Law Reviews

A recent law review arti­cle by Professors Carol and Jordan Steiker exam­ines two decades of attempts to reg­u­late cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and con­cludes that this process may have paved the way to a find­ing that the death penal­ty is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al: “[T]he mod­ern American death penal­ty — with its unprece­dent­ed costs, alter­na­tives, and legal reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work — seems new­ly vul­ner­a­ble to judi­cial inval­i­da­tion. Reform of the death penal­ty and its abo­li­tion might well be on the same path.” The authors point to devel­op­ments such as the num­ber of exon­er­a­tions from death row,…

A recent arti­cle in the Michigan State Law Review exam­ined the prob­lem of racial bias in cap­i­tal cas­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly with respect to jurors’ deci­sion mak­ing. Authors Mona Lynch and Craig Haney (pic­tured), both pro­fes­sors at the University of California, sum­ma­rize past sta­tis­ti­cal stud­ies on race and the death penal­ty and present new exper­i­men­tal research on juror deci­sion-mak­ing in a sim­u­lat­ed cap­i­tal tri­al. Research par­tic­i­pants were shown one of four sim­u­lat­ed tri­al video­tapes. The videos were iden­ti­cal except for the race of the defen­dant and the race of the vic­tim. Participants…

In one of the most com­pre­hen­sive inves­ti­ga­tions ever under­tak­en about the exe­cu­tion of a pos­si­bly inno­cent defen­dant, Professor James Liebman and oth­er researchers at Columbia University Law School have pub­lished a ground­break­ing report on the case of Carlos DeLuna (pic­tured), who was exe­cut­ed in Texas in 1989. This ​“Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution” is being pub­lished today (May 15) in Columbia’s Human Rights Law Review. Prof. Liebman con­clud­ed DeLuna was inno­cent and was wrong­ly con­vict­ed ​“on the thinnest of evi­dence: a sin­gle, night­time, cross-eth­nic eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and no cor­rob­o­rat­ing forensics.”…

Recently pub­lished his­tor­i­cal research led by Professor Austin Sarat (pic­tured) of Amherst College exam­ines the way grue­some exe­cu­tions were report­ed in the media in the late 19^th and ear­ly 20^th cen­turies. Prof. Sarat’s study found that news­pa­pers gen­er­al­ly pre­sent­ed two com­pet­ing nar­ra­tives in their cov­er­age: ​“a sen­sa­tion­al­ist nar­ra­tive, which played up the grue­some­ness of botched execution[s], and an oppos­ing, recu­per­a­tive nar­ra­tive, which sought to dif­fer­en­ti­ate [the] law’s vio­lence from vio­lence out­side the law.” (Article abstract) Gruesome exe­cu­tions were put into a larg­er con­text of an order­ly and jus­ti­fied pun­ishm­net: ​“They…

A recent study pub­lished in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology about the U.S. Military death penal­ty sys­tem found that racial dis­par­i­ties among those sen­tenced to death are worse in the mil­i­tary than in oth­er crim­i­nal courts. The study, con­duct­ed by Catherine Grosso of Michigan State’s College of Law, the late David Baldus of the University of Iowa College of Law, and oth­ers, reviewed all poten­tial­ly death-eli­gi­ble mil­i­tary pros­e­cu­tions from 1984 to 2005 and iden­ti­fied 105 death-eli­gi­ble mur­der cas­es. The study found that defen­dants of col­or in the military…

A new arti­cle to be pub­lished in the American Criminal Law Review explores the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the death penal­ty for those con­vict­ed of felony mur­der, i.e., those who par­tic­i­pat­ed in a seri­ous crime in which a death occurred, but were not direct­ly respon­si­ble for the death. The arti­cle is by Joseph Trigilio and Tracy Casadio, both Deputy Federal Public Defenders in California and is titled ​“Executing Those Who Do Not Kill.” The authors argue that the U.S. Supreme Court​’s deci­sion in Tison v. Arizona (1987) should be over­turned. Tison allows…

On February 11, 2011, a sym­po­sium will be held at the Vermont Law School in South Royalton to explore cur­rent issues in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Entitled New Perspectives on Capital Punishment, the sym­po­sium will address the death penal­ty from the point of view of schol­ars, lit­i­ga­tors, and edu­ca­tors. The goal of the sym­po­sium is to con­tribute to the vital dis­course con­cern­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and its human rights impli­ca­tions. It will fea­ture Hugo Adam Bedau, a promi­nent death penal­ty schol­ar. Other speak­ers include nation­al­ly rec­og­nized death penal­ty lit­i­ga­tors Mark Olive and Sean…