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Article: Judicial suicide or constitutional autonomy? A capital defendant's right to plead guilty.(state prohibitions on guilty pleas)
- Article from:
- Albany Law Review
- Article date:
- September 22, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Albany Law School. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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I. INTRODUCTION
In 1995, when New York reinstituted the death penalty with much fanfare, it joined only two other states, Arkansas and Louisiana, in forbidding a criminal defendant from pleading guilty when facing the death penalty. (1) However, in reviewing the history of the capital guilty plea, Anglo-American law suggests that an across-the-board prohibition against capital guilty pleas violates the fundamental notion of due process. (2) The right of an accused, even one facing the death penalty, to plead guilty unconditionally to the charges against him was explicitly recognized at common law. (3) It has been widely and almost uniformly acknowledged and ...