Moral dilemmas—like the ‘‘trolley problem’’ or real-world examples like capital punishment—result from a conflict between consequentialist and deontological intuitions (i.e., whether ends justify means). The authors contend that people often resolve such moral conflict by aligning factual beliefs about consequences of acts with evaluations of the act’s inherent morality (i.e., morality independ...

Though several state legislatures have considered bills to eliminate the death penalty in the past decade, New Jersey stands alone as the first state to legislatively abolish the death penalty in over thirty years. What factors enabled the New Jersey legislature to successfully pass legislation that abolished the death penalty? To answer this question, I conduct a qualitative case study of the ...

Two hundred venirepersons from the 12th Judicial Circuit in Bradenton, Florida completed the following measures: (1) one question that measured their level of support for the death penalty; (2) one question that categorized their death-qualification status; (3) 23 questions that measured their attitudes toward the death penalty (ATDP); (4) 22 questions that assessed their attitudes toward women...

The legal standards for reviewing claims of ineffective assistance of counsel at sentencing are underdeveloped. In other contexts, defendants seeking to prove ineffective assistance must demonstrate that counsel’s performance fell below appropriate professional standards and that there is a reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s deficient performance, the result of the proceeding would ...

This article describes an innovative curriculum module the author created on the two-way exchange between ethics and statistics. Part of an undergraduate interdisciplinary ethics course, the module builds upon a prior introduction to basic philosophical ethics, but has no particular mathematical prerequisites beyond high school algebra. Its emphasis on conceptual and critical thinking makes it ...

Euthanasia is, and probably will remain a controversial issue. Although many doctors will agree that under certain circumstances a demand for euthanasia should be granted (and in fact often is granted when the occasion arises), the subject generally gives rise to very emotional debates. Attempts to decriminalize euthanasia generally fail, and this contrasts sharply with the attitude of many tow...

One of the longstanding complaints against the death penalty is that it “distort[s] the course of the criminal law.” Capital prosecutions are expensive and complicated; they draw sensational attention from the press; they are litigated—before, during, and after trial—at greater length and depth than other felonies; they generate more intense emotions, for and against; they last longer and live ...

At 2.00 am on the morning of May 24, 1995 the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly Australia passed the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act by the narrow margin of 15 votes to 10. The act permits a terminally ill patient of sound mind and over the age of 18 years, and who is either in pain or suffering, or distress, to request a medical practitioner to assist the patient to terminate his or her...

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...

The Flynn Effect is a well-established psychometric fact documenting substantial increases in measured intelligence test performance over time. Flynn's (1984) review of the literature established that Americans gain approximately 0.3 points per year or 3 points per decade in measured intelligence. The accurate assessment and interpretation of intellectual functioning becomes critical in death p...