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Full-Text Articles in Law
Localism And Capital Punishment, Stephen F. Smith
Localism And Capital Punishment, Stephen F. Smith
Journal Articles
Professor Adam Gershowitz presents an interesting proposal to transfer from localities to states the power to enforce the death penalty. In his view, state-level enforcement would result in a more rationally applied death penalty because states would be much more likely to make capital charging decisions based on desert, without the distorting influence of the severe resource constraints applicable to all but the wealthiest of localities. As well conceived as Professor Gershowitz’s proposal is, however, I remain skeptical that statewide enforcement of the death penalty would be preferable to continued local enforcement. First, Professor Gershowitz underestimates the benefits of localism …
Neuroimaging And The "Complexity" Of Capital Punishment, O. Carter Snead
Neuroimaging And The "Complexity" Of Capital Punishment, O. Carter Snead
Journal Articles
The growing use of brain imaging technology to explore the causes of morally, socially, and legally relevant behavior is the subject of much discussion and controversy in both scholarly and popular circles. From the efforts of cognitive neuroscientists in the courtroom and the public square, the contours of a project to transform capital sentencing both in principle and in practice have emerged. In the short term, these scientists seek to play a role in the process of capital sentencing by serving as mitigation experts for defendants, invoking neuroimaging research on the roots of criminal violence to support their arguments. Over …
Depravity Thrice Removed: Using The 'Heinous, Cruel, Or Depraved' Factor To Aggravate Convictions Of Nontriggermen Accomplices In Capital Cases, Richard W. Garnett
Depravity Thrice Removed: Using The 'Heinous, Cruel, Or Depraved' Factor To Aggravate Convictions Of Nontriggermen Accomplices In Capital Cases, Richard W. Garnett
Journal Articles
In Tison v. Arizona, the Tison brothers' appeal from their death sentences, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a nontriggerman convicted of first-degree felony murder could constitutionally be executed if he was a major participant in the crime and if he exhibited a reckless disregard for human life. This decision blurred the bright-line rule announced just five years earlier in Enmund v. Florida, which limited the death penalty to defendants who kill, attempt to kill, or at least intend to kill. Tison thus dramatically increased the exposure of nontriggermen to capital punishment, undercutting the death penalty's limited purpose of identifying …