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Reassessing Restorative Justice: Addressing Sexual Violence Cases In Indonesi, Ribut Hari Wibowo, Ahmad Busro, Ani Purwanti

Indonesia Law Review

This study examines”Restorative”Justice in the settlement of sexual violence crimes. The research method used in this study is normative juridical, using a statute approach. The aim of this research is to determine the effectiveness of Restorative Justice in resolving the problems of cases of sexual violence that have occurred in Indonesia. The results of this study include that Restorative Justice is not effectively applied to cases of sexual violence because it cannot fulfill”the principles of respect for human”dignity, nondiscrimination, the best interests of the victim, justice, benefit and legal certainty for the victim as stipulated in the Law, Constitution Number …

Volume 6, Issue 1 (2023) Criminal Justice Agents And Responsibility, Colleen Berryessa, Elizabeth Griffiths, Kaitlen Hubbard, Deena A. Isom, Kateryna Kaplun, Hiuxuan Li, Siyu Liu, Esther Nir, Heather L. Scheuerman, Rachel Schumann, Sandy Xie, Carolyn Yule

International Journal on Responsibility

This special issue of the International Journal on Responsibility (IJR) advances scholarship on the various ways responsibility infuses the roles of criminal justice agents. As the inaugural issue of my tenure as Editor-in-Chief, Volume 6 deepens our understanding of responsibility in the context of the criminal justice system, thereby fulfilling IJR’s aim and scope. Specifically, the articles highlight issues of responsibility within each component of the criminal justice system: police, courts, and corrections.

Capital Punishment, Carlos Wood

Mercer Law Review

In Glossip v. Gross, a 2015 Supreme Court of the United States case that addressed the constitutionality of Oklahoma’s lethal injection protocol, Justice Breyer authored a dissent, joined by Justice Ginsburg, in which he noted the declining use of the death penalty in the United States. Justice Breyer began his dissent by noting the downward trajectory of the number of convictions that resulted in capital sentences. The evidence he cited included the following: from 1986 to 1999, approximately 300 people on average were sentenced to death every year, but in 2000, this number began to decline rapidly. In 2014, …

Laundering Police Lies, Adam Gershowitz, Caroline E. Lewis

Faculty Publications

Police officers—like ordinary people—are regularly dishonest. Officers lie under oath (testilying), on police reports (reportilying), and in a myriad of other situations. Despite decades of evidence about police lies, the U.S. Supreme Court regularly believes police stories that are utterly implausible. Either because the Court is gullible, willfully blind, or complicit, the justices have simply rubber-stamped police lies in numerous high-profile cases. For instance, the Court has accepted police claims that a suspect had bags of cocaine displayed in his lap at the end of a police chase (Whren v. United States), that officers saw marijuana through a …

Holding The Big House Accountable: The Sixth Circuit Concludes A Pretrial Detainee's Fourteenth Amendment Deliberate Indifference Claim Is A Wholly Objective Determination, Noah Speitel

Villanova Law Review

No abstract provided.

Events To Record: An Examination Of Required Activation For Body-Worn Cameras, Allison Reed

Honors Theses

There has been a lot of research on the effectiveness of body-worn cameras in policing including the impacts that body-worn cameras have on police officers, individual citizens, and the community. Results from prior literature show that police body-worn cameras are only sometimes highly effective. This project investigates why police body-worn cameras may not be effective by examining the required activation policies. Data for this project derive from the 2016 Law Enforcement Management Administrative Statistics – Body-Worn Camera Supplement (LEMAS-BWCS) study conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The main components of these data are the required events officers are to …

Jd And Me: Exploring Hybrid Representation Of Pro Se Defendants In Capital Murder Cases, Andrew Wick

Et Cetera

The United States Constitution grants those facing the loss of life and liberty the right to due process and a fair trial under the law. What can be done to ensure criminal defendants facing the death penalty feel as though their desired argument and defense will be presented while still having the appearance of a fair trial? This Article compares a person the law says is qualified to waive counsel and represent themselves and a person qualified to be appointed to represent those facing the death penalty, what is required to waive counsel, the involvement of the trial court and …

Clemency: A Tool For Extreme And Discriminatory Sentences, Kathryn Miller, Jonathan H. Oberman, Cardozo Criminal Defense Clinic

Cardozo News 2023

This article appeared in the 2023 edition of Cardozo Life magazine.

For Joaquin Winfield, April 7, 2023, will forever be a day to remember. That is when he was granted clemency by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul after serving 26 years in prison for possession of 4.6 ounces of crack. The disparity in sentences given to people from different races for similar crimes has been widely written about in recent years. Winfield was sentenced under the now-repealed Rockefeller Drug Laws of the 1970s and 1980s. He was sentenced to 37.5 years to life, one of the longest prison sentences in …

A Comparative Analysis Of Criminal Justice Systems In The United States And Scandinavia, Tyler Truelock

Ohio Northern University International Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Underage And Unprotected: Federal Grand Juries, Child Development, And The Systemic Failure To Protect Minors Subpoenaed As Witnesses, Lucy Litt

University of Cincinnati Law Review

Grand juries in the United States were originally intended to protect people from unwarranted criminal prosecution by the government; however, criticism of federal grand juries in the U.S. throughout the past five decades demonstrates that these deliberative bodies protect prosecutors at the expense of the people subjected to their investigations. Worse still, federal grand jury proceedings circumvent fundamental constitutional rights, direct judicial oversight, and many of the procedural protections of criminal trials; they enable prosecutors to strip unaccused individuals subpoenaed solely for witness testimony of their safety, rights, and liberty. Prosecutorial misconduct has received increasingly widespread attention, especially in recent …

Mitigation Reports In Capital Cases: Legal And Ethical Issues, Russell Stetler, W. Bradley Wendel

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

The mitigation investigation that is essential in every capital case requires a multidisciplinary team. The duty to conduct this investigation is clearly established federal law, as well as an ethical obligation of counsel. The mitigation evidence that is uncovered is of vital importance to the rights of the individual accused of a capital offense, but also to reliable outcomes since all decisionmakers—including prosecutors, jurors, and judges—need the most complete and accurate picture of the person facing the punishment of last resort. This Article discusses some of the unique legal and ethical issues affecting the documentation of this investigation. The Authors …

Preliminary-Hearing Waivers And The Contract To Negotiate, Michael D. Cicchini

Pepperdine Law Review

Plea bargaining often begins very early in a criminal case—sometimes before the preliminary hearing, or “prelim,” is held. Be-cause of the time, effort, and risk involved in holding a prelim, the prosecutor may make the defendant a prelim waiver offer. That is, if the defendant agrees to waive the prelim, the prosecutor will hold a particular plea offer open for the defendant’s future consideration. Such prelim waiver offers may be skeletal, at best, but will often include the promise of “future negotiations” to fill in the details. When the prosecutor obtains the defendant’s prelim waiver for the promise of future …

Privacy And National Politics: Fingerprint And Dna Litigation In Japan And The United States Compared, Dongsheng Zang

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.

After The Criminal Justice System, Benjamin Levin

Washington Law Review

Since the 1960s, the “criminal justice system” has operated as the common label for a vast web of actors and institutions. But as critiques of mass incarceration have entered the mainstream, academics, activists, and advocates increasingly have stopped referring to the “criminal justice system.” Instead, they have opted for critical labels—the “criminal legal system,” the “criminal punishment system,” the “prison industrial complex,” and so on. What does this re-labeling accomplish? Does this change in language matter to broader efforts at criminal justice reform or abolition? Or does an emphasis on labels and language distract from substantive engagement with the injustices …

The Ever-Shifting Ground Of Pretrial Detention Reform, Jenny E. Carroll

Faculty Scholarship

In the past six decades, pretrial detention systems have undergone waves of reform. Despite these efforts, pretrial jail populations across the country continue to swell. The causes of such growth in jail populations are difficult to pinpoint, but some are more readily apparent: Fear over rising crime rates, judicial reluctance to release accused persons, and monetary burdens associated with release have all contributed to increased detention pretrial across criminal legal systems in the United States. This article examines various pretrial detention reform efforts and highlights the need for greater research in the area.

Policing Protest: Speech, Space, Crime, And The Jury, Jenny E. Carroll

Faculty Scholarship

Speech is more than just an individual right—it can serve as a catalyst for democratically driven revolution and reform, particularly for minority or marginalized positions. In the past decade, the nation has experienced a rise in mass protests. However, dissent and disobedience in the form of such protests is not without consequences. While the First Amendment promises broad rights of speech and assembly, these rights are not absolute. Criminal law regularly curtails such rights—either by directly regulating speech as speech or by imposing incidental burdens on speech as it seeks to promote other state interests. This Feature examines how criminal …

Preface: New Directions In Prosecutorial Reform, Miriam Aroni Krinsky, Justin Murray, Maybell Romero

Articles & Chapters

This Preface, which introduces the American Criminal Law Review’s Symposium Issue on Reform-Minded Prosecution, begins by describing the power that prosecutors hold in the criminal legal system, which has historically gone unchecked and unquestioned. As mass incarceration, police violence, and wrong- ful convictions began to permeate the public consciousness, many communities focused their attention on the critical role of their local elected prosecutor and elected leaders who promised to do the job differently. Reform-minded prosecu- tors have enjoyed remarkable electoral successes over the past decade such that close to twenty percent of the U.S. population now resides in a jurisdiction …

Face Recognition Under Adverse Viewing Conditions: Implications For Eyewitness Testimony, Charles C. F. Or, Denise Y. Lim, Siyuan Chen, Alan L. F. Lee

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Eyewitness testimony forms an important component in deciding whether a case can be prosecuted. Yet, many criminal perpetrators deliberately conceal their faces with disguises or under dim lighting, undermining eyewitness accuracy. This article reviews recent studies to characterize the factors that impair face recognition performance, specifically, various forms of face disguise (e.g., face masks, sunglasses) and different lighting conditions. Research shows that identification accuracy, alongside eyewitness confidence and decision bias, all affect the reliability of eyewitness accounts. A consistent finding across studies is that face-identification accuracy can be improved by matching the viewing conditions during the police lineup with those …

Innocent Until Proven Mentally Incompetent., Jade Smith

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract Forthcoming.

The Death Penalty Seals Racial Minorities’ Fate: The Unfortunate Realities Of Being A Racial Minority In America., Sarah Garcia

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract Forthcoming.

Public Defenders As Gatekeepers Of Freedom, Alma Magaña

Faculty Articles

Nearly half a million people are currently held in pretrial detention across the United States. Legal scholarship has explored many of the actors and factors contributing to the deprivation of freedom of those presumed innocent. And while the scholarship in these areas is rich, it has primarily focused on certain system actors—including judges, prosecutors, and profit-seeking sheriffs—structural concerns, such as the role race plays in who is being held in pretrial detention, or critiques of the failed promise of algorithms to deliver on bias-free bail determinations. But relatively little scholarship exists about the contributions of public defenders to this deprivation. …

What Are The Causes And Remedies Of Wrongful Convictions?, Audree Alick

The Mid-Southern Journal of Criminal Justice

Wrongful convictions, also known as miscarriages of justice, are very common in the criminal justice system today. With the first known wrongful conviction in 1872, to the most recent in 2023, researchers have similarly identified three causes of wrongful convictions: false confessions, eyewitness errors, and investigative misconduct. Wrongful convictions can cause many physical and mental effects on post-exonerees and currently incarcerated individuals, including but not limited to, clinical anxiety, depression, and PTSD. Analyses of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) have proven instrumental in cases of wrongful convictions. Each exoneree should have access to the DNA database to test against the DNA evidence …

Put The Juvenile Back In Juvenile Court, Erin Fitzgerald

Villanova Law Review

No abstract provided.

Unreliable Forensic Science, Sarah Ciuffetelli

Quest

The Effectiveness of Forensic Science

Research in progress for CRIJ 1301: Introduction to Criminal Justice

Faculty Mentor: Stefanie LeMaire

Sarah Ciuffetelli uses critical thinking to examine the effectiveness of forensic sciences during criminal investigations. The assignment requires students to find the most prominent scholarly research in forensic sciences and discuss its efficacy. Further, the research leads students to discuss the potential limitations investigators must consider when examining forensic evidence. Lastly, students find at least six scholarly sources to provide an in-depth analysis of the research.

Sarah begins by discussing the history of forensic science and the ever-increasing technology used in …

Racial Discrimination In Jury Selection: The Urgent Need For Sixth Amendment Protections For Black Capital Defendants, Claire Austin

Marquette Benefits and Social Welfare Law Review

In the U.S., death row is made up of a disproportionate number of black persons. In capital trials, black defendants often face all white juries. The deep-rooted racial discrimination in the justice system impacts jury selection because prosecutors use peremptory strikes to remove black jurors from the jury panel. As the law stands today, the Sixth Amendment guarantee of an impartial jury made up of a fair representation of the jury applies only to the pool of jurors called in for jury service, not those who are actually selected to hear the case.

This comment analyzes the Supreme Court decision, …

Examining Remorse In Attributions Of Focal Concerns During Sentencing: A Study Of Probation Officers, Colleen M. Berryessa

International Journal on Responsibility

This research, using interviews with probation officers in the United States (n = 151) and a constant comparative method for analysis, draws from the focal concerns framework to qualitatively model a process by which probation officers use a defendant’s remorse to attribute focal concerns in order to guide their sentencing recommendations in pre-sentencing reports. The model suggests that officers use expressions of remorse to make attributions about mitigated criminal intention (blameworthiness and notions of responsibility), reduced dangerousness and a high potential for reform (community protection), and organization-level effects for increasing caseload efficiency and using correctional resources (practical effects of …

The History Of Forensic-Science Evidence In Criminal Trials And The Role Of Early “Success” In Establishing Its Putative Reliability, Carrie Leonetti

St. Mary's Law Journal

This Article posits the history of forensic-science evidence plays a significant role in the unquestioning manner of its modern acceptance. It traces early high-profile forensic science “successes” and the public reactions to them. It argues the public perception of the “advances” of forensic science continues to play a role in the lack of scrutiny given to these disciplines in admissibility decisions today. It concludes, when it comes to forensic science, history should play a different role by serving as a critical warning rather than a congratulatory buttress.

Texas Juvenile Justice: The Need For A “Second Look” At Juvenile Prison Sentences, Kyle Jenkins

St. Mary's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Meet Our New Faculty: Yvette Butler, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

Associate Professor Yvette T. Butler joined the Indiana Law faculty this summer. She earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota, Morris, and her law degree from The George Washington University Law School.

Understanding The Crisis: The Evolution Of Indigent Defense In Oregon, Molly Pettit

University Honors Theses

On any given day in Oregon, hundreds of people charged with a crime do not have an attorney to represent them. Many of these people are in custody, and some face charges as serious as murder. How did our public defense system reach the point of crisis? What can be done about it? This paper provides a general overview of the right to counsel nationally before narrowing the focus to the state of Oregon. Using scholarly articles, historical documents, footnotes, meeting transcripts, and interviews, I explore the beginnings of court-appointed counsel in Oregon, and document how it has grown and …