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Does The Punishment Fit The Crime?: A Comparative Note On Sentencing Laws For Murder In England And Wales Vs. The United States Of America, Megan Elizabeth Tongue Nov 2015

Does The Punishment Fit The Crime?: A Comparative Note On Sentencing Laws For Murder In England And Wales Vs. The United States Of America, Megan Elizabeth Tongue

Missouri Law Review

This Note explores the differences between the American legal system’s sentencing procedures for murder with the procedures of England and Wales. This Note attempts to determine how this divide occurred and whether the two countries chose the appropriate way to sentence their murderers. In particular, this Note focuses on England’s and Wales’s lack of degrees of murder and the United States’ practice of plea bargaining. Part II discusses the history of American and English criminal law and how these countries similarly evolved from their origins to the late nineteenth century. Part III explores modern criminal law theory progressing from the …


Supreme Court Decision On Juvenile Sentencing Results In Cruel And Unusual Difficulties For Missouri, Andrew Peebles Nov 2014

Supreme Court Decision On Juvenile Sentencing Results In Cruel And Unusual Difficulties For Missouri, Andrew Peebles

Missouri Law Review

Part II gives a brief background of the facts and circumstances surrounding the Hart decision. Part III discusses the history of the Eighth Amendment and explores the U.S. Supreme Court’s trend toward leniency in the imposition of punishments, culminating with a discussion of the Miller decision. Part IV delves into the Supreme Court of Missouri’s reasoning behind its decision in Hart and the temporary sentencing procedures the court provided. Finally, Part V comments on the many problems currently facing Missouri’s criminal justice system since the implementation of the Miller decision and the actions that will be required by the legislature …


The Model Federal Sentencing Guidelines Project: Adjustments For Guilty Pleas And Cooperation With The Government, Model Sentencing Guidelines §3.7 - 3.8, Frank O. Bowman Iii Jul 2006

The Model Federal Sentencing Guidelines Project: Adjustments For Guilty Pleas And Cooperation With The Government, Model Sentencing Guidelines §3.7 - 3.8, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

This Article is the tenth of twelve parts of a set of Model Federal Sentencing Guidelines designed to illustrate the feasibility and advantages of a simplified approach to federal sentencing proposed by the Constitution Project Sentencing Initiative. The Model Sentencing Guidelines and the Constitution Project report are all to be published in Volume 18, Number 5 of the Federal Sentencing Reporter. The project is described in an essay titled 'Tis a Gift To Be Simple: A Model Reform of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, available on SSRN at http://ssrn.com/abstract=927929. This segment of the project contains rules addressing cases in which the …


Victimhood, Jessie K. Liu Jan 2006

Victimhood, Jessie K. Liu

Missouri Law Review

Part I of this paper examines the theoretical tension between using the total harm caused by a convicted defendant to determine the proper punishment and limiting the categories of harm for which punishment can be imposed. This is the equivalent in the criminal context of the problem discussed in the classic tort case of Palsgraf v Long Island Railroad. How should a legal regime limit the universe of victims? Part II provides a brief overview of pre-Guidelines decisions defining the term "victim" for sentencing purposes, focusing in particular on constitutional decisions about victim participation. Although the Sentencing Guidelines have made …


The 'Abuse Excuse' In Capital Sentencing Trials: Is It Relevant To Responsibility, Punishment, Or Neither?, Paul J. Litton Jul 2005

The 'Abuse Excuse' In Capital Sentencing Trials: Is It Relevant To Responsibility, Punishment, Or Neither?, Paul J. Litton

Faculty Publications

The violent criminal who was a victim of severe childhood abuse frequently appears in the responsibility literature because he presents a difficulty for theorists who maintain the compatibility of causal determinism and our practices of holding persons responsible. The challenge is based on the fact that learning about an offender's horrific childhood mitigates the indignation that many persons feel towards him, possibly indicating that they hold him less than fully responsible. Many capital defendants present evidence of suffering childhood abuse, and many jurors find this evidence to count against imposing death. The most obvious explanation for a response like this …


Justifying Restorative Justice: A Theoretical Justification For The Use Of Restorative Justice Practices, Zvi D. Gabbay Jul 2005

Justifying Restorative Justice: A Theoretical Justification For The Use Of Restorative Justice Practices, Zvi D. Gabbay

Journal of Dispute Resolution

This paper analyzes the premises of the two main theories of punishment that influence sentencing policies in most Western countries-retributivism and utilitarianism-and compares them to the basic values that structure the restorative justice theory. It then makes clear distinctions between restorative justice and the rehabilitative ideal and addresses the criticism that, like rehabilitation, restorative justice results in different punishments to equally culpable offenders. The paper concludes that restorative justice does not contradict retribution and utility as theoretical justifications for penal sanctioning. Moreover, it suggests that restorative practices rehabilitate the basic notions of retribution and deterrence that have been neglected in …


Murder, Meth, Mammon & Moral Values: The Political Landscape Of American Sentencing Reform (In Symposium On White Collar Crime), Frank O. Bowman Iii Apr 2005

Murder, Meth, Mammon & Moral Values: The Political Landscape Of American Sentencing Reform (In Symposium On White Collar Crime), Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

This Article examines the ongoing American experiment in mass incarceration and considers the prospects for meaningful sentencing reform.


Beyond Bandaids: A Proposal For Reconfiguring Federal Sentencing After Booker, Frank O. Bowman Iii Jan 2005

Beyond Bandaids: A Proposal For Reconfiguring Federal Sentencing After Booker, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

This Article proposes a simplified sentencing table consisting of nine base sentencing ranges, each subdivided into three sub-ranges. The base sentencing range would be determined by combining offense facts found by a jury or admitted in a plea with the defendant's criminal history. A defendant's placement in the sub-ranges would be determined by post-conviction judicial findings of sentencing factors. No upward departures from the base sentencing range would be permissible, but defendants might be sentenced below the low end of the base sentencing range as a result of an acceptance of responsibility credit or due to a downward departure motion. …