The Argument for According Life Without Parole Its Own Category of Heightened Review Under the Eighth Amendment After Graham v. Florida WILLIAM W. BERRY III

More Different than Life, Less Different than Death: The Argument for According Life Without Parole Its Own Category of Heightened Review Under the Eighth Amendment After Graham v. Florida

The Youth Discount: Old Enough to Do the Crime, Too Young to Do the Time

In a trilogy of cases, the Supreme Court applied the Eighth Amendment to the entire category of juvenile offenders, repudiated its “death is different” jurisprudence, and required states to consider youthfulness as a mitigating factor in sentencing. Roper v. Simmons prohibited states from executing offenders for murder they committed when younger than eighteen years of age. Roper reasoned that ...

Eighth Amendment Meanings from the Aba’s Moratorium Resolution

The American Bar Association’s (“ABA’s”) objection to capital punishment as currently practiced stands as one of the most provocative acts of selfproclaimed Eighth Amendment relevance to occur in many years, ranking with Justice Harry A. Blackmun’s well-publicized renunciation of the death penalty in Callins v. Collins. The ABA insists that its position—that America must institute substantial r...

A new test for evaluating Eighth Amendment challenges to lethal injections.

An explosion of Eighth Amendment challenges to lethal injection protocols has struck the federal courts. The Supreme Court's recent decision in Hill v. McDonough,1 which empowered prisoners to bring challenges to lethal injection procedures under 42 U.S.C. para. 1983, has facilitated a flood of new lethal injection cases. In response, several courts have ordered states to alter their protocols,...

Constitutional Law: Parole Status

In Rose v. Haskins,' the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reiterated the orthodox view that since a prisoner parole system is not constitutionally compelled, parole status is merely a "privilege" regulated by statute and not circumscribed by either the specific constitutional guarantees applicable to a criminal proceeding nor the traditional safeguards of procedural due process. However, ...