The Death Penalty in Georgia: Still Arbitrary

The United States Supreme Court has found death constitutional as a punishment for murder. In Gregg v. Georgia, the Court declared that capital punishment is not, by its very nature, cruel and unusual in violation of the eighth amendment. This Article focuses on the Georgia capital punishment system. The conclusions to be drawn from examination of the Georgia experience have broad application, however, because the Georgia system is typical of modem American capital punishment schemes. If the Georgia statute cannot avoid arbitrary and discriminatory imposition of death sentences, it is difficult to imagine a statute that could effectively perform that task. In Part I, this Article examines the Gregg Court\u27s assumption that safeguards built into the trial and appeal phase of a capital case insure against arbitrary and capricious application of the death penalty in Georgia. The Court in Gregg essentially dismissed the problems inherent in the prosecutor\u27s discretion to charge and the executive\u27s power to grant clemency. The Article will address the issues surrounding those stages in Parts II and III

Amici Curiae Brief of New York law school professors in People v. Harris: Constitutionality of the New York Death Penalty Statute Under the State Constitution\u27s Cruel and Unusual Punishments and Antidiscrimination Clauses

Amici are teachers in New York law schools who have studied the operation of the death penalty for the purpose of teaching the subject, writing about it in scholarly journals, or representing persons accused or convicted of capital crimes. Most of us have worked in the field both as academics and as pro bono counsel for condemned inmates. Collectively, we have had first-hand experience in hundreds of death cases, in dozens of jurisdictions, extending over more than a third of a century. Our experience has convinced us that capital punishment cannot be administered with the fairness, reliability, and freedom from discrimination that a penalty so grave and irreversible requires. This is no accident or transitory condition; it is the consequence of certain innate attributes of the penalty of death. The purpose of our brief is to analyze those attributes and explain why they are fundamentally at war with the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause and the Antidiscrimination Clause of New York’s Bill of Rights. We hope to persuade the Court that it should not temporize with the death penalty in the face of this basic incompatibility but should hold the 1995 death penalty statute altogether unconstitutional

Capital Case Sentencing: How To Protect Your Client

https://works.swarthmore.edu/alum-books/5643/thumbnail.jp

Appellate Advocacy: Principles And Practice: Cases And Materials

https://works.swarthmore.edu/alum-books/4562/thumbnail.jp

State And Federal Postconviction Remedies: Last Hopes

https://works.swarthmore.edu/alum-books/5656/thumbnail.jp