(Copious) capital commentary

Thanks to the Death Penalty Information Center, I see that I will never be able to catch up on all my death penalty reading.  DPIC has notices of two new and notable resources commenting on the death penalty.  Here’s their descriptions and links to access the materials:

• A new report by the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project discusses the United States’ position on the death penalty in the face of international concerns regarding this practice. The report, How the Death Penalty Weakens U.S. International Interests (accessible here), notes that many other nations are moving toward abolition of capital punishment and are critical of specific aspects of the death penalty in the US. Among the topics featured in this resource are the ongoing international efforts to abolish the death penalty, foreign intervention in US capital cases, international extradition cases involving the death penalty, rulings by the International Court of Justice, and how the death penalty has affected America’s war on terror.

• The December 2004 issue of the American Psychological Association Journal, Psychology, Public Policy, & Law, contains articles devoted to important and emerging topics related to capital punishment (abstracts here). Craig Haney, Richard Wiener, James Acker, and Charles Lanier are among the issue’s contributing writers who provide expert analysis in areas such as capital sentencing, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision-making, public opinion, victim impact statements, moratorium efforts, innocence, and other topics.

Based on the abstracts, all the articles in Psychology, Public Policy, & Law look quite interesting.  Also, recall that, as detailed here, the Fall 2004 issue of the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law also has symposium devoted to “Capital Juries” and it is fully available on-line here.  (You can also browse on-line prior and future forthcoming OSJCL issues here.)