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?
about
Category: Who decides
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I am intrigued to have learned right after class that Washington Governor Jay Inslee decided to take his state's death penalty into his own hands today by declaring a moratorium on executions while he serves as Governor. I have blogged about this notable decision here at my main blog; and these comments from Governor Inslee’s remarks announcing his…
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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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Williams? McGautha? Furman? Tsarnaev? The principal goal of our pre-sentencing conversation about the Williams case on Wednesday was to shake everyone away from the (incomplete) view that a trial judge imposing a sentence is the most responsible (or even most important) decision-maker in the sentencing process. A sentencing judge (or, in some cases, a…
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As you may already be discovering, once one starts to focus on current-event stories with a "who sentences" lens, the context and complications of sentencing decision-making can take on a new view. With that reality in mind, consider these recent posts from my other blogs concerning some notable recent events: How could AG Eric Holder…
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In addition to closely reviewing the 1949 Williams v. New York case (which can be read in full here and is worth the time to read in full), we will discuss in class next week which particular institutional players tend to exercise the most formal and informal sentencing power, and whether and how you think these institutional…
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The question in the title of this post, which I am now posting to all the blogs in which I now participate, is my sincere reaction to this new Washington Post article headlined "DEA operations chief decries legalization of marijuana at state level." Here is the context: The chief of operations at the Drug Enforcement Administration on Wednesday called…
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I suggested in Tuesday's class that, if incapacitation was a key goal/purpose when sentencing convicted rapist Richard Graves, that castration would seem likely much more effective than any term in prison. (Indeed, given ugly statistics concerning prison rape, a trip to prison might be the worst way to prevent Graves from raping again.) But I…
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As you all know, everyone needs to turn in short-paper advice for Jonathan Wroblewski, the director of the Justice Department's Criminal Division Office of Policy and Legislation, by mid-day on Monday. While or after you complete this task, I hope you are thinking about hard questions to ask Mr. Wroblewski concerning his work for the…
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Seven years ago, back when my main blog was just getting going, I did this (silly?) post in which I imagined a "Sentencing Judges Hall of Fame" — an institution like the Baseball Hall of Fame which would seek to foster an appreciation of the historical development of sentencing and its impact on our justice…
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I made brief mention in class of Justice Stephen Breyer's concurrence in Watts, and I thought it might be useful to quote all of it here as the prelude to an (extra credit) challenge: I join the Court’s per curiam opinion while noting that it poses no obstacle to the Sentencing Commission itself deciding whether…
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I mentioned briefly in class Professor Paul Butler's (in)famous and provocative law review article in which he urged race-based jury nullification. The article was published as Racially Based Jury Nullification: Black Power in the Criminal Justice System, 105 Yale L.J. 677 (1995), and is available at this link. Here is a snippet from the piece's introduction:…
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The title of this post starts with the headline of this interesting commentary, which was published in yesterday's New York Times. Though not saying one word about sentencing, I thought many parts of piece (and especially the passages quoted below) were especially interesting and deserved consideration as we transition into our review and assessment of guideline sentencing systems: Why…
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This coming week we are going to shift our look into modern (non-capital) sentencing reforms into high gear. To have everyone on the same page, it is essential that you come to class on Tuesday having completed the pre-modern-reform sentencing exercise I handed out at the end of last Tuesday's class. The front page of…
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As the casebook highlights, Kentucky in 1998 enacted the first statutory response to the McClesky ruling through its Kentucky Racial Justice Act. And just two years ago, North Carolina followed suit through the enactment of the North Carolina Racial Justice Act. There has not been much litigation over the Kentucky RJA because that legislation was expressly made…
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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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As a few folks have already noted in comments to a prior post and as this lengthy Atlanta Journal-Constitution article reports, this morning the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles declined to commute the death sentence of Troy Anthony Davis. A couple quick thoughts and questions to set up a discussion here (and perhaps also…
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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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I suggested in class some time ago that you should read (and re-read) Furman thinking about which of the nine Justices' opinions you would have been most likely to join (assuming you had been a hypothetical additional Justice in 1972 and could only join an opinion rather than write your own). Because I suspect we will not…
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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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In addition to closely reviewing the 1949 Williams v. New York case (which can be read in full here and is worth the time to read in full), we will discuss in class on Thursday which particular institutional players tend to exercise the most formal and informal sentencing power, and whether and how you think these institutional…
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We concluded our first week's class discussion with questions about whether and why castration (either physical or chemical) could and would be a fitting punishment for convicted rapist Richard Graves. As a preview of second week topics, I encouraged considering whether answers to these questions might be changed or significantly influenced if (a) Graves' victim…
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As detailed this Washington Post article, which is headlined "Arenas awaits sentence on gun charge, fate in NBA," the gun fun had by NBA star Gilbert Arenas last month has now made him a great subject for discussion and debate in a sentencing seminar. I have asked this same sentencing question in this post at my main…
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inspired in part by our class discussions of prosecutorial discretion in capital cases, I have done a serius of recent posts at my main blog that focus on prosecutorial sentencing discretion. All the posts linked below are worth checking out (along with the comments), and the first linked post is especially on-point in light of our…
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I mentioned in class an article about victim participation in the death penalty process. That article, titled "Their Day in Court: The Role of Murder Victims' Families in Capital Juror Decision Making," can be accessed at this link. I recommend the whole piece, but here are some snippets of particular note as we get into discussion of…
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As some of you may already know, President-elect Barack Obama last month nominated Eric H. Holder Jr. to be the next Attorney General of the United States, and Holder's Senate confirmation hearings are scheduled to begin Thursday morning at 9:30 am. The hearings can be followed via webcast through this official webpage of the Senate Judiciary Committee,…
Sentencing Class @ OSU Moritz College of Law 