Sunday’s stimulating sentencing stories

After reading about all the bowl games in the sports pages — how ’bout that Rose Bowl — there are a number of thought-provoking articles in today’s newspapers:

• Emily Bazelon has this interesting essay entitled “Sentencing by the Numbers” in the New York Times Magazine, which thoughtfully discusses Virginia’s fascinating and controversial risk-assessment sentencing that encourage “judges to sentence nonviolent offenders the way insurance agents write policies, based on a short list of factors with a proven relationship to future risk.” (As detailed here, the Federal Sentencing Reporter recently devoted a full issue to risk assessment, and Grits for Breakfast here has some thoughtful comments on the Times article.)

• This article thoughtfully reviews the state of the death penalty in Louisiana, as well as nationwide death penalty developments in 2004.  I was surprised and intrigued to learn that Louisiana has not executed anyone since 2001 and that “Orleans Parish counted its seventh year without a single death sentence, despite ample opportunity [because the local DA seeks the death penalty in every first-degree murder case] and a high murder rate.”  UPDATE: And, thanks to TalkLeft here, I see that the Washington Post has this editorial applauding the recent declines in the use of the death penalty.

• And, thanks to How Appealing, from South Carolina we get this article about the juvenile death penalty in that state, as well as a set of companion stories (linked here), which details the potential impact of the Supreme Court’s coming constitutional ruling in Roper on the juvenile death penalty (background here and here).