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In Defense Of Federalism: The Need For A Federal Institutional Defender Of State Interests, Kory A. Atkinson

Northern Illinois University Law Review

In Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584 (2002), the United States Supreme Court struck down the state of Arizona's death penalty procedure as violative of the Sixth Amendment's right to trial by jury. The Ring case is noteworthy because the Supreme Court upheld the identical procedure under the same constitutional provision twelve years earlier in Walton v. Arizona, 497 U.S. 639 (1990). The Ring case raises a serious constitutional issue because the high Court reaffirmed its decision upholding Arizona's death penalty procedure twice during those twelve years. The issue is this: what recourse does the state of Arizona have against …