Mixed Messages: The Supreme Court’s Conflicting Decisions on Juries in Death Penalty Cases

The right to a jury determination of a capital defendant\u27s fate has expanded recently. The era of judges making factual determinations then determining whether to apply a death sentence or judges having the power to overrule a jury\u27s life sentence to impose death is over. The expanded right to access a jury and have it hold determinative power over a defendant\u27s life has not, however, been accompanied by commensurate attention to the instructions that guide those jurors through the applicable law toward their verdict. Nor have adequate procedures been designed to produce a truly representative jury panel. In brief, the right to a jury has been enhanced without concern for the government’s obligations necessary to animate that right. This contradiction has clear consequences. A capital defendant puts his life in the hands of a group we have strong reason to suspect will have difficulty understanding their instructions, difficulty defining and applying mitigating evidence, and uncertainty regarding the true meaning of the sentences available to them. Moreover, that group was assembled systematically to be unrepresentative of community mores. In the cases highlighted here, we demonstrate that the Rehnquist Court led the Court toward a laissez faire position on the jury system. The Court asserts, without justification, that there is no problem. They offer unfalsiable evidence that the jury functioned properly. This has long-ranging implications for the jury system and for capital punishment

An investigation into the effects of location and government regulation on the petrol sales of retail service stations in South Africa

Bibliography: p. xi-xvii.The object of this thesis is to develop an economic framework in which to analyse the effects of regulation and location on retail service station petrol sales. The political leaders of most countries in the world today will attempt to ensure the stable, independent and secure growth of their economies. Oil, whether being produced or consumed, will have an undoubted effect on their strategies. This is particularly true of South Africa, which imports all its crude oil from an ostensibly hostile world. Powerful government controls regulate all aspects of the oil industry, right through to final consumption. Retail service stations, the subject of this thesis, are no exception. They are affected by government propagated barriers to entry, price controls, restrictions on selling hours and restrictions on location, inter alia ... all in an avowedly free enterprise economy. Additional important factors help to shape the service stations as a unique economic entity. Their customers, according to one writer, buy petrol as a rent to use their cars. It is an 'inconvenience' good. Consequently, locational convenience takes on a special importance

The Arbiters of Decency: A Study of Legislators\u27 Eighth Amendment Role

Within Eighth Amendment doctrine, legislators are arbiters of contemporary values. The United States Supreme Court looks closely to state and federal death penalty legislation to determine whether a given punishment is out of keeping with “evolving standards of decency.” Those who draft, debate, and vote on death penalty laws thus participate in both ordinary and higher lawmaking. This Article investigates this dual role. We coded and aggregated information about every floor statement made in the legislative debates preceding the recent passage of bills abolishing the death penalty in Connecticut, Illinois, and Nebraska. We categorized all statements according to their position on the death penalty, their subject matter, and any references they made to the courts and Constitution. We also collected basic facts about the legislators, including about political party, race, education, and profession. We present our quantitative and qualitative findings here. Building upon these findings, we critically examine the Court’s use of legislation as an “objective indicator” of “evolving standards of decency.” We identify disconnects between legislative outcomes and community “standards of decency,” and we analyze legislators’ understanding of their constitutional significance and why their level of self-awareness may matter. Finally, we consider how legislative debates—rather than outcomes alone—might provide insights into contemporary values. In particular, the strong concern we observed over wrongful execution may support more robust Eighth Amendment protections for those claiming actual innocence

Patients' and partners' health-related quality of life before and 4 months after coronary artery bypass grafting surgery

Background: Patients having coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) often depend on their partners for assistance before and after surgery. Whilst patients' physical and mental health usually improves after surgery little is known about the partners' health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in CABG. If the partners' physical and emotional health is poor this can influence their caregiving role and ability to support the patient. This study aimed: to increase understanding of patients' and partners' HRQoL before and after CABG; to explore whether patients' and partners' pre-operative socio-demographics and HRQoL predict their own, and also partners' HRQoL 4 months after CABG. Methods: This prospective study recruited 84 dyads (patients 84% males, aged 64.5 years; partners 94% females, aged 61.05 years). Patients' and partners' perceived health status was assessed using the Short-Form 12 Health Survey. Patients' physical limitation, angina symptoms and treatment satisfaction were assessed using the Seattle Angina Questionnaire. Partners' emotional, physical and social functioning was assessed using the Quality of Life of Cardiac Spouses Questionnaire. Data were analysed using hierarchical multiple (logistic) regressions, repeated measures analysis of variance, paired t test and Chi square. Results: Patients most likely to have poorer physical health post-operatively were associated with partners who had poorer pre-operative physical health. Partners most likely to have poorer emotional, physical and social functioning post-operatively were associated with patients who had poorer pre-operative mental health. Patients" and partners' poorer post-operative HRQoL was also explained by their poorer pre-operative HRQoL. Conclusion: The partners' involvement should be considered as part of patients' pre-operative assessment. Special attention needs be paid to patients' pre-operative mental health since it is likely to impact on their post-operative mental health and the partner's emotional, physical and social functioning

Are Land-use Emissions Scalable with Increasing Corn Ethanol Mandates in the United States?

In response to the Renewable Fuel Standard, the U.S. transportation sector now consumes a substantial amount (13.3 billion gallons in 2010) of ethanol. A key motivation for these mandates is to expand the consumption of biofuels in road transportation to both reduce foreign oil dependency and to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the consumption of fossil fuels in transportation. In this paper, we present the impacts of several biofuels expansion scenarios for the U.S. in which scaled increases in the U.S. corn ethanol mandates are modeled to explore the scalability of GHG impacts. The impacts show both expected and surprising results. As expected, the area of land used to grow biofuel crops increases with the size of the policy in the U.S., and some land-use changes occur abroad due to trade in agricultural commodities. Because the land-use changes happen largely in the U.S., there is an increase in U.S. land-use emissions when natural lands are converted to agricultural use in the policy scenarios. Further, the emissions impacts in the U.S. and the rest of the world in these scenarios, including land-use emissions, scale in direct proportion to the size of the U.S. corn ethanol mandates. On the other hand, the land-use emissions that occur in the rest of the world are disproportionately larger per hectare of change due to conversions of more carbon-rich forests to cultivate crops and feed livestock.We gratefully acknowledge the financial support for this work from the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science under DE-FG02-94ER61937, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under XA-83600001-1 and XA-835055101-2, and other government, industry, and foundation sponsors of the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change