Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Sentencing Law and Policy

Criminal Law

: Sentencing Law and Policy

Interesting take on SCOTUS Porter and Van Hook rulings and "selective empathy"

By Douglas A. Berman

The New York Times' "Opinionator" blog today has this fascinating piece by Linda Greenhouse titled "Selective Empathy."  Here is how it starts and ends: In overturning a death sentence this week of a Korean War veteran whose lawyer failed to inform the jury about the man?s combat-related traumatic stress disorder, the Supreme Court drew cheers from veterans? groups and death-penalty opponents.  But it also raised a question: Is selective empathy better than no empathy at all?... Setting the Porter and the Van Hook cases side by side, what strikes me is how similarly horrific the two men?s childhoods were ? indeed, how common such childhoods were among the hundreds of death-row inmates whose appeals I have read over the years and, I have to assume, among the 3,300 people on death row today...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on December 04, 2009 (boomark / email).