Dr. Talia Harmon, chair and professor of criminology and criminal justice at Niagara University, recently published an article in the University of Richmond’s Public Interest Law Review. The article, “‘Their Futures, So Full of Dread’: How Barefoot’s Contamination of the Death Penalty Trial Process Continues,” was co-authored by Niagara University alumni Maren Geiger, ’22, M.S.’24, and Moana Houde-Camirand, ’22, M.S.’23, and Michael L. Perlin, professor of law emeritus at New York Law School.
“This study examines the issue of future dangerousness predictions that were upheld in the Supreme Court decision Barefoot v. Estelle—a decision premised on the responses to a hypothetical question by a witness who had never directly evaluated the defendant,” Dr. Harmon explained. “Over a stinging dissent by Justice Blackmun, the Supreme Court ruled that it was not constitutional error for psychiatrists to testify that the defendant—whom they had never interviewed, nor evaluated—'would probably commit further acts of violence and represent a continuing threat to society.’ The study sheds light on some of the problems caused by Barefoot and the lack of accuracy of predictivity in the use of assessment instruments. We wrote this paper to assess how that circuit has construed Barefoot for the past 40 years.”
In the article, Dr. Harmon and her colleagues discussed cases that fell into the following groups: those that rely on the adversary process to be counted on to assess future dangerousness; those that reject Daubert’s potential impact and overruling of the holding of Barefoot; those that reject adequacy-of-counsel arguments based on Strickland v. Washington; and those that involve the battle of the experts. They argue that, in spite of the Fifth Circuit’s decisions on this question, Daubert should have implicitly overruled Barefoot in this context, and that lower courts should acknowledge this. They also construe these findings through the lens of therapeutic jurisprudence, focusing on the court’s failure to take seriously defendants’ Strickland-based arguments and its obeisance to the adversarial process cliche, concluding that continued adherence to Barefoot rejects TJ principles.
Dr. Harmon joined the faculty at Niagara University 1999. She has been studying capital punishment for more than 25 years and published 29 journal articles in this area. One of her most recent research areas has been on mental health issues and exemptions from capital punishment. This article is the fourth in a series with co-author Perlin examining the Fifth Circuit and how it deals with defendants with mental disabilities.
Dr. Harmon earned her bachelor’s degree in political science and her master’s and Ph.D. in criminal justice at the State University of New York at Albany.