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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Innocence Revolution And Our "Evolving Standards Of Decency" In Death Penalty Jurisprudence, Mark A. Godsey, Thomas Pulley
The Innocence Revolution And Our "Evolving Standards Of Decency" In Death Penalty Jurisprudence, Mark A. Godsey, Thomas Pulley
Faculty Articles and Other Publications
One cannot adequately consider whether the current administration of the death penalty in America measures up to modern notions of decency without doing so in light of the revolution that has occurred over the past decade in the American criminal-justice system - the Innocence Revolution. Up through the 1990s, as a society, we believed our criminal-justice system was highly accurate, but the recent advent of DNA testing and other advanced technologies has demonstrated the naiveté of such beliefs. This article will discuss the history of the Innocence Revolution, examine the impact of that revolution on our society, and ask: "What …
Living "Off-Stage": The Semiotic Potential Of Narrative In Paula Johnson's Inner Lives: Voices Of African-American Women In Prison, Emily Houh
Faculty Articles and Other Publications
The hopelessness and hopefulness in the voices of the women profiled in Inner Lives exemplify a semiotic response to the racism that permeates the criminal justice and prison systems in the United States. This article asks how, in the telling of their stories and living of their lives, the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women profiled in the book engage in a working semiotics. The extraordinary thing about the narratives collected by Johnson is that they describe how women who have been placed at the very bottom of the American social consciousness are successfully constructing their own image-repertoires rather than accepting …