The Overproduction of Death

In this Article, Professor Liebman concludes that trial actors have strong incentives to – and do – overproduce death sentences, condemning to death men and women who, under state substantive law, do not deserve that penalty. Because trial-level procedural rights do not weaken these incentives or constrain the overproduction that results, it falls to post-trial procedural review – which is ill-suited to the task and fails to feed back needed information to the trial level – to identify the many substantive mistakes made at capital trials. This system is difficult to reform because it benefits both pro-death penalty trial actors (who generate more death sentences than otherwise) and anti-death penalty lawyers (who concentrate their resources on post-trial review proceedings where, given high rates of trial error, they prevail abnormally often). Reforms that focus only on trials or appeals cannot solve the problem. Professor Liebman offers a comprehensive 10-part plan to adjust the skewed incentives and curb the overproduction of death

The State of Utah v. Ralph Leroy Menzies : Brief of Appellant

BRIEF OF APPELLANT Appeal from a judgement and conviction for Criminal Homicide, Murder in the First degree a capital offense, in violation of Utah Code Ann. § 76-202 (Supp. 1989), and Aggravated Kidnapping, a first degree felony in violation of Utah Code Ann. § 76-5-302 (Supp. 1989), in the judicial district Court in and for Salt Lake County, State of utah , the Honorable Raymond S. Uno, Judge, presiding

I\u27m Dying to Tell You What Happened : The Admissibility of Testimonial Dying Declarations Post-\u3ci\u3eCrawford\u3c/i\u3e

This Article demonstrates the existence and delineates the scope of a federal constitutional definition of dying declarations that is distinct from the definitions set forth in the Federal Rules of Evidence and their state counterparts. This Article further demonstrates that states have state constitutional definitions of dying declarations (for purposes of interpreting state constitutional analogues to the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment) that may differ in important respects from the federal constitutional definition of dying declarations. This Article then shows that some of the definitions of dying declarations contained in federal and state hearsay exceptions exceed the federal and state constitutional definitions of that phrase. As a result, statements admitted against the accused in criminal cases pursuant to such exceptions may run afoul of the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment and its state analogues, even if there exists a dying declaration exception to the Confrontation Clause

Verdict According to Conscience: Perspectives on the English Criminal Trial Jury 1200-1800

This book treats the history of the English criminal trial jury from its origins to the eve of the Victorian reforms in the criminal law. It consists of eight free-standing essays on important aspects of that history and a conclusion. Each chapter addresses the phenomenon that has come to be known as jury nullification, the exercise of jury discretion in favor of a defendant whom the jury nonetheless believes to have committed the act with which he is charged. Historically, some instances of nullification reflect the jury\u27s view that the act in question is not unlawful, while in other cases the jury does not quarrel with the law but believes that the prescribed sanction is too severe. Order is imposed on the book not by time but by a unity of concern. This approach trades the continuity of a comprehensive narrative for a more detailed treatment of issues and events of particular significance. With one exception, these essays are not concerned with establishing the fact of nullification. No one who has studied the history of criminal law doubts that on occasion this practice occurs. (Indeed, the practice is a central topic in many of the important studies of the social history of crime that have appeared in recent years.) What interests me most is not the persistence of nullification but its imp_act through time on the substantive law, on the administration of the law, and on the ways in which Englishmen-officials, jurists, and laymen-thought about both the jury and the law. It is on these aspects that I focus, and it is that focus that makes the book (at least in the author\u27s mind) a general social and intellectual history of an important element of English criminal law.https://repository.law.umich.edu/books/1003/thumbnail.jp

Verdict According to Conscience: Perspectives on the English Criminal Trial Jury 1200-1800

This book treats the history of the English criminal trial jury from its origins to the eve of the Victorian reforms in the criminal law. It consists of eight free-standing essays on important aspects of that history and a conclusion. Each chapter addresses the phenomenon that has come to be known as jury nullification, the exercise of jury discretion in favor of a defendant whom the jury nonetheless believes to have committed the act with which he is charged. Historically, some instances of nullification reflect the jury\u27s view that the act in question is not unlawful, while in other cases the jury does not quarrel with the law but believes that the prescribed sanction is too severe. Order is imposed on the book not by time but by a unity of concern. This approach trades the continuity of a comprehensive narrative for a more detailed treatment of issues and events of particular significance. With one exception, these essays are not concerned with establishing the fact of nullification. No one who has studied the history of criminal law doubts that on occasion this practice occurs. (Indeed, the practice is a central topic in many of the important studies of the social history of crime that have appeared in recent years.) What interests me most is not the persistence of nullification but its imp_act through time on the substantive law, on the administration of the law, and on the ways in which Englishmen-officials, jurists, and laymen-thought about both the jury and the law. It is on these aspects that I focus, and it is that focus that makes the book (at least in the author\u27s mind) a general social and intellectual history of an important element of English criminal law.https://repository.law.umich.edu/books/1003/thumbnail.jp