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The Role Of Executive Clemency In Modern Death Penalty Cases, Bruce Ledewitz, Scott Staples
The Role Of Executive Clemency In Modern Death Penalty Cases, Bruce Ledewitz, Scott Staples
University of Richmond Law Review
When a governor commutes a sentence of death, typically to one of life imprisonment either with an extended mandatory term or without possibility of parole, how is this action to be understood? As former Governor Pat Brown's book about his commutation decisions illustrates, in a period of widespread support for the death penalty, each commutation contains an appeal for popular support and understanding as to why the decision was made. Where the case for commutation cannot be made to the public's satisfaction, a governor is not likely to act.
Due Process In Death Penalty Commutations: Life, Liberty, And The Pursuit Of Clemency, Daniel T. Kobil
Due Process In Death Penalty Commutations: Life, Liberty, And The Pursuit Of Clemency, Daniel T. Kobil
University of Richmond Law Review
The idea of the last-minute reprieve granted by a distant, unknowable dispenser of mercy to a man condemned to death has a powerful hold on our imaginations. Fyodor Dostoevsky's eleventh hour pardon by the czar in many ways shaped his literary career. The scene of the haunted Death Row prisoner who awaits word from the governor as a ticking clock punctuates his final hours is a stock vignette of Hollywood crime films. Anyone who has ever seized on the slimmest hope, whose fate has been committed to the hands of another - virtually all of us - can identify with …