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: Clemency
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One main goal of our first few weeks of classes is to enable you to be able to analyze and assess in a sophisticated way the theories of punishment and institutional players that formally and functionally have key roles in the operation of our sentencing systems. As I have already started to emphasize and will…
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Just a reminder to everyone that, as we start the first week of student presentations, we will be going back to meeting in Room 348. I look forward to seeing everyone there no later than 4pm so we have adequate time for the scheduled presentations. Meanwhile, I assume all clemency fans have been seeing some…
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Our last class of general discussion (before we turn to student presentations) will focus on the ground-breaking and controversial clemency activity during the final years of the Obama Administration. I handed out in class last week this basic web review of the initiative as described by the US Department of Justice. Among many topics I…
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Though you are soon to turn to conducting research and preparing your presentation/papers, I am here going to be recommending additional reading for background information to advance our on-going class discussions. Specifically, there are two sets of readings that were on the syllabus that I want to provide here (and I may print out and…
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Thanks to everyone for being a great audience for our special guest today, and now we get back to our regular programming. As promised, we are starting a turn toward a discussion of whether, when and how "offender circumstances" should to be considered at sentencing. Though I mentioned age in class, we will start with…
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This blog got started over 10 years ago (with the uninspired title of Death Penalty Course @ Moritz College of Law) to facilitate student engagement in a Spring 2007 course on the death penalty. Because the blog proved successful during that semester, and because the students' hard work as reflected in the archives still generates…
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As I mentioned in class, as we turn our attention more to the history and modern realities of non-capital sentencing and especially to the history and modern realities of incarceration, having a basic understanding of a lot of number becomes important. The title of this post is designed to make sure, before you dive too…
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Though I am eager to start migrating our class discussions away from capital sentencing and punishment to non-capital sentencing and punishments, the notable death penalty news keeps coming. Specifically, check out these two recent posts from my main blog: Philadelphia DA sues Pennsylvania Gov asserting execution moratorium is "lawless" and "flagrantly unconstitutional" New Oregon Gov pledges…
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check out what new Pennsylvania Gov Tom Wolf did on Friday the 13th. Turns out it was a lucky day for those on death row in the state. Thoughts? The Marshall Hypothesis as applied by a Governor?
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In our last few classes, I want to wrap up our discussions of modern federal drug sentencing by turning attention to the work of the most powerful of sentencing "whos": the President of the United States. There are lots of ways the President can and does make sentencing decisions, but the most historic means is…
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While we were starting to work through some "who" issues in class today, an Ohio agency made a notable decision in a notable death penalty case. Here are the basics from this Columbus Dispatch article: A Hamilton County man who stabbed his 62-year-old mother to death while he was on a crack-cocaine binge should not…
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Soon we will discuss the role of executive clemency, focused in part on the speech (which is at the end of our reading packet) delivered by former Illinois Governor George Ryan to support the "mass clemency" at the end of his term of given to everyone then on Illinois’ death row. In light of that…
Sentencing Class @ OSU Moritz College of Law 