Law Commons^™

May I Hold On To My God As I Die?: An Analysis On A Death Row Inmate's Right To Spiritual Advisors Inside The Execution Chamber, Geysel M. Gómez Lozada

Lincoln Memorial University Law Review Archive

This article analyzes the first amendment right of condemned prisoners to have their spiritual advisor with them up to the point of execution. It dives into a brief yet relevant historical background of the death penalty in the United States. Then it analyzes the specific protections awarded to death penalty inmates up to the point of their executions through R.L.U.I.P.A. At its core, it compares and contrasts two recent decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court: Dunn v. Ray, 139 S. Ct. 661 (2019) and Murphy v. Collier, 139 S. Ct. 1111 (2019), in which the Court reached two different conclusions …

Effective Death Penalty Abolitionist Rhetoric: A Quantitative Analysis Of What Works, Michael Conklin

Lincoln Memorial University Law Review Archive

This essay reports the findings of a study designed to measure the effectiveness of anti-death penalty rhetoric at decreasing support for the practice. Demographic factors, such as gender and political affiliation, were also analyzed for potential causal relationships. The surprising results of this novel study will help inform abolitionist advocates as to the best practices for promoting their message. Furthermore, the findings invite future research into death penalty attitudes and advocacy.

Limiting The Deadly Impact Of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Ptsd): Offenders Suffering From Ptsd At The Time Of The Offense Should Be Excluded From The Death Penalty, Alexandria Patterson Tipton

Lincoln Memorial University Law Review Archive

The Constitution of the United States prohibits the infliction of “cruel and unusual punishments.” However, a consistently asked question is what constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. In 1958, the Supreme Court stated that “the basic concept underlying the Eighth Amendment is nothing less than the dignity of man,” and recognized that the “words of the [Eighth] Amendment are not precise, and that [the Court’s] scope is not static.” Thus, “[t]he Amendment must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” Accordingly, the constitutionality of the death penalty—specifically the implementation of it—depends …

The Difference Of One Vote Or One Day: Reviewing The Demographics Of Florida’S Death Row After Hurst V. Florida, Melanie Kalmanson

University of Miami Law Review

As the federal appeals court with jurisdiction over Florida and Alabama—two leaders in capital punishment in the United States—the Eleventh Circuit reviews several claims each year related to capital punishment. Florida is home to one of the largest death row populations in the country. Thus, understanding Florida’s capital sentencing scheme is important for understanding capital punishment nationwide.

This Article analyzes the empirical demographics of Florida’s death row population and reviews how defendants are sentenced to death and ultimately executed in Florida. The analysis reveals that although age is not a factor upon which murder/manslaughter defendants are discriminated against in the …

The Eighth Amendment Power To Discriminate, Kathryn E. Miller

Articles

For the last half-century, Supreme Court doctrine has required that capital jurors consider facts and characteristics particular to individual defendants when determining their sentences. While liberal justices have long touted this individualized sentencing requirement as a safeguard against unfair death sentences, in practice the results have been disappointing. The expansive discretion that the requirement confers on overwhelmingly White juries has resulted in outcomes that are just as arbitrary and racially discriminatory as those that existed in the years before the temporary abolition of the death penalty in Furman v. Georgia.' After decades of attempting to eliminate the requirement, conservative justices …

Examining Death Penalty Ballot Measures: A Review Of Austin Sarat’S The Death Penalty On The Ballot, Michael Conklin

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Sister Helen Prejean And The Death Penalty: Decades Of Fighting Capital Punishment, University Marketing And Communications, Helen Prejean

DePaul Download

Sister Helen Prejean has dedicated her life to opposing the death penalty after she witnessed an execution in her home state of Louisiana. Her efforts have sparked a national dialogue on capital punishment and she has helped shape the Catholic Church’s position on the topic. In 2011, she donated her personal archives to the university to help the DePaul community continue to learn from her work. On this episode of DePaul Download, Sister Helen talks about life’s work and what keeps her going.

The Problematic Nature Of Execution By Lethal Injection In The United States And People’S Republic Of China, Franchesca Fanucchi

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

The United States and the People’s Republic of China perceive the death penalty as a fundamental feature of the criminal justice system. Lethal injection procedures provide these countries with the humane disguise necessary to preserve capital punishment in an environment of evolving societal standards. However, this essay examines the highly problematic nature of execution by lethal injection due to numerous medical, procedural, and bureaucratic concerns often concealed from the public and press. The low-visibility nature of lethal injection in the United States and China has become troublesome, especially since it prevents public, academic, and medical evaluation on the procedure's humaneness …

Why Justice Kavanaugh Should Continue Justice Kennedy’S Death Penalty Legacy—Next Step: Expanding Juvenile Death Penalty Ban, Alli Katzen

University of Miami Law Review

As science and society both progress, Supreme Court rulings should reflect those changes. The national consensus has been gradually moving away from the use of the death penalty, particularly as applied to offenders between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. Research clarifies that the brain is not fully developed in the areas most directly linked to culpability until after this age range. The combination of these factors should compel the Court to raise the minimum age for death sentences, but the shifting bench presents unpredictability

Has Revenge Become A Justification To Legitimize The Death Penalty?, Jordan Ryan

Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy Sidebar

Revenge has played a role in criminal justice systems for thousands of years. From the Code of Hammurabi, to the Bible, to modern Supreme Court jurisprudence, revenge, or “getting even,” has been a consideration in how wrongdoers are punished, especially with respect to the imposition of the death penalty. Historically, revenge has not been viewed as a legitimate justification for punishment under American legal principles. However, in the past year, both the United States Supreme Court and the Department of Justice have signaled that revenge may well have a legitimate role in justifying the death penalty.

This Note will explore …

Evolving Standards Of Decency: A View Of 8th Amendment Jurisprudence And The Death Penalty, Jared Lockhart, Madeline Hill

Brigham Young University Prelaw Review

In July 1997, Kenneth Foster was indicted on capital murder charges

and sentenced to death even though he had only committed robbery.

3 On August 14, 1996, Kenneth Foster and his friends, Mauriceo

Brown, DeWayne Dillard, and Julius Steen, rented a car and

drove to downtown San Antonio, Texas. Later that night, Brown

suggested that the men rob a few people in order to make up for the

money they had lost while partying. After their second robbery that

evening, Foster did not want to continue breaking the law, according

to Dillard’s courtroom testimony four years later. Dismissing

his request, …

The Political Development Of Capital Punishment In The Modern Moroccan State, Mia Barr

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The modern Moroccan state seen today is very young. Having only been independent from France since 1956, the country has spent the last sixty-four years crafting its post-colonial statehood. What has emerged is a hybrid political system with powers split, however unequally, between the King and his inner circle, known as the makhzen, and the Parliament. Not only is the monarchy constitutional—meaning that its legitimacy is literally written into the primary governing document of Morocco, which had its last referendum in 2011—but it is also self-sustaining and self-legitimizing, for the monarchy uses its constitutional powers to grant itself further powers …

Supreme Court Clerks And The Death Penalty, Matthew Tokson

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

This Essay is part of GW's Supreme Court Clerks at 100 symposium.

The Supreme Court is involved, directly or otherwise, with virtually every execution carried out in the United States. Most executions are appealed to the Court, and inmates commonly request a stay of execution a few days or hours before their scheduled death. The clerks review these requests and recommend a ruling.

A few days after I arrived at the Court, I got my first death penalty assignment. As the date drew near, the defendant asked the Court to stay his execution. I opened his file and began to …

The Central Park Five As “Discrete And Insular” Minorities Under The Equal Protection Clause: The Evolution Of The Right To Counsel For Wrongfully Convicted Minors, Todd K. Beharry

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Nondelegating Death, Alexandra L. Klein

Scholarly Articles

Most states’ method of execution statutes afford broad discretion to executive agencies to create execution protocols. Inmates have challenged this discretion, arguing that these statutes unconstitutionally delegate legislative power to executive agencies, violating the state’s nondelegation and separation of powers doctrines. State courts routinely use the nondelegation doctrine, in contrast to the doctrine’s historic disfavor in federal courts. Despite its uncertain status, the nondelegation doctrine is a useful analytical tool to examine decision-making in capital punishment.

This Article critically evaluates responsibility for administering capital punishment through the lens of nondelegation. It analyzes state court decisions upholding broad legislative delegations to …

“A World Of Steel-Eyed Death”: An Empirical Evaluation Of The Failure Of The Strickland Standard To Ensure Adequate Counsel To Defendants With Mental Disabilities Facing The Death Penalty, Michael L. Perlin, Talia Roitberg Harmon, Sarah Chatt

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

First, we discuss the background of the development of counsel adequacy in death penalty cases. Next, we look carefully at Strickland, and the subsequent Supreme Court cases that appear—on the surface—to bolster it in this context. We then consider multiple jurisprudential filters that we believe must be taken seriously if this area of the law is to be given any authentic meaning. Next, we will examine and interpret the data that we have developed. Finally, we will look at this entire area of law through the filter of therapeutic jurisprudence, and then explain why and how the charade of “adequacy …

Replacing Death With Life? The Rise Of Lwop In The Context Of Abolitionist Campaigns In The United States, Michelle Miao

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

On the basis of fifty-four elite interviews[1] with legislators, judges, attorneys, and civil society advocates as well as a state-by-state data survey, this Article examines the complex linkage between the two major penal trends in American society during the past decades: a declining use of capital punishment across the United States and a growing population of prisoners serving “life without the possibility of parole” or “LWOP” sentences. The main contribution of the research is threefold. First, the research proposes to redefine the boundary between life and death in relation to penal discourses regarding the death penalty and LWOP. LWOP …

Urge To Reform Life Without Parole So Nonviolent Addict Offenders Never Serve Lifetime Behind Bars, Johanna Poremba

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reimagining The Death Penalty: Targeting Christians, Conservatives, Spearit

Articles

This Article is an interdisciplinary response to an entrenched legal and cultural problem. It incorporates legal analysis, religious study and the anthropological notion of “culture work” to consider death penalty abolitionism and prospects for abolishing the death penalty in the United States. The Article argues that abolitionists must reimagine their audiences and repackage their message for broader social consumption, particularly for Christian and conservative audiences. Even though abolitionists are characterized by some as “bleeding heart” liberals, this is not an accurate portrayal of how the death penalty maps across the political spectrum. Abolitionists must learn that conservatives are potential allies …