Word: conviction
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...also considering defending Jack Abbot, a convict tunnel-writer who is now charged with murder...
...mentally ill only after resolving the question of sanity, jurors would likely agree to return such a verdict at the outset of deliberations, sparing themselves both the difficulty of determining sanity and the danger of returning a potentially dangerous criminal to their community. This new verdict enables jurors to convict defendants who otherwise would, and should, be declared insane. Guilty-but-mentally-ill would imprison those not legally accountable for a crime...
Clayton's lawyers sought to paint a picture of an Honor Committee concerned with a spate of bad publicity and under pressure to convict someone. In April 1979, The Daily Princetonian released a controversial poll which said that one-third of undergraduates had cheated on an exam...
...legal turmoil in Texas is the doing of Federal District Court Judge William Wayne Justice, who ordered, among other things, that the prisons provide at least 40 sq. ft. of cell space for each convict. The state has partly complied by putting 3,100 inmates in jury-rigged twelve-man tents. The strict prisons of Texas are not, by Southern standards, atypically harsh. In 30 states, prisons are under court orders to end unconstitutionally cruel conditions and practices, whether inadequately treating sick inmates, improperly ventilating cellblocks or simply jamming in too many prisoners...
Determinate sentencing ends the ambiguity. The plan considered wisest is the one adopted by Minnesota in 1980. Basically, that state's "grid" formula quantifies a convict's criminal past and his current offense, and assigns the appropriate sentence. A judge who occasionally wants to impose any lesser or greater penalty must justify his divergence in writing. Most appealing is the cool simplicity embodied in the guidelines, which help to restore an aura of fairness and strictness to criminal justice. Deterring crime is a murky business, but it can work well only if the sanctions threatened are credible, consistently applied...