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Franklin Zimring on the American Law Institute's New Capital Punishment Position

By Steve Hall

Zimring's commentary for the National Law Journal is, "Pulling the plug on capital punishment."  He is the William G. Simon Professor of Law and Wolfen Distinguished Scholar at the UC Berkeley School of Law. Not all the important turning points in America's epic struggle over the death penalty get noticed immediately by the mass media and the public. A quiet blockbuster this year was the decision of the American Law Institute, a little-known but prestigious organization of lawyers and judges, to withdraw its approval for the standards created by the institute's 1963 Model Penal Code to guide juries in the choice between long prison terms and execution. Ordinarily, the decision of a non-governmental organization to reject a sentencing system it adopted in the early 1960s would richly deserve public obscurity...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on December 08, 2009 (boomark / email).