Deborah Denno | |
---|---|
Born | June 6, 1952 |
Nationality | American |
Education | University of Virginia University of Toronto University of Pennsylvania University of Pennsylvania Law School (JD) |
Known for | Criticism of capital punishment |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Criminal law Neurocriminology Neurolaw |
Institutions | Fordham University School of Law |
Thesis | Sex Differences in Cognition and Crime: Early Developmental, Biological, and Sociological Correlates (1982) |
Deborah West Denno (born June 6, 1952) [1] is an American legal scholar and criminologist who studies the intersection of biology, neuroscience, and criminal law. She is the Arthur A. McGivney Professor of Law at the Fordham University School of Law, where she is also the founding director of the Neuroscience and Law Center. In 2007, she was named one of the fifty most influential women lawyers in the United States by the National Law Journal . [2] She is known for her writings on the constitutionality of certain methods of capital punishment, such as lethal injection. [3] A 2006 article in the Washington Post described her as "a leading expert on executions in the United States." [4]
Denno was educated at the University of Virginia, the University of Toronto, and the University of Pennsylvania. She received her J.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where she was the managing editor of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review . Before joining the faculty of Fordham in 1991, she clerked for Justice Anthony J. Scirica and worked at the law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. [2] She first became interested in capital punishment while working as a law clerk for Scirica. In 1991, she became one of the first scholars to argue that, like electrocution before it, lethal injection constituted "cruel and unusual punishment" and therefore violated the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. [3]
Lethal injection is the practice of injecting one or more drugs into a person for the express purpose of causing rapid death. The main application for this procedure is capital punishment, but the term may also be applied in a broader sense to include euthanasia and other forms of suicide. The drugs cause the person to become unconscious, stops their breathing, and causes a heart arrhythmia, in that order.
The University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School is the law school of the University of Pennsylvania, a private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Penn Carey Law offers the degrees of Juris Doctor (J.D.), Master of Laws (LL.M.), Master of Comparative Laws (LL.C.M.), Master in Law (M.L.), and Doctor of the Science of Law (S.J.D.).
In the United States, capital punishment is a legal penalty throughout the country at the federal level, in 27 states, and in American Samoa. It is also a legal penalty for some military offenses. Capital punishment has been abolished in 23 states and in the federal capital, Washington, D.C. It is usually applied for only the most serious crimes, such as aggravated murder. Although it is a legal penalty in 27 states, 20 states have the ability to execute death sentences, with the other seven, as well as the federal government, being subject to different types of moratoriums. The existence of capital punishment in the United States can be traced to early colonial Virginia. Along with Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan, the United States is one of four advanced democracies and the only Western nation that applies the death penalty regularly. It is one of 54 countries worldwide applying it, and was the first to develop lethal injection as a method of execution, which has since been adopted by five other countries. The Philippines has since abolished executions, and Guatemala has done so for civil offenses, leaving the United States as one of four countries to still use this method. It is common practice for the condemned to be administered sedatives prior to execution, regardless of the method used.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of Ohio, although all executions have been suspended indefinitely by Governor Mike DeWine until a replacement for lethal injection is chosen by the Ohio General Assembly. The last execution in the state was in July 2018, when Robert J. Van Hook was executed via lethal injection for murder.
The U.S. state of Washington enforced capital punishment until the state's capital punishment statute was declared null and void and abolished in practice by a state Supreme Court ruling on October 11, 2018. The court ruled that it was unconstitutional as applied due to racial bias however it did not render the wider institution of capital punishment unconstitutional and rather required the statute to be amended to eliminate racial biases. From 1904 to 2010, 78 people were executed by the state; the last was Cal Coburn Brown on September 10, 2010. In April 2023, Governor Jay Inslee signed SB5087 which formally abolished capital punishment in Washington State and removed provisions for capital punishment from state law.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of Nebraska. In 2015, the state legislature voted to repeal the death penalty, overriding governor Pete Ricketts' veto. However, a petition drive secured enough signatures to suspend the repeal until a public vote. In the November 2016 general election, voters rejected the repeal measure, preserving capital punishment in the state. Nebraska currently has 12 inmates on death row.
Anthony Joseph Scirica is a Senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Brian David Steckel was an American convicted killer in the 1994 rape and murder of 29-year-old Sandra Lee Long near Wilmington, Delaware.
Deborah Anne Batts was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. During Gay Pride Week in June 1994, Batts was sworn in as a United States district judge for Manhattan, becoming the nation's first openly LGBT, African-American federal judge. She took senior status on her 65th birthday, April 13, 2012.
Steven Howard Oken was an American spree killer who raped and murdered three women in Maryland and Maine in November 1987. He was sentenced to death and executed in Maryland by lethal injection in 2004.
Stephen Anthony Mobley was a convicted murderer executed by the State of Georgia for the 1991 killing of John C. Collins, a 25-year-old college student working nights as a Domino's pizza store manager. On appeal, Mobley's attorneys advanced a novel argument that Mobley was genetically predisposed to seeking violent solutions to conflict. The case was described by Nature Reviews Neuroscience as "perhaps the most widely cited case in which defence lawyers used genetic factors in the defence of their client".
The Fordham Law Review is a student-run law journal associated with the Fordham University School of Law that covers a wide range of legal scholarship.
Deborah Lynn Rhode was an American jurist. She was the Ernest W. McFarland Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and the nation's most frequently cited scholar in legal ethics. From her early days at Yale Law School, her work revolved around questions of injustice in the practice of law and the challenges of identifying and redressing it. Rhode founded and led several research centers at Stanford devoted to these issues, including its Center on the Legal Profession, Center on Ethics and Program in Law and Social Entrepreneurship; she also led the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford. She coined the term "The 'No-Problem' Problem".
Attina Marie Cannaday was charged with robbery, kidnapping, and homicide and is the inspiration for the film Too Young to Die? She was convicted of the kidnap and murder of U.S. Air Force Sergeant Ronald Wojcik and was initially sentenced to death. The guilty verdict was upheld, but the sentence was reversed in 1984, Cannaday v. State, 455 So.2d 713, 720. Cannaday was re-sentenced to one life sentence and two 25-year sentences at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility. She was released on parole on March 9, 2008.
Hanging has been practiced legally in the United States of America from before the nation's birth, up to 1972 when the United States Supreme Court found capital punishment to be in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Four years later, the Supreme Court overturned its previous ruling, and in 1976, capital punishment was again legalized in the United States. As of 2021, three states have laws that specify hanging as an available secondary method of execution.
Glossip v. Gross, 576 U.S. 863 (2015), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held, 5–4, that lethal injections using midazolam to kill prisoners convicted of capital crimes do not constitute cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Court found that condemned prisoners can only challenge their method of execution after providing a known and available alternative method.
Oscar Ray Bolin Jr. was an American serial killer and convicted rapist who was executed in Florida for murder. In 1986, Bolin kidnapped and murdered three young women in Tampa, Florida. He was later connected to a fourth murder in Texas in 1987. The murders went unsolved for nearly four years, until the husband of his ex-wife called a tip line and implicated him. He maintained his innocence to the end.
The Michigan State Law Review is a law review published by students at Michigan State University College of Law. It is the flagship journal of the school and it publishes five issues per year. According to the Washington & Lee Law Journal Ranking, Michigan State Law Review was the 48th highest-ranked flagship legal journal in 2022, a dramatic increase from its ranking of 332rd in 2003. The journal hosts an annual academic conference of global legal experts with past events covering issues such as autonomous vehicles, quantitative legal analysis, civil rights, and intellectual property. Professor David Blankfein-Tabachnick has served as Faculty Advisor of the journal since his appointment in 2016. In 2018, the journal began publishing an annual "Visionary Article Series," which features the work of one prominent legal scholar per year.
Dana Ann Remus is an American lawyer who served as White House counsel for U.S. President Joe Biden from January 2021 to July 2022. Prior to her appointment as White House counsel, Remus was general counsel for Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign. Earlier in her career, she was deputy assistant to the president and deputy counsel for ethics during the presidency of Barack Obama, was general counsel for the Obama Foundation from 2017 to 2019, and was counsel to Michelle Obama.