Available in print or online through the ebrary database (students, faculty and staff only).

U.S. Supreme Court opinion that mentally retarded criminals should not receive the death penalty.

1 DVD (98 minutes).

Summary: "An intimate look at the death penalty in the state of Texas through the eyes of Pastor Carroll Pickett, who served 15 years as the death house chaplain to the infamous 'Walls' prison unit in Huntsville. During Pickett's remarkable career he presided over 95 executions, including the world's first lethal injection. After each execution, Pickett recorded an audiotape account of his trip to the death chamber."

Available in print or online through the ebrary database (students, faculty and staff only).

1 DVD (23 minutes).

Originally aired on ABC's Nightline program, July 11, 2002.
Summary: "Discusses the case of convicted murderer John Paul Penry that prompted the Supreme Court's ruling that executing prisoners who are mentally retarded is unconstitutional."

• Judgment and metaphysics : American capital punishment jurisprudence and Friedrich Nietzsche's history of an error
• The promise of reliability and the twin objectives of the capital punishment system
• The consolation of common sense in the regulation of capital punishment
• The cockcrow of positivism : "normal" culpability in capital punishment jurisprudence
• The impact of Payne : the return of sense to capital punishment jurisprudence
• The end of error : DNA technology and the decision not to decide in capital cases
• The experience of judgment
   

Available online only.

An overview of Supreme Court decisions on the death penalty.

Available in print and online.

Available in print or online through the ebrary database (students, faculty and staff only).

Available online only.  This report by the National Research Council " assesses whether the available evidence provides a scientific basis for answering questions of if and how the death penalty affects homicide rates." (from the website).

Available online through the ebrary database (students, faculty and staff only).

This website by Amnesty International, a staunch death penalty opposer, includes annual numbers of death sentences and executions by country.  It also includes information on international resolutions and moratoriums on the death penalty.

One VHS cassette (88 minutes).

"In May 1987, Edward Earl Johnson was executed at Parchman Penitentiary in Mississippi. This program, set in the days immediately preceding and following Johnson's death in the gas chamber, focuses on the legal mechanism for execution and the intense ethical debate surrounding it. Johnson is interviewed at length. Questions arising from that interview explore such issues as whether the death penalty is ever justified, whether it is disproportionately used against minorities, and whether legal avenues of appeal are sufficient, or overly-weighted in favor of criminals."

This website includes numbers from polls of U.S. residents from 1936 to the present showing the number of people who support the death penalty, whether or not people thought it was applied too often, whether or not it acts as a crime deterrent, and whether or not it should apply to juveniles, women, mentally ill individuals or mentally retarded individuals.

U.S. Supreme Court opinion that reinstated the Death Penalty (with conditions) and included the following:
"The punishment of death for the crime of murder does not, under all circumstances, violate the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments."

U.S. Supreme Court opinion forbidding the "imposition of the death penalty on offenders who were under the age of 18 when their crimes were committed."
 

Vanderbilt Law School Dealth Pentaly Debate

WATCH THE VIDEO

Online video (55 minutes).

"Dr. Ken Haas of the University of Delaware and Joshua Marquis, District Attorney of Clatsop County, Oregon, debate the topic of capital punishment. Dr. Ken Haas of the University of Delaware advocates a view that the death penalty should be abolished in the United States. Joshua Marquis, who has served as District Attorney of Clatsop County (Astoria), Oregon argues for the death penalty."