Death Penalty Keynote: Why Mitigation Matters, Now and for the Future

This Article examines the current state of the death penalty in California and nationally through the lens of mitigation—the empathy-evoking evidence that has been a constitutional requirement to ensure individualized sentencing in the era of the modern American death penalty. It situates the discussion in the context of the extraordinary events of 2020: the Covid-19 pandemic, the heightened awareness of racial inequities reflected in the Black Lives Matter movement, and the federal execution spree in the final six months of the Trump administration. The Article began as the keynote address at California’s annual Capital Case Defense Seminar on February 13, 2021. In the spring of 2020, when the author was invited to give this keynote, no one knew what an unprecedented year was unfolding. No one anticipated that the keynote and the seminar would be virtual. While the keynote kept its focus on the author’s area of expertise (mitigation evidence in death penalty cases), it expanded to reflect on the pandemic, the emergence of Black Lives Matter, and the federal execution spree. The months of research that went into the keynote made it relatively straightforward for the author to transform a speech into a carefully documented Article. Nonetheless, the author has kept some of the colloquial tone of the original address in order to capture the unique framework for understanding the death penalty in California and nationally in 2021. For more than four decades, capital defense training in California and across the country has stressed the importance of developing humanizing evidence based on the diverse frailties of humankind, evidence that at once provides to the accused the effective representation guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment and to jurors the evidence that they need to make the reasoned moral decision they are asked to render in capital cases and without which there cannot be reliable results. Capital punishment had its ascendency in the 1990s when executions resumed in California. Annual death sentences and executions reached their highest numbers both in California and across the country. However, the trends reversed around the turn of the century. The requirement of mitigating evidence to ensure fairness and individualized sentencing was a built-in, self-destructive part of the modern American death penalty. The thirteen federal executions in the final six months of the Trump administration and in the midst of the pandemic were arbitrary and lawless, as prisoners were executed in spite of intellectual disability, mental illness, meritorious legal claims, and powerful evidence of remorse and rehabilitation. Some had spotless or near spotless records during their years on death row. In recent years, we have also seen many other examples of prisoners who were sentenced to death, or to die in prison without hope of parole, who have led exemplary lives after securing their release. The Supreme Court of the United States enabled the federal execution spree, overturning stays issued by numerous federal courts below and suggesting that, at least for now, we have lost the legal battle over the death penalty. However, the death penalty has become a damaged brand, increasingly abandoned by state after state, prosecutors, juries, and the American public. I submit that we are winning the narrative battle

Constructing a Legal and Managerial Paradigm Applicable to the Modern-Day Safety and Security Challenge at Colleges and Universities

This Article focuses on campus safety and security in higher education. In light of the numerous stakeholders in higher education that include faculty, law enforcement professionals, higher education lawyers, state and federal officials, and institutional administrators, this Article examines legal and policy considerations that should influence how colleges and universities respond to protect the campus community and safeguard the educational environment. In particular, the Article discusses the Incident Command System and the impact this management approach has had on the development of an organizational framework to manage emergency incidents. The Article also reviews selected case law regarding campus safety and state and federal statutory responses designed to minimize threats to campus safety. Finally, the Article acknowledges the role that members of the university community play in advancing campus security as well as the application of risk management concepts and strategies in the campus safety and security arena. Recognizing that colleges and universities are vital national institutions, the article encourages the development of a legal and managerial paradigm to deal with the modem-day perplexities of campus safety and security

Detecting a decline in serial homicide : have we banished the devil from the details?

The current research provides perspective regarding the true prevalence of serial murderers in modern society and addresses the conflict between the evidenced decline in serial homicide and the viewpoint that the phenomenon is increasing. The likelihood that serial murderers are responsible for most unresolved homicides and missing persons is examined in the context of a declining prevalence. A mixed methods approach was used, consisting of a review of a sample of unresolved homicides, a comparative analysis of the frequency of known serial homicide series and unresolved serial homicide series, and semi-structured interviews of experts. In failing to become serial killers, aspiring and probable serial killers and spree killers have impacted the rate of serial murder by not reaching their potential. The past decade contained almost half the cases (13%) that existed at the 1980s peak of serial homicide (27%). Only 282 (1.3%) strangled females made up the 22,444 unresolved homicides reviewed. Most expert respondents thought it unreasonable that any meaningful proportion of missing persons cases are victims of serial homicide. Technology, shifts in offending behavior, proactive law enforcement action, and vigilance of society have transformed serial killing and aids in viewing offenders as people impacted by societal shifts and cultural norms. The absence of narrative details inhibited some aspects of the review. An exhaustive list of known unresolved serial homicide series remained elusive as some missing persons are never reported. Future research should incorporate those intending to murder serially, but whose efforts were stalled by arrest, imprisonment, or death

Fraud and the Evolution of Forensic Accounting Education

Forensic accounting, the use of accounting practices in court, developed as a field separate from traditional accounting or auditing throughout the 1900’s. As fraud changed the landscape of auditing practice, forensic accounting slowly began to take shape as the accountant’s answer to fraud. After a series of major frauds at the beginning of the 21st century, forensic accounting became one of the most demanded fields of accounting. The profession, though, was still relatively in its infancy: forensic accountants were predominantly untrained aside from firsthand experience. Since the early 2000’s, schools have begun rapidly implementing forensic accounting programs to meet the increasing demand for forensic accountants. As the demand continues to increase, however, education offerings will be needed

Economic crisis and public services: note 1, December 2008

The paper examines the impact of the economic crisis on public services, including government reponses and implications for companies operating in public services

Towards a pragmatic approach for dealing with uncertainties in water management practice

Management of water resources is afflicted with uncertainties. Nowadays it is facing more and new uncertainties since pace and dimension of changes (e.g. climatic, demographic) are accelerating and are likely to increase even more in the future. Hence it is crucial to find pragmatic ways to deal with these uncertainties in water management. So far, decision-making under uncertainty in water management is based on either intuition, heuristics and experience of water managers or on expert assessments all of which are only of limited use for water managers in practice. We argue for an analytical yet pragmatic approach to enable practitioners to deal with uncertainties in a more explicit and systematic way and allow for better informed decisions. Our approach is based on the concept of framing, referring to the different ways in which people make sense of the world and of the uncertainties. We applied and tested recently developed parameters that aim to shed light on the framing of uncertainty in two sub-basins of the Rhine. We present and discuss the results of a series of stakeholder interactions in the two basins aimed at developing strategies for improving dealing with uncertainties. The strategies are synthesized in a cross-checking list based on the uncertainty framing parameters as a hands-on tool for systematically identifying improvement options when dealing with uncertainty in water management practice. We conclude with suggestions for testing the developed check-list as a tool for decision aid in water management practice. Key words: water management, future uncertainties, framing of uncertainties, hands-on decision aid, tools for practice, robust strategies, social learnin

Criminal Responsibility of the Addict: Conviction by Force of Habit

This article addresses questions of criminal responsibility of drug addicts in light of Robinson v. California, holding criminal sanctions for a status of drug addiction to be unconstitutional under the eighth amendment. The article evaluates key court cases relating the insanity defense, and argues that in cases where addicts commit criminal acts as a result of drug addictions, the addict should not suffer criminal penalties but should instead be treated through rehabilitation facilities or other methods