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: Death penalty history
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After a final review of what we should take away from the McClesky ruling, we will turn for our last week of death penalty discussion to the Supreme Court's Eighth Amendment jurisprudence which places categorical limits on what crimes cannot result in capital sentence and what criminals can not be executed for their crimes. Here,…
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As I mentioned very briefly in class, the Fall 2012 issue of the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law had a lead symposium focused on "McClesky at 25." Here are links to all the articles in the symposium: McClesky at 25 OSJCL Symposium Articles: Douglas A. Berman, McCleskey at 25: Reexamining the “Fear of Too…
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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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This coming week we are going to get much more focused on the particulars of capital punishment laws and doctrines and practices. But, as you may already realize, my obsession with "who" issues will persist in class and elsewhere. And these posts from my other blogs since our last meeting highlights this reality from various perspectives…
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Sorry to have played an (evil?) game of guess the murderer at the end of class yesterday, but I think the story of Terry Nichols encounters with both the federal and Oklahoma capital punishment system provides a useful reminder that some (many?) high-profile US mass murderers can escape a death sentence in various ways. Via his Wikipedia…
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One (of many) interesting and valuable components of Ohio's modern death penalty system is the fact that the Ohio General Assembly has, by statute, required the Ohio Attorney General to produce an annual report on capital punishment regarding individuals who have been sentenced to death since Oct. 19, 1981. The last four such annual reports…
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Though I spent probably too much class time Thursday referencing parts of the history of the death penalty in the United States, I do not think it is possible for students of modern sentencing law and policy to spend too much time reflecting on this history. I encourage all students to read up on the…
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We ended class with a question/issue/talking-point that may well haunt us throughout the semester and that has arguably haunted all modern legal debates over modern issues of crime and punishment: is "death" really different as a matter of constitutional law? Couple of preliminaries as we unpack this question/issue/talking-point going forward: 1. As a basic normative and empirical…
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This week has already brought some notable death penalty action in the Supreme Court, and these blog posts over at my main blog about all the action has generated some interesting debates in the comments: Early report on Bies oral argument A SCOTUS win for the capital defendant in Cone v. Bell
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For those interested in a little more information about the history of the death penalty in the United States, the Death Penalty Information Center has an effective summary at this link.
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As I mentioned in class, one of my questions to begin our discussion of modern death penalty constitutional law is why it took nearly 200 years for the Supreme Court to seriously examine the constitutionality of the death penalty. Of course, that question could (and perhaps should) lead to a broader examination of America’s history…
Sentencing Class @ OSU Moritz College of Law 