Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Institution
- Publication Year
- Publication
- Publication Type
Articles 1 - 20 of 20
Full-Text Articles in Law
Retention And Reform In Japanese Capital Punishment, David T. Johnson
Retention And Reform In Japanese Capital Punishment, David T. Johnson
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
This Article focuses on the failure of abolition and of death penalty reform in Japan in order to illustrate contingencies in the trajectory of capital punishment in the modern world. Part I describes three facts about postwar Japan that help explain why it retains capital punishment today: a missed opportunity for abolition during the American occupation of the country after World War II; the long-term rule of a conservative political party; and economic and geopolitical power that has enabled the country to resist the influence of international norms. Part II describes a few ways in which Japanese capital punishment has …
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 …
The Banality Of Wrongful Executions, Brandon L. Garrett
The Banality Of Wrongful Executions, Brandon L. Garrett
Michigan Law Review
What is so haunting about the known wrongful convictions is that those cases are the tip of the iceberg. Untold numbers of unnoticed errors may send the innocent to prison — and to the death chamber. That is why I recommend to readers a trilogy of fascinating new books that peer deeper into this larger but murkier problem. Outside the rarified group of highly publicized exonerations, which have themselves done much to attract attention to the causes of wrongful convictions, errors may be so mundane that no one notices them unless an outsider plucks a case from darkness and holds …
Flawed Forensics And The Death Penalty: Junk Science And Potentially Wrongful Executions, Jessica Dwyer-Moss
Flawed Forensics And The Death Penalty: Junk Science And Potentially Wrongful Executions, Jessica Dwyer-Moss
Seattle Journal for Social Justice
No abstract provided.
Remedying Wrongful Execution, Meghan J. Ryan
Remedying Wrongful Execution, Meghan J. Ryan
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
The first legal determination of wrongful execution in the United States may very well be in the making in Texas. One of the state's district courts is in the midst of investigating whether Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in 2004, was actually innocent. The court's investigation has been interrupted by objections from Texas prosecutors, but if the court proceeds, this may very well become a bona fide case of wrongful execution. Texas, just like other jurisdictions, is ill equipped to provide any relief for such an egregious wrong, however. This Article identifies the difficulties that the heirs, families, and …
Reply To Richard A. Leo And Jon B. Gould, Samuel R. Gross, Barbara O'Brien
Reply To Richard A. Leo And Jon B. Gould, Samuel R. Gross, Barbara O'Brien
Articles
The following is a letter to the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law received from Professors Samuel Gross and Barbara O'Brien, responding to an article published in the Journal in Fall 2009 by Professors Richard Leo and Jon Gould. This letter is followed by a reply from Professors Leo and Gould. Professors Gross and O'Brien did not see the reply prior to the Journal going to press. As we have indicated before, we welcome letters to the Journal from readers on any topic covered in a prior issue. - Editors
The Abolition Of The Death Penalty In New Jersey And Its Impact On Our Nation's "Evolving Standards Of Decency", Aaron Scherzer
The Abolition Of The Death Penalty In New Jersey And Its Impact On Our Nation's "Evolving Standards Of Decency", Aaron Scherzer
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
In 2007, New Jersey became the first state in over forty years to abolish the death penalty legislatively. Twenty-five years earlier, in 1982, New Jersey had followed a state-level trend by reinstating its death penalty. However, during the twenty-five years between reinstatement and abolition, New Jersey did not conduct a single execution. Instead, the New Jersey Supreme Court reversed numerous death penalty cases and consistently narrowed the class of cases eligible for the death penalty. This Note posits that the supreme court's narrowing of eligible cases was one of the factors that prevented executions from taking place in New Jersey. …
Abolition In The U.S.A. By 2050: On Political Capital And Ordinary Acts Of Resistance, Bernard E. Harcourt
Abolition In The U.S.A. By 2050: On Political Capital And Ordinary Acts Of Resistance, Bernard E. Harcourt
Faculty Scholarship
The United States, like the larger international community, likely will tend toward greater abolition of the death penalty during the first half of the twenty-first century. A handful of individual states – states that have historically carried out few or no executions – probably will abolish capital punishment over the next twenty years, which will create political momentum and ultimately a federal constitutional ban on capital punishment in the United States. It is entirely reasonable to expect that, by the mid-twenty-first century, capital punishment will have the same status internationally as torture: an outlier practice, prohibited by international agreements and …
Pay Now, Execute Later: Why Counties Should Be Required To Post A Bond To Seek The Death Penalty, Adam M. Gershowitz
Pay Now, Execute Later: Why Counties Should Be Required To Post A Bond To Seek The Death Penalty, Adam M. Gershowitz
University of Richmond Law Review
No abstract provided.
What They Say At The End: Capital Victims' Families And The Press, Samuel R. Gross, Daniel J. Matheson
What They Say At The End: Capital Victims' Families And The Press, Samuel R. Gross, Daniel J. Matheson
Articles
Perhaps the most common complaint by American crime victims and their families is that they are ignored-by the police, by the prosecutors, by the courts and by the press. However true that may be for capital cases in general, there is at least one consistent exception: the great majority of newspaper accounts of executions include at least some description of the reactions of the victims' families and of any surviving victims. It seems to have become an item on the checklist, part of the "who, what, where, when, why, and how" of execution stories. When no family members are available, …
Lethal Elections: Gubernatorial Politics And The Timing Of Executions, Jeffrey D. Kubik, John R. Moran
Lethal Elections: Gubernatorial Politics And The Timing Of Executions, Jeffrey D. Kubik, John R. Moran
Center for Policy Research
We document the existence of a gubernatorial election cycle in state executions, suggesting that election year political considerations play a role in determining the timing of executions. Our analysis indicates that states are approximately 25 percent more likely to conduct executions in gubernatorial election years than in other years. We also find that elections have a larger effect on the probability that an African American defendant will be executed in a given year than on the probability that a white defendant will be executed, and that the overall effect of elections is largest in the South. These findings raise concerns …
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
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
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 …
Revenge For The Condemned, Sara Sun Beale, Paul H. Haagen
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
The Romance Of Revenge: An Alternative History Of Jeffrey Dahmer's Trial, Samuel R. Gross
The Romance Of Revenge: An Alternative History Of Jeffrey Dahmer's Trial, Samuel R. Gross
Articles
On Feb. 17, 1992, Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced to fifteen consecutive terms of life imprisonment for killing and dismembering fifteen young men and boys. Dahmer had been arrested six months earlier, on July 22, 1991. On Jan. 13 he pled guilty to the fifteen murder counts against him, leaving open only the issue of his sanity. Jury selection began two weeks later, and the trial proper started on Jan. 30. The jury heard two weeks of horrifying testimony about murder, mutilation and necrophilia; they deliberated for five hours before finding that Dahmer was sane when he committed thos crimes. After …
Note, The Death Penalty In Late Imperial, Modern, And Post-Tiananmen China, Alan W. Lepp
Note, The Death Penalty In Late Imperial, Modern, And Post-Tiananmen China, Alan W. Lepp
Michigan Journal of International Law
This paper seeks to explore the crucial determinants that shape the Chinese legal system's use of the death penalty. Why have the Chinese relied so heavily on execution as a form of sentencing? What factors and conditions account for the major changes in the frequency of China's use of the death penalty? What indigenous traditions are reflected in China's implementation of the death penalty? In order to inquire into the role and function of the legal system in affecting the severity of criminal punishment in China, this study will focus on only those death sentences carried out by the state …
Preliminary Screening Of Prosecutorial Access To Death Qualified Juries: A Missing Constitutional Link, F. Thomas Schornhorst
Preliminary Screening Of Prosecutorial Access To Death Qualified Juries: A Missing Constitutional Link, F. Thomas Schornhorst
Indiana Law Journal
No abstract provided.
The Trials Of Israel Lipski, Blaine G. Renfert
The Trials Of Israel Lipski, Blaine G. Renfert
Michigan Law Review
A Review of The Trials of Israel Lipski by Martin L. Friedland
The Deterrent Effect Of The Death Penalty For Murder In Ohio: A Time-Series Analysis, William C. Bailey
The Deterrent Effect Of The Death Penalty For Murder In Ohio: A Time-Series Analysis, William C. Bailey
Cleveland State Law Review
One thing is abundantly clear from the analysis reported in this article: if Ohio is to reinstate capital punishment, its justification will have to be based upon grounds other than the deterrent effect of the death penalty for murder. Notwithstanding the opinion of some members of the United States Supreme Court, and possibly a majority of the Ohio House and Senate, the present analysis of Ohio's experience with capital punishment provides no justification for reinstating the death penalty as an effective means of dealing with the state's murder problem.
The Reincarnation Of The Death Penalty: Is It Possible?, Yale Kamisar
The Reincarnation Of The Death Penalty: Is It Possible?, Yale Kamisar
Articles
Fifty years ago Clarence Darrow, probably the greatest criminal defense lawyer in American history and a leading opponent of capital punishment, observed: The question of capital punishment has been the subject of endless discussion and will probably never be settled so long as men believe in punishment. Some states have abolished and then reinstated it; some have enjoyed capital punishment for long periods of time and finally prohibited the use of it. The reasons why it cannot be settled are plain. There is first of all no agreement as to the objects of punishment. Next there is no way to …
Insurance - Execution For A Criminal Offense, Herman J. Bloom
Insurance - Execution For A Criminal Offense, Herman J. Bloom
Michigan Law Review
The insured was convicted and legally executed for the crime of rape. The beneficiary sued on a life insurance policy which contained no express exemption from liability in the event of death resulting from the legal execution of the insured. The court held that the beneficiary was entitled to recover under the public policy as declared in the constitutional provision against corruption of blood and forfeiture of estate. Progressive Life Insurance Co. v. Dean, (Ark. 1936) 97 S. W. (2d) 62.