Will the death penalty in the United States be halted any time soon? Not likely. But the director of the national Death Penalty Information Center believes the frequency of executions will diminish in the coming years, in part because of budgetary issues. That and other topics were discussed Nov. 21, 2008, at the Elon Law Review Death Penalty Symposium in Greensboro.
Dieter served as the keynote speaker at the midday luncheon, sharing with attendees his observations about death penalty trends and the future of executions in the United States. His main theme: As courts require the state to offer capital defendants improved legal assistance, lawmakers and special commissions have taken notice that such mandates require lots of money.
The question then arises whether prosecutors would even be allowed by a judge to seek the death penalty if legislatures fail to appropriate resources.
“People have been executed with lawyers who slept through parts of the trial, or who were drunk,” Dieter said. “The courts are saying we’ve got to have better representation.”
The number of executions nationwide peaked in 1999 when 98 inmates were put to death. By 2007, that number had fallen to 42, and the final tally looks to be lower for this year. Meanwhile, public support for capital punishment has dropped from 80 percent of the population in 1994 to 64 percent in a poll taken this fall.
Another issue that Dieter brought to light was the ease with which prosecutors can exclude people from juries. By limiting jury pools only to people who may support executions, district attorneys create not only an increased likelihood of death sentences in the penalty phase – prosecutors may be stacking the odds of a guilty verdict in their favor.
Dieter said that death penalty proponents tend to be more conservative and more willing to trust the word of police and prosecutors regardless of the quality of evidence.
“It’s not a diversified America that sits on a capital jury,” he said.
Dieter offered praise to the university as he opened his luncheon remarks.
“Your law school should be commended,” he said of Elon Law, which enrolled its first class in 2006. “It’s taken other law schools 100 years before holding a symposium on the death penalty.”
Invited speakers included the following:
Arnold Loewy, of Texas Tech School of Law
“The Death Penalty and Innocence”
Christopher Slobogin, of Vanderbilt University
“The Death Penalty in Florida”
Elizabeth Rapaport, of the University of New Mexico
Victor Streib, of Elon University School of Law
“North Carolina’s Death Penalty for Girls and Women”
Thomas K. Maher, Center for Death Penalty Litigation (Durham, N.C.)
“The Best of Times, the Worst of Times: Examining the 8th Amendment Implications of Increased Procedural Reliability on Existing Death Sentences”
“North Carolina has always had the death penalty but its executions have stalled for two years,” said Streib, a national expert on capital punishment legal issues. “Everything is on hold. This is a fairly unique time in state history to think about the issue.”
Elon Law students said the event showcased the university as an institution that takes legal education seriously and offers its students an opportunity to learn from knowledgeable experts who visit Greensboro.
“A lot of law reviews just focus on getting speakers in to talk,” said Norm Leonard, editor in chief of the Elon Law Review. “We wanted to provide an opportunity to give exposure to Elon by growing symposium attendance.”