Death Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

In the forty-four years since the Court employed the Eighth Amendment to temporarily suspend the death penalty in the United States in Furman v. Georgia in 1972, the Court has spilled an enormous amount of ink attempting to instruct the states on how to properly guide jurors’ discretion in imposing the death penalty. Yet, in its voluminous Eighth Amendment jurisprudence, the Justices spilled not one drop suggesting the familiar and unifying standard of beyond a reasonable doubt as a guide

Risking the Eight Amendment: Arbitrariness, Juries, and Discretion in Capital Cases

This Article argues that the stalled dialogue over the U.S. Supreme Court\u27s administration of capital punishment suffers from a fundamental misunderstanding of the first principles of the Eighth Amendment, Although the Court in Furman v. Georgia articulated an Eighth Amendment substantive right against the arbitrary imposition of death sentences, the Court later recast Furman to require procedures that merely reduced a substantial risk of arbitrariness. Instead, Furman mandates procedures that expose arbitrariness. The best vehicle for this is a review of jurors\u27 reasons for , imposing death in an individual case. Although there are political and practical hurdles to mining the jurors\u27 reasons for imposing death, they are far from insurmountable. Absent a moratorium, this Article advocates change that informs and exposes the process of death. As to impossibility, all I can say is that nothing is more true of [the legal) profession than that the most eminent among them, for 100 years, have testified with complete confidence that something is impossible which, once it is introduced, is found to be very easy of administration. —F. Frankfurte

Ending Injustice: Solving the Initial Appearance Crisis

Most Americans expect that if they are arrested, they will quickly appear before a judge, learn about the charges, and have an attorney assigned to defend them. The reality is vastly different. After arrest, a person can wait in jail for days, weeks, or even months before seeing a judge or meeting an attorney. This report chronicles the resulting initial appearance crisis and highlights its devastating consequences. More importantly, it provides policymakers and advocates with actionable recommendations.https://scholar.smu.edu/deasoncenter/1002/thumbnail.jp

The first joint ESGAR/ ESPR consensus statement on the technical performance of cross-sectional small bowel and colonic imaging

Objectives: To develop guidelines describing a standardised approach to patient preparation and acquisition protocols for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computed tomography (CT) and ultrasound (US) of the small bowel and colon, with an emphasis on imaging inflammatory bowel disease. Methods: An expert consensus committee of 13 members from the European Society of Gastrointestinal and Abdominal Radiology (ESGAR) and European Society of Paediatric Radiology (ESPR) undertook a six-stage modified Delphi process, including a detailed literature review, to create a series of consensus statements concerning patient preparation, imaging hardware and image acquisition protocols. Results: One hundred and fifty-seven statements were scored for agreement by the panel of which 129 statements (82 %) achieved immediate consensus with a further 19 (12 %) achieving consensus after appropriate modification. Nine (6 %) statements were rejected as consensus could not be reached. Conclusions: These expert consensus recommendations can be used to help guide cross-sectional radiological practice for imaging the small bowel and colon. Key points: • Cross-sectional imaging is increasingly used to evaluate the bowel • Image quality is paramount to achieving high diagnostic accuracy • Guidelines concerning patient preparation and image acquisition protocols are provided