Law Reviews

Christopher Slobogin, Professor of Law and Psychiatry at Vanderbilt University, has writ­ten an eval­u­a­tion of Florida​’s death penal­ty to be pub­lished in a forth­com­ing edi­tion of the Elon University Law Review. The eval­u­a­tion is based on a study by an assess­ment team spon­sored by the American Bar Association. Florida is one of the lead­ing states in sen­tenc­ing peo­ple to death, but it also has the most death row exonerations…

The Tennessee Law Review recent­ly pub­lished a com­pi­la­tion of arti­cles and essays from its colloquium, ​“The Past, Present, and Future of the Death Penalty,” held in February 2009. Contributors focused on issues that have influ­enced cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment through­out the course of his­to­ry. An arti­cle by Hugo Adam Bedau, a promi­nent death penal­ty schol­ar, address­es the issues of inno­cence and racial bias in the…

The Council of the American Law Institute (ALI) recent­ly vot­ed to with­draw a sec­tion of its Model Penal Code con­cerned with cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment because of the​“cur­rent intractable insti­tu­tion­al and struc­tur­al obsta­cles to ensur­ing a min­i­mal­ly ade­quate sys­tem for admin­is­ter­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.” The Council based its deci­sion on a study it com­mis­sioned to look into the prac­tice of the death penal­ty since the…

The University of Missouri-Kansas City Law Review recent­ly pub­lished a sym­po­sium issue of Death Penalty Stories, high­light­ing the role of the nar­ra­tive in the defense of death penal­ty cas­es. The com­pi­la­tion includes con­tri­bu­tions from lit­i­ga­tors who have used per­sua­sive nar­ra­tive in sup­port of a life sen­tence. Russell Stetler’s The Unknown Story of a Motherless Child chron­i­cles the case of Edgar H., who was con­vict­ed of killing four men…

Professor Ty Alper of the Boalt School of Law at Berkeley has writ­ten an arti­cle for the forth­com­ing edi­tion of the North Carolina Law Review enti­tled​“The Truth About Physician Participation in Lethal Injection Executions.” Prof. Alper, a not­ed death penal­ty expert, reviews the avail­able research and recent lit­i­ga­tion on the most wide­ly used method of exe­cu­tion in the U.S., focus­ing espe­cial­ly on the poten­tial role of doc­tors in exe­cu­tions. As states…

A new arti­cle in the Annual Review of Law and Social Science enti­tled​“Convicting the Innocent” by Prof. Samuel Gross of the Universiry of Michigan Law School explores the rate of false con­vic­tions among death-sen­­tenced inmates and exam­ines the demo­graph­i­cal and pro­ce­dur­al pre­dic­tors of such errors. Prof. Gross not­ed that ear­li­er research showed the exon­er­a­tion rate to be 2.3% for inmates who had been on death row at least 15 years and…

The Tennessee Law Review is host­ing a col­lo­qui­um enti­tled,​“The Past, Present, and Future of the Death Penalty.” The event will take place February 6 – 7 at the University of Tennessee College of Law in Knoxville and will fea­ture nation­al­ly known experts in this field, includ­ing David Baldus, Hugo Adam Bedau, Stephen Bright, Deborah Denno, Lyn Entzeroth, the Honorable Gilbert S. Merritt, and Penny White. Judge Merritt will deliv­er the keynote address on…

The Texas Tech Law Review​’s lat­est edi­tion is focused on inno­cence and the death penal­ty. Among the arti­cles includ­ed, are,​“Presumed Guilty: A Death Row Exoneree Shares His Story of Supreme Injustice and Reflections on the Death Penalty,” by Juan Roberto Melendez;​“Toward a New Paradigm of Criminal Justice: How the Innocence Movement Merges Crime Control and Due Process,” by Keith A. Findley;​“The Role of the Innocence Argument in Contemporary Death Penalty…

A new study pub­lished in the Houston Law Review,​“Racial Disparities in the Capital of Capital Punishment,” explores the rela­tion­ship of race to death sen­tenc­ing in Harris County (Houston), Texas. In the study, Prof. Scott Phillips of the University of Denver explores pat­terns involv­ing the race of both vic­tims and defen­dants, while con­trol­ling for oth­er vari­ables. Phillips con­cludes death sen­tences were more like­ly to be imposed in cas­es with white vic­tims than in those…

Professor Bruce Winick of the Miami School of Law has writ­ten an arti­cle argu­ing that the Supreme Court should extend the pro­tec­tion it present­ly offers to those with men­tal retar­da­tion and juve­niles to offend­ers with severe men­tal ill­ness, as well. In The Supreme Court’s Emerging Death Penalty Jurisprudence: Severe Mental Illness as the Next Frontier, Winick reviews the High Court’s analy­sis of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment under the Eighth Amendment with a focus on when…