Law Commons^™

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 …

An Introduction To Federal Habeas Corpus Practice And Procedure, John H. Blume, David P. Voisin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

For many prisoners, federal habeas corpus stands as the last opportunity to challenge the constitutionality of their convictions or sentences. Simply navigating through the procedural maze of habeas practice, however, is a formidable task for inmates proceeding pro se and prisoners represented by counsel. Tragically, those who have had a fundamentally unfair trial, and even those who are innocent, may easily stumble. Since 1867, habeas corpus, or the Great Writ, has been available to state prisoners "in all cases where any person may be restrained of his or her liberty in violation of the constitution, or of any treaty or …

How Juries Decide Death: The Contributions Of The Capital Jury Project, Valerie P. Hans

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In 1988 I concluded a review of what was then known about capital jury decision-making with the following observations: “[T]he penalty phase presents significant incongruities. The jurors are charged with representing the community's judgment, yet the voir dire and challenge processes have eliminated significant segments of the public from the jury. Jurors have been influenced by preceding events during voir dire questioning and the trial in pivotal ways, yet they are instructed to focus only on aggravating and mitigating evidence. They are told to ignore their emotions in perhaps one of the most emotionally charged decisions they will ever make, …

Deadly Confusion: Juror Instructions In Capital Cases, Theodore Eisenberg, Martin T. Wells

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

A fatal mistake. A defendant is sentenced to die because the jury was misinformed about the law. The justice system should be designed to prevent such a tragic error. Yet our interviews with jurors who served in South Carolina capital cases indicate that this nightmare is a reality.

Although our data are limited to South Carolina, the question whether jurors are adequately instructed in capital cases is of national concern. For example, the issue whether jurors should be more fully informed about the alternative to a death sentence has arisen in other states. And the question whether jurors understand the …

Death-Innocence And The Law Of Habeas Corpus, Stephen P. Garvey

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The legal space between a sentence of death and the execution chamber is occupied by an intricate network of procedural rules. On average, it currently takes between six and seven years to traverse this space, but this interval is expected to shrink. Federal habeas corpus, an important part of this space, is studded more and more with procedural obstacles that bar the federal courts from entertaining the merits of a defendant's claims. By design, these barriers foreclose federal review in order to protect the state's interests in the finality of its criminal convictions, as well as to display healthy respect …

Sentencing The Mentally Retarded To Death: An Eighth Amendment Analysis, John H. Blume, David Bruck

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Today, on death rows across the United States, sit a number of men with the minds of children. These people are mentally retarded. Typical of these individuals is Limmie Arthur, who currently is imprisoned at Central Correctional Institution in Columbia, South Carolina. Although Arthur is twenty-eight years old, all the mental health professionals who have evaluated him, including employees of the South Carolina Department of Corrections, agree he has the mental capacity of approximately a 10-year-old child. Arthur was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of a neighbor. At his first trial, his court appointed attorneys did not …

Black Innocence And The White Jury, Sheri Johnson

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Racial prejudice has come under increasingly close scrutiny during the past thirty years, yet its influence on the decisionmaking of criminal juries remains largely hidden from judicial and critical examination. In this Article, Professor Johnson takes a close look at this neglected area. She first sets forth a large body of social science research that reveals a widespread tendency among whites to convict black defendants in instances in which white defendants would be acquitted. Next, she argues that none of the existing techniques for eliminating the influence of racial bias on criminal trials adequately protects minority-race defendants. She contends that …