Shrinking the Accountability Deficit in Capital Charging

2021 ◽  
pp. 558-584
Author(s):  
Sherod Thaxton
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Administrative Cost ◽  
Legal Intervention ◽  
Cost Shifting ◽  
Wrongful Convictions ◽  
Capital Trials ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Capital Cases ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Totality Of Evidence

The price of capital trials, appeals, and clemency proceedings have skyrocketed since the U.S. Supreme Court lifted its moratorium on the death penalty, but this has not translated to more reliable case outcomes—the rate of serious reversible error and wrongful convictions has steadily increased during the same time period. The overly aggressive use of the death penalty by prosecutors has not only been convincingly linked to these high reversal rates, but may also increase crime, decrease the likelihood of arrests for homicides, and lead to heightened risks of miscarriages of justice for non‐capital defendants. It follows that limiting hawkish prosecutorial decision‐making in potentially capital cases may be particularly effective in reducing the prevalence of error and reducing unnecessary expense. Curbing the virtually unfettered discretion of prosecutors is not a new idea, but extant proposals tend to suffer from shortcomings that are likely to render them impractical or ineffective. Any viable legal intervention must increase prosecutorial accountability for inadequate charge‐screening in capital cases while still permitting prosecutors to retain discretion in seeking the death penalty. This essay describes a reform that consists of two primary components: (1) an advisory (i.e., non‐binding) opinion from a reviewing authority assessing the appropriateness of a prosecutor’s decision to seek the death penalty in a case based on the totality of evidence, and (2) financial and administrative cost-shifting mechanisms capable of disincentivizing prosecutorial overreaching in capital charging.

Intellectual Disability, Criminal Justice, and the Death Penalty

2020 ◽  
pp. 172-183
Author(s):  
Cliff Sloan ◽  
Lauryn Fraas
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Disability ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Adaptive Behavior ◽  
Current Medical ◽  
Medical Standards ◽  
Capital Cases ◽  
Social Work Practitioners ◽  
Iq Scores ◽  
Standard Error Of Measurement ◽  
The U.S

This chapter introduces the reader to key cases analyzing claims of intellectual disability, describes the current clinical definition and diagnosis, and provides an overview of recurring issues in capital litigation. In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that individuals with intellectual disability may not be executed. The Court subsequently clarified that current medical standards must be used in assessing claims of intellectual disability in capital cases. The clinical diagnosis requires assessing three factors: (a) deficits in intellectual functioning; (b) deficits in adaptive behavior; and (c) the onset of deficits during the developmental period. Courts must be informed by current medical standards regarding issues that arise, including the standard error of measurement in IQ scores, the problems of offsetting weaknesses in adaptive behavior with perceived strengths, and other clinical topics. The principle that the death penalty must not be imposed on individuals with intellectual disability signals important responsibilities for social work practitioners.

scholarly journals The Death Penalty: Should the Judge or the Jury Decide Who Dies?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerie P. Hans ◽  
John H. Blume ◽  
Amelia C. Hritz ◽  
Sheri Lynn Johnson ◽  
Caisa E. Royer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Death Sentence ◽  
Final Decision ◽  
Jury Decision Making ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
Capital Trials ◽  
Death Sentences ◽  
Capital Cases ◽  
Jury Decision

12 Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 70-99 (2015)This article addresses the effect of judge versus jury decision making through analysis of a database of all capital sentencing phase hearing trials in the State of Delaware from 1977– 2007. Over the three decades of the study, Delaware shifted responsibility for death penalty sentencing from the jury to the judge. Currently, Delaware is one of the handful of states that gives the judge the final decision-making authority in capital trials. Controlling for a number of legally relevant and other predictor variables, we find that the shift to judge sentencing significantly increased the number of death sentences. Statutory aggravating factors, stranger homicides, and the victim’s gender also increased the likelihood of a death sentence, as did the county of the homicide. We reflect on the implications of these results for debates about the constitutionality of judge sentencing in capital cases.

scholarly journals Slow Law: Temporal Logics in US Death Penalty Mitigation Investigations

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (04) ◽  
pp. 1174-1195
Author(s):  
Jesse Cheng
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Temporal Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Temporal Logics ◽  
Large Measure ◽  
Slow Pace ◽  
Capital Trials ◽  
Capital Murder ◽  
Capital Cases ◽  
Temporal Dimensions

From arrest to sentencing, cases in which the defendant is charged with capital murder in the United States take substantially longer to resolve than homicide cases in which prosecutors choose not to seek the death penalty. One might reasonably attribute the slowness of capital trials to heightened procedural safeguards that attend the potential deprivation of life. In this article, I suggest that this explanation, straightforward as it is, glosses over more probing and analytically interesting truths about the complex temporal dimensions of death penalty trials. Based on my experiences as both a former defense advocate and an ethnographic researcher of capital defense practices, the slowness of capital cases revolves in large measure around the investigative pursuits of sentencing mitigation. Mitigation investigation’s knowledge practices are informed by distinct temporal operations whose interrelations feed into a deeper logic to capital defense advocacy. This article parses out and traces the connections between these inner workings, using social theory on time to articulate the processes by which mitigation’s temporal logics produce the characteristically slow pace of death penalty cases. I conclude with brief thoughts speculating how the temporal analysis experimented with here might be extended to processes of US criminal adjudication more broadly.

Death penalty views in China, Japan and the U.S.: An empirical comparison

2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (5) ◽  
pp. 862-869 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shanhe Jiang ◽  
Eric G. Lambert ◽  
Jin Wang ◽  
Toyoji Saito ◽  
Rebecca Pilot
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Empirical Comparison ◽  
The U.S

Infant fatality patterns in shared sleep: keys to intervention strategies?

2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 1322-1326
Author(s):  
Dorothy Ann Drago ◽  
Carol Pollack-Nelson ◽  
Sarah Beth Newens
Keyword(s):  
Cause Of Death ◽  
Potential Risk ◽  
Intervention Strategies ◽  
Consumer Product Safety Commission ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Reduction Strategies ◽  
Sleep Environment ◽  
Risk Reduction Strategies ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Age And Sex

This study examines infant fatalities that occurred while sharing a sleep surface. Fatality data reported to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) during the time period January, 2013 through December, 2017 and involving infants through age 10 months were reviewed. 1,587 Cases were analyzed on the following variables: infant age and sex; sleep environment by product; cause of death; fatality pattern; and breastfeeding, where it was mentioned. 97% Of deaths were due to some form of asphyxia. Adult beds were associated with 78% of shared sleep fatalities, and the primary fatality pattern was overlay (35.4%)/probable overlay (8.8%). Infants <3 months made up 65% of fatalities. The data reflect that bedsharing continues, despite AAP guidelines to the contrary, and that overlay is the primary hazard pattern to be addressed. This paper discusses potential risk reduction strategies that may reduce the potential for overlay fatalities.

Capital Punishment, Retribution, and Emotion

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 267-290
Author(s):  
Anthony Walsh ◽  
Virginia L. Hatch
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Imaging Techniques ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fully Integrated ◽  
Group Stability ◽  
Normal People ◽  
Capital Cases ◽  
Almost All

This article explores the emotions behind the retributive urge as it applies to the death penalty in the United States. It is argued that the retributive urge is so strong because it engages the most primitive of our emotions, and that these emotions served adaptive purposes over the course of human evolution. Many scholars offended by the retributive instinct insist that we must put emotions aside when discussing the death penalty, even as jurors in death penalty cases, and rely on our rationality. To ask this is to ask what almost all normal people find impossible because the emotions evoked in capital cases (disgust, anger, sympathy for the victim, desire for justice) evolved for the purpose of maintaining group stability and survival by punishing freeloaders. Modern neuroscience has destroyed the traditional notion that rationality and emotion are antagonists. Brain imaging techniques show that they are fully integrated in our brain wiring, and both are engaged in decision making, but when reason and emotion yield conflicting judgments, the latter almost always triumphs. The evolutionary rationales for why emotions conducive to punitive responses for wrongdoers exist are examined.

Race and the Death Penalty

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony G. Vito
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Racial Bias ◽  
The United States ◽  
Death Sentence ◽  
White Female ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Wrongful Convictions ◽  
Black Defendants ◽  
Black Defendant ◽  
Modern Era

The relation of race and the death penalty has been a consistent issue in the United States in what is known as the “modern era” of capital punishment. The modern era is defined as being from 1972 to the present, following the Furman v. Georgia decision. Supreme Court cases examining race and the death penalty have considered the application of the death penalty. Issues and concerns have been brought up about whether using statistical evidence is appropriate to determine racial bias that can be used in court cases, the role of a mandatory death penalty, and concern over striking jurors from the jury pool due to race. A wealth of empirical evidence has been done in different areas of the country and has shown some evidence of bias or disparities based on various statistical analyses. One of the more common issues found is issues regarding the race of the defendant (i.e., Black defendant or Black male defendant), the race of the victim (i.e., White victim or White female victim), or interracial dyad (i.e., Black defendant and White victim) that impacts whether the death penalty is sought or imposed. Another concern is wrongful convictions and exonerations. The criminal justice system is not infallible, and this is no more so apparent when deciding to give a death sentence. Prior research has shown that Black defendants are more likely to be involved in cases later found to be wrongful convictions or exonerations. Due to the issue regarding race and the death penalty, two states Kentucky and North Carolina, have created Racial Justice Acts. The creation of these two acts is a good sign of efforts to deal with race and the death penalty. However, how its use and when shows that there is much more work is needed.

Assessment of Elevator Risks and Code Requirements Associated With Slip, Trip and Fall Hazards

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Bress ◽  
Eugenia Kennedy ◽  
Mark Guttag
Keyword(s):  
Surveillance System ◽  
Consumer Product Safety Commission ◽  
Injury Surveillance System ◽  
Current Effort ◽  
Safety Requirements ◽  
Manual Inspection ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Safety Code ◽  
Elevator Door ◽  
The U.S

Abstract In previous work, the hazards associated with elevator door closures were identified and analyzed. Using the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) database of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), incidents associated with door strikes were identified between the years 1990 to 2017. This current effort focuses on elevator slip, trip and fall hazards. The ASME A17.1 Safety Code for Elevators and Escalators requires that elevator systems be equipped with leveling devices to vertically align the car platform sill relative to the hoistway landing sill to attain a predetermined accuracy. Even with the leveling safety requirements, slip, trip and fall incidents for passengers exiting or entering elevators are known to occur. This paper will analyze elevator slip, trip and fall hazards using injury records from the NEISS database from 1990 to 2019. Relevant elevator incidents were extracted from this dataset through manual inspection of the text-based description fields of all elevator-related incident records found in the NEISS dataset from this time period. National projections of elevator incidents were then calculated from this extracted dataset and trended for the entire time period of 1990 through 2019. The age and sex distributions of these national projections were also analyzed. These projections and trends are then discussed in the context of ASME A17.1 requirements intended to mitigate the risks of injuries when entering or exiting an elevator.

Drone Penalty

Killing Times ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 150-184
Author(s):  
David Wills
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Structural Space ◽  
Extrajudicial Killing ◽  
Criminal Conduct ◽  
The U.S

A different appropriation of the instant takes place in the case of extrajudicial killing by drones. That practice by the U.S., begun in 2002, has remained shrouded in secrecy. However one counts the victims, drone executions outnumber by a huge margin American judicial executions, and the drone penalty thus represents a particular paradigm of the American death penalty: for the most part out of sight and out of mind. It raises in turn questions about American democracy and the deadly criminal conduct of its foreign policy, but also produces a perspective that brings into focus the long series of historical relations between slavery and the death penalty, as well as lynching and the persistence of racism in the application of capital punishment. Furthermore, the sovereign secrecy of drone attacks produces a structural space shared by the U.S. president and the terrorist s/he attacks.

The Time of the Trap Door

Killing Times ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 54-86
Author(s):  
David Wills
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Trap Door ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Late Eighteenth

This chapter offers an examination of the refining of the instant of execution that takes place with the introduction of trap door gallows in the seventeenth century and, more spectacularly and explicitly, in the late eighteenth century with the French Revolution and the guillotine. The death penalty is thereby distinguished from torture and a post-Enlightenment conception of punishment is introduced, lasting to the present. But the guillotine is bloody, and that underscores a complex visuality of the death penalty that also obtains during the same time period, playing out across diverse genres such as the execution sermon, political and scientific discourses relating to the guillotine, Supreme Court descriptions of crimes, and practices of an entity such as the Islamic State. What develops concurrent with the guillotine—yet remains constant through all those examples--is a form of realist photographic visuality.

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