Death Penalty Course @ Moritz College of Law

A week for reviews

I hope everyone is as excited as I am for the week of capital review we will be having to kick of April:

• On Tuesday, the Reynolds habeas case will be heard by the Sixth Circuit at Moritz.
• On Wednesday, we will discuss habeas procedures in general (readings here).
• On Thursday, we will discuss how habeas procedures deal with innocence claims (readings here)

Everyone should feel free to express pre- or post-event comments here.

Special class session Thursday, March 29

As mentioned before Spring Break, we will have a set of very special guest speakers in our Thursday class next week: two Ohio death row exonerees and the public defender primarily responsible for Ohio's lethal injection litigation.  More details about the speakers scheduled to appear can be found in the flier available for downloading here: Download exoneree_announcement.doc

Latest class topics and dates

A student made the very sensible suggestion that I post our schedule of class blogging/coverage.  I have updated the schedule and it can be downloaded here:

Download 2007_blog_schedulesyllabus.rtf

Showing the uncut Saddam execution video

I am about to leave to teach the first class that this blog is about.  At some point during my first class, I am planning on showing the entire uncut video of Saddam Hussein's hanging (which can be found here as one of many links).  Among other benefits, this class activity will give my students some knowledge about the operation of Iraq's legal system that President Bush lacks (since he purportedly has not watched the video).

Showing this video should encourage the class to think immediately about the death penalty aesthetics discussed in this post and in comments here and here at my home blog.  But I cannot help but wonder if it is bad form to show someone getting killed on the first day of class.  I hope there is no ABA rule against it.