Criminal Law Commons^™

Rethinking The Death Penalty: Can We Define Who Deserves Death?, Martin Leahy, Robert Blecker, William M. Erlbaum, Jeffrey Fagan, Norman Greene, Jeffrey Kirchmeier, David Von Drehle

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Roots "Resolving The Death Penalty: Wisdom From The Ancients", Robert Blecker

Articles & Chapters

Lest it be cruel and unusual, the U.S. Supreme Court has held, capital punishment must be consistent with the evolving standards of decency of a maturing society. Although controversy swirls around our current sense of decency, this Society's changing standards are largely the product of deeply embedded traditions and an unchanging cultural core. Thus, virtually every heated death penalty debate today requires us not only to take the temperature of the people, but also to appreciate their temperament.

ROOTS: Resolving the Death Penalty: Wisdom from the Ancients reflects the current controversy back onto the core of Western Culture - the …

Nothing Less Than The Dignity Of Man: Evolving Standards, Botched Executions And Utah's Controversial Use Of The Firing Squad , Christopher Q. Cutler

Cleveland State Law Review

While outrage boils to the surface when Utah uses its firing squad option, there is little substantive legal development concerning the firing squad's use. Few cases have challenged the firing squad's constitutionality. This article discusses the legal and political implications of the firing squad. Using the Supreme Court's everdeveloping Eighth Amendment jurisprudence as a guide, this article discusses whether the firing squad, both historically and in its present application, passes constitutional muster. Beyond those factors that trigger constitutional protection, this article discusses those elements of the firing squad's use which define society's humanity and demonstrate our dignity. In the end, …

The Cognitive Components Of Punishment, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Forest Jourden

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

What They Say At The End: Capital Victims' Families And The Press, Samuel R. Gross, Daniel J. Matheson

Articles

Perhaps the most common complaint by American crime victims and their families is that they are ignored-by the police, by the prosecutors, by the courts and by the press. However true that may be for capital cases in general, there is at least one consistent exception: the great majority of newspaper accounts of executions include at least some description of the reactions of the victims' families and of any surviving victims. It seems to have become an item on the checklist, part of the "who, what, where, when, why, and how" of execution stories. When no family members are available, …

Gallery Of The Doomed: An Exploration Of Creative Endeavors By The Condemned, Roberta M. Harding

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This Article examines creative expressions produced by the death row faction of the incarcerated population. Looking at these works provide insights about what it means to live as a condemned person in our society, and about the people who occupy the death rows across our nation. After reviewing and analyzing a substantial amount of the enormous body of work of this genre, it became apparent that the condemned's creative endeavors reflect how they address and handle serious issues such as their executions and the ways spirituality influences their life. When the individual issues are examined, two general themes are evident: …

Casting New Light On An Old Subject: Death Penalty Abolitionism For A New Millennium (Reviewing Austin Sarat, When The State Kills: Capital Punishment And The American Condition (2001))., Wayne A. Logan

Scholarly Publications

This paper examines recent U.S. efforts to abolish capital punishment, using Austin Sarat's 2001 book "When the State Kills" as the centerpiece of its exploration. The book, rather than mounting a principled "frontal assault" on the death penalty, instead surveys the numerous ways in which capital punishment negatively affects American law, politics, and culture. The paper considers the broader historic significance of this tactical shift and reflects upon the consequences and prospects for its ultimate success.

The Death Penalty In The United States: Following The European Lead, Nora V. Demleitner

Scholarly Articles

None available.

Mitigation Evidence And Capital Cases In Washington: Proposals For Change, Mary Pat Treuthart, Anne Branstad, Matthew Kite

Seattle University Law Review

Part II of this article examines the United States Supreme Court's recognition of the importance of mitigation evidence in capital cases. Part III then focuses on the role of mitigation evidence in Washington's death penalty scheme. The following section, Part IV, addresses the public policy implications when mitigation evidence is not presented. Finally, Part V proposes changes to the current sentencing procedure in Washington involving capital crimes.

A Broken System, Part Ii: Why There Is So Much Error In Capital Cases And What Can Be Done About It, James S. Liebman, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Andrew Gelman, Valerie West, Garth Davies, Alexander Kiss

Faculty Scholarship

There is growing awareness that serious, reversible error permeates America’s death penalty system, putting innocent lives at risk, heightening the suffering of victims, leaving killers at large, wasting tax dollars, and failing citizens, the courts and the justice system.

Our June 2000 Report shows how often mistakes occur and how serious it is: 68% of all death verdicts imposed and fully reviewed during the 1973-1995 study period were reversed by courts due to serious errors.

Analyses presented for the first time here reveal that 76% of the reversals at the two appeal stages where data are available for study were …

Another Place Beyond Here: The Death Penalty Moratorium In The United States, Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.

Responsibility In Capital Sentencing, Steven Semeraro

San Diego Law Review

Although modem doctrine is worth preserving, it could be improved significantly by focusing explicitly on heightening individual responsibility. Two concrete ways to improve it would be to (1) explain the sentencer' s role in the narrative voice, a way of speaking that, at least in American society, appears to be associated with the assignment of responsibility; and (2) require heightened scrutiny of death sentences by state appellate courts, bringing the responsibility of state appellate judges in capital cases in line with the responsibility they bear in constitutional cases dealing with analogous mixed questions of fact and law under the First, …

The Discretionary Power Of "Public" Prosecutors In Historical Perspective, Carolyn B. Ramsey

Publications

Norms urging prosecutors to seek justice by playing a quasi-judicial role and striving for fairness to defendants are often assumed to have deep historical roots. Yet, in fact, such a conception of the prosecutor's role is relatively new. Based on archival research on the papers of the New York County District Attorney's Office, "The Discretionary Power of 'Public' Prosecutors in Historical Perspective" explores the meaning of the word "public" as it applied to prosecutors in the nineteenth century. This article shows that, in the early days of public prosecution, district attorneys were expected to maximize convictions and leave defendants' rights …

Twenty-Five Years Of Death: A Report Of The Cornell Death Penalty Project On The "Modern" Era Of Capital Punishment In South Carolina, John H. Blume

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In 1972, the United States Supreme Court determined that the death penalty, as then administered in this country, violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Many states, including South Carolina, scurried to enact new, "improved" capital punishment statutes which would satisfy the Supreme Court's rather vague mandate. In 1976, the High Court approved some of the new laws, and the American death penalty was back in business. After a wrong turn or two, including a statutory scheme which did not pass constitutional muster, the South Carolina General Assembly passed the current death penalty statute in 1977. The …

Opting For Real Death Penalty Reform, James S. Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

The capital punishment system in the United States is broken. Studies reveal growing delays nationwide between death sentences and executions and inexcusably high rates of reversals and retrials of capital verdicts. The current system persistently malfuinctions because it rewards trial actors, such as police, prosecutors, and trial judges, for imposing death sentences, but it does not force them either to avoid making mistakes or to bear the cost of mistakes that are made during the process. Nor is there any adversarial discipline imposed at the trial level because capital defendants usually receive appointed counsel who either do not have experience …

Amici Curiae Brief Of New York Law School Professors In People V. Harris: Constitutionality Of The New York Death Penalty Statute Under The State Constitution's Cruel And Unusual Punishments And Antidiscrimination Clauses, Anthony G. Amsterdam, Ursula Bentele, Vivian Berger, John H. Blume, Peggy Davis, Deborah Denno, Markus Dubber, Stephen Ellmann, Deborah Fins, Eric M. Freedman, Stephen P. Garvey, Jack Greenberg, Randy Hertz, Sheri Lynn Johnson, Richard Klein, James Liebman, Peter Neufeld, Barry Scheck, Bryan Stevenson

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Amici are teachers in New York law schools who have studied the operation of the death penalty for the purpose of teaching the subject, writing about it in scholarly journals, or representing persons accused or convicted of capital crimes. Most of us have worked in the field both as academics and as pro bono counsel for condemned inmates. Collectively, we have had first-hand experience in hundreds of death cases, in dozens of jurisdictions, extending over more than a third of a century.

Our experience has convinced us that capital punishment cannot be administered with the fairness, reliability, and freedom from …

Rates Of Reversible Error And The Risk Of Wrongful Execution, James S. Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

Innocent fatalities are a concern of all social activity with a capacity to kill. This is especially true when the social activity is the death penalty since an innocent person's execution is not simply a tragic collateral consequence of activity with a non-fatal objective. Instead, the taking of life is the goal of the enterprise, and the killing is the intended act of the state.

There is another difference between accidental fatalities in other social activities and those that occur when the capital system miscarries. Typically, the former fatalities are easy to spot and quantify; the latter are not. Precisely …

Knockin' On Heaven's Door: Rethinking The Role Of Religion In Death Penalty Cases, Gary J. Simson, Stephen P. Garvey

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Religion has played a prominent role at various points of capital trials. In jury selection, peremptory challenges have been exercised against prospective jurors on the basis of their religion. At the sentencing phase, defendants have offered as mitigating evidence proof of their religiosity, and the prosecution has introduced evidence of the victim's religiosity. In closing argument, quotations from the Bible and other appeals to religion have long been common. During deliberations, jurors have engaged in group prayer and tried to sway one another with quotes from scripture.

Such practices have not gone unquestioned. Rather remarkably, however, the questions have almost …

Forecasting Life And Death: Juror Race, Religion, And Attitude Toward The Death Penalty, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen P. Garvey, Martin T. Wells

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Determining whether race, sex, or other juror characteristics influence how capital case jurors vote is difficult. Jurors tend to vote for death in more egregious cases and for life in less egregious cases no matter what their own characteristics. And a juror's personal characteristics may get lost in the process of deliberation because the final verdict reflects the jury's will, not the individual juror's. Controlling for the facts likely to influence a juror's verdict helps to isolate the influence of a juror's personal characteristics. Examining each juror's first sentencing vote reveals her own judgment before the majority works its will. …

Innocence Protection Act: Death Penalty Reform On The Horizon, Ronald Weich

All Faculty Scholarship

The criminal justice pendulum may be swinging back in the direction of fairness. The Innocence Protection Act of 2001, introduced in both the Senate and the House of Representatives earlier this year, promises meaningful reforms in the administration of capital punishment in the United States.

Unlike previous slabs at reform, the Innocence Protection Act (lPA) has a real chance to become law because it commands unusually broad bipartisan support. The Senate bill (S. 486) is sponsored by Democrat Pat Leahy of Vermont and Republican Gordon Smith of Oregon. The House bill (H.R. 912) is sponsored by Democrat Bill Delahunt of …

The Right To Kill In Cold Blood: Does The Death Penalty Violate Human Rights, Alan Ryan

Cleveland State Law Review

The essence of the argument is this: all punishment must be inflicted in cold blood; whatever damage we do to others not in cold blood is not punishment but self-defense or revenge; what we have a right to inflict in cold blood is a question of the rules of just social cooperation and especially the justice of the sanctions required to sustain those rules; it is here argued that the fundamental principle is that we may inflict whatever punishment is necessary to deter wrongdoing and not disproportionate to the offence; I do not dismiss 'pure' retribution as a goal of …

Playing God: An Essay On Law, Philosophy, And American Capital Punishment, Samuel J. Levine

Scholarly Works

This article looks at the capital sentencer's decision: Whether a death-eligible defendant will in fact receive the death sentence. Based in part on an examination of Jewish law and philosophy, Professor Levine identifies three particular areas in which it can be said that the Supreme Court requires the capital sentencer to "play God." First, capital sentencers are asked to ascertain the degree of a defendant's culpability by looking at factors that affect free will and victim impact evidence, implicating moral luck. Capital sentencers are also required to determine a person's total moral worth by considering character evidence. Finally, the Supreme …

The Deadly Paradox Of Capital Jurors, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen P. Garvey, Martin T. Wells

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

We examine support for the death penalty among a unique group of respondents: one hundred and eighty-seven citizens who actually served as jurors on capital trials in South Carolina. Capital jurors support the death penalty as much as, if not more than, members of the general public. Yet capital jurors, like poll respondents, harbor doubts about the penalty's fairness. Moreover, jurors--black jurors and Southern Baptists in particular--are ready to abandon their support for the death penalty when the alternative to death is life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, especially when combined with a requirement of restitution. Support for the …

Opining On Death: Witness Sentence Recommendations In Capital Trials, Wayne A. Logan

Scholarly Publications

Despite the Supreme Court's command that capital prosecutions be free of undue arbitrary and capricious influences, the trials themselves are becoming increasingly emotional and personalized. This Article addresses a key outgrowth of this evolution: the increasingly common practice of witnesses opining on whether a defendant should be put to death, despite the Court's apparent prohibition of such testimony. The Article addresses why this practice is likely to continue, and advances several reasons why the Supreme Court should impose an unequivocal bar on sentence opinion, testimony in capital trials.

Fish not, with this melancholy bait,
For this fool gudgeon, this opinion. …

The Emotional Economy Of Capital Sentencing, Stephen P. Garvey

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

You often hear that one reason capital jurors condemn capital defendants is that jurors don't empathize with defendants. And one reason they don't empathize is that the process of capital sentencing is rigged against empathy. Using data from the South Carolina segment of the Capital Jury Project, I try to examine the role emotion plays in capital sentencing.

Without entering here all the important and necessary caveats, I find that the self-reported emotional responses jurors have toward capital defendants run the gamut from sympathy and pity at one extreme, to disgust, anger, and fear at the other. What causes these …

Correcting Deadly Confusion: Responding To Jury Inquiries In Capital Cases, Stephen P. Garvey, Sheri Lynn Johnson, Paul Marcus

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In Weeks v. Angelone, 528 U.S. 225 (2000), the members of the capital sentencing jury asked for clarification of the jury instructions on the essential question of whether they were required to sentence Weeks to death upon the finding of certain aggravating factors. The judge merely informed the jurors to reread the instruction. The jurors returned with a death penalty sentence. The Supreme Court held that these jurors likely understood the instructions and at most Weeks had shown a slight possibility that the jurors believed they were precluded from considering mitigating evidence. However, the results of a mock jury study …

Death Is The Whole Ball Game, Jeffrey A. Fagan, James S. Liebman, Valerie West

Faculty Scholarship

In Capital Appeals Revisited and The Meaning of Capital Appeals, Barry Latzer and James N.G. Cauthen argue that a study of capital appeals should focus only on overturned findings of guilt, and complain that in A Broken System we examine all overturned capital verdicts. But the question they want studied cannot provide an accurate evaluation of a system of capital punishment. By proposing to count only "conviction" error and not "sentence" error, Latzer and Cauthen ignore that if a death sentence is overturned, the case is no longer capital and the system of capital punishment has failed to achieve its …

Death Matters – A Reply To Latzer And Cauthen, James S. Liebman, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Valerie West

Faculty Scholarship

The legal treatment of capital punishment in the United States "rests squarely on the predicate that the penalty of death is qualitatively different from a sentence of imprisonment, however long. Death, in its finality, differs more from life imprisonment than a 100-year prison term differs from one of only a year or two. This predicate is among "the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society" and determine whether a punishment is "cruel and unusual" in violation of the Constitution. Because "'[f]rom the point of view of the defendant, [death] is different in both its severity …

Capital Attrition: Error Rates In Capital Cases, 1973-1995, James S. Liebman, Jeffery Fagan, Valerie West, Jonathan Lloyd

Faculty Scholarship

Americans seem to be of two minds about the death penalty. In the last several years, the overall number of executions has risen steeply, reaching a fifty year high this year. Although two-thirds of the public support the penalty, this figure represents a sharp decline from the four-fifths of the population that endorsed the death penalty only six years ago, leaving support for capital punishment at a twenty year low. When life without parole is offered as an alternative, support for the penalty drops even more – often below a majority. Grants of executive clemency reached a twenty year high …

A Broken System: Error Rates In Capital Cases, 1973-1995, James S. Liebman, Jeffrey Fagan, Valerie West

Faculty Scholarship

There is a growing bipartisan consensus that flaws in America's death-penalty system have reached crisis proportions. Many fear that capital trials put people on death row who don't belong there. Others say capital appeals take too long. This report – the first statistical study ever undertaken of modern American capital appeals (4,578 of them in state capital cases between 1973 and 1995) – suggests that both claims are correct.

Capital sentences do spend a long time under judicial review. As this study documents, however, judicial review takes so long precisely because American capital sentences are so persistently and systematically fraught …