Pacific Standard March-April 2013 Cover

The Death Penalty is Experiencing Technical Difficulties

October 29, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Needle

LOS ANGELES DISTRICT ATTORNEY Steve Cooley is in a hurry to have Mitchell Sims put to death. You couldn’t blame Cooley if he felt frustrated. He’s seen the execution of Sims, a convicted triple murderer, delayed for six solid years, bogged down in a legal quagmire over whether California’s three-chemical lethal-injection sequence is a sufficiently humane method of killing someone. By the time the courts decide the issue, the state might not even be able to obtain the deadly drugs required. And to top it off, Cooley may be running out of time: this November, the state’s voters may ... Read More

More like this: Legal Affairs, November-December 2012
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Seeking Second Chances Without DNA

October 11, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO: ILYA ANDRIYANOV/SHUTTERSTOCK)

The most hopeful scenario possible for innocent inmates fighting a wrongful conviction is when DNA testing of existing evidence might be enough to exonerate them. DNA holds out an unparalleled promise of certainty. As far as evidence goes, it’s the gold standard; solid science. Just last month, a Louisiana man became the 300th inmate in the U.S. exonerated by it. Yet DNA evidence plays no role in 90 to 95 percent of criminal convictions and the inmates in such cases' subsequent innocence claims. Often biological evidence simply doesn’t exist. Sometimes it has been badly degraded or has ... Read More

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Book Seeks True Justice for Crime Victims

December 20, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Restorative Justice

Susan Herman has nothing against victim-offender dialogue or other restorative-justice techniques. She just wants to start a broader — much, much broader — national conversation about true justice for victims because, she says, "our collective failure to respond to their needs is a national disgrace." Herman, a criminal justice professor at Pace University, lays out her ideas in the new book Parallel Justice for Victims of Crime, an outgrowth of her work as executive director of the National Center for Victims of Crime. In the book, the veteran victims' rights advocate asks: What would ... Read More

More like this: Culture, January-February 2011, Legal Affairs
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When the Wheels of Justice Grind Out … Coupons

August 3, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

Class-action lawsuits are becoming so prevalent that some legal experts worry the headlong rush to certify so many cases — and the settlements that result — may compromise fundamental principles of justice and place an unsustainable burden on an already creaky court system. The most barbed criticisms are aimed at settlements that increasingly line legal pockets with millions of dollars in fees while plaintiffs make do with paltry sums or, more controversially, coupons for compensatory goods or services. In some cases, the awards would be so inconsequential to individuals that the money ... Read More

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When Black and White Aren’t Black and White

October 18, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment

Quick! What color is sinfulness? What about moral purity? If you're like most people, you naturally see sinfulness as tinged in black, while moral purity comes through in soft whites. And if you are the kind of person who really values cleaning products, or, for some reason, you were just thinking about immorality, the mental coloration of these abstract concepts is even stronger. So demonstrates doctoral student Gary D. Sherman and professor Gerald L. Clore, both of the University of Virginia Psychology Department, in a recent article from Psychological Science. But why? Is this just a ... Read More

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Re-Mapping Forensic Science’s Future

February 28, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment

If the cluster of forensic sciences involved in day-to-day crime solving, only nuclear DNA analysis has undergone truly rigorous scientific validation. But much forensic evidence that juries are routinely led to believe is rock-solid lacks reliable scientific methodology or proven accuracy. Studies show possible error rates of 1 to 4 percent in fingerprint analysis and of 10 percent or more in paint, fiber and body fluid analysis alone. Recently, Miller-McCune.com investigated the unique problems plaguing the fire investigation industry and found that forensic investigations and the rush to ... Read More

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