Responsibility in Capital Sentencing

Gene-Environment Interactions, Criminal Responsibility, and Sentencing

Imagine a defendant who has been charged with murder, the intentional homicide of a victim he was robbing with a weapon. He has a history of three previous convictions and imprisonments for armed robbery. Prior to being released from the third term, he publicly threatened to kill any future armed robbery victims who might be able to identify him. When the current victim looked our armed robber ...

Expert testimony in capital sentencing: juror responses.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in Furman v. Georgia (1972), held that the death penalty is constitutional only when applied on an individualized basis. The resultant changes in the laws in death penalty states fostered the involvement of psychiatric and psychologic expert witnesses at the sentencing phase of the trial, to testify on two major issues: (1) the mitigating factor of a defendant's abnormal...

Abolish the Juvenile Court: Youthfulness, Criminal Responsibility, and Sentencing Policy

The guilty mind and criminal sentencing: integrating legal and empirical inquiry as illustrated by capital sentencing.

We articulate an interpretation of mens rea that is broader than the traditional special sense but narrower than the traditional general sense. Mens rea in this intermediate sense addresses the guilty mind required by the sentencing criteria for specific criminal sentences for particular offenses. We advance an analytic structure for the integration of legal and empirical inquiry regarding stan...

Two-edged Swords, Dangerousness, and Experttestimony in Capital Sentencing