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27 Crim. L. Bull. 334 (1991)
Life without Parole: The View from Death Row

handle is hein.journals/cmlwbl27 and id is 336 raw text is: Life Without Parole: The View From Death Row By Julian H. Wright, Jr.* This article considers the suggestion that capital punishment be replaced with the sanction of LWOP and discusses this proposal from all available perspectives, especially those of the people on death row. The author first covers some of the theoretical and practical problems inherent in applying capital punishment and then briefly describes LWOP. Next, the methodology of a Tennessee survey that included specific questions about LWOP is explained and the results of the survey examined. The author concludes with an analysis of what these views reflect about LWOP and the death row inmates themselves. Like most Americans, Tennesseans seem to support over- whelmingly the concept of capital punishment in the abstract.' Having murderers pay for their crimes with their own lives seems only appropriate to most Tennesseans, especially when those murders were heinous or especially brutal or involved some degree of depravity of mind.2 Like most states, however, Tennes- see flinches when it comes right down to killing someone. Tennessee has not executed anyone since William Tines in 1960.1 And a case currently before the Supreme Court of Tennessee, State v. Black,4 may throw out the sentences of the eighty-five people currently on Tennessee's death row and force the General * Joint Program in Law and Divinity, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn.; former Editor in Chief, Vanderbilt Law Review. ' See, e.g., Grand Jury Supports Death Penalty, Nashville Tennessean, Sept. 4, 1989, at 1B, col. 3. Generally, 80 percent of all American favor capital punishment for murderers. See text accompanying note 12 infra. 2 See Williams, State Justices to Wrestle With Death Penalty, Nashville Tennessean, Feb. 24, 1991, at 10 (remarks of Johnson City, Tenn., prosecutor David E. Crockett that the only appropriate punishment is that the person should forfeit his life for that crime). Id.; see also State v. Bomer, 205 Tenn. 572, 329 S.W.2d 813 (1959) (quashing Tines's final writ of habeas corpus); Tines v. State, 203 Tenn. 612, 315 S.W.2d 111 (1958) (upholding Tines's conviction for rape and sentence of death). Note that current death penalty statutes, including Tennessee's, apply only to first-degree or capital murders and that, today, William Tines would not get the death penalty for committing rape. I State v. Black, Davidson County Crim. Appeal No. 01-S-01-9002-CR-00007. 334

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