Law Commons^™

Too Ill To Be Killed: Mental And Physical Competency To Be Executed Pursuant To The Death Penalty, Linda A. Malone

Faculty Publications

Mentally ill individuals are being housed in prisons and jails throughout the country. Due to decreased funding and overpopulation of correctional facilities, individuals with pre-existing illnesses, as well as others who develop illnesses, are in severe need of mental health services and punished for their ailments through the use of solitary confinement, long prison sentences, and lack of care. The stress created by such conditions is amplified for mentally ill prisoners who are awaiting execution or the dismissal of their death row sentences. These individuals must show that they are competent to stand trial, exhibit the mental state required for …

Bucklew V. Precythe : Brief Of Arizona Voice For Crime Victims, Inc., And Melissa Sanders As Amici Curiae In Support Of Respondents, Paul Cassell, Allyson N. Ho, Daniel Nowicki, Daniel Chen

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

This amicus brief in Bucklew v. Precythe discusses how undue delay in capital cases can harm crime victims’ families. After reviewing the facts of the cases, the brief draws on the available scholarship to show how extended delays in criminal cases – and particularly death penalty cases – can compound the harms and exacerbate the trauma that victims’ families suffer. The brief concludes that the important interests of victims should be vindicated by affirming the judgment reached below.

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 …

Should Death Be So Different?: Sentencing Purposes And Capital Jury Decisions In An Era Of Smart On Crime Sentencing Reform, Jelani Jefferson Exum

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

We are in an era of “Smart on Crime” sentencing reform. Several states and the federal government have made major changes to their sentencing policies—from reducing the incarceration of low-level, nonviolent drug offenders to the use of evidence-based sentencing to focus the most severe punishments on those who are at the greatest risk of recidivism. Often, today’s reform efforts are spoken about in terms of being fiscally responsible while still controlling crime. Though such reform efforts do not explicitly acknowledge purposes of punishment—such as retribution, incapacitation, rehabilitation, or deterrence—an undercurrent running through all of these reforms is an effort …

Cruel Techniques, Unusual Secrets, William W. Berry, Meghan J. Ryan

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

In the recent case of Glossip v. Gross, the Supreme Court denied a death row petitioner’s challenge to Oklahoma’s lethal injection protocol. An important part of Justice Alito’s majority opinion highlighted the existence of a relationship between the constitutionality of a punishment and the requirement of a constitutional technique available to administer the punishment.

Far from foreclosing future challenges, this principle ironically highlights the failure of the Court to describe the relationship under the Eighth Amendment between three distinct categories of punishment: (1) the type of punishment imposed by the court — i.e., death penalty, life without parole, life with …

The Death Knell For The Death Penalty And The Significance Of Global Realism To Its Abolition From Glossip V. Gross To Brumfield V. Cain, Linda A. Malone

Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court’s jurisprudence regarding the death penalty, whether or not cruel, has most certainly been unusual in the annals of criminal punishment. In the short span of four years, the Court foreclosed and then reopened this form of punishment in Furman v. Georgia and Gregg v. Georgia. One year later the Court would categorically exclude the punishment for the rape of an adult. Five years later the Court would again preclude the punishment, for any defendant convicted of felony-murder who did not participate or share in the homicidal act or intent. In 1986 the Court would struggle with …

Post-Trial Pleas Bargaining In Capital Cases: Using Conditional Commutations To Remove Weak Cases From Death Row, Adam M. Gershowitz

Faculty Publications

Plea bargaining accounts for over ninety percent of criminal convictions and it dominates the American criminal justice system. Yet, once a defendant is convicted, bargaining almost completely disappears from the system. Even though years of litigation are on the horizon, there is nearly no bargaining in the appellate and habeas corpus process. There are two reasons for this. First, prosecutors and courts typically lack the power to alter a sentence that has already been imposed. Second, even if prosecutors had the authority to negotiate following a conviction, they would have little incentive to do so. Affirmance rates in ordinary criminal …

Ring Around The Jury: Reviewing Florida's Capital Sentencing Framework In Hurst V. Florida, Richard Guyer

Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy Sidebar

This commentary discusses Hurst v. Florida, a case in which the Supreme court will review Florida's death sentencing scheme to determine whether it violates the Sixth of Eighth Amendments. The author argues that Florida's capital sentencing framework violates the Sixth Amendment. A jury, rather than a judge, better reflects society's moral views, which are critical to weigh when deciding whether to impose the death penalty.

The Inequality Of America's Death Penalty: A Crossroads For Capital Punishment At The Intersection Of The Eighth And Fourteenth Amendments, John Bessler

All Faculty Scholarship

We live in a divided society, from gated communities to cell blocks congested with disproportionate numbers of young African-American men. There are rich and poor, privileged and homeless, Democrats and Republicans, wealthy zip codes and stubbornly impoverished ones. There are committed "Black Lives Matter" protesters, and there are those who—invoking "Blue Lives Matter" demonstrate in support of America‘s hardworking police officers. In her new article, "Matters of Strata: Race, Gender, and Class Structures in Capital Cases," George Washington University law professor Phyllis Goldfarb highlights the stratification of our society and offers a compelling critique of America‘s death penalty regime—one, she …

Section 6: Criminal, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

Death As A Bargaining Chip: Plea Bargaining And The Future Of Virginia's Death Penalty, John G. Douglass

Law Faculty Publications

Virginia now averages less than a single death sentence each year, a far cry from its not-too-distant history as the second most active death penalty state in the nation. The numbers alone tempt us to forecast the death of Virginia's death penalty: a death by disuse. But those numbers leave much of the story untold. The plummeting number of death sentences is only the diminishing tip of a larger, more stable iceberg of capital case litigation. That iceberg is melting very slowly, if at all.

Rethinking The Timing Of Capital Clemency, Adam M. Gershowitz

Faculty Publications

This Article reviews every capital clemency over the last four decades. It demonstrates that in the majority of cases, the reason for commutation was known at the conclusion of direct appeals—years or even decades before the habeas process ended. Yet when governors or pardon boards actually commuted the death sentences, they typically waited until the eve of execution, with only days or hours to spare. Leaving clemency until the last minute sometimes leads to many years of unnecessary state and federal habeas corpus litigation, and this Article documents nearly 300 years of wasted habeas corpus review. Additionally, last-minute commutations harm …

An Ntsb For Capital Punishment, Adam M. Gershowitz

Faculty Publications

When a fatal traffic accident happens, we expect the local police and prosecutors to handle the investigation and criminal charges. When afatal airplane crash occurs, however, we turn instead to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). The reason is that air crashes are complicated and the NTSB has vast expertise. Without that expertise, investigations falter. We need look no further than the mess made by Malaysian authorities in the search for Flight 370 to see the importance of expertise in handling complicated investigations and processes. It is easy to point to a similar series of mistakes by local prosecutors and …

Section 6: Criminal, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

Furman, After Four Decades, J. Thomas Sullivan

Faculty Scholarship

Problems of racial discrimination in the imposition of capital sentences, disclosure of misconduct by prosecutors and police, inconsistency in the quality of defense afforded capital defendants, exoneration of death row inmates due to newly available DNA testing, and, most recently, controversies surrounding the potential for cruelty in the execution process itself continue to complicate views about the morality, legality, and practicality of reliance on capital punishment to address even the most heinous of homicide offenses. Despite repeated efforts by the Supreme Court to craft a capital sentencing framework that ensures that death sentences be imposed fairly in light of the …

Capital Punishment, Cultural Competency, And Litigating Intellectual Disability, Jeffrey Omar Usman

Law Faculty Scholarship

In an illuminating 2008 article in the Hofstra Law Review, Scharlette Holdman and Christopher Seeds helped to bring the concept of culturally competency much needed attention in the field of capital litigation. They presented a view of cultural competency as “at root a collection of knowledge, abilities, and skills.” Because cultural competency allows for translation across cultures, Holdman and Seeds took the position that this skill is a prerequisite for a capital defense attorney who is representing a client of a different ethnicity, nationality, social group, or subgroup in the mitigation phase of a capital case. While cultural competency discourse …

Is Texas Tough On Crime But Soft On Criminal Procedure?, Adam M. Gershowitz

Faculty Publications

Although Texas is well known for imposing tough punishments on convicted defendants, it is surprisingly generous in affording criminal procedure protections. In a variety of areas, including search and seizure rules, confession requirements, the availability of bail, prosecutorial discovery obligations, and jury trial guarantees, Texas affords protections vastly in excess of what is required by the United States Constitution. Even more shocking, these criminal procedure guarantees come almost entirely from Texas statutes approved by the legislature, not activist rules imposed by judges. This Article explores Texas's reputation as a tough-on-crime state and the seeming inconsistency between Texas being tough on …

Judge's Ill-Timed Ruling Invites Irrationality In Public's Views About Capital Punishment, Adam M. Gershowitz

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Statewide Capital Punishment: The Case For Eliminating Counties’ Role In The Death Penalty, Adam M. Gershowitz

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Death Penalty On Deathbed, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

Popular Media

Capital punishment involves killing helpless prisoners. It is uncivilized. It is wrong for the same reasons torture is wrong.

Get In The Game Or Get Out Of The Way: Fixing The Politics Of Death, Adam M. Gershowitz

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Geronimo Bank Murders: A Gay Tragedy, Joan W. Howarth

Scholarly Works

The Geronimo Bank Murders examines the intersection of homosexuality and capital punishment through the lenses of cultural criticism, queer theory, and legal analysis. The paper's subject is Jay Neill, who was executed in 2002 for murdering four people in a gruesome Geronimo, Oklahoma bank robbery in 1984, and for being gay. Current capital punishment doctrine permits, and perhaps even encourages, such results. The Geronimo Bank Murders recasts Neill's story, privileging homosexuality and gender, and uses that account to make three points, each based in law, culture, and politics. First, as a matter of legal doctrine, recognizing the error in using …

The Death Penalty For Child Rape: Why Texas May Help Louisiana, Adam M. Gershowitz

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Pay Now, Execute Later: Why Counties Should Be Required To Post A Bond To Seek The Death Penalty, Adam M. Gershowitz

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Imposing A Cap On Capital Punishment, Adam M. Gershowitz

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Reforming Federal Death Penalty Procedures: Four Modest Proposals To Improve The Administration Of The Ultimate Penalty, Robert E. Steinbuch

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Capital Punishment In The United States, And Beyond, Paul Marcus

Faculty Publications

This article explores the controversial topic of capital punishment, with a particular focus on its longstanding application in the United States. The use of the death penalty in the US has been the subject of much criticism both domestically and internationally. The numerous concerns addressed in this article relate to the morality of the punishment, its effectiveness, the uneven application of the penalty, and procedural problems. The US Supreme Court has confirmed the constitutionality of capital punishment while striking down particular uses of the death penalty. The US is not, however, alone in executing convicted defendants. Capital punishment is still …

But Did They Listen? The New Jersey Death Penalty Commission's Exercise In Abolitionism: A Detailed Reply, Robert Blecker

Articles & Chapters

Based upon the nearly unanimous recommendation of its Death Penalty Study Commission, New Jersey seems poised to become the first state in the modern era to legislatively abolish capital punishment and substitute life without parole. Hailed nationally and internationally as thoughtful and fair, the Commission's final report consistently distorts the evidence, displays an anti-retributive bias, and worst of all, ignores basic well-established perspectives framing the great debate, avoiding at all costs the question of justice.

Unbalanced and biased, the Commission does not even consider any alternative to abolition or standing pat. This essay directly engages the Report on its findings …

Constitutional Right Against Excessive Punishment, The, Youngjae Lee

Faculty Scholarship

When is a death sentence, a sentence of imprisonment, or a fine so "excessive" or "disproportionate" in relation to the crime for which it is imposed that it violates the Eighth Amendment? Despite the urgings of various commentators and the Supreme Court's own repeated, albeit uncertain, gestures in the direction of proportionality regulation by the judiciary, the Court's answer to this question within the past few decades is a body of law that is messy and complex, yet largely meaningless as a constraint. In the core of this ineffectual and incoherent proportionality jurisprudence lies a conceptual confusion over the meaning …

Section 1: Moot Court, Roper V. Simmons, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.