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Judicial Override
In the United States and other nations that use jury trials (such as Australia), a judicial override is when a judge overrules a jury's sentencing determination. Use in capital cases Only four U.S. states have allowed judicial overrides: Alabama, Delaware, Florida, and Indiana. Indiana abolished it in 2002, Florida in 2016, and Alabama in 2017. In 2016, the Delaware Supreme Court declared the state's death penalty law unconstitutional due to the override. Researchers who analyzed survey data from thousands of capital jurors found that "residual doubt" about the person's guilt was the most significant reason jurors voted for a life sentence instead of the death penalty. This could suggest that life-to-death overrides have a higher likelihood of resulting in a wrongful conviction. Florida Florida was the first state to adopt an override statute in the 1970s, after the Supreme Court case ''Furman v. Georgia'' had effectively invalidated all death penalty statutes in the country. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jury Trials
A jury trial, or trial by jury, is a legal proceeding in which a jury makes a decision or findings of fact. It is distinguished from a bench trial in which a judge or panel of judges makes all decisions. Jury trials are used in a significant share of serious criminal cases in many but not all common law judicial systems. The majority of common law jurisdictions in Asia (such as Singapore, India, Pakistan and Malaysia) have abolished jury trials on the grounds that juries are susceptible to bias. Juries or lay judges have also been incorporated into the legal systems of many civil law countries for criminal cases. Only the United States makes routine use of jury trials in a wide variety of non-criminal cases. Other common law legal jurisdictions use jury trials only in a very select class of cases that make up a tiny share of the overall civil docket (like malicious prosecution and false imprisonment suits in England and Wales), but true civil jury trials are almost entirely a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sandra Day O'Connor
Sandra Day O'Connor (born March 26, 1930) is an American retired attorney and politician who served as the first female associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1981 to 2006. She was both the first woman nominated and the first confirmed to the court. Nominated by President Ronald Reagan, she was considered the swing vote for the Rehnquist Court and the first five months of the Roberts Court. Prior to O'Connor's tenure on the Court, she was a judge and an elected official in Arizona, serving as the first female majority leader of a state senate as the Republican leader in the Arizona Senate. Upon her nomination to the Court, O'Connor was confirmed unanimously by the Senate. On July 1, 2005, she announced her intention to retire effective upon the confirmation of a successor. Samuel Alito was nominated to take her seat in October 2005 and joined the Court on January 31, 2006. O'Connor most frequently sided with the Court's conservative bloc but demons ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Capital Punishment In Indiana
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of Indiana. The last man executed in the state, excluding federal executions at Terre Haute, was the murderer Matthew Wrinkles in 2009. Capital punishment by the United States federal government takes place at the United States Penitentiary, Terre Haute, in Indiana; however the state has no control over executions there. Legal process When the prosecution seeks the death penalty, the sentence is decided by the jury and must be unanimous. In case of a hung jury during the penalty phase of the trial, the judge decides the sentence.Indiana Code - § 35-50-2-9 Indiana was one of the four states (alongside Alabama, Delaware and Florida) that had allowed a judge to override a jury's recommendation of a life sentence to the death penalty or death penalty to a life sentence. The Indiana override statute was abolished in 2002. The power of clemency belongs to the Governor of Indiana after receiving a non-binding advice from the Ind ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Capital Punishment In Delaware
Capital punishment in Delaware was abolished after being declared unconstitutional by the Delaware Supreme Court on August 2, 2016. The ruling retroactively applies to earlier death sentences, and remaining Delaware death row inmates had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment. Despite this, the capital statute for first-degree murder under Title 11, Chapter 42, Section 09, of the Delaware Code has yet to be repealed, though it is unenforceable. Delaware has the third highest number of executions since 1976 per capita, behind Oklahoma and Texas. Sixteen people were executed in the state after the ''Gregg v. Georgia'' decision of 1976. The last person executed in the state was 28-year-old Shannon Johnson, who was executed on April 20, 2012. Former status Legal process Delaware was one of the four states, along with Alabama, Florida, and Indiana, where the judge may override a jury decision. The statute was struck down in 2016 because the judge decided not only the s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Capital Punishment In Florida
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of Florida. Since 1976, the state has executed 99 convicted murderers, all at Florida State Prison. As of July 8, 2021, 327 offenders are awaiting execution. History Florida performed its last pre-''Furman'' execution in 1964. After the Supreme Court of the United States struck down all states' death penalty procedures in ''Furman v. Georgia'' (1972), essentially ruling the imposition of the death penalty at the same time as a guilty verdict unconstitutional, Florida was the first state to draft a newly written statute on August 12, 1972. After the Supreme Court permitted the death penalty once more in ''Gregg v. Georgia'' (1976), the state electrocuted John Arthur Spenkelink on May 25, 1979, which was the second execution in the U.S. since 1967, after that of Gary Gilmore on January 17, 1977, in Utah. Capital crimes In Florida, murder can be punished by death if it involves one of the next aggravating factors: #It w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Capital Punishment In Alabama
Capital punishment in Alabama is a legal penalty. The state has the highest per capita capital sentencing rate in the United States. In some years, its courts impose more death sentences than Texas, a state that has a population five times as large. However, Texas has a higher rate of executions both in absolute terms and per capita. Legal process When the prosecution seeks the death penalty, the sentence is decided by the jury and at least 10 jurors must concur. In case of a hung jury during the penalty phase of the trial, a retrial happens before another jury. Until 2017, Alabama was the only state which still allowed a judge to impose death against jury verdict in favor of life imprisonment. The power of clemency belongs to the Governor of Alabama. The method of execution is lethal injection, unless the condemned requests electrocution or nitrogen hypoxia. Nitrogen hypoxia was approved in 2018, but as of 2022 it had not yet been used. If the method selected by the offende ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
US Constitution
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, in 1789. Originally comprising seven articles, it delineates the national frame of government. Its first three articles embody the doctrine of the separation of powers, whereby the federal government is divided into three branches: the legislative, consisting of the bicameral Congress (Article I); the executive, consisting of the president and subordinate officers ( Article II); and the judicial, consisting of the Supreme Court and other federal courts ( Article III). Article IV, Article V, and Article VI embody concepts of federalism, describing the rights and responsibilities of state governments, the states in relationship to the federal government, and the shared process of constitutional amendment. Article VII establishes the procedure subsequently used by the 13 states to ratify it. It is regarde ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sixth Amendment To The United States Constitution
The Sixth Amendment (Amendment VI) to the United States Constitution sets forth rights related to criminal prosecutions. It was ratified in 1791 as part of the United States Bill of Rights. The Supreme Court has applied the protections of this amendment to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Sixth Amendment grants criminal defendants the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury consisting of jurors from the state and district in which the crime was alleged to have been committed. Under the impartial jury requirement, jurors must be unbiased, and the jury must consist of a representative cross-section of the community. The right to a jury applies only to offenses in which the penalty is imprisonment for longer than six months. In ''Barker v. Wingo'', the Supreme Court articulated a balancing test to determine whether a defendant's right to a speedy trial had been violated. It has additionally held that the requirement of a pu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Delaware Supreme Court
The Delaware Supreme Court is the sole appellate court in the United States state of Delaware. Because Delaware is a popular haven for corporations, the Court has developed a worldwide reputation as a respected source of corporate law decisions, particularly in the area of mergers and acquisitions.Thomas Lee Hazen and Jerry W. Markham, ''Corporations and Other Business Enterprises'' (2003) Jurisdiction The Supreme Court has appellate jurisdiction over direct appeals from the Superior Court, Family Court, and Court of Chancery. Because it is the only appellate court in the state, its jurisdiction over appeals from final orders is mandatory. However, it has discretionary jurisdiction over appeals from interlocutory orders. The Court has original jurisdiction over writs of mandamus, prohibition, and certiorari. In addition, the Court regulates and has exclusive jurisdiction over matters concerning the admission and discipline of lawyers, the Lawyers' Fund for Client Protection, c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reuters
Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency was established in London in 1851 by the German-born Paul Reuter. It was acquired by the Thomson Corporation of Canada in 2008 and now makes up the media division of Thomson Reuters. History 19th century Paul Reuter worked at a book-publishing firm in Berlin and was involved in distributing radical pamphlets at the beginning of the Revolutions in 1848. These publications brought much attention to Reuter, who in 1850 developed a prototype news service in Aachen using homing pigeons and electric telegraphy from 1851 on, in order to transmit messages between Brussels and Aachen, in what today is Aachen's Reuters House. Reuter moved to London in 1851 and established a news wire agency at the London Royal Exchange. Headquartered in London, Reuter' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sonia Sotomayor
Sonia Maria Sotomayor (, ; born June 25, 1954) is an American lawyer and jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She was nominated by President Barack Obama on May 26, 2009, and has served since August 8, 2009. She is the third woman, first woman of color, the first Hispanic, and first Latina to serve on the Supreme Court. Sotomayor was born in The Bronx, New York City, to Puerto Rican-born parents. Her father died when she was nine, and she was subsequently raised by her mother. Sotomayor graduated '' summa cum laude'' from Princeton University in 1976 and received her Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 1979, where she was an editor at the ''Yale Law Journal''. She worked as an assistant district attorney in New York for four and a half years before entering private practice in 1984. She played an active role on the boards of directors for the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, the State of New York Mortgage Agency, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stephen Breyer
Stephen Gerald Breyer ( ; born August 15, 1938) is a retired American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1994 until his retirement in 2022. He was nominated by President Bill Clinton, and replaced retiring justice Harry Blackmun. Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was nominated by President Joe Biden, was his designated successor. Breyer was generally associated with the liberal wing of the Court. He is now the Byrne Professor of Administrative Law and Process at Harvard Law School. Born in San Francisco, Breyer attended Stanford University, the University of Oxford as a Marshall Scholar, and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1964. After a clerkship with Associate Justice Arthur Goldberg in 1964–65, Breyer was a law professor and lecturer at Harvard Law School from 1967 until 1980. He specialized in administrative law, writing textbooks that remain in use today. He held other prominent positions before being nominated to the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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