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Criminal Law, Frank C. Mills Iii

Mercer Law Review

This year's legislatively enacted criminal discovery law will be the most influential change in criminal law in many years. Only slightly less significant is the Georgia constitutional enactment of a true life-without- parole sentence. Both changes will vastly increase the cost of the criminal justice system to the taxpayer. The latter will probably increase the cost of crime to the criminal. These legislative events dwarf any changes by the courts.

Nevertheless, there are many cases of substantial note in the survey period for this year. The procedure and proper charge to the jury for an abandonment trial was changed. Apparently …

Freedom From Incarceration: Why Is This Right Different From All Other Rights?, Sherry F. Colb

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

American constitutional jurisprudence has long accepted the notion that the exercise of certain rights can only be restricted by the government if the restriction satisfies strict scrutiny. The Supreme Court has identified such rights as fundamental often by relying on an expansive interpretation of the word "liberty" in the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment. In this Article, Professor Colb argues that the Supreme Court has failed to recognize the right to physical liberty itself as a fundamental right. She demonstrates that at present conduct that is not itself constitutionally protected may serve as the basis for imprisonment even …

The Punishment Of Hate: Toward A Normative Theory Of Bias-Motivated Crimes, Frederick M. Lawrence

Michigan Law Review

This article explores how bias crimes differ from parallel crimes and why this distinction makes a crucial difference in our criminal law. Bias crimes differ from parallel crimes as a matter of both the resulting harm and the mental state of the offender. The nature of the injury sustained by the immediate victim of a bias crime exceeds the harm caused by a parallel crime. Moreover, bias crimes inflict a palpable harm on the broader target community of the crime as well as on society at large, while parallel crimes do not generally cause such widespread injury.

The distinction between …

Section 5: Criminal Law, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

Reading, Writing, And Sexual Harassment: Finding A Constitutional Remedy When Schools Fail To Address Peer Abuse, Karen Mellencamp Davis

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Marital Rape: A Higher Standard Is In Order, Linda Jackson

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Proportionality As A Guiding Principle In Young Offender Dispositions, Paul Riley

Dalhousie Law Journal

Sentencing is traditionally regarded as one of the most difficult and challenging functions of the criminal justice system. In arriving at the appropriate sanction to be imposed upon an offender, a court must reconcile the principles and objectives of the criminal law with the criminal act committed, the circumstances surrounding its commission, and the character of the offender who committed it. The court must, with the guidance of a few abstract, broadly philosophical, and often contradictory principles of sentencing, decide upon a sanction which is appropriate in the very concrete and factually specific case within which it is presented. This …

Testing Penry And Its Progeny , Deborah W. Denno

Faculty Scholarship

In Penry v. Lynaugh, the United States Supreme Court held that the Texas death penalty statute was applied unconstitutionally because the trial court gave no instructions allowing the jury to “consider and give effect to” the defendant's mitigating evidence of organic brain damage, moderate retardation, and disadvantaged background. The Court considered these mitigating factors relevant because of society's steadfast belief in the lesser culpability of defendants whose criminal acts are due to a disadvantaged background, or to emotional and mental disorders. The jury must have full consideration of such evidence in order to give its “reasoned moral response” to the …

Sedition In Nova Scotia: R. V. Wilkie (1820) And The Incontestable Illegality Of Seditious Libel Before R. V. Howe (1835), Barry Cahill

Dalhousie Law Journal

Given its primacy and exceptionality in the Nova Scotian context, Wilkie both exemplifies the judiciary's role in official repression, and instantiates the importance of what Wright calls "the ideological mechanisms of the criminal law" in prescribing the outer limits of legitimate political discourse. This paper examines the first known use by the government of Nova Scotia of the eighteenth-century, judicially-invented misdemeanour of seditious libel in order to silence and punish criticism of the ruling eite. As Nova Scotia had neither indigenous caselaw, nor statutory legislation to supplement and reinforce the common law offence-Upper Canada's SeditionAct (1804) was still in full …

Getting To Know The General: American Conceits About The Rule Of Law, Kenneth Anderson

Book Reviews

This essay reviews a book about General Manuel Noriega, the Panamanian strongman toppled by the Bush Sr. administration in 1989; Noriega was tried on drug charges in Miami and has spent many years in prison. This book examines Noriega's background and rise to power, involvement in drugs and politics in Central America, including the famous murder of Hugo Spadafora, and his trial in the United States. The book's author covered the trial for newspapers; the review's author monitored human rights in Panama in the two years prior to the US invasion and covered the invasion for human rights organizations.

Prosecutors And Domestic Violence: Local Leadership Makes A Difference, Janet E. Findlater, Dawn Van Hoek

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Prosecution Discovery In The U.S.: A Balancing Perspective, Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In R. v. Stinchcombe, the Supreme Court of Canada held that the Crown has a legal duty to disclose all relevant information, exculpatory and inculpatory, to a defendant charged with an indictable offence. Left undiscussed by the decision, and by Canadian decisional and statutory law generally, is the scope of discovery against the defence. A description and analysis of the American experience in this regard may be of interest to Canadian practitioners and academics.

Prior to the middle of this century, defence attorneys and prosecutors in the United States depended on preliminary hearings and informal exchanges to obtain information about …

Eliminating Double Talk From The Law Of Double Jeopardy, Eli J. Richardson

Florida State University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Double Jeopardy, The Federal Sentencing Guidelines, And The Subsequent-Prosecution Dilemma, Elizabeth T. Lear

UF Law Faculty Publications

The choice to embrace a real-offense regime probably constitutes the single most controversial decision made by the Federal Sentencing Commission in drafting the Federal Sentencing Guidelines ("Guidelines"). Real-offense sentencing bases punishment on a defendant's actual conduct as opposed to the offense of conviction. The Guidelines sweep a variety of factors into the sentencing inquiry, including criminal offenses for which no conviction has been obtained. Under the Guidelines, therefore, prosecutorial charging decisions and even verdicts of acquittal after jury trial may have little impact at sentencing.

Long before the adoption of the Guidelines, courts bent on rationalizing the real-offense regime devised …

Words And Sentences: Penalty Enhancement For Hate Crimes, Shirley S. Abrahamson, Susan Craighead, Daniel N. Abrahamson

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Factors For Reasonable Suspicion: When Black And Poor Means Stopped And Frisked, David A. Harris

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Losing The Right To Confront: Defining Waiver To Better Address A Defendant's Actions And Their Effects On A Witness, David J. Tess

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Part I of this Note examines the current legal landscape regarding a defendant's waiver of the right to confrontation. This Part explores the justifications courts have provided for finding a waiver of the confrontation right, both through the use of the traditional "intentional relinquishment of a known right" standard and the less precise formulations of waiver found in cases of defendant misconduct. Part II offers a critique of the reasoning courts employ to find waiver of the right to confrontation. In the process, the analysis explores general theories of waiver which have been advanced by other commentators. In so doing, …

Stretching The "Terry" Doctrine To The Search For Evidence Of Crime: Canine Sniffs, State Constitutions, And The Reasonable Suspicion Standard, Kenneth L. Pollack

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Fourth Amendment, protects an individual's interest in freedom from unreasonable government intrusions into personal privacy. When a court finds an investigative technique to be a search within the Amendment's meaning, it effectively concludes that Fourth Amendment protection should apply. If the government activity constitutes a search, that activity must be reasonable. If the activity does not amount to a search, however, the government enjoys virtual freedom to conduct that activity as unreasonably as it pleases. For pure investigatory searches, the United States Supreme Court has found that the probable cause requirement strikes the proper balance in defining reasonableness. Unlike …

The New Law Of Murder, Daniel Givelber

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Felony-Murder Doctrine Through The Federal Looking Glass, Henry S. Noyes

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Administrative Subpoenas And The Grand Jury: Converging Streams Of Criminal And Civil Compulsory Process, Graham Hughes

Vanderbilt Law Review

Litigation depends on information. In the last few decades, discovery in civil cases has been dramatically extended in order to move toward a position in which litigants' files are open to other parties with very few restrictions.' This movement in civil cases has been relatively smooth, for its merits in terms of economy and efficiency can be fortified by pointing to its even-handed mutuality and reciprocity. In criminal cases, by contrast, courts at one time thought that any considerable expansion in discovery must be rejected because the constraints of the Fifth Amendment's self-incrimination clause would bar the exercise of compulsion …

Law, Culture, And Harassment, Anita Bernstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

"Solutions In Sciences Outside Of The Law!?" Rodriguez V. British Columbia (A.G.), Anne Jackman

Dalhousie Law Journal

While we are forced, somewhat begrudgingly, to face the fact that there are limitations to what medicine can achieve, we still seem to have an undisturbed faith in what law can achieve. The limitations to what litigation under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms' can achieve was highlighted most recently in the case of Rodriguez v. British Columbia (A.G.)2 where the Supreme Court of Canada, by a five to four margin, upheld the constitutionality of the assisted suicide provisions of the Criminal Code.3 The Court recognized that Ms. Rodriguez's rights were violated but concluded that the infringement did not …

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act And The Fourth Amendment: Time To Legislate A Criminal Standard For Probable Cause, Joseph M. Teefey Jr.

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Challenging Prosecutorial Peremptory Challenges: Little V. United States, Suzanne Frare

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

No abstract provided.

From Social Safety Net To Dragnet: African American Males In The Criminal Justice System, Jerome G. Miller

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Criminal Law And Justice System Practices As Racist, White, And Racialized, Kathleen Daly

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Building Bridges: A Personal Reflection On Race, Crime, And The Juvenile Justice System, Fay Wilson Hobbs

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Minority View Of Juvenile "Justice", Coramae Richey Mann

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reflections On The "Inevitability" Of Racial Discrimination In Capital Sentencing And The "Impossibility" Of Its Prevention, Detection, And Correction, David C. Baldus, George Woodworth, Charles A. Pulaski, Jr.

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.