Ad Hoc Review Committee Named
for Capital Punishment Paper
As ALI’s proposed revisions to the sentencing provisions of the Model Penal Code have drawn renewed attention to criminal sentencing, some members have urged that the Institute take a position against the death penalty. As reported to ALI members this spring, Director Lance Liebman has asked Professors Carol Steiker of Harvard Law School and Jordan Steiker of the University of Texas School of Law to write a paper for the Institute summarizing the current state of American law of capital punishment and the most important and relevant scholarship, and then outlining the Institute’s options regarding the subject.
Director Liebman has invited a small group of experts, including prosecutors, defense lawyers, state and federal judges, and academics, to review and comment on a draft of the paper. The group, which will meet in September, consists of the following: Nancy F. Atlas of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas; Charles F. Baird of the Judicial Criminal District Court in Austin, TX; David O. Carter of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California; Roger S. Clark of Rutgers School of Law – Camden; Christine M. Durham of the Utah Supreme Court; Jaime Esparza, District Attorney in El Paso, TX; Jeffrey A. Fagan of Columbia Law School; Peter Gilchrist, III, District Attorney in Charlotte, NC; James E. Ferguson, II, an attorney in Charlotte, NC; Joseph L. Hoffmann of Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington; Kathryn M. Kase of the Texas Defender Service, Houston; Nancy J. King of Vanderbilt University Law School; Daniel J. Meltzer of Harvard Law School; William H. Pryor, Jr., of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit; and Kevin R. Reitz of the University of Minnesota Law School, the Reporter for the ALI’s Sentencing project.
The Program Committee and Council are expected to take up the matters addressed in the Steikers’ paper later in the fall.