Word: legalism
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Muslim jurists contend that stoning is no more typical of Islamic justice than extra-tough state laws against the possession of drugs are representative of the American legal tradition. Beyond that, the threat of the Shari'a is usually more severe than the reality. As in Western common law, defendants are presumed innocent until proved guilty...
...Supreme Court refused to hear the case. The Spenkelink decision is important. The Fifth Circuit covers the six Southern states (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas) that have 75% of all the prisoners now on death row. It means that Spenkelink has nearly exhausted all possible legal remedy, and scores of inmates in other Southern states are closer to death. There will be no sudden bloodbath, predicts Legal Defense Fund Lawyer John Boger, but unless Florida Governor Robert Graham grants clemency, the state's electric chair will be back in use this summer for the first time since...
...N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense Fund, which has led the fight against capital punishment since the late '60s, now finds itself hard pressed. A big reason why no one has died except Gilmore since 1967 is that L.D.F. lawyers have been racing around the country filing last-minute appeals. But without broad constitutional arguments, lawyers will have to fight each case on the facts of the crime and technicalities of conviction. A network of local defense lawyers, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is trying to save Evans, has sprung up to help stave off executions, but L.D.F. Lawyer Joel...
Whatever the legal merits of the L.D.F.'s stand, there is no doubt that most people in the U.S. want capital punishment. It was not always so: in 1966 a Gallup poll showed more people against the death penalty than for it. But high crime has helped change many minds. By September 1978 a Gallup poll estimated that 62% favored the death penalty, only 27% opposed it. No one has been able to prove conclusively that the death penalty deters murders, but the feeling persists that some crimes are so awful that the criminal deserves to be executed. Whether...
...legal tug of war had been going on for four months when suddenly last week Fairbanks mysteriously showed up on campus. Eddie Crowder, the university's athletic director, refused to say what was going on. Colorado Governor Richard Lamm was furious. "The public is being treated like mushrooms-kept in the dark and spread with manure," he fumed. Two days later, the university's regents revealed that Colorado had acquired Fairbanks because of an extraordinary out-of-court settlement: the indefatigable Flatirons had agreed to pay $200,000 to the Patriots in return for dropping the suit...