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Life in Prison with the Remote Possibility of Death: The Death Penalty and California's Broken Punishment Paradigm

By Jonathan Simor

Judge Carney's 39 page opinion finding California's death penalty is already setting off a wave of debate in the media. We will see yet whether it catches any political fire in this dry but so far politically placid season in California.  There is much to recommend in the opinion (read it here courtesy of the LA Times).  At its core is an unassailable principle of contemporary 8th Amendment law, that a sanction as severe as death cannot be administered arbitrarily.  The constitutional basis of the contemporary death penalty is that the statutes "narrow" the realm of death eligible crimes so that a rational basis existed for distinguishing those convicted of murder and sentenced to death and those convicted of a similar murder and given life...continue to full post

Full post as published by Governing Through Crime on July 17, 2014 (boomark / email).