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Full-Text Articles in Law
Death Penalty Drugs And The International Moral Marketplace, James Gibson, Corinna Barrett Lain
Death Penalty Drugs And The International Moral Marketplace, James Gibson, Corinna Barrett Lain
Law Faculty Publications
Across the country, executions have become increasingly problematic as states have found it more and more difficult to procure the drugs they need for lethal injection.At first blush, the drug shortage appears to be the result of pharmaceutical industry norms; companies that make drugs for healing (mostly in Europe) have refused to be merchants of death. But closer inspection reveals that European governments are the true change agents here. For decades, those governments have tried-and failed-to promote abolition of the death penalty through traditional instruments of international law. Turns out that the best way to export their abolitionist norms was …
Reply To Richard A. Leo And Jon B. Gould, Samuel R. Gross, Barbara O'Brien
Reply To Richard A. Leo And Jon B. Gould, Samuel R. Gross, Barbara O'Brien
Articles
The following is a letter to the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law received from Professors Samuel Gross and Barbara O'Brien, responding to an article published in the Journal in Fall 2009 by Professors Richard Leo and Jon Gould. This letter is followed by a reply from Professors Leo and Gould. Professors Gross and O'Brien did not see the reply prior to the Journal going to press. As we have indicated before, we welcome letters to the Journal from readers on any topic covered in a prior issue. - Editors
Abolition In The U.S.A. By 2050: On Political Capital And Ordinary Acts Of Resistance, Bernard E. Harcourt
Abolition In The U.S.A. By 2050: On Political Capital And Ordinary Acts Of Resistance, Bernard E. Harcourt
Faculty Scholarship
The United States, like the larger international community, likely will tend toward greater abolition of the death penalty during the first half of the twenty-first century. A handful of individual states – states that have historically carried out few or no executions – probably will abolish capital punishment over the next twenty years, which will create political momentum and ultimately a federal constitutional ban on capital punishment in the United States. It is entirely reasonable to expect that, by the mid-twenty-first century, capital punishment will have the same status internationally as torture: an outlier practice, prohibited by international agreements and …
What They Say At The End: Capital Victims' Families And The Press, Samuel R. Gross, Daniel J. Matheson
What They Say At The End: Capital Victims' Families And The Press, Samuel R. Gross, Daniel J. Matheson
Articles
Perhaps the most common complaint by American crime victims and their families is that they are ignored-by the police, by the prosecutors, by the courts and by the press. However true that may be for capital cases in general, there is at least one consistent exception: the great majority of newspaper accounts of executions include at least some description of the reactions of the victims' families and of any surviving victims. It seems to have become an item on the checklist, part of the "who, what, where, when, why, and how" of execution stories. When no family members are available, …
Lethal Elections: Gubernatorial Politics And The Timing Of Executions, Jeffrey D. Kubik, John R. Moran
Lethal Elections: Gubernatorial Politics And The Timing Of Executions, Jeffrey D. Kubik, John R. Moran
Center for Policy Research
We document the existence of a gubernatorial election cycle in state executions, suggesting that election year political considerations play a role in determining the timing of executions. Our analysis indicates that states are approximately 25 percent more likely to conduct executions in gubernatorial election years than in other years. We also find that elections have a larger effect on the probability that an African American defendant will be executed in a given year than on the probability that a white defendant will be executed, and that the overall effect of elections is largest in the South. These findings raise concerns …
The Romance Of Revenge: An Alternative History Of Jeffrey Dahmer's Trial, Samuel R. Gross
The Romance Of Revenge: An Alternative History Of Jeffrey Dahmer's Trial, Samuel R. Gross
Articles
On Feb. 17, 1992, Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced to fifteen consecutive terms of life imprisonment for killing and dismembering fifteen young men and boys. Dahmer had been arrested six months earlier, on July 22, 1991. On Jan. 13 he pled guilty to the fifteen murder counts against him, leaving open only the issue of his sanity. Jury selection began two weeks later, and the trial proper started on Jan. 30. The jury heard two weeks of horrifying testimony about murder, mutilation and necrophilia; they deliberated for five hours before finding that Dahmer was sane when he committed thos crimes. After …
The Reincarnation Of The Death Penalty: Is It Possible?, Yale Kamisar
The Reincarnation Of The Death Penalty: Is It Possible?, Yale Kamisar
Articles
Fifty years ago Clarence Darrow, probably the greatest criminal defense lawyer in American history and a leading opponent of capital punishment, observed: The question of capital punishment has been the subject of endless discussion and will probably never be settled so long as men believe in punishment. Some states have abolished and then reinstated it; some have enjoyed capital punishment for long periods of time and finally prohibited the use of it. The reasons why it cannot be settled are plain. There is first of all no agreement as to the objects of punishment. Next there is no way to …