Explore the vast range of titles available.

The retention and use of the death penalty, especially the mandatory death penalty, continues to be an issue of controversy and concern in Africa and elsewhere. Accordingly, African states are slowly but increasingly moving away from the death penalty, with many of them abolishing it either de facto or de jure, or limiting its use, with some finding its mandatory application to be unlawful. This article considers the recent Supreme Court of Kenya decision that declared the mandatory nature of the death penalty as provided for under the country's Penal Code to be unconstitutional. However, it argues that, while declaring the mandatory death penalty to be unconstitutional is commendable and a promising step on the path towards the abolition of the death penalty, the death penalty remains available as a punishment, with serious human rights implications if procedural safeguards are not followed.

This article traces interconnections between folk knowledge-the everyday, taken-for-granted understandings and beliefs that shape people's perceptions, actions, and reaction to events and situations-and legal action. It examines the consciousness of crime and punishment as that consciousness comes to bear when citizens are given the responsibility for the life or death decision made by jurors in capital cases. It seeks to identify the sources of both general and specific folk knowledge about the release of convicted capital murderers not sentenced to death and to elucidate the construction and concentration of such knowledge. One state-Georgia-where folk knowledge of early release is distinctively concentrated and different from other states serves as a strategic site for the analysis. Using Capital Jury Project (CJP) data from 3-4-hour interviews with 916 jurors in 11 states, we show that it is jurors' specific release estimates that influence their capital sentencing decisions, and we explore how folk knowledge figures in jury deliberations, despite court admonitions that such considerations are not to play a role.

From the start in 1933, Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason appeared regularly in no less than eighty-two titles over the next forty years, the last two stories, The Case of the Fenced-In Woman and The Case of the Postponed Murder posthumously after Gardner’s death, in 1972 and 1973 respectively. With Gardner’s combination of mystery story and courtroom drama, featuring Mason as sleuth as well as attorney, a pattern was consolidated, even further entrenched by the extremely popular TV series, starring Raymond Burr. The series ran from 1957 to 1966, and Burr reappeared in a revival of the original tales, from 1985 to the actor’s death in 1993. In between, during the 1970s, a series with another cast proved a failure. It is not too much to state that the legal thriller from its beginnings until the 1970s was synonymous with Gardner’s impressively prodigious output, reinforced in the TV era by the extremely popular Perry Mason TV series.

Juror characteristics correlating with a bias in favor of the death penalty were studied using survey data from 331 jurors in a selected juror pool in 2 LA parishes. The hypothesis that resistance to the death penalty is correlated with Democratic party affiliation, liberal ideology, minority status, & higher educational & occupational levels was tested with regression analysis. The only significant predictor of resistance was black racial identity; party identity, & income dropped out as significant predictors after race. Overall opposition to capital punishment was low. Jurors' perceptions of the length of a life sentence & death penalty bias were not correlated. It is concluded that the racial composition of a jury is of great importance in capital cases. 3 Tables. M. Pflum

That \"death is different\" from other penalties the state may impose has become an axiom of American law. Although it is opponents of capital punishment who invoke the phrase most frequently, supporters of the death penalty also appear willing to accept this categorical distinction. In fact, the notion that death is different may actually perpetuate popular support for capital punishment. This note examines the effects of the rhetoric of differences.

In this essay, we report on the promise and possibilities offered by careful study of American state supreme courts. We detail the measures taken in the Brace-Hall State Supreme Court Project to produce reliable data from the fifty state courts for the scholarly community. In addition, we illustrate some prominent features of these courts and the tremendous variety that exists among them. With the release of these data to the scholarly community, many exciting opportunities exist for empirically evaluating comprehensive theories of judicial behavior and politics that integrate case, judge, institution, and context.

The Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of the Alabama capital sentencing scheme in the case \"Harris v. Alabama\" is discussed. Garvey argues that the scheme violates the Eighth Amendment since it results in arbitrary and capricious sentences.