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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Eighth Amendment Power To Discriminate, Kathryn E. Miller
The Eighth Amendment Power To Discriminate, Kathryn E. Miller
Faculty Articles
For the last half-century, Supreme Court doctrine has required that capital jurors consider facts and characteristics particular to individual defendants when determining their sentences. While liberal justices have long touted this individualized sentencing requirement as a safeguard against unfair death sentences, in practice the results have been disappointing. The expansive discretion that the requirement confers on overwhelmingly White juries has resulted in outcomes that are just as arbitrary and racially discriminatory as those that existed in the years before the temporary abolition of the death penalty in Furman v. Georgia.' After decades of attempting to eliminate the requirement, conservative justices …
Preventing The Execution Of The Innocent: Testimony Before The Senate Judiciary Committee, Barry C. Scheck
Preventing The Execution Of The Innocent: Testimony Before The Senate Judiciary Committee, Barry C. Scheck
Faculty Articles
No abstract provided.
Rethinking The Penalty Phase, Kyron Huigens
Rethinking The Penalty Phase, Kyron Huigens
Faculty Articles
This article argues that the chaos of the US Supreme Court’s death penalty jurisprudence can be sorted with the use of a single point of clarification. That jurisprudence uses the term “culpability” – and similar terms, such as desert, responsibility, and blameworthiness – without regard to a critical ambiguity. We use “culpability” to refer to fault in wrongdoing, as reflected in “culpability elements” such as purpose or recklessness. We also use culpability to refer to eligibility for punishment, which is at issue in the defenses of insanity or minority. Death sentencing is structured around aggravating and mitigating factors, but aggravation …