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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 3:01 am
Time: 3:01 am
Results for death penalty (u.s.)
5 results foundAuthor: Dieter, Richard C. Title: Struck by Lightning: The Continuing Arbitrariness of the Death Penalty Thirty-Five Years After Its Re-instatement in 1976 Summary: The United States Supreme Court approved the re-instatement of the death penalty 35 years ago on July 2, 1976. Although the death penalty had earlier been held unconstitutional because of its arbitrary and unpredictable application, the Court was willing to sanction new systems that states had proposed to make capital punishment less like “being struck by lightning” and more like retribution for only the “worst of the worst” offenders. The Court also deferred to the statesʼ judgment that the death penalty served the goals of retribution and deterrence. After three and a half decades of experience under these revised statutes, the randomness of the system continues. Many of the countryʼs constitutional experts and prominent legal organizations have concluded that effective reform is impossible and the practice should be halted. In polls, jury verdicts and state legislative action, there is evidence of the American peopleʼs growing frustration with the death penalty. A majority of the nine Justices who served on the Supreme Court in 1976 when the death penalty was approved eventually concluded the experiment had failed. Four states have abolished the death penalty in the past four years, and nationwide executions and death sentences have been cut in half since 2000. A review of state death penalty practices exposes a system in which an unpredictable few cases result in executions from among thousands of eligible cases. Race, geography and the size of a countyʼs budget play a major role in who receives the ultimate punishment. Many cases thought to embody the worst crimes and defendants are overturned on appeal and then assessed very differently the second time around at retrial. Even these reversals depend significantly on the quality of the lawyers assigned and on who appointed the appellate judges reviewing the cases. In such a haphazard process, the rationales of deterrence and retribution make little sense. In 1976, the newly reformed death penalty was allowed to resume. However, it has proved unworkable in practice. Keeping it in place, or attempting still more reform, would be enormously expensive, with little chance of improvement. The constitution requires fairness not just in lofty words, but also in daily practice. On that score, the death penalty has missed the mark. Details: Washington, DC: Death Penalty Information Center, 2011. 38p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 15, 2011 at: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/StruckByLightning.pdf Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/StruckByLightning.pdf Shelf Number: 122391 Keywords: Capital PunishmentDeath Penalty (U.S.) |
Author: Nagin, Daniel S. Title: Deterrence and the Death Penalty Summary: Many studies during the past few decades have sought to determine whether the death penalty has any deterrent effect on homicide rates. Researchers have reached widely varying, even contradictory, conclusions. Some studies have concluded that the threat of capital punishment deters murders, saving large numbers of lives; other studies have concluded that executions actually increase homicides; still others, that executions have no effect on murder rates. Commentary among researchers, advocates, and policymakers on the scientific validity of the findings has sometimes been acrimonious. Against this backdrop, the National Research Council report Deterrence and the Death Penalty assesses whether the available evidence provides a scientific basis for answering questions of if and how the death penalty affects homicide rates. This new report from the Committee on Law and Justice concludes that research to date on the effect of capital punishment on homicide rates is not useful in determining whether the death penalty increases, decreases, or has no effect on these rates. The key question is whether capital punishment is less or more effective as a deterrent than alternative punishments, such as a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Yet none of the research that has been done accounted for the possible effect of noncapital punishments on homicide rates. The report recommends new avenues of research that may provide broader insight into any deterrent effects from both capital and noncapital punishments. Details: Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2012. 127p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 2, 2012 at: http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13363#description Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13363#description Shelf Number: 125115 Keywords: Capital PunishmentDeath Penalty (U.S.)DeterrenceHomicidesMurders |
Author: Hans, Valerie P. Title: The Death Penalty: Should the Judge or the Jury Decide Who Dies? Summary: This article addresses the effect of judge versus jury decision making through analysis of a database of all capital sentencing phase hearing trials in the state of Delaware from 1977-2007. Over the three decades of the study, Delaware shifted responsibility for death penalty sentencing from the jury to the judge. Currently, Delaware is one of the handful of states that gives the judge the final decision making authority in capital trials. Controlling for a number of legally-relevant and other predictor variables, we find that the shift to judge sentencing significantly increased the number of death sentences. Statutory aggravating factors, stranger homicides, and the victim's gender also increased the likelihood of a death sentence, as did the county of the homicide. We reflect on the implications of these results for debates about the constitutionality of judge sentencing in capital cases Details: Ithaca, NY: Cornell Law School, 2014. 30p. Source: Internet Resource: Working Paper Series: Accessed November 18, 2014 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2513371 Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2513371 Shelf Number: 134121 Keywords: Capital PunishmentDeath Penalty (U.S.)JudgesJuriesSentencing |
Author: Gibson, James Title: Death Penalty Drugs and the International Moral Marketplace Summary: Across the country, executions have become increasingly problematic as states have found it more and more difficult to procure the drugs they need for lethal injection. At first blush, the drug shortage appears to be the result of pharmaceutical industry norms; companies that make drugs for healing have little interest in being merchants of death. But closer inspection reveals that European governments are the true instigators of the shortage. For decades, those governments have tried - and failed - to promote abolition of the death penalty through traditional instruments of international law. Turns out that the best way to export their abolitionist norms was to stop exporting their drugs. At least three lessons follow. First, while the Supreme Court heatedly debates the use of international norms in Eighth Amendment jurisprudence, that debate has largely become an academic sideshow; in the death penalty context, the market has replaced the positive law as the primary means by which international norms constrain domestic death penalty practice. Second, international norms may have entered the United States through the moral marketplace, but from there they have seeped into the zeitgeist, impacting the domestic death penalty discourse in significant and lasting ways. Finally, international norms have had such a pervasive effect on the death penalty in practice that they are now poised to influence even seemingly domestic Eighth Amendment doctrine. In the death penalty context, international norms are having an impact - through the market, through culture, and ultimately through doctrine - whether we formally recognize their influence or not. Details: Richmond, VA: University of Richmond School of Law, 2014. 65p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed November 18, 2014 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2524124 Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2524124 Shelf Number: 134129 Keywords: Capital PunishmentDeath Penalty (U.S.) |
Author: Berry, William W., III Title: Eighth Amendment Presumptions: A Constitutional Framework for Curbing Mass Incarceration Summary: The Supreme Court's conceptualization of the Eighth Amendment over the past decade has focused on narrow exceptions to the ability of the states to punish criminal offenders, excising particular punishments based on characteristics of the offender or crime. What is missing, however, is a set of broader guiding principles delineating the line between acceptable and impermissible punishments. The Court itself, in Kennedy v. Louisiana, acknowledged as much, describing the case law as "still in search of a unifying principle." In light of this vacuum, this article proposes a new approach to the application of the Eighth Amendment. The absence of regulation of excessive and disproportionate punishments by state legislatures over the past two decades has resulted in the largest prison population in the history of the human race. Instead of merely being a tool that merely removes a few types of offenses and offenders from the purview of state legislatures, the Eighth Amendment should also serve as a more robust guide to shape state penal practices. To that end, this Article argues for the development of a series of Eighth Amendment presumptions - guiding principles that would govern the punishment practices of legislatures without excluding them from the conversation. Currently, the Eighth Amendment serves to identify the constitutional "exceptions" to the "rules" promulgated by the legislatures. This Article's approach would reverse that status quo, with the Court articulating general rules and the legislatures then developing (and justifying through careful study) the exceptions to the rules. Indeed, an examination of the Court's Eighth Amendment cases suggests this "presumptive" sentiment is already implicit in much of the thinking of the Court. Part I of the Article briefly explains the shortcomings of the current evolving standards of decency doctrine and its devastating consequences. Part II of the Article explores the concept of presumptions, exploring how presumptions operate and demonstrating their virtues. The Article then argues in Part III for the reimagining of the Eighth Amendment as an Amendment of constitutional presumptions combining elements from the Court's past cases with the needs arising from three decades of neglecting the decisions of legislatures. Finally, Part IV demonstrates how this conceptual framework would work in practice. Details: University, MS: University of Mississippi School of Law, 2015. 36p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 26, 2015 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2567962 Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2567962 Shelf Number: 134680 Keywords: Death Penalty (U.S.)Mandatory SentencingParolePunishmentSentencingSupreme Court |