Title: Perry v. Louisiana: can a state treat an incompetent prisoner to ready him for execution?
Abstract: From 1967 to 1977, the Supreme Court upheld a dr jucto moratorium on executions in the United States.' In 1972, the Court vacated the sentence of three capital defendants in Fzlnnan v. Ge~rgia,~ ruling that the sentences inflicted cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Furinan court's concern with the arbitrary and discriminatory application of the death penalty eventually prompted state legislatures to refine their capital punishment statutes.' Four years after Furman, the Court upheld the first group of revised death penalty statutes in Gregg v. G~orgia.~ and a majority of states copied those statutes. reenacting the death penalty.' The newly condemned inmates slowly began to be executed; finally, in 1984, more than 20 prisoners were executed, twice as many as in the previous 20 years ~ombined.~ The nation's death row population swelled because the tedious appeals process meant that prisoners were condemned to death faster than the judicial system could dispose of their cases.7 Today, with the appeals process taking as
Publication Year: 1991
Publication Date: 1991-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['pubmed']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 2
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