Publications & Testimony

Items: 6261 — 6270

Jun 24, 2002

U.S. Supreme Court: Ring v. Arizona

In a 7 – 2 deci­sion in the case of Ring v. Arizona, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a defen­dant has the right to have a jury, rather than a judge, decide on the exis­tence of an aggra­vat­ing fac­tor that makes the defen­dant eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty. The Court based its judg­ment on the broad­er con­sti­tu­tion­al prin­ci­ple that the Sixth Amendment right to tri­al by jury encom­pass­es the right to a jury find­ing of all facts that are nec­es­sary to put a defen­dant to death. In its decision,…

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May 12, 2002

Examples of Geographic Disparity

About one-quar­ter of Ohio’s death row inmates come from Hamilton County (Cincinnati), but only 9% of the state’s mur­ders occur there. (R. Willing and G. Fields, Geography of the Death Penalty, USA Today, Dec. 20,…

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