NCJ Number
153839
Journal
Fordham Urban Law Journal Volume: 21 Issue: 2 Dated: (1994) Pages: 239-298
Date Published
1994
Length
60 pages
Annotation
Eight panelists discuss whether rational discourse and due process can guide policymaking associated with the death penalty in the face of perceived political pressure.
Abstract
One panelist concludes that there is still unguided discretion under the capital punishment regimes that the U.S. Supreme Court has approved as constitutional in the years since "Furman." Another panelist discusses how an Alabama State court judge, immediately after bemoaning in private the demagogic pro- death penalty arguments of a gubernatorial candidate, took the bench and rejected clear evidence of racial discrimination in the selection of an all-white jury for the capital trial of an African-American man. Several of the panelists state that the lawyers whom State court judges have appointed to represent defendants in capital trials have often lacked the requisite experience, knowledge, resources, and commitment to represent these clients effectively. Two panelists discuss a relatively new way in which discretion is being exercised arbitrarily in a few States. A panelist notes that the U.S. Supreme Court has in recent years created a series of procedural obstacles that prevent Federal courts from adjudicating the merits of Federal constitutional claims. Other topics considered by the panelists are legislative efforts that would further curtail habeas corpus, political threats to judges' principled consideration of capital cases, systemic reasons why many innocent people are sentenced to death, irrational political discourse and inadequate reporting on the death penalty, and misconceptions about the inevitability of political death for death-penalty opponents. 137 footnotes