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Course Description
In
this course, students will read and write papers about some well-known
criminal law cases, including the British landmark case of Regina v.
Dudley, Furman
v. Georgia (the United States Supreme Court's decision striking
down the death penalty as unconstitutional), and the case of Bobby Joe
Leaster, who was convicted of murder and imprisoned in Massachusetts for
many years before an eyewitness came forward and exonerated Leaster with
new testimony. We will read and critique essays about the criminal justice
system (in particular, about the death penalty as it currently exists
and is applied in the United States), excerpts from the work of Helen
Préjean and Norman Mailer (The Executioner's Song),
and the writings of advocates for and opponents of the death penalty.
Finally, we will screen and critique the film Dead
Man Walking. Each student will choose an additional film to screen
and research as the subject of a longer essay drawing on several outside
sources. These films include: I Want to Live!, Hurricane, The
Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and Mrs. Soffel,
among others.
Themes
& Readings
Required readings for this course
will be selected from the following:
1. Furman
v. Georgia (1972), the case in which the United States Supreme Court
found that the way in which state capital punishment laws were written,
including discriminatory sentencing guidelines, constituted cruel and
unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.
2. Gregg
v. Georgia (1976), the case in which the United States Supreme Court
upheld Georgia's revised death penalty statute, resulting in the resumption
of executions across the United States.
3. Mailer,
Norman, The Executioner's Song. Boston: Little Brown, 1979. Mailer
chronicles the crime, and 1977 execution by Utah firing squad, of convicted
murderer Gary Gilmore.
http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/AHR/archive/Issue-March-1997/petch.html
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/mailer_n_timeline_flash.html
4. Préjean,
Helen, Dead Man Walking. New York: Random House, 1993. Sister Helen
Préjean's memoir of her work as the spiritual counselor for two Louisiana
death row inmates.
5. Reggio,
Michael H., "History of the Death Penalty," from Randa, Laura
A., ed., Society's Final Solution: A History and Discussion of the
Death Penalty. University Press of America, Inc., 1997.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/execution/readings/history.html
6. The
Execution. A PBS, Frontline special.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/execution/
7. Regina
v. Dudley and Stephens, L.R. 14 Q.B. D 273 (1884)
As described by John L. Bonsignore, et al., in their text, Before the
Law, 4th edition, this case "is one of the most remarkable ever
to have been heard in either British or American courts. In it, two English
seamen were charged with cannibalism of a young sailor with whom they
had been shipwrecked on the high sea." (44). The decision raises
fascinating questions about the defense of necessity, the intersection
of mores and the law, and the way in which we punish those whom we judge
to be transgressors.
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