UCI Law Alumna, Olivia Meme, Winner of 2020 Academy for Justice and Arizona State Law Journal National Student Writing Competition
Olivia Meme, a UCI Law 2020 graduate, was announced as the winner of the 2020 Academy for Justice and Arizona State Law Journal: The Criminal Justice Reform National Writing Competition for her entry “The Unkindness of Fate: Why Atkins v. Virginia Demands an Extension to Capital Defendants with a Cluster B Personality Disorder.” As a result, her paper will be published in the Arizona State Law Journal Online.
“I'm so excited and honored that my paper was chosen as the winner for this competition,” said Meme. “Having spent both of my summers in law school working on death penalty appeals in California and Texas, this is an issue very close to my heart. I hope research like this can ignite a larger conversation on the application of the death penalty to mentally ill individuals.”
Meme explained that her paper focuses on: Why the U.S. Supreme Court should carve out an exemption from the death penalty for defendants suffering from one of the four "Cluster B" personality disorders: antisocial, borderline, histrionic, and narcissistic. The Court's jurisprudence currently exempts intellectually disabled and minor defendants from the death penalty. The paper argues that the rationales for these exemptions--reduced culpability of offenders and the high risk of a fundamentally unfair trial -- apply with equal force to defendants suffering from one of the four "Cluster B" personality disorders.
The national student competition seeks to promote legal scholarship centering on criminal justice reform. Winners are awarded $1,000 in prize money and articles will be considered for publication in the Arizona State Law Journal Online. Established in 1969 and originally published under the title Law and the Social Order, the Arizona State Law Journal is a nationally recognized legal periodical that serves as the primary scholarly publication of the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University.