Source: https://lsi.typepad.com/death_penalty_moritz/
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 06:13:58+00:00

Document:
Jon Getson on Should particular pie pieces or particular populations be of particular concern for those troubled by modern mass incarceration?
I do not yet know any more details about this gathering, but I suspect more "who and where" details will be filled in shortly. Any student who is available during the lunch hour of May 22 and interested in being part of this discussion/event should send me a note.
I have now finally double- and triple-checked my various files to confirm my records on how many mini-papers I believe I received from each student. All 42 of you should be able to find you names on the spreadsheet uploaded here, and therein you will find an associated number for how many papers I have in hand from you.
If you see what you think is an error in my accounting, please let me know before the end of next week.
I am continuing to enjoy re-reading your mini-papers and now reading some final drafts. I try to provide some general feedback on drafts within a few days of receipt, but that opportunity will be extinguished in the next few days. Feel free to email me with any questions.
If you are working on a final paper, you should turn in that paper on or before May 10, and if you want feedback on a draft I would be grateful to see it at least a few days before then.
And whatever your plans, be checking this space (and my main blog) for continued coverage of sentencing topics AND for continued opportunities to comment about sentencing topics to continue to earn class participation points.
(2) "who" has been most responsible for the particular emphasis on incarceration in modern American history.
I think some reasonable answers to these questions are important for anyone eager to move the nation away from modern mass incarceration: without having some sense of just why incarceration has proved so popular and just who has had a leading role in inflating incarceration levels, it will be hard to engineer a successful change of course.
Especially because there have recently been a whole lot of notable new court opinions about Eighth Amendment limits on extreme juvenile prison sentences — see examples here and here and here and here and here from the Third Circuit, the District of Connecticut, the Iowa Supreme Court, the Georgia Supreme Court and the Wyoming Supreme Court — I am especially eager to discuss what role we think courts have played in creating modern mass incarceration and what role courts could play in moving us away from modern mass incarceration.
In this context (and again to serve as a kind of semester review), I think it important to recognize that courts have played a major role in the modern decline of the death penalty in the United States over the last two decades. All sort of litigation has played all sorts of roles in "gumming up" the modern machinery of death, and many abolitionists have come to expect that the US Supreme Court will play a starring role in a final push to have the death penalty fully abolished throughout the United States.
Is there any basis to hope or expect courts to play a major role in a decline in the use of incarceration in the United States over the next two decades?
Should particular pie pieces or particular populations be of particular concern for those troubled by modern mass incarceration?
Breaking down incarceration by offense type also exposes some disturbing facts about the youth confined by our criminal and juvenile justice systems: Too many are there for a “most serious offense” that is not even a crime. For example, there are over 8,500 youth behind bars for “technical violations” of the requirements of their probation, rather than for a new offense. Further, 2,300 youth are locked up for “status” offenses, which are “behaviors that are not law violations for adults, such as running away, truancy, and incorrigibility.” Nearly 1 in 10 is held in an adult jail or prison, and most of the others are held in juvenile facilities that look and operate a lot like prisons and jails.
Beyond identifying the parts of the criminal justice system that impact the most people, we should also focus on who is most impacted and who is left behind by policy change. For example, people of color are dramatically overrepresented in the nation’s prisons and jails. These racial disparities are particularly stark for Blacks, who make up 40% of the incarcerated population despite representing only 13% of U.S residents. Gender disparities matter too: rates of incarceration have grown even faster for women than for men. As policymakers continue to push for reforms that reduce incarceration, they should avoid changes that will widen disparities, as has happened with juvenile confinement and with women in state prisons.
Notably, last fall the Prison Policy Initiative working jointly with the ACLU’s Campaign for Smart Justice released this great report with a particular population perspective: "Women’s Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2017." The report explains that it provides "a first-of-its-kind detailed view of the 219,000 women incarcerated in the United States, and how they fit into the even larger picture of correctional control." In addition to thinking about how the female incarceration "pie" looks different, I wonder if you share my concern about discussion of "women's mass incarceration" given that there are around 165 million women in the United States and thus really less than 0.15% of all US women are incarcerated.
Is it accurate and helpful to describe a phenomenon as "mass" if it directly impacts less than 1 out of 500 persons in a population?
"Reducing America's exceptional reliance on incarceration is one of the few issues of genuine bipartisan cooperation these days. Yet despite years of work, change has been slow and halting. One critical reason is that the story we tell about what has driven prison growth often emphasizes causes that matter less at the expense of those that matter more.
"We talk about the impact of long sentences — which certainly matter — but end up overlooking the even more important role of prosecutorial charging behavior in the process. We emphasize the need to stop sending people to prison for drugs, but as a result fail to talk about changing how we punish those convicted of violence — even though only 15% of the prison population is serving time for drugs, compared to over 50% for violence. And reformers frequently direct their attention on private prisons, and thus don't focus on the fact that public institutions hold over 90% of all inmates, and that (public) correctional officer unions and legislators with public prisons in their districts play far bigger roles than the private prison firms in pushing back against reform efforts. Even the modest reductions in prison populations since 2010 are something to celebrate, but more substantive cuts will require us to start asking tougher questions about the sorts of changes we need to demand."
From Pacific Standard, "Have We Been Looking at Mass Incarceration All Wrong?"
From The New Yorker, "How We Misunderstand Mass Incarceration"
This brief explains how Congress and the president can best help reduce our country’s outsized reliance on imprisonment, a goal with rare, widespread bipartisan support. Successful interventions will need to target issues that previous efforts have overlooked or ignored, and they will need to take better account of the haphazard ways that costs, benefits, and responsibilities are fractured across city, county, state, and federal governments. If designed properly, however, federal efforts could play an important role in pushing our criminal justice system to adopt more efficient, as well as more humane, approaches to managing and reducing crime.
In terms of reading, it might be helpful if the students were familiar with Judge Pryor’s “presumptive guidelines” proposal (described in this speech to the American Law Institute). I plan to spend a few minutes discussing how the Commission operates, what role DOJ plays in the process, what amendments are pending at the Commission now, and then I’d like to just have a discussion with the students. I’d particularly love to hear their reactions to Judge Pryor’s proposal.
If there are particular questions that you would like me to address (or topics you know the students will want to discuss), please send them my way.
As highlighted in previous posts, on April 2, Zachary Bolitho, Moritz class of 2007 who now serves as Deputy Chief of Staff and Associate Deputy Attorney General to the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, will be speaking to our class. As repeatedly mentioned, and as shown at the end of this list of US Sentencing Commissioners, Zachary Bolitho also now serves as the designated ex officio member of the United States Sentencing Commission representing the Attorney General.
AG Jeff Sessions issues memo to "strongly encourage federal prosecutors ... when appropriate" to pursue "capital punishment in appropriate cases"
Notable report of AG Sessions seeking more federal death sentences, but what about carrying out those long ago imposed?
DOJ casting new marijuana enforcement memo in terms of "rule of law" and "local control"
This lecture is scheduled for noon on March 19 in Saxbe Auditorium, located inside Drinko Hall.
"'A Day Late and a Dollar Short': President Obama's Clemency Initiative 2014"
We will wrap up our two-week sentencing of Rob Anon on Wednesday by noting the persistent discretion that still subsists within a federal sentencing system now filled with all sort of sentencing law. The most obvious locus of modern federal sentencing discretion, and the form that still garners the most attention, resulted from the Supreme Court's landmark Booker ruling making the guidelines advisory instead of mandatory. Please come to class thinking about whether and why you would be, as sentencing judge, inclined to "vary" from the guideline range you calculated for Rob Anon. Please also think about what a federal prosecutor or public defender might argue to you that might make you more inclined to "vary" from the guideline range.
Charging and sentencing recommendations are crucial responsibilities for any federal prosecutor. The directives I am setting forth below are simple but important. They place great confidence in our prosecutors and supervisors to apply them in a thoughtful and disciplined manner, with the goal of achieving just and consistent results in federal cases.
First, it is a core principle that prosecutors should charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense. This policy affirms our responsibility to enforce the law, is moral and just, and produces consistency. This policy fully utilizes the tools Congress has given us. By definition, the most serious offenses are those that carry the most substantial guidelines sentence, including mandatory minimum sentences.
There will be circumstances in which good judgment would lead a prosecutor to conclude that a strict application of the above charging policy is not warranted. In that case, prosecutors should carefully consider whether an exception may be justified. Consistent with longstanding Department of Justice policy, any decision to vary from the policy must be approved by a United States Attorney or Assistant Attorney General, or a supervisor designated by the United States Attorney or Assistant Attorney General, and the reasons must be documented in the file.
Second, prosecutors must disclose to the sentencing court all facts that impact the sentencing guidelines or mandatory minimum sentences, and should in all cases seek a reasonable sentence under the factors in 18 U.S.C. § 3553. In most cases, recommending a sentence within the advisory guideline range will be appropriate. Recommendations for sentencing departures or variances require supervisory approval, and the reasoning must be documented in the file.
My hope is you can, with the help of our engagement with the Rob Anon case, now have a fuller and deeper appreciation for the potential impact, in individual cases and across a range of cases, of the May 2017 Sessions Memo. We will discuss this matter a bit further in class on Wednesday.
Monday, April 2: Zachary Bolitho, Moritz class of 2007 who now serves as Deputy Chief of Staff and Associate Deputy Attorney General to the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, will be speaking to our class. As repeatedly mentioned, and as shown at the end of this list of US Sentencing Commissioners, Zachary Bolitho also now serves as the designated ex officio member of the United States Sentencing Commission representing the Attorney General. As mentioned also repeatedly mentioned, mini-paper #4 should be a memo addressed to ADAG Bolitho.
Monday, April 9: NO CLASS!!
Attending, from 4pm-5:30pm, the Reckless-Dinitz Memorial Lecture featuring Professor John Pfaff, "Moving Past the Standard Story: Rethinking the Causes of Mass Incarceration."
This final week before Spring Break, we will be diving even deeper into the sentencing of Rob Anon under the modern federal sentencing guidelines. I continue to welcome comments to this prior post if/when you want to discuss your experiences with guideline sentencing, though I also welcome new comments here as I reprint the US Sentencing Commission's latest accounting of the average sentences that modern federal robbery defendants now receive.
The most common Criminal History Category for these offenders was Category I (25.0%). The proportion of these offenders in other Criminal History Categories was as follows: 11.0% of these offenders were in Category II; 20.2% were in Category III; 13.5% were in Category IV; 7.8% were in Category V; and 22.6% were in Category VI.
The median loss for these offenses was $2,846. 92.1% of robbery offenses involved losses of $95,000 or less. 82.5% of robbery offenses involved losses of $20,000 or less.
Sentences for robbery offenders were increased for: 48.7% of offenders for taking the property of a financial institution or post office; 61.2% of offenders for using or brandishing a firearm or dangerous weapon or making a threat of death; 13.0% of offenders because a victim sustained bodily injury; 22.0% of offenders for abducting or physically restraining a victim; 8.5% of offenders for carjacking; 8.2% of offenders for taking a firearm, destructive device, or controlled substance; and 5.1% of offenders for recklessly creating a risk of death or bodily injury in the course of fleeing from a law enforcement officer.
More than one-third (34.1%) of robbery offenders also had convictions under 18 U.S.C. § 924(c).
The average sentence length for robbery offenders was 111 months.
The average sentence length for robbery offenders with a conviction under section 924(c) was 180 months.
The average sentence length for robbery offenders without a conviction under section 924(c) was 75 months.
In fiscal year 2016, 46.7% of robbery offenders without a conviction under section 924(c) were sentenced within the guideline range.
Substantial assistance departures were granted in approximately 11 to 13 percent of robbery cases without section 924(c) convictions in each of the past five years.
The average reduction for these offenders was 42.6% during the five year time period (which corresponds to an average reduction of 36 months).
The rate of non-government sponsored below range sentences increased during the past five years for robbery cases without section 924(c) convictions from 22.5% to 24.7%. The average reduction for these offenders was 32.1% during the five year time period (which corresponds to an average reduction of 24 months).
In fiscal year 2016, 43.0% of robbery offenders with a section 924(c) conviction were sentenced within the guideline range.
Substantial assistance departures were granted in approximately 19 to 22 percent of robbery cases with section 924(c) convictions in each of the past five years.
The average reduction for these offenders was 41.7% during the five year time period (which corresponds to an average reduction of 84 months).
21 percent. The average reduction for these offenders was 17.3% during the five year time period (which corresponds to an average reduction of 31 months).
UPDATE: It just dawned on me, as I was thinking about how much to talk about the impact of section 924(c) charges and convictions in the federal sentencing process, that I should flag that just last year the Supreme Court finally got around to discussing the interplay of mandatory minimum sentencing provisions and the discretion created by Booker's conversion of the guidelines from mandates to advice. The Supreme Court's unanimous(!) work in Dean v. United States is worth checking out, in part because it highlights the potential severity of "stacked" 924(c) convictions.
And if you have been wondering, "what the heck is a section 924(c) conviction and why is it so significant," here is a link or two or three to help(?) on that front.
Starting with Wednesday's class, we will start unpacking the sentencing of Rob Anon under the modern federal sentencing guidelines. I welcome comments to this prior post if/when you want to discuss your experiences with guideline sentencing. This post, however, is meant to wrap up our pre-guideline sentencing experiences with the help of this interesting 1986 US Government Accounting Office report reviewing the "median sentences imposed and median time served for 609 offenders convicted of armed and unarmed bank robbery who were confined in the Federal Prison System as of June 30, 1983, and on whom release decisions had been made by the Parole Commission."
Usefully, the short report also notes that the US Parole Commission had "established parole release guidelines as required by law which indicate the customary range of time to be served by offenders before release from prison." These parole guidelines had two parts, "offense severity and parole prognosis": the severity of the offense was "broken down into eight categories" and the parole prognosis score ranging "from 0 to 10." These Parole Commission guidelines served as a partial template for the work of the original US Sentencing Commission creating the original US Sentencing Guidelines (especially its criminal history categories).
In addition to giving you another perspective on the range of sentencing outcomes for the likes of Rob Anon, this report serves as another reminder of just how practically consequential the abolition of parole was as a feature of the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984. We will discuss that reality and other parts of the SRA starting Wednesday.
As mentioned in class, mini-paper #3 provides you an opportunity to explore federal sentencing realities surrounding a federal defendant of your choice. Continuing a series of posts providing suggestions about possible federal defendants you might consider examining for mini-paper #3, below are some links to some Sixth Circuit opinions all from the first two months of 2018 in cases in which a federal defendant appealed some aspect of his federal sentencing.
United States v. Richard Thornton and Keenan Crane and David Tatum (fraud offenses resulting in imprisonment for 136 months, 80 months, and 66 months, respectively).
As stressed in class last week, the next two weeks are going to involve detailed discussions of federal sentencing policies and practice before and after modern guideline reforms.
We will begin on Monday with a deep discussion of the sentencing realities faced in sentencing Rob Anon in a pre-guideline world (the world Judge Marvin Frankel criticizes in the excerpt in our text which you should read and re-read). In addition to imagining how you, as a judge, would sentence Rob Anon in this world, think also about how prosecutors and defense attorneys would approach sentencing in a pre-guideline world.
We will then turn to sentencing Rob Anon under the modern federal sentencing guidelines. I highly encourage class members to try to figure out how to identify and assess federal guideline sentencing laws relevant to Rob Anon with just the help of on-line search materials or traditional legal research resources (and feel free to use the comments to express frustration). Consider that a federal defendant or a novice lawyer taking on his or her first federal criminal case will not likely have access to any perfect guide (or even "Guidelines for Dummies") to enable ready understanding of the federal sentencing guidelines.
As you work through this assignment, give particular thought to the array of challenges that modern federal sentencing law may present for modern federal sentencing lawyers. If you want to think particularly about the import and impact of sentencing law for the work of defense attorneys, perhaps check out this article I wrote some years ago seeking to highlight "the array of challenges that the Federal Sentencing Guidelines create for defense counsel."
then this post can help facilitate discussion and reflection on prison history in the United States, building on the video about Eastern State Penitentiary and the modern reality that time in jail or prisons is now our default punishment for crimes both major and minor. If you are interested in learning more about Eastern State, check out this terrific website. Notably, the Eastern State Penitentiary has this new exhibit on "Prisons Today: Questions in the Age of Mass Incarceration." And that includes this little survey: "What are Prisons For? Take the quiz."
With the opening of the Ohio State Reformatory in 1896, the state legislature had put in place "the most complete prison system, in theory, which exists in the United States." The reformatory joined the Ohio Penitentiary and the Boys Industrial School, also central-Ohio institutions, to form the first instance of "graded prisons; with the reform farm on one side of the new prison, for juvenile offenders, and the penitentiary on the other, for all the more hardened and incorrigible class." However, even as the concept was being replicated throughout the country, the staffs of the institutions were faced with the day-to-day struggle of actually making the system work.
Notably, a few years ago, students had a lot to say in the wake of watching the ESP video, and you might be interested to read these 2011 student comments about prison history. This coming week, we will be shifting back into a discussion of sentencing law and the (non-capital) sentencing process, but everyone should keep thinking about both the theory and practices of imprisonment as a form of punishment as we get into the nitty-gritty of modern sentencing doctrines.
As mentioned in class, mini-paper #3 provides you an opportunity to explore federal sentencing realities surrounding a federal defendant of your choice. In a series of posts, I will be providing a series of suggestions about possible federal defendants you might consider examining for mini-paper #3.
No politician in town is more closely identified with the death penalty than Joe Deters, the latest in a long line of Hamilton County prosecutors who have regularly sought capital murder charges.
Deters said he tries to answer the same questions before every murder trial: Is the accused eligible for the death penalty under Ohio law? Does he have the evidence to remove all doubt of innocence? Was the offense so terrible the defendant deserves to die?
Victims’ relatives often feel [killers deserve to die], but it’s up to the prosecutor to decide how aggressively to pursue the ultimate punishment. Deters said he has, in some cases, sought the death penalty even when relatives asked him not to, because the law and the facts of the case demanded it.
An Enquirer analysis of data from Dunham’s group found Hamilton County's death row population ranks 22nd out of the 647 counties nationwide that have at least one person on death row. Among U.S. counties with 20 or more inmates on death row, Hamilton County ranks seventh per capita.
What’s happened here over the years is part of a broader trend that has seen death penalty cases become highly concentrated. Less than 1 percent of U.S. counties now account for 40 percent of all death row inmates.
One reason for that disparity is the growing number of states, now 19, that have banned the death penalty. Another is the uneven application of death penalty laws by the prosecutors elected to enforce them. A county with a strong death penalty proponent, such as Deters, might send killers like Tibbetts or Van Hook to death row, while a prosecutor in another county might be content to seek life without parole, or less.
Hamilton County has seen a decline in death sentences, too, as jurors increasingly recommend sentences of life without parole instead of death. The option, which eliminates the risk of a killer one day walking free, has fundamentally changed the calculus of capital trials. "That has impacted death sentences across the country," said Abe Bonowitz, spokesman for Ohioans to Stop Executions. "If you can guarantee the guy is never getting out, why do you have to kill him?"
Sometimes, though, juries and judges still find a reason. Ohio's life without parole law didn't exist when Van Hook was convicted in 1985, but it was on the books when Tibbetts went on trial in 1998. His Hamilton County jury recommended the death penalty anyway.
For a lot more information about executions by county, here is a lot of information from the Death Penalty Information Center. And for a big report on death sentences by counties, here are Part I and Part II of a big recent report titled Too Broken to Fix: An In-depth Look at America’s Outlier Death Penalty Counties.
As the title of this post highlights, in addition to encouraging you to think about all this county-by-county examination and analysis of the death penalty, I am interested in whether you can help me find any county-by-county analysis of LWOP sentences. The "Too Broken to Fix" report notes than "in 2015, juries only returned 49 death sentences" and that only 33 counties of 3,143 counties in the US imposed the sentence. Can anyone help me find any estimate of how many total LWOP sentences were imposed in 2015 (or any other calendar year)? Can anyone help me find any county-by-county accounting of LWOP sentence in Ohio or anywhere else?
Here is a list of (and links to) rulings by the Supreme Court declaring (or suggesting in the case of Tison v. Arizona) that the Eighth Amendment places substantive categorical limits on the application of the death penalty. Can you see a common thread or theme to these rulings?
If you can identify a theme to these rulings, and there additional categorical limits that should be set forth by the Supreme Court? Suggestions have been made that felony murder (on the crime side) and mental illness (on the criminal side) should be the basis for categorical restrictions on the death penalty.
Also, as we will discuss when wrapping up the death penalty, if the Eighth Amendment places categorical limits on death sentences, should it also place some categorical limits on other extreme sentences like life without parole? How about life with parole?
Douglas A. Berman, McCleskey at 25: Reexamining the “Fear of Too Much Justice" , 10 Ohio St. J. Crim. L. 1 (2012).
Scott E. Sundby, The Loss of Constitutional Faith: McCleskey v. Kemp and the Dark Side of Procedure, 10 Ohio St. J. Crim. L. 5 (2012).
John H. Blume & Sherri Lynn Johnson, Unholy Parallels between McCleskey v. Kemp and Plessy v. Ferguson: Why McCleskey (Still) Matters, 10 Ohio St. J. Crim. L. 37 (2012).
G. Ben Cohen, McCleskey’s Omission: The Racial Geography of Retribution, 10 Ohio St. J. Crim. L. 65 (2012).
Robert P. Mosteller, Responding to McCleskey and Batson: The North Carolina Racial Justice Act Confronts Racial Peremptory Challenges in Death Cases, 10 Ohio St. J. Crim. L. 103 (2012).
Kent Scheidegger, Rebutting the Myths About Race and the Death Penalty, 10 Ohio St. J. Crim. L. 147 (2012).
Q: What does a death penalty indictment mean?
Q: Will the court process be different in a death penalty case?
Q: A death sentence means the case will be cheaper because the defendant dies, right?
Q: How long after a death sentence being imposed will a person be executed?
Q: Does the jury or the judge decide if a person gets a death sentence?
A Cleveland-area man was scheduled to make his initial appearance in federal court in Columbus Monday, charged with providing a Glock semi-automatic handgun to the convicted felon accused of killing two Westerville police officers over the weekend.
Gerald A. Lawson III, 30, of Warrensville Heights, was taken into custody by federal agents just before noon at his home and faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted, according to a release from the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Ohio. Lawson was to appear before U.S. Magistrate Judge Kimberly A. Jolson Monday afternoon in Columbus.
Investigators say Smith provided money and an extra $100 payment to Lawson to purchase the firearm and that Lawson knew that Smith was a convicted felon. A trace determined the gun was bought in Broadview Heights, a Cleveland suburb.
The two are longtime friends, with several photos of the two together posted online on one of Lawson’s social media accounts, according to a release.
At the risk of asking you to pre-judge the matter, I encourage you to think about what kind of punishment you might be inclined to impose upon Gerald A. Lawson III for illegally acquiring a gun for his friend that his friend used to kill two police officers.
"A Heavy Thumb On The Scale: The Effect Of Victim Impact Evidence On Capital Decision Making"
"#BlackLivesDon’tMatter: Race-of-Victim Effects in US Executions, 1976-2013"
"America's Top Five Deadliest Prosecutors: How Overzealous Personalities Drive The Death Penalty"
"Life and Death Decisions: Prosecutorial Discretion and Capital Punishment in Missouri"
"Counsel for the Poor: The Death Sentence Not for the Worst Crime but for the Worst Lawyer"
"Capital Defense Lawyers: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly"
"The Death Penalty: Should the Judge or the Jury Decide Who Dies?"
"The Death Penaltyin Alabama: Judge Override"
"Blind Justice: Juries Deciding Life And Death With Only Half the Truth; How Death Penalty Jurors are Unfairly Selected, Manipulated, and Kept in the Dark"
"Capital Jurors in an Era of Death Penalty Decline"
"A Broken System: The Persistent Patterns of Reversals of Death Sentences in the United States"
"In states with elected high court judges, a harder line on capital punishment"
"The Death of Death Row Clemency and the Evolving Politics of Unequal Grace"
"Rethinking the Timing of Capital Clemency"
"Ohio Gov Kasich issues reprieve days before scheduled execution so clemency process can consider new juror letter"
"Prosecutor will seek the death penalty if Westerville shooting suspect survives"
As I have repeatedly mentioned in class, we will be exploring in our next few classes how Florida, Texas and Ohio capital sentencing laws help guide jury death sentencing discretion for the Unibomber (and others). The essentials for preparation appear at pp. 252 to 257 of our text, though you also need to check out two Ohio statutory provisions via the web: 2929.03 Imposition of sentence for aggravated murder and 2929.04 Death penalty or imprisonment - aggravating and mitigating factors.
For a lot more information about "your client," here is a massive Wikipedia entry on Ted Kaczynski. That entry has (too) many great links, though I would especially encourage checking out at least some of the Unibomber's (in)famous Manifesto, "INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY AND ITS FUTURE" as well as this lengthy Time article by Stephen J. Dubner from 1999 about Teddy K. headlined "I Don't Want To Live Long. I Would Rather Get The Death Penalty Than Spend The Rest Of My Life In Prison."
Week of Feb 5: We will finish up a discussion of Furman/Gregg/Woodson/Roberts which help explain/define modern DP realities and we will explore how Florida, Texas and Ohio capital sentencing laws help guide jury death sentencing discretion for the Unibomber (and others). (I will do a separate post with a lot more information about Ted Kaczynski, whom some of you will be asked to defend or prosecute).
Week of Feb 12: We will discuss McClesky v. Kemp, paying extra special attention to the final few paragraphs of the majority opinion and then debating a possible Ohio Racial and Gender Justice Act and thereafter try to start wrapping up DP discussions and transition to LWOP/non-capital sentencing issues for constitutional courts and other actors.

References: § 3553
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