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Wishing Petitioners To Death: Factual Misrepresentations In Fourth Circuit Capital Cases, Sheri Lynn Johnson
Wishing Petitioners To Death: Factual Misrepresentations In Fourth Circuit Capital Cases, Sheri Lynn Johnson
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Legislating Racial Fairness In Criminal Justice, Olatunde C.A. Johnson
Legislating Racial Fairness In Criminal Justice, Olatunde C.A. Johnson
Faculty Scholarship
Twenty years ago, in McCleskey v. Kemp, the Supreme Court rejected a capital defendant's claim that statistical evidence of racial discrimination in the administration of Georgia's death penalty system constituted a violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. Yet, even as McCleskey effectively bars constitutional challenges to racial disparities in the criminal justice system where invidious bias is difficult to establish, the Court invites advocates to pursue legislation as a remedy to racial disparities. Indeed, the McCleskey Court offers as a rationale for its ruling the judiciary's institutional incompetence to remedy these disparities, holding that "McCleskey's arguments are best …