Death Penalty Course @ Moritz College of Law

Posting and/or sending out white papers to named audience

After a long few weeks to finish grading and to deal with other commitments that stacked up in the Spring, I am now ready to get serious about polishing, publishing and propagating all of the great white papers that were produced for this course.  I hope at least a few of you are interested, and have a little time, to turn your white paper into more than just a required assignment for our class.

If you are still interested in having your white paper posted on the blog and/or polished for sending to your chosen audience, please let me know via a comment here or e-mail.  Though a little work may be involved to update and formalize the presentation, I doubt more than a few hours of effort would be required to make anyone's white paper post-worthy.  (Consider the cool double meaning: post-worthy means worthy of posting on this blog and worthy of putting in the post (mail).)

Initial reactions to white-paper outlines

I have reviewed all the submitted white-paper outlines, and I am in the midst of preparing class-wide substantive feedback and suggestions.  In this post, let me just detail some of my initial reactions and thoughts:

1.  Thanks for providing such interesting Spring Break reading.  I really enjoyed seeing how everyone approached this novel assignment, and I learned a lot from your outlines.  Though a lot of you (understandably) expressed concerns about the scope and coverage of your outlines, my review of all your efforts confirmed my instinct that this assignment is proving to be much more valuable than any exam or even a traditional research paper I could have assigned.

2.  The thoughtfulness and diversity of your efforts was quite impressive.  Even the shortest outline — which ran just over a page double-spaced — revealed thoughtful reflection on this project.  The longest outline — which ran just under seven pages single-spaced — revealed how dangerously easy it will be for this project to consume you.

3.  I will mark-up submitted outlines only upon request.  As noted above, I am preparing a long memo with general feedback for everyone.  I am happy to provide individual feedback through conferences or by marking up an outline upon request.  A number of you stressed that the outline was a work in progress; I would rather spend time helping you move forward than marking up an effort you have already revised.

4.  I am excited about the importance and possible impact of this project; I am thinking dynamically about how we can and should disseminate the class's efforts.  Of course, I hope to post (with permission) the completed white papers on this blog.  But I am also thinking about (1) whether and how we might foster (and fund) sending the white papers directly to the official intended audience, and also (2) whether and how we might publish all the papers in some kind of compiled book form.

UPDATE:  I have now completed a detailed memo with class-wide substantive feedback and suggestions, which can be downloaded here: Download recommendations_for_dp_white_papers.rtf

An offer for (and encouragement of) "field research"

I am getting very excited about the white papers upon seeing the diverse and interesting selections of officials to whom you all (tentatively) plan to write.  I hope you are as excited about this part of the class as I am.  Though I will discuss the particulars of the papers more next week, it is never to early to start your research.

Wonderfully, some more friends in the field are providing offers of assistance.  Specifically, while digging out from snow yesterday, I got this kind e-mail from Ward Campbell, the Supervising Deputy Attorney General in the California Department of Justice:

One of your students may be interested in contacting Dane Gillette, who was recently promoted to chief assistant of the criminal division of the Calif AG's office.  He was our statewide coordinator and lead attorney in Morales [the case concerning California's lethal injection protocol being litigated in federal district court].  Here is a recent news article about him.

Please post this offer -- dane's e mail address is dane.gillette @ doj.ca.gov if someone contacts him, they may they say they were referred by Ward Campbell.

This kind California offer (along with the similar offer we've gotten from a friend in Arizona) reminds me that I want to actively encourage real "field-research" in conjunction with both the blog and white paper parts of this class.  As these offers spotlight, people working in the death penalty field are very eager to speak with bright, motivated and open-minded research and policy advocates.  And people in the field often have a lot more insights about the day-to-day realities of the death penalty than do most politicians, appellate judges or academics.