Law Reviews

The Fordham Urban Law Journal has pub­lished a series of arti­cles based on a sym­po­sium on lethal injec­tion that was held at Fordham Law School in March 2008. The issue includes arti­cles by Professor Deborah Denno of Fordham, a lead­ing his­to­ri­an and expert on meth­ods of exe­cu­tion, Judge Jeremy Fogel, a fed­er­al judge over­see­ing the chal­lenge to lethal injec­tion in California, Judge Fernando Gaitan, a fed­er­al judge who over­saw the chal­lenge to Missouri’s lethal injec­tion process, and arti­cles by doc­tors and oth­er experts who spoke at the symposium.(“Symposium: The Lethal…

Professor Celestine Richards McConville explores the plight of inmates on Alabama’s death row who face exe­cu­tion despite being denied ade­quate rep­re­sen­ta­tion for key parts of their appeal in her law review arti­cle, ​“The Meaninglessness of Delayed Appointments and Discretionary Grants of Capital Postconviction Counsel.” The arti­cle is part of a University of Tulsa Law Review sym­po­sium issue on ​“The Death Penalty and the Question of Actual Innocence.” The arti­cle points out that Alabama’s courts will not grant coun­sel to a death row inmate in post-con­vic­tion appeals until after the petitioner…

A recent law review arti­cle argues that cap­i­tal defen­dants’ right to expert assis­tance would grow stronger through the revi­tal­iza­tion of the 1983 Supreme Court deci­sion in Ake v. Oklahoma. The author explains that recent court deci­sions and the revised American Bar Association Guidelines for the Appointment and Performance of Defense Council in Death Penalty Cases ​“offer the hope that the the­o­ret­i­cal enti­tle­ment of Ake will be ful­ly real­ized.” As a result, the arti­cle argues that one of two out­comes will result at the state lev­el; ​“1) cap­i­tal defen­dants will receive…

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…

A recent law review arti­cle explores the qual­i­ty of defense rep­re­sen­ta­tion in cap­i­tal cas­es in Tennessee. Authors William Redick, Jr., Bradley Maclean, and M. Shane Truett con­duct­ed an in depth study of Tennessee death penal­ty cas­es in their arti­cle, ​“Pretend Justice – Defense Representation in Tennessee Death Penalty Cases” in the University of Memphis Law Review. The arti­cle argues that Tennessee fails to pro­vide effec­tive defense rep­re­sen­ta­tion in death penal­ty cas­es, cit­ing inef­fec­tive attor­ney qual­i­fi­ca­tion stan­dards, inad­e­quate com­pen­sa­tion and resources for indi­gent cap­i­tal defense rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and inequal­i­ties between defense to pros­e­cu­tion resources.…

A new study by Professor Scott Phillips of the Univeristy of Denver found that black defen­dants in Houston, Texas, are more like­ly to be sen­tenced to death than white defen­dants, even when oth­er vari­ables are account­ed for. The research, to be pub­lished in a forth­com­ing edi­tion of the Houston Law Review, looked at cas­es eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty in the coun­ty that is the source of the high­est num­ber of exe­cu­tions in Texas, which itself is respon­si­ble for more exe­cu­tions than any oth­er state. The study, which looked at…

The March 2008 issue of the Pierce Law Review explores many aspects of the death penal­ty through arti­cles writ­ten by renowned death penal­ty schol­ars and attor­neys. With a for­ward by Christopher M. Johnson, the Review exam­ines the death penal­ty at indi­vid­ual, soci­etal, and inter­na­tion­al lev­els. To coin­cide with the pub­li­ca­tion of this issue, the Franklin Pierce Law Center in New Hampshire held a pan­el dis­cus­sion on the death penal­ty on April 15, 2008.

In ​“Confronting Evil: Victims’ Rights in an Age of Terror,” Prof. Wayne Logan of Florida State College of Law exam­ines the use of vic­tim impact evi­dence in mass-vic­tim pros­e­cu­tions, such as the 1995 Oklahoma City bomb­ing and the ter­ror­ist attacks of September 11. The arti­cle will appear in the forth­com­ing issue of the Georgetown Law Journal. Victim impact evi­dence (VIE) is ​“infor­ma­tion on dece­dents’ per­son­al traits and the ways in which their deaths have adverse­ly affect­ed those left behind,” and it has been per­mit­ted in cap­i­tal cas­es since the Supreme…

A recent edi­tion of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review fea­tures arti­cles about the impact of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) in lim­it­ing appeals by pris­on­ers and death row inmates. AEDPA was enact­ed in 1996, and Harvard Law School spon­sored a sym­po­sium mark­ing the leg­is­la­tion’s tenth anniver­sary. One arti­cle by Bryan Stevenson, Director of the Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative, ​“Confronting Mass Imprisonment and Restoring Fairness to Collateral Review of Criminal Cases,” dis­cuss­es how AEDPA and relat­ed court deci­sions have cre­at­ed bar­ri­ers to chal­leng­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al vio­la­tions and…

University of Tennessee law pro­fes­sor Penny White exam­ines how two recent Supreme Court rul­ings should impact a cap­i­tal defen­dan­t’s right to con­front wit­ness­es dur­ing the sen­tenc­ing phase of his death penal­ty tri­al. Prof. White argues that a defen­dan­t’s con­sti­tu­tion­al right to con­front actu­al wit­ness­es tes­ti­fy­ing against him dur­ing the guilt phase of his tri­al (rather than hav­ing such evi­dence admit­ted through hearsay or oth­er non-first per­son evi­dence), should be extend­ed to cap­i­tal defen­dants dur­ing the penal­ty phase of their cas­es. The right of con­fronta­tion was strength­ened by the Supreme Court’s…