Sentencing Class @ OSU Moritz College of Law
A new home for an old class blog
recent posts
- Anyone have any distinct views on who Joe Biden should pick as US Attorney General?
- What data in the federal system would indicate the Biden Administration is drawing down the federal drug war?
- A final (too brief) foray into what metrics and data matter for assessing a sentencing system
- Reactions to our look behind the robes with federal sentencing judges?
- Are there any “offender characteristics” that you think must be considered at sentencing? If so, how?
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Category: Aggravators and mitigators
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As I have mentioned in class, we will be exploring in coming classes how Florida, Texas and Ohio capital sentencing laws help guide jury death sentencing discretion for the Unibomber, Ted Kaczynski. You should imagine yourself preparing for getting a jury to recommend a life sentence rather than a death sentence for Teddy K. The…
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As I mentioned in class today, our coming exploration of the federal sentencing system will be based in part on using the real-world "Bridgegate" case into a real-world sentencing exercise. To get started in preparation to that end, I recommend some review of at least the following two links: This Wikipedia page, titled "Fort Lee lane…
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I have been quite amused to see these two headlines on two notable commentaries published since our last class: Should 25-Year-Olds Be Tried as Juveniles?: Science — and law enforcement — are rethinking what it means to be an adult. Let children vote. Even 13-year-olds: Kids deserve a say too. The first of these articles…
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As you should recall, we ended class on Thursday with a working draft proposal for new drunk-driving legislation. Here is what has made it through our drafting committee so far: First Offense DUI: imprisonment from minimum term of zero to five years max Second Offense DUI: imprisonment from minimum term of six month to seven years max…
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As mentioned in class, one class activity for the coming week(s) will be to work through how modern post-Furman capital punishment laws might get applied to the (in)famous Unibomber, Ted Kaczynski. (Ted is currently an LWOP resident at superman ADX Florence in Colorado and in the past was comically portrayed by Will Farrell). I will not…
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We could easily spend months discussing the history and modern specifics of the death penalty in specific jurisdictions like Ohio or the US. I will sometime reference this history and modern practices in class over the next few weeks, but here are some links of note concerning both jurisdictions to provide everyone with a (low-stress,…
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To give you a focus for examining modern death penalty statutes, the casebook encourages thinking about how you might help represent Ted Kaczynski if he were to be prosecuted under the applicable death penalty statutes in Texas and Florida. Though not in the text, you should also consider how you think Ted might fare under…
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During next week’s classes any beyond, we will talk a lot about mental conditions of various sorts impacting the application of the death penalty. I see our quick discussion of MR this week has already spurred some comments in a prior post, and Kristin Harlow sent me this thoughtful note concerning my comments about the…
Sentencing Class @ OSU Moritz College of Law 