Habeas Corpus and the Penalty of Death

Adolescence is associated with high impulsivity and risk taking, making adolescent individuals more inclined to use drugs. Early drug use is correlated to increased risk for substance use disorders later in life but the neurobiological basis is unclear. The brain undergoes extensive development during adolescence and disturbances at this time are hypothesized to contribute to increased vulnerability. The transition from controlled to compulsive drug use and addiction involve long-lasting changes in neural networks including a shift from the nucleus accumbens, mediating acute reinforcing effects, to recruitment of the dorsal striatum and habit formation. This study aimed to test the hypothesis of increased dopamine release after a pharmacological challenge in adolescent rats. Potassium-evoked dopamine release and uptake was investigated using chronoamperometric dopamine recordings in combination with a challenge by amphetamine in early and late adolescent rats and in adult rats. In addition, the consequences of voluntary alcohol intake during adolescence on these effects were investigated. The data show a gradual increase of evoked dopamine release with age, supporting previous studies suggesting that the pool of releasable dopamine increases with age. In contrast, a gradual decrease in evoked release with age was seen in response to amphetamine, supporting a proportionally larger storage pool of dopamine in younger animals. Dopamine measures after voluntary alcohol intake resulted in lower release amplitudes in response to potassium-chloride, indicating that alcohol affects the releasable pool of dopamine and this may have implications for vulnerability to addiction and other psychiatric diagnoses involving dopamine in the dorsal striatum

Experimentalist Equal Protection

Elsewhere Garrett and Liebman have recounted that though James Madison is considered the Father of the Constitution, his progeny disappointed him because it was defenseless against self-government\u27s mortal disease -the oppression of minorities by local majorities-because the Framers rejected the radical structural approach to equal protection that Madison proposed. Nor did the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment\u27s Equal Protection Clause and federal courts enforcing it adopt a solution Madison would have considered effectual. This Article explores recent subconstitutional innovations in governance and public administration that may finally bring the nation within reach of the constitutional polity Madison envisioned To explain how Madisonian governance mechanisms can solve the problem of equal protection, the authors turn to the thinking of another homegrown practical philosopher who was ahead of his time, John Dewey. Dewey sets out what he calls an experimentalist problem-solving method for curing the equal protection ills Madison diagnosed In two core civil rights contexts, public school reform and workplace discrimination, solutions both Madisonian and Deweyan already point the way to an experimentalist equal protection regime that remains well within our reach. Such experimentalism may not only open our rigid, tepidly enforced equal protection doctrine to an evolving, problem-solving approach, but in the process transform democratic institutions and community

Opting for Real Death Penalty Reform

The capital punishment system in the United States is broken. Studies reveal growing delays nationwide between death sentences and executions and inexcusably high rates of reversals and retrials of capital verdicts. The current system persistently malfuinctions because it rewards trial actors, such as police, prosecutors, and trial judges, for imposing death sentences, but it does not force them either to avoid making mistakes or to bear the cost of mistakes that are made during the process. Nor is there any adversarial discipline imposed at the trial level because capital defendants usually receive appointed counsel who either do not have experience trying capital cases or who receive inadequate resources from the State to pay litigation expenses. Instead, the appellate system is forced to deal with large amounts of error, creating backlog and delays. This article proposes a radical trade-off for capital defendants in which they agree to give up existing post-conviction review rights in return for a real assurance of better qualified, higher quality trial counsel. This proposal will avoid the traps of window dressing reforms, save states a good bit of the expense of appellate review, and make the capital punishment system more fair, efficient, and effective

Opting for Real Death Penalty Reform

The capital punishment system in the United States is broken. Studies reveal growing delays nationwide between death sentences and executions and inexcusably high rates of reversals and retrials of capital verdicts. The current system persistently malfuinctions because it rewards trial actors, such as police, prosecutors, and trial judges, for imposing death sentences, but it does not force them either to avoid making mistakes or to bear the cost of mistakes that are made during the process. Nor is there any adversarial discipline imposed at the trial level because capital defendants usually receive appointed counsel who either do not have experience trying capital cases or who receive inadequate resources from the State to pay litigation expenses. Instead, the appellate system is forced to deal with large amounts of error, creating backlog and delays. This article proposes a radical trade-off for capital defendants in which they agree to give up existing post-conviction review rights in return for a real assurance of better qualified, higher quality trial counsel. This proposal will avoid the traps of window dressing reforms, save states a good bit of the expense of appellate review, and make the capital punishment system more fair, efficient, and effective

Search and Seizure of the Media: A Statutory, Fourth Amendment and First Amendment Analysis

On the evening of October 10, 1974, police appeared at radio station KPFK-FM in Los Angeles with a warrant authorizing them to search the premises for a New World Liberation Front (NWLF) communique that took credit for a recent bombing. The officers conducted an intensive 8-hour search-combing files, listening to tapes, and looking through reporters\u27 notes – finally concluding that the NWLF letter was not at the station. The KPFK search warrant was one of six that California law enforcement officials have executed at press offices since 1972. The circumstances surrounding the incident illustrate the rationale behind the recent development of the search technique. For several years before the KPFK search, the news media had litigated their right not to honor subpoenas from government investigatory bodies and courts. They premised claims of immunity from subpoenas on the first amendment protection of newsgathering and on strengthened shield laws for which they had lobbied. Indeed, when KPFK received the communique from the NWLF, the station was in the process of litigating its previous refusal to respect two subpoenas that sought production of communications from other radical groups. Reiterating the station\u27s policy of not honoring subpoenas prior to judicial challenge, station manager Will Lewis aired the contents of the NWLF letter and offered typed copies of it to press and police, but refused to surrender the original. Confident that a subpoena would mean months of litigation, even if the courts eventually denied Lewis\u27 statutory and constitutional claims, the police resorted to the ex parte search warrant process, allowing them to seize the evidence immediately, if found, and litigate later, if necessary

Voice, Not Choice

In John Chubb and Terry Moe\u27s book, choice is hot; voice is not. As influential as their book has become in current policy debates, however, its data and reasoning may support policies the reverse of those that the authors and their New Paradigm disciples propose. In this review, voice is hot; choice is not

New Death Penalty Debate: What\u27s DNA Got to Do with It

The nation is engaged in the most intensive discussion of the death penalty in decades. Temporary moratoria on executions are effectively in place in Illinois and Maryland, and during the winter 2001 legislative cycle legislation to adopt those pauses elsewhere cleared committees or one or more houses of the legislature, not only in Connecticut (passed the Senate Judiciary Committee) and Maryland (where it passed the entire House, and the Senate Judiciary Committee) but in Nevada (passed the Senate) and Texas (passed committees in both Houses). In the last year, abolition bills have passed or come within a few votes of passing in New Mexico and New Hampshire, although the Democratic governor vetoed the New Hampshire bill. Comprehensive studies of the death penalty have been legislated or ordered in Arizona, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, Virginia, and at the federal level, and are under consideration in a variety of other states. Legislation to abolish, or at least to moderate, the use of the death penalty has been considered in the current legislative cycle in at least twenty-six of the nation\u27s forty death sentencing states, and has passed at least a committee vote in twelve or more. As recently as two years ago, a similar count likely would have revealed less than a third as many proposals, and almost no instances of committee approval. A major death penalty reform bill is pending in Congress with bipartisan support and over two hundred cosponsors in the House

Rates of Reversible Error and the Risk of Wrongful Execution

Innocent fatalities are a concern of all social activity with a capacity to kill. This is especially true when the social activity is the death penalty since an innocent person\u27s execution is not simply a tragic collateral consequence of activity with a non-fatal objective. Instead, the taking of life is the goal of the enterprise, and the killing is the intended act of the state. There is another difference between accidental fatalities in other social activities and those that occur when the capital system miscarries. Typically, the former fatalities are easy to spot and quantify; the latter are not. Precisely because operating a railroad is not designed to kill, the fact that passengers died when a train went off the rails is conclusive proof that a serious mistake occurred. When the number of victims is determined – usually without too much difficulty – the extent of the tragedy is clear. All that remains is to figure out what went wrong, to compensate the victims\u27 families, and to take steps to keep the fatal error from occurring again

Voice, Not Choice

In John Chubb and Terry Moe\u27s book, choice is hot; voice is not. As influential as their book has become in current policy debates, however, its data and reasoning may support policies the reverse of those that the authors and their New Paradigm disciples propose. In this review, voice is hot; choice is not

Apocalypse Next Time?: The Anachronistic Attack on Habeas Corpus/Direct Review Parity

Today, a district court\u27s habeas corpus review of the constitutionality of a state criminal conviction and the Supreme Court\u27s direct review of the same question are nearly identical. Last Term, in Wright v. West, an otherwise mundane criminal procedure case, the Supreme Court rewrote the question presented to ask whether the parity between federal habeas corpus and direct appellate review should be destroyed. The Court proposed abandoning in habeas corpus an important trait shared by the two modes of review – de novo consideration of legal and mixed legal-factual questions. To those who value meaningful habeas corpus review, the Court\u27s order augured Apocalypse Now. The seeming momentousness of the Court\u27s action was enhanced by its timing. Just three weeks before, the Senate had come within a few votes of ending a Republican filibuster and passing a habeas corpus reform bill, previously adopted by the House, that rejected a Bush Administration proposal to replace de novo review with deferential review of state court determinations of law. The Court\u27s sua sponte order requesting briefing on a question presented by neither the parties nor the case thus arrogated to the Court an issue that the political branches otherwise might have, but have not since, settled. Despite ominous signals from the Court that pervasive change was afoot, the Court unanimously dispatched Wright on the mundane criminal procedure issue initially presented by the parties. But the views expressed injustice Thomas\u27 plurality opinion (joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Scalia) and the Court\u27s nearly simultaneous grants of certiorari in two cases raising similar issues may well portend Apocalypse Next Time. That Justice O\u27Connor (joined by Justices Blackmun and Stevens) responded to Justice Thomas\u27 singular brief in support of deferential review with a point-by-point refutation – supported on one of those points by Justice Kennedy\u27s separate opinion – only enhances the sense that battle lines are forming for an impending habeas corpus Armageddon. It is against that possibility that this Article is deployed