Articles

A recent arti­cle in Time Magazine by Editor-at-large David Von Drehle exam­ines the cur­rent state of the death penal­ty in the United States at a time when the Supreme Court is con­sid­er­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the most wide­ly used method of exe­cu­tion – lethal injec­tion. Von Drehle writes, ​“In a per­fect world, per­haps, the gov­ern­ment would­n’t wait 30 years and sev­er­al hun­dred exe­cu­tions to deter­mine whether an exe­cu­tion method makes sense. But the world of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment has nev­er been…

New…

Journal of the American Medical Association COMMENTARY By Lee Black, JD, LLM and Robert M. Sade, MD Legal exe­cu­tion by lethal injec­tion has made nation­al head­lines dur­ing the past 2 years because pris­on­ers have argued that it pos­es an unnec­es­sary risk of pain as cur­rent­ly per­formed and there­fore con­sti­tutes uncon­sti­tu­tion­al cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment. The most wide­ly used method of lethal injec­tion, devel­oped by a physician,1 involves the intra­venous infu­sion of large dos­es of sodium…

In a recent edi­to­r­i­al, The New York Times praised New Jersey’s replace­ment of the death penal­ty with a sen­tence of life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. The Times wrote, ​“It took 31 years, but the moral bank­rupt­cy, social imbal­ance, legal imprac­ti­cal­i­ty and ulti­mate futil­i­ty of the death penal­ty has final­ly pen­e­trat­ed the con­sciences of law­mak­ers in one of the 37 states that arro­gates to itself the right to exe­cute human beings.” The Times not­ed the impor­tance of the inno­cence issue in the…

by Michal LandoDecember 13, 2007Jerusalem…

In a recent edi­to­r­i­al enti­tled ​“The Myth of Deterrence,” the Dallas Morning News point­ed to the many rea­sons why the death penal­ty does not deter mur­ders: a major­i­ty of mur­ders can be clas­si­fied as irra­tional acts, and the per­pe­tra­tors are unlike­ly to have con­sid­ered the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a death sen­tences before and dur­ing the crime; those who com­mit pre­med­i­tat­ed mur­der are also unlike­ly to con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment because it is so unlike­ly to be car­ried out. ​“No rational…

By BOB MAKINSTAFF WRITERNovember 28, 2007 Home News…

The jour­nal of Criminology & Public Policy recent­ly asked lead­ing experts to rec­om­mend impor­tant pol­i­cy changes need­ed in the area of crim­i­nal jus­tice and to pro­vide the evi­dence to sup­port such change. Although most of the arti­cles addressed var­i­ous prison and treat­ment issues, the first arti­cle by Prof. James Acker of the University at Albany called for an imme­di­ate mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions. Prof. Acker exam­ines the United States’ long his­to­ry of grap­pling with the death penal­ty. He…

A recent Newsweek arti­cle by Evan Thomas and Martha Brant com­pares the his­tor­i­cal search for humane meth­ods of exe­cu­tion with the cur­rent decline in the use of the death penal­ty in the…

In a forth­com­ing arti­cle in the American Journal of Criminal Law, John H. Blume of Cornell Law School explores recent Supreme Court deci­sions that affect the guide­lines for effec­tive coun­sel for cap­i­tal defen­dants. Blume notes in ​“It’s Like Déjà Vu All Over Again: Williams V. Taylor, Wiggins V. Smith, Rompilla V. Beard and a (Partial) Return to the Guidelines Approach to the Effective Assistance of Counsel” that despite the recog­ni­tion by researchers, lit­i­ga­tors, and judges of the prob­lem of…