Law Reviews

The lat­est edi­tion of the Amicus Journal is now avail­able and fea­tures arti­cles relat­ed to death penal­ty top­ics such as gen­der bias and jurors, as well as infor­ma­tion on inter­na­tion­al cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment devel­op­ments in the Caribbean and Africa. The jour­nal fea­tures a sto­ry on the Middle Temple Library’s Capital Punishment Collection in Great Britain, an archive of text­books, case-prepa­ra­tion aides, film doc­u­men­taries, and oth­er pri­ma­ry sources on the death penal­ty. The Amicus Journal high­lights death penal­ty devel­op­ments from around the world in an effort to broad­en read­ers’ under­stand­ing of capital…

A new edi­tion of the Stanford Law Review con­tains an arti­cle enti­tled Uses and Abuses of Empirical Evidence in the Death Penalty Debate. The arti­cle exam­ines and per­forms com­par­i­son tests on recent stud­ies that have claimed a deter­rent effect to the death penal­ty. Authors John J. Donohue of Yale Law School and Justin Wolfers of the University of Pennsylvania state their goal and con­clu­sions: (O)ur aim in this Article is to pro­vide a thor­ough assess­ment of the sta­tis­ti­cal evi­dence on this impor­tant pub­lic pol­i­cy issue and to under­stand better…

A new edi­tion of the Catholic University Law Review includes papers from the uni­ver­si­ty’s recent sym­po­sium on men­tal ill­ness and the death penal­ty. The pre­sen­ta­tions by experts deliv­ered dur­ing the sym­po­sium address how pol­i­cy mak­ers and the courts might resolve the pro­pri­ety of exe­cut­ing those with men­tal ill­ness. Articles exam­ine rec­om­men­da­tions from the Task Force of the ABA’s Section of Individual Rights and Reponsibilities regard­ing men­tal dis­abil­i­ties and the death penal­ty. Authors also explore whether the exe­cu­tion of those with men­tal ill­ness vio­lates the U.S. Constitution’s ban on cru­el and…

The Amicus Journal dis­cuss­es death penal­ty issues from around the world. The lat­est edi­tion con­tains arti­cles on the ​“team­work” approach used by cap­i­tal defense attor­neys in Virginia, Africa’s progress in aban­don­ing the death penal­ty, and a fea­ture on the expe­ri­ence of being a lawyer on the front lines of cap­i­tal lit­i­ga­tion in the U.S. The pub­li­ca­tion also exam­ines the recent U.S. Supreme Court cas­es of Medellin v. Dretke and Miller-El v. Dretke. (13 Amicus Journal (2005), pub­lished in London by the Andrew Lee Jones Fund). See Resources.

According to a new study to be pub­lished in the Santa Clara Law Review, a defan­dant in California is more like­ly to be sen­tenced to death for killing a white per­son than for mur­der­ing a per­son of any oth­er race, despite there being more black and Hispanic mur­der vic­tims in the state. The research also shows that geog­ra­phy plays a key role in whether the death penal­ty will be sought in a par­tic­u­lar case. The study implies that the loss of white lives is con­sid­ered more impor­tant in the…

Robert Weisberg, a pro­fes­sor at Stanford University’s School of Law, exam­ines recent stud­ies on deter­rence and the death penal­ty, as well as oth­er social sci­ence research ragard­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the U.S. In The Death Penalty Meets Social Science: Deterrence and Jury Behavior Under New Scrutiny, Weisberg notes that many of the new stud­ies claim­ing to find that the death penal­ty deters mur­der have been legit­i­mate­ly crit­i­cized for omit­ting key vari­ables and for not address­ing the poten­tial dis­tort­ing effect of one high-exe­cut­ing state, Texas. Later in the arti­cle, Weisberg examines…

A new Michigan Law Review arti­cle by Professor John Blume of Cornell Law School exam­ines the rela­tion­ship between ​“vol­un­teer­ing” for exe­cu­tion and sui­cide. Blume found that near­ly 88% of all death row inmates who have ​“vol­un­teered” for exe­cu­tion have strug­gled with men­tal ill­ness and/​or sub­stance abuse. He writes that there is an espe­cial­ly strong link between ​“vol­un­teerism” and men­tal ill­ness. Of the ​“vol­un­teer” exe­cu­tions he reviewed, 14 involved schiz­o­phre­nia and sev­er­al more report­ed delu­sions that may reflect schiz­o­phre­nia. Depression and bipo­lar dis­or­der account­ed for at least 23 oth­er cas­es, and…

A new law review arti­cle by inter­na­tion­al death penal­ty expert Mark Warren con­cludes that the reten­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the United States dis­tances the nation from its clos­est allies ​“in ways both sym­bol­ic and tan­gi­ble, and the costs of that iso­la­tion are ris­ing steadi­ly.” Warren’s arti­cle, Death, Dissent, and Diplomacy: The U.S. Death Penalty as an Obstacle to Foreign Relations, exam­ines a broad range of con­cerns, includ­ing treaty com­pli­ance and glob­al secu­ri­ty. Warren notes that in recent years, world lead­ers have become increas­ing­ly vocal about their oppo­si­tion to the…

Newly pub­lished research exam­in­ing 340 exon­er­a­tions in the United States between 1989 and 2003 found that a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of those who were wrong­ly con­vict­ed had been sen­tenced to death. Researchers note that this find­ing appears to reflect two pat­terns: cap­i­tal defen­dants are more like­ly to be con­vict­ed in error, and false con­vic­tions are more like­ly to be detect­ed when defen­dants are on death row. The paper, authored by Professor Samuel Gross of the University of Michigan Law School along with oth­er assis­tants, reveals clear pat­terns asso­ci­at­ed with false…

A new research paper by Wayne A. Logan of the William Mitchell College of Law exam­ines the con­sti­tu­tion­al, eth­i­cal and legal issues raised by vic­tim impact evi­dence. In his arti­cle, ​“Victims, Survivors and the Decisions to Seek and Impose Death,” Logan notes that the U.S. Supreme Court’s land­mark 1991 deci­sion in Payne v. Tennessee opened the door for sur­vivors of mur­der vic­tims to tes­ti­fy about the social, emo­tion­al, and eco­nom­ic loss­es result­ing from the mur­der of their loved one. Since this rul­ing, such tes­ti­mo­ny has been broad­ly used through­out the…