Invalidated, James R. Acker, Brian W. Stull
Life After Sentence Of Death: What Becomes Of Individuals Under Sentence Of Death After Capital Punishment Legislation Is Repealed Or Invalidated, James R. Acker, Brian W. Stull
Akron Law Review
More than 2500 individuals are now under sentence of death in the United States. At the same time, multiple indicators—public opinion polls, legislative repeal and judicial invalidation of deathpenalty laws, the reduction in new death sentences, and infrequency of executions—suggest that support for capital punishment has significantly eroded. As jurisdictions abandon or consider eliminating the death-penalty, the fate of prisoners on death row—whether their death sentences, valid when imposed, should be carried out or whether these individuals should instead be spared execution—looms as contentious political and legal issues, fraught with complex philosophical, penological, and constitutional questions. This article presents a …
Lockett Symposium: For Sandra Lockett, Anthony G. Amsterdam
Lockett Symposium: For Sandra Lockett, Anthony G. Amsterdam
ConLawNOW
Tony Amsterdam, lead counsel for Sandra Lockett in the U.S. Supreme Court case Lockett v. Ohio, offers his reflections on the case.
Dissecting The Aba Texas Capital Punishment Assessment Report Of 2013: Death And Texas, A Surprising Improvement, Patrick S. Metze
Dissecting The Aba Texas Capital Punishment Assessment Report Of 2013: Death And Texas, A Surprising Improvement, Patrick S. Metze
Akron Law Review
Professor Metze dissects the American Bar Association report, September 2013, entitled Evaluating Fairness and Accuracy in State Death Penalty Systems: The Texas Capital Punishment Assessment Report—An Analysis of Texas’s Death Penalty Laws, Procedures and Practices. This Report was produced by the ABA’s Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities, specifically the Death Penalty Due Process Review Project, which identified 12 inadequacies in the Texas Capital Punishment System, recommended changes, and evaluated compliance. Now, four years and two legislative sessions later, this Article explores what Texas has done in the interim to improve its death penalty process. Incredibly, the Article concludes …
Originalism And The Criminal Law: Vindicating Justice Scalia's Jurisprudence - And The Constitution, Adam Lamparello, Charles E. Maclean
Originalism And The Criminal Law: Vindicating Justice Scalia's Jurisprudence - And The Constitution, Adam Lamparello, Charles E. Maclean
Akron Law Review
Justice Scalia was not perfect—no one is—but he was not a dishonest jurist. As one commentator explains, “[i]f Scalia was a champion of those rights [for criminal defendants, arrestees], he was an accidental champion, a jurist with a deeper objective—namely, fidelity to what he dubbed the ‘original meaning’ reflected in the text of the Constitution—that happened to intersect with the interests of the accused at some points in the constellation of criminal law and procedure.” Indeed, Justice Scalia is more easily remembered not as a champion of the little guy, the voiceless, and the downtrodden, but rather, as Texas Gov. …
The Death Penalty And Justice Scalia's Lines, J. Richard Broughton
The Death Penalty And Justice Scalia's Lines, J. Richard Broughton
Akron Law Review
In Justice Scalia’s lone dissenting opinion in Morrison v. Olson, he lamented that, after the Court had upheld a law that he believed violated the separation of powers, “there are now no lines.” Lines were of critical importance to Justice Scalia – in law and in life – and informed much of his work on criminal law issues (Morrison, after all, was a case about the nature of federal prosecutorial authority). In the area of capital punishment, in particular, Justice Scalia saw clear lines that the Court should not cross. He believed that the Constitution contemplates the …
Legislative Response To Furman V. Georgia - Ohio Restores The Death Penalty, Jeffrey T. Heintz
Legislative Response To Furman V. Georgia - Ohio Restores The Death Penalty, Jeffrey T. Heintz
Akron Law Review
THE ABOVE REPRESENTS the first inclusion of a prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments in any charter of any colony in the New World. Believed to be traceable to the Magna Charta, such a prohibition is now embodied in our eighth amendment. It has been the subject of much litigation and construction, most recently in Furman v. Georgia, where the death penalty, as then imposed, was declared to be invalid as cruel and unusual. Some states, including Ohio, have responded with new statutes controlling imposition of the death penalty in order to circumvent the Furman proscriptions. Only time will tell …
Death Penalty; Cruel And Unusual Punishment; Individualized Sentencing Determination; Lockett V. Ohio; Bell V. Ohio, James C. Ellerhorst
Death Penalty; Cruel And Unusual Punishment; Individualized Sentencing Determination; Lockett V. Ohio; Bell V. Ohio, James C. Ellerhorst
Akron Law Review
“In Bell v. Ohio and Lockett v. Ohio the United States Supreme Court found the sentencing provisions of the Ohio capital punishment statute to be incompatible with the eighth and fourteenth amendments which prohibit cruel and unusual punishment. These two opinions represent the most recent attempt by the Supreme Court to explain what elements must be included in a constitutionally valid capital punishment statute.”
Death Row Conditions: Progression Toward Constitutional Protections, Nancy Holland
Death Row Conditions: Progression Toward Constitutional Protections, Nancy Holland
Akron Law Review
Beginning with recapitulation of the quest for the meaning and scope of the eighth amendment, this comment will review both the evolution of judicial scrutiny and the constitutional limitations of criminal incarceration and will also analyze the narrow body of case law affecting the quality of life on America's death rows.
The Ohio Supreme Court's Move Toward Quality Control Of Court-Appointed Counsel For Indigent Defendants Charged With Capital Offense Crimes, George J. Ticoras
The Ohio Supreme Court's Move Toward Quality Control Of Court-Appointed Counsel For Indigent Defendants Charged With Capital Offense Crimes, George J. Ticoras
Akron Law Review
This comment outlines the law in Ohio concerning court-appointed representation of indigent defendants in capital offense cases. A brief look at Ohio's "pre-C.P.Sup.R. 65" period provides the proper backdrop in which to examine C.P.Sup.R. 65's relation to the Ohio Public Defender's Regulations and the impact this rule may have throughout the State.
Two Wrongs Don't Make A Right: Federal Death Eligibility Determinations And Judicial Trifurcations, Michael D. Pepson, John N. Sharifi
Two Wrongs Don't Make A Right: Federal Death Eligibility Determinations And Judicial Trifurcations, Michael D. Pepson, John N. Sharifi
Akron Law Review
Broadly speaking, the purpose of this article is to bring attention to this radical and irreconcilable disparity between the unequivocal Sixth Amendment right of confrontation criminal defendants are afforded at trial,and the limited, qualified right of confrontation the FDPA grants federal capital defendants during death-eligibility determinations, which occur as part of the sentencing phase. It advances the argument that there is no tenable principled distinction on which this disparate procedural treatment may rest. We will attempt to demonstrate that, as written, the statutory provision that governs the admission of evidence at capital sentencings—18 U.S.C. § 3593(c)—is unconstitutional on its face …
The Challenge And Dilemma Of Charting A Course To Constitutionally Protect The Severely Mentally Ill Capital Defendant From The Death Penalty, Lyn Entzeroth
Akron Law Review
This article examines these issues in the context of an important and emerging constitutional challenge to the death penalty: whether the death penalty can be imposed on capital defendants who suffer from severe mental illness at the time of the commission of their crimes. The American Bar Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, and the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill all endorse a death penalty exemption for the severely mentally ill. Recent law review articles suggest that such an exemption may even be compelled by the Supreme Court’s decisions in Roper v. Simmons and Atkins v. …