Prof. James Acker has pub­lished an arti­cle in the lat­est edi­tion of the Vermont Law Review enti­tled, ​“Be Careful What You Ask For: Lessons from New York’s Recent Experience with Capital Punishment.” The arti­cle explores the var­i­ous stan­dards by which the death penal­ty was eval­u­at­ed dur­ing the last decade in New York. The pub­lic debate first addressed the ques­tion of, ​“Is it right?” with a focus on ret­ri­bu­tion, moral­i­ty and reli­gion. The sec­ond set of ques­tions addressed was, ​“Is it use­ful? Is it cost-effec­tive? Is it nec­es­sary?” with a focus on costs and alter­na­tives such as life in prison with­out parole. The final ques­tion dis­cussed was, ​“Is it fair?”

Acker is a Distinguished Teaching Professor of the School of Criminal Justice at the State University at Albany. He explores the issues that New York faced first in rein­stat­ing the death penal­ty and then in aban­don­ing it, issues such as inno­cence, race dis­crim­i­na­tion, arbi­trari­ness, qual­i­ty of rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and the make­up of the cap­i­tal jury. Based on his exten­sive review of the leg­isla­tive debate and pub­lic hear­ings, Acker con­clud­ed, ​“Between 1995, when their state enact­ed a death penal­ty statute after not hav­ing one for more than a gen­er­a­tion, and 2004, when the New York Court of Appeals inval­i­dat­ed the law on state con­sti­tu­tion­al grounds, New Yorkers invest­ed mil­lions of dol­lars and an incal­cu­la­ble amount of time and effort in an enter­prise that vexed many and ulti­mate­ly ben­e­fit­ed no one.”
(J. Acker, ​“Be Careful What You Ask For: Lessons from New York’s Recent Experience with Capital Punishment,” 32 Vermont Law Review 683 (2008)). See Law Reviews.


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