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Proportionality Skepticism In A Red State, Lauren Sudeall
Proportionality Skepticism In A Red State, Lauren Sudeall
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
As someone who lives in a red state and has practiced capital defense in Georgia and Alabama, my view for some time has been that the death penalty is not going anywhere any time soon. And while the dominant message from legal experts and commentators in recent years has been that the death penalty is on the decline,' the results of this past election might suggest otherwise. The three referenda regarding capital punishment on the 2016 ballot - in California, Nebraska, and Oklahoma - were all resolved in favor of the death penalty. These votes could be taken to signal …
An Empirical Assessment Of Georgia's Beyond A Reasonable Doubt, Lauren Sudeall
An Empirical Assessment Of Georgia's Beyond A Reasonable Doubt, Lauren Sudeall
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
In Atkins v. Virginia, the Supreme Court held that execution of people with intellectual disabilities violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. In doing so, the Court explicitly left to the states the question of which procedures would be used to identify such defendants as exempt from the death penalty. More than a decade before Atkins, Georgia was the first state to bar execution of people with intellectual disability. Yet, of the states that continue to impose the death penalty as a punishment for capital murder, Georgia is the only state that requires capital defendants to prove …