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Sonic Jihad — Muslim Hip Hop In The Age Of Mass Incarceration, Spearit
Sonic Jihad — Muslim Hip Hop In The Age Of Mass Incarceration, Spearit
Articles
This essay examines hip hop music as a form of legal criticism. It focuses on the music as critical resistance and “new terrain” for understanding the law, and more specifically, focuses on what prisons mean to Muslim hip hop artists. Losing friends, family, and loved ones to the proverbial belly of the beast has inspired criticism of criminal justice from the earliest days of hip hop culture. In the music, prisons are known by a host of names like “pen,” “bing,” and “clink,” terms that are invoked throughout the lyrics. The most extreme expressions offer violent fantasies of revolution and …
Empirical Fallacies Of Evidence Law: A Critical Look At The Admission Of Prior Sex Crimes, Tamara Rice Lave, Aviva Orenstein
Empirical Fallacies Of Evidence Law: A Critical Look At The Admission Of Prior Sex Crimes, Tamara Rice Lave, Aviva Orenstein
Articles
In a significant break with traditional evidence rules and policies, Federal Rules of Evidence 413-414 allow jurors to use the accused's prior sexual misconduct as evidence of character and propensity to commit the sex crime charged. As reflected in their legislative history, these propensity rules rest on the assumption that sexual predators represent a small number of highly deviant and recidivistic offenders. This view of who commits sex crimes justified the passage of the sex-crime propensity rules and continues to influence their continuing adoption among the states and the way courts assess such evidence under Rule 403. In depending on …
Outsourcing Investigations, Elena Baylis
Outsourcing Investigations, Elena Baylis
Articles
This article addresses the International Criminal Court’s reliance on third-party investigations in the absence of its own international police force. In addition to cooperation from sometimes reluctant states, the ICC and other international criminal tribunals have come to rely on a network of NGOs and UN entities focused on postconflict justice work to provide critical evidence. This reliance raised problems in the ICC Office of the Prosecutor's first case against Thomas Lubanga. The use of third-party evidence raises questions regarding confidentiality and disclosure, the integrity of the evidence-gathering process, and the equality of arms between the prosecution and the defense. …
Improving Criminal Jury Decision Making After The Blakely Revolution, J. J. Prescott, Sonja B. Starr
Improving Criminal Jury Decision Making After The Blakely Revolution, J. J. Prescott, Sonja B. Starr
Articles
The shift in sentencing fact-finding responsibility triggered in many states by Blakely v. Washington may dramatically change the complexity and type of questions that juries will be required to answer. Among the most important challenges confronting legislatures now debating the future of their sentencing regimes is whether juries are prepared to handle this new responsibility effectively - and, if not, what can be done about it. Yet neither scholars addressing the impact of Blakely nor advocates of jury reform have seriously explored these questions. Nonetheless, a number of limitations on juror decision making seriously threaten the accuracy of verdicts in …