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Policing Criminal Justice Data, Wayne A. Logan, Andrew Guthrie Ferguson

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

The Choice Between Right And Easy: Pena-Rodriguez V. Colorado And The Necessity Of A Racial Bias Exception To Rule 606(B), Kevin Zhao

Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy Sidebar

Traditionally, under Rule 606(b) of the Federal Rules of Evidence, jurors are barred from testifying towards matters within juror deliberations. However, many jurisdictions in the United States have adopted an exception to this rule for racial prejudice. That is, if a juror comes forward post-verdict to testify that another juror made racially charged comments within the jury room, then the verdict may be overturned. The Supreme Court will address this issue in its upcoming decision in Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado. This commentary will argue that a racial bias exception is necessary to protect defendants' rights to a fair trial and …

Brief Of Appellant, Davon Jones V. State Of Maryland, No. 547, Paul Dewolfe, Renée M. Hutchins, Matthew T. Healy

Court Briefs

No abstract provided.

Brief Of Appellant, John Hill V. State Of Maryland, No. 2740, Paul Dewolfe, Renée M. Hutchins, Silva Georgian

Court Briefs

No abstract provided.

New Approaches To Data-Driven Civilian Oversight Of Law Enforcement: An Introduction To The Second Nacole/Cjpr Special Issue, Daniel L. Stageman, Nicole M. Napolitano, Brian Buchner

Publications and Research

In April of 2016, National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement (NACOLE) and John Jay College partnered to sponsor the Academic Symposium “Building Public Trust: Generating Evidence to Enhance Police Accountability and Legitimacy.” This essay introduces the Criminal Justice Policy Review Special Issue featuring peer-reviewed, empirical research papers first presented at the Symposium. We provide context for the Symposium in relation to contemporary national discourse on police accountability and legitimacy. In addition, we review each of the papers presented at the Symposium, and provide in-depth reviews of each of the manuscripts included in the Special Issue.

Section 1: Moot Court: Pena-Rodriguez V. Colorado, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

Section 4: Criminal, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

'Serial' Should Release Bergdahl Interviews, Jeffrey Bellin

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Justice Scalia’S Originalism And Formalism: The Rule Of Criminal Law As A Law Of Rules, Stephanos Bibas

All Faculty Scholarship

Far too many reporters and pundits collapse law into politics, assuming that the left–right divide between Democratic and Republican appointees neatly explains politically liberal versus politically conservative outcomes at the Supreme Court. The late Justice Antonin Scalia defied such caricatures. His consistent judicial philosophy made him the leading exponent of originalism, textualism, and formalism in American law, and over the course of his three decades on the Court, he changed the terms of judicial debate. Now, as a result, supporters and critics alike start with the plain meaning of the statutory or constitutional text rather than loose appeals to legislative …

Trending @ Rwu Law: Dean Yelnosky's Post: What The Tragedy In Orlando Means For Rwu Law 6/17/2016, Michael Yelnosky

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

Private Prisons And The New Marketplace For Crime, André Douglas Pond Cummings, Adam Lamparello

Faculty Scholarship

A saner and safer prison policy in the United States begins by ending the scourge of the private prison corporation and returning crime and punishment to public function. We continue by radically reimagining our sentencing policies and reducing them significantly for non-violent crimes. We end the War on Drugs, once and for all, and completely reconfigure our drug and prison policy by legalizing and regulating marijuana use and providing health services to addicts of harder drugs and using prison for only violent drug kingpins and cartel bosses. We stop the current criminalization of immigration in its tracks and block the …

Constitutional Retroactivity In Criminal Procedure, Alex Stein, Dov Fox

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Jurisdiction Of The Irish Courts In The Protection Of The Constitutional Rights Of A Person Accused Of A Crime., Adrian Berski

Reports

Studying the Irish Constitutional Law, requires the understanding of how the Irish Political System was evolved. Montesquieu's tripartite system, adopted by the Republic of Ireland is the judiciary[1] has a particular place in the Irish Constitution in articles 34 - 37[2].

The main purpose of this essay is to analyse the balance between the jurisdiction of the Irish Courts in the protection of the constitutional rights of a person accused of a crime and the functioning of the criminal justice system in protecting Society`s general interest. The first section presents a brief summary of the courts functions …

Coming To Grips With The Ethical Challenges For Capital Post-Conviction Representation Posed By Martinez V. Ryan, John H. Blume, W. Bradley Wendel

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In its groundbreaking decision in Martinez v. Ryan, 556 U.S. 1 (2012), the Supreme Court of the United States held that inadequate assistance of post-conviction counsel could be sufficient “cause” to excuse a procedural default thus allowing a federal court in habeas corpus proceedings to reach the merits of an otherwise barred claim that an inmate was deprived of his Sixth Amendment right to the effective assistance of counsel at trial. The upshot of Martinez is that, if state post-conviction counsel unreasonably (and prejudicially) fails to raise a viable claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel, then there is “cause” …

Appraising 9/11: 'Sacred' Value And Heritage In Neoliberal Times, Mateo Taussig-Rubbo

Journal Articles

On September 11, 2001, United Airlines Flight 93 — one of the four airplanes hijacked that day — crashed into a vacant parcel of land in rural Pennsylvania, killing all on board. For many, including family members of those killed in the attack and the Park Service that now manages the national memorial at the site, the former strip mine was transformed into ‘sacred’ ground. Unable to settle on a price with the landowner, in 2009 the government took the property through eminent domain. Focusing on the ongoing effort in United States of America v. 275.81 Acres of Land to …

The Right To Silence V. The Fifth Amendment, Tracey Maclin

Faculty Scholarship

This paper concerns a well-known, but badly misunderstood, constitutional right. The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution guarantees, inter alia, that no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” For the non-lawyer, the Fifth Amendment protects an individual’s right to silence. Many Americans believe that the Constitution protects their right to remain silent when questioned by police officers or governmental officials. Three rulings from the Supreme Court over the past twelve years, Chavez v. Martinez (2003), Berghuis v. Thomkpins (2010) and Salinas v. Texas (2013), however, demonstrate that the “right to remain silent” that …

Reconstructing Rfra: The Contested Legacy Of Religious Freedom Restoration, Martin S. Lederman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Almost every member of Congress voted to approve the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), a bill endorsed by an unprecedented coalition of dozens of religious and civil rights organizations spanning the political and ideological spectrum. President Clinton quipped at the signing ceremony that perhaps only divine intervention could explain such an unusual meeting of the minds: the establishment of “new trust” across otherwise irreconcilable “ideological and religious lines,” he remarked, “shows . . . that the power of God is such that, even in the legislative process, miracles can happen.”

The RFRA consensus was especially “miraculous” because the …

Fixing Bail, Samuel R. Wiseman

Scholarly Publications

A large portion of the jail population consists of criminal defendants whose guilt has yet to be established. A growing number of states have attempted to reduce jail populations in light of budget concerns, and many federal and state statutes already direct judges to detain defendants only if alternative conditions will not protect society or prevent pretrial flight. Despite these legislative directives, judges continue to jail too many defendants pretrial. Indeed, although statutes often direct judges not to impose financial conditions leading to detention, many pretrial detainees are in jail because they could not afford the bond set by a …

The Riddle Of Harmless Error Revisited, John M. Greabe

Law Faculty Scholarship

Half a century ago, in Chapman v. California, the Supreme Court imposed on appellate courts an obligation to vacate or reverse criminal judgments marred by constitutional error unless the government demonstrates that the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. But the Court did not explain the juridical status of this obligation or its relation to the federal harmless-error statute, 28 U.S.C. § 2111. In the intervening years, commentators have struggled to make sense of Chapman. Some see it as a constitutional mandate. Others view it as an example of constitutional common law. In THE RIDDLE OF HARMLESS ERROR, written …

Salvaging "Safe Spaces": Toward Model Standards For Lgbtq Youth-Serving Professionals Encountering Law Enforcement, Brendan M. Conner

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Reconceptualizing The Eighth Amendment: Slaves, Prisoners, And Cruel And Unusual Punishment, Alexander A. Reinert

Faculty Articles

The meaning of the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause has long been hotly contested. For scholars and jurists who look to original meaning or intent, there is little direct contemporaneous evidence on which to rest any conclusion. For those who adopt a dynamic interpretive framework, the Supreme Court’s “evolving standards of decency” paradigm has surface appeal, but deep conflicts have arisen in application. This Article offers a contextual account of the Eighth Amendment’s meaning that addresses both of these interpretive frames by situating the Amendment in eighteenth and nineteenth-century legal standards governing relationships of subordination.

In particular, I …

Plea Bargain Negotiations: Defining Competence Beyond Lafler And Frye, Cynthia Alkon

Faculty Scholarship

In the companion cases of Lafler v. Cooper and Missouri v. Frye the U.S. Supreme Court held that there is a right to effective assistance of counsel during plea bargaining. However, the Court defined effective assistance of counsel in only one narrow phase of plea bargaining: the client counseling phase. The Court said it would not look more broadly at the negotiation process itself as "[b]argaining is, by its nature, defined to a substantial degree by personal style.” This statement indicates that the Court does not fully understanding developments in the field of negotiation over the last thirty years. Negotiation …

The Young And The Redemptionless? Juvenile Offenders Before Miller V. Alabama, Katherine Johnson

Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy Sidebar

The Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits excessive criminal sanctions, and the Supreme Court has held that this provision has special application in situations dealing with juvenile offenders. This Commentary looks at the recent Supreme Court case of Montgomery v. Louisiana, in which the Court held that there was a constititutional prohibition of life sentences without parole for juvenile offenders. This Commentary argues that this is the correct result under the Court’s Eighth Amendment jurisprudence but that the Court should also have held that the sole remedy for such constitutional violations is resentencing.

The Hidden Under Caste Of America: An Examination Of The Effects Of Terry V. Ohio, Florida V. Bostick, & Whren V. United States And Colorblindness On African Americans, Austin Schoeck

Political Science: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Luis V. United States: Asset Forfeiture Butts Heads With The Sixth Amendment, Jordan Glassberg

Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy Sidebar

In recent years, the federal government has vastly increased its use of asset forfeiture, the seizure of property connected to illegal activities. As authorized under federal law, the government is also able to restrain assets prior to trial when the government belives those assets will ultimately be found to be forfeitable. This pretrial restraint potentially implicates the constitutionally guaranteed right to counsel for criminal defendants. In the upcoming Supreme Court case of Luis v. United States, the Court will address the question of whether a pretrial restraint of assets which are not traceable to any illegal activity is permissible …

The Real Homeland Security Gaps, Areto A. Imoukuede

Journal Publications

This Article reveals the real security gaps in FPS and suggests that the enormous delegation of FPS's vital security functions to private contractors should be treated as an unconstitutional delegation of an inherently governmental function. However, the current constitutional doctrine regarding inherently governmental functions is so weak that even this obvious example of a vital security function that ought to be performed by government fails to satisfy the current constitutional standard for being inherently governmental. Part II presents the FPS federal infrastructure mission and the real homeland security gaps created by post 9/11 policies that have undermined FPS security capabilities. …

Miranda 2.0, Tonja Jacobi

Faculty Articles

Fifty years after Miranda v. Arizona, significant numbers of innocent suspects are falsely confessing to crimes while subject to police custodial interrogation. Critics on the left and right have proposed reforms to Miranda, but few such proposals are appropriately targeted to the problem of false confessions. Using rigorous psychological evidence of the causes of false confessions, this Article analyzes the range of proposals and develops a realistic set of reforms — Miranda 2.0 — which is directed specifically at this foundational challenge to the justice system. Miranda 2.0 is long overdue; it should require: warning suspects how long they …

Youthful Offenders And The Eighth Amendment Right To Rehabilitation: Limitations On The Punishment Of Juveniles, Martin R. Gardner

Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications

To understand the potential scope of the Court's implicit conclusion that the punishment of adolescents is unconstitutional unless a meaningful opportunity for rehabilitation is afforded, it is necessary to carefully distinguish and clarify the distinction between the conflicting concepts of punishment and rehabilitation. I therefore begin Part I by analyzing this distinction. Since the logic of the Court's decisions impacts the punishment of adolescents in both the juvenile and criminal justice contexts, I contrast the two systems in Part II by tracing the development of the juvenile court movement from its original rehabilitative origins towards an increasingly punitive model, dispensing …

Guns, Gays, And Ganja, Justin R. Long

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Muscle Memory And The Local Concentration Of Capital Punishment, Lee B. Kovarsky

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.