Opinion ID: 1386258
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 18

Heading: The Death Penalty in Modern America

Text: Defined within the cognitive umbrella of the United States Supreme Court in Gregg and Furman, it may not be the provence of the state appellate court to question the pragmatic wisdom of the death penalty in our so-called modern society. Greenberg, Capital Punishment as a System, 91 Yale L.J. 908 (1982). Furthermore, under the United States Constitution and for this case, that decision has previously been rendered by the Wyoming Supreme Court under the Wyoming Constitution in Hopkinson v. State, 664 P.2d 43 (Wyo.), cert. denied 464 U.S. 908, 104 S.Ct. 262, 78 L.Ed.2d 246 (1983) and Engberg I. The volume of critical literature is overwhelming [38] with converse justification for litigative action based upon public opinion as almost completely limited in modern democracy to this nation. Levit, Expediting Death: Repressive Tolerance and Post-Conviction Due Process Jurisprudence in Capital Cases, 59 UMKC L.Rev. 55 (1990). Cf. Bigel, William H. Rehnquist on Capital Punishment, XVII Ohio N.U.L.Rev. 729 (1991). Given the system and the apparent societal circumference articulated in controlling cases of the United States Supreme Court for federal law, it remains incumbent upon the state tribunal to honor the prerequisites of the state constitution. In attempting to define a fair, evenhanded and reasonably applied death penalty, see Hopkinson, 664 P.2d 43 and Engberg I, 686 P.2d 541, Rose, J., dissenting. My conviction against the entire process, issue analysis and decision in this case is examined as a result lacking either fairness, equal protection or any rational justification in simple criminal law for what occurred in this, the Engberg case. [39] The indeterminate future, definable once in accurate anticipation of total confusion by a law journal writer, is discernable in analysis by Professor Rosen, The Especially Heinous Aggravating Circumstance in Capital Cases  The Standardless Standard, 64 N.C.L.Rev. 941 (1986). See Maynard v. Cartwright, 486 U.S. 356, 108 S.Ct. 1853, 100 L.Ed.2d 372 (1988), but then consider Johnson v. Mississippi, 486 U.S. 578, 108 S.Ct. 1981, 100 L.Ed.2d 575 (1988). What really exists is best recognized by Bright, Death by Lottery  Procedural Bar of Constitutional Claims in Capital Cases Due to Inadequate Representation of Indigent Defendants, 92 W.Va.L.Rev. 679, 695 (1990), where the author concludes, following advocacy of continued federal review, that [o]therwise, the death penalty will too often be punishment not for committing the worst crime, but for being assigned the worst lawyer. See Death Penalty Litigation in the '90's-A Forum (ABA 1990); I. Robbins, Toward a More Just and Effective System of Review in State Death Penalty Cases (ABA 1990); and Fogel, A Fair Death: Arbitrariness, the Supreme Court and Capital Punishment, 1972-1989, 16 New Eng.J.Crim. & Civ. Confinement 1 (1990). Cf. Arkin, The Prisoner's Dilemma: Life in the Lower Federal Courts After Teague v. Lane, 69 N.C.L.Rev. 371 (1991). See also Project, The Death Penalty: Personal Perspectives, 22 Loy.U.Chi. L.J. 1, 1 (1990), initially quoting Plato's Apology of Socrates: But now it is time to go away, I to die and you to live. Which of us goes to a better thing is unclear to everyone except to the god. For additional analysis, see Ledewitz, The Morality of Capital Punishment: An Exchange, 29 Duq.L.Rev. 719 (1991) compared with Comment, Barbarism in the Plastic Bubble: An Application of Existentialist Theory to Capital Punishment in the United States, 1990 Det.C.L.Rev. 1011 (1990).