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Commonwealth Of Kentucky V. William P. King, Et Al. (Sc 1744), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and scans (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 1744. Record of trial held in Simpson County, Kentucky of William P. King, Charles Smith, Abraham Owen and seven others for the murder of Harvey King. Defendants and victim had all participated in a previous train robbery. Also includes a photocopy of The Life of King and Owen, Written by Themselves, Revised and Prepared by Rev. L. M. Horn, Explaining the Railroad Robbery and Murder of Harvey King (Louisville, Ky., 1867); and “‘A High Handed Outrage:’ The King & Owens Railroad Robbery of 1866,” a paper written …

The Emerging Death Penalty Jurisprudence Of The Roberts Court, Kenneth C. Haas

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “In 1976, four years after finding the nation’s death penalty laws to be constitutionally flawed, the U.S. Supreme Court established the parameters of modern American death penalty jurisprudence. Since then the Court has gone through several phases. The Court proceeded cautiously from 1977 to 1982, limiting the death penalty to those who committed murder in a manner deemed especially heinous and despicable by judges and juries, requiring even-handedness and consistency in capital sentencing, and insisting that sentencing authorities examine the individual characteristics of each offender and the particular circumstances of his crime. From 1983 to 2001, however, the Court …

Death Is Unconstitutional: How Capital Punishment Became Illegal In America—A Future History, Jur. Eric Engle Ph.D.

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “A constitution is an organic fact of every state: it is a part of the being of the state. People, like the state, also have a constitution—a character. Just as people change over time, so do states. But just as there are natural limits on what people can or cannot become, so there are natural limits on what the state can and cannot fairly do. No man, nor any group of men, ex ante may justly take the life of another person, though perhaps their killing may be excused (or forgiven) ex post.”

"The death of Death would surely …

The Abolitionist’S Dilemma: Establishing The Standards For The Evolving Standards Of Decency, Dwight Aarons

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “For those who believe that the death penalty should be declared unconstitutional and that the U.S. Supreme Court is the institution that should make that declaration, these are interesting times. On one hand, the Rehnquist Court, which had previously not been a reliable friend of criminal defendants, in 2002, ruled that it was unconstitutional to execute mentally retarded defendants, and in 2005 it came to the same conclusion as to defendants who committed a capital crime before his or her eighteenth birthday. On the other hand, close scrutiny of these opinions evidences that the Court all but casts aside …

Engaging Capital Emotions, Douglas A. Berman, Stephanos Bibas

All Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court, in Kennedy v. Louisiana, is about to decide whether the Eighth Amendment forbids capital punishment for child rape. Commentators are aghast, viewing this as a vengeful recrudescence of emotion clouding sober, rational criminal justice policy. To their minds, emotion is distracting. To ours, however, emotion is central to understand the death penalty. Descriptively, emotions help to explain many features of our death-penalty jurisprudence. Normatively, emotions are central to why we punish, and denying or squelching them risks prompting vigilantism and other unhealthy outlets for this normal human reaction. The emotional case for the death penalty for child …