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

Toward a More Robust Right to Counsel of Choice

This Article takes its lead from the core principles of the right to counsel of choice expressed in Gonzalez-Lopez. These principles indicate that the right should include an indigent defendant\u27s right to continue an attorney-client relationship established at some point in the past, and that, for both nonindigent and indigent defendants, the right to continue a trial with counsel of choice must be honored by trial courts unless it would be unethical or manifestly unjust to do so. This means that trial courts must almost always grant a continuance to accommodate that choice and could rarely deny such a request for reasons of administrative convenience or docket control

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 Roberts Court\u27s Failed Innocence Project

In this article, Professor Hoeffel discusses the Roberts Court\u27s obvious struggle with its actual innocence jurisprudence. It is a struggle that was only theoretical in the days before DNA exonerations. While the Court had two opportunities to clarify the role of wrongful convictions in the criminal justice system, it has declined to do so. In House v. Bell, the Court ratcheted up the standard of proof for freestanding constitutional claims of innocence to a level no petitioner could understand, much less meet. Then, in District Attorney\u27s Office for the Third Judicial District v. Osborne, the Court held that the one manner in which a litigant might in fact meet that standard—through conclusive DNA testing of the state\u27s evidence—was not constitutionally mandated. Through analysis of these two cases and two other cases that came before the Roberts Court, Professor Hoeffel concludes that the majority of the Court is so cowed by the power of DNA that it has exaggerated its potential impact on the criminal justice system. As a result, it has closed doors on the few men and women who can prove their innocence