Law Commons^™

Courts, Culture, And The Lethal Injection Stalemate, Eric Berger

William & Mary Law Review

The Supreme Court’s 2019 decision in Bucklew v. Precythe reiterated the Court’s great deference to states in Eighth Amendment lethal injection cases. The takeaway is that when it comes to execution protocols, states can do what they want. Events on the ground tell a very different story. Notwithstanding courts’ deference, executions have ground to a halt in numerous states, often due to lethal injection problems. State officials and the Court’s conservative Justices have blamed this development on “anti-death penalty activists” waging “guerilla war” on capital punishment. In reality, though, a variety of mostly uncoordinated actors motivated by a range of …

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 …

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 …

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, …

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 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 …

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 …

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

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

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 …

Furman'S Legacy: New Challenges To The Overbreadth Of Capital Punishment, Jeffrey A. Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

A 2018 decision in the Arizona Supreme Court raised new strong claims that the death penalty in the U.S. has become a "fatal lottery," with critical implications for its constitutionality and its future in American criminal law. In the case, Hidalgo v. Arizona, the defense provided preliminary evidence that over the past twenty years, nearly 98% of all first- and second-degree murder defendants in Maricopa County-the state's largest county and location of the nation's fifth largest city-were death-eligible. The Arizona Supreme Court conceded this point even as it rejected Mr. Hidalgo's appeal. What the Arizona Supreme Court conceded, and what …

Book Review Essay: Jewish And American Law: A Comparative Study. (Vols. 1 And 2) By Samuel J. Levine, Marie A. Failinger

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 …

Race-Of-Victim Disparities And The "Level Up" Problem, Aya Gruber

Publications

No abstract provided.