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Journal article
Capital Punishment: Going Beyond "A Reasonable Doubt"
Cumberland law review, Vol.52(1), pp.215-258
2022
Abstract
Excerpt - For thirty-five years, Robert DuBoise awaited his death sentence on death row for a crime he did not commit-a form of psychological torture if ever there was one, especially for an innocent man whose charges were ultimately dropped by the State of Florida when he was exonerated in 2020.1 It took all those years to determine that a single piece of evidence-a misidentified bite mark-was used to sentence Mr. DuBoise to death wrongfully.2 Nor was such an outcome unique to Mr. DuBoise. Given the many improvements in forensic science over the recent past, including the development of DNA sequencing, since 1973 there have been 185 individuals in the United States and its territories that were initially sentenced to death but later exonerated.3 This means that one out of every eight people sentenced to death over that period was later exonerated!4 This is a staggering statistic and calls current approaches to the imposition of the death penalty into serious question, regardless of whether the penalty is considered "cruel and unusual" per se.5
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Details
- Title
- Capital Punishment
- Publication Details
- Cumberland law review, Vol.52(1), pp.215-258
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publisher
- Samford University * Cumberland School of Law
- Identifiers
- 99380502797106600
- Academic Unit
- College of Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities; Criminology, Criminal Justice, and Legal Studies
- Language
- English