Law symposium to present new study findings on death penalty

By Darryl Geddes

New empirical studies on racial discrimination and factors that influence juries in capital sentencing cases will be presented at a symposium on the death penalty this Saturday, March 28, at the Cornell Law School.

The symposium, "How the Death Penalty Works: Empirical Studies of the Modern Capital Sentencing System," sponsored by the Cornell Law Review and the Cornell Death Penalty Project, will bring to campus 11 leading legal scholars, some of whom have represented death-row inmates in postconviction appeals, to address and present new research on capital punishment issues.

All sessions will take place in the MacDonald Moot Court Room of Myron Taylor Hall. Panel discussion topics and presenters are:

• "Perspectives on the Modern Capital Sentencing System: Public Opinion and Judicial Assumptions," 10 to 11:30 a.m. Panelists include: Samuel R. Gross, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, and Jordan Steiker, the Cooper K. Ragan Regents Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law.

• "Influencing the Jury: Impartiality and Remorse in Jury Decision-Making," 1:30 to 3 p.m. Panelists include: William J. Bowers, College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University and author of Executioners in America and Legal Homicide; Scott Sundby, Washington & Lee University School of Law; and Theodore Eisenberg and Stephen P. Garvey, Cornell Law School.

• ;"Unequal Justice: Racial Discrimination in Capital Sentencing," 3:30 to 5 p.m. Panelists include: David Baldus, University of Iowa and author of Equal Justice and the Death Penalty; Jeffrey Pokorak, St. Mary's University of San Antonio School of Law; Sheri Lynn Johnson and John Blume, directors of the Cornell Law School's Death Penalty Project; and Eisenberg.

The papers presented will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Cornell Law Review.

This weekend's symposium is sponsored by Russell K. Osgood, the Allan R. Tessler Dean of the Cornell Law School; LEXIS-NEXIS; the Office of the Cornell Vice President for Research and Advanced Studies; and BAR/BRI Bar Review.