Law Commons^™

Capital Defense Lawyers: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, Sean O'Brien

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

The Challenge Of Implementing Atkins V. Virginia: How Legislatures And Courts Can Promote Accurate Assessments And Adjudications Of Mental Retardation In Death Penalty Cases, Richard J. Bonnie, Katherine Gustafson

University of Richmond Law Review

Our goal in this paper is to assist state courts and legislatures as they try to carry out the task that Atkins requires of them promoting fairness and accuracy in the assessment and adjudication of mental retardation. After addressing the definition ofmental retardation in Part I, we focus on its assessment in Parts II and III, highlighting several key requirements of a scientifi-cally and clinically adequate assessment.

Part II addresses the assessment of deficits in intellectual functioning, particularly on the measurement of intelligence as represented by an intelligence quotient. Appropriate IQ tests must be used, and the scores must be …

The Legal, Political, And Social Implications Of The Death Penalty, Hon. William W. Wilkins

University of Richmond Law Review

A recent national poll found that sixty-five percent of Americans favor the death penalty. That's down from eighty percent ten years ago. Moreover, the total favoring the death penalty dropped to fifty percent when those polled were asked to assume that thealternative to the death penalty was life in prison with no chance of parole. And, the number of death sentences imposed in the United States during the last few years has dropped to the lowest level since capital punishment was reinstated thirty years ago. Thus, it would seem that our society's attitude toward capital punishment is changing. What was …

The Lethal Injection Quandary: How Medicine Has Dismantled The Death Penalty, Deborah W. Denno

Fordham Law Review

On February 20, 2006, Michael Morales was hours away from execution in California when two anesthesiologists declined to participate in his lethal injection procedure, thereby halting all state executions. The events brought to the surface the long-running schism between law and medicine, raising the question of whether any beneficial connection between the professions ever existed in the execution context. History shows it seldom did. Decades of botched executions prove it. This Article examines how states ended up with such constitutionally vulnerable lethal injection procedures, suggesting that physician participation in executions, though looked upon with disdain, is more prevalent--and perhaps more …

Executioner Identities: Toward Recognizing A Right To Know Who Is Hiding Beneath The Hood, Ellyde Roko

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.