Abstract: Over thirty years ago, in Furman v. Georgia, the Supreme Court struck down all existing death-penalty laws because capital punishment in America was being applied in an arbitrary and capricious manner. Although the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment four years later and has laid down dozens of procedural rules for the death penalty over the last thirty years, most scholars believe that capital punishment is applied just as arbitrarily today as the day Furman was decided. The reason for the continued arbitrariness is that — with a few exceptions — the Court’s death-penalty decisions have merely tinkered with the trial and appeal process rather than forcing substantive changes in the criminal justice system. In particular, this
Publication Year: 2007
Publication Date: 2007-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 1
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