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The Plea Jury, Laura I. Appleman
The Plea Jury, Laura I. Appleman
Laura I Appleman
This article provides a call to reform the much-criticized guilty plea process. My original proposal would incorporate the local community into the guilty plea through the use of a plea jury, thus solving a multitude of problems. In a plea jury, a lay panel of citizens would listen to the defendant's allocution and determine the acceptability of the plea and sentence, reinvigorating the community's right to determine punishment for offenders. My goal in this article is to restore the community jury right to its proper place by envisioning its integration into the guilty plea, based on recent Supreme Court decisions, …
The Lost Meaning Of The Jury Trial Right, Laura I. Appleman
The Lost Meaning Of The Jury Trial Right, Laura I. Appleman
Laura I Appleman
This article contends that the right to a criminal jury trial right was originally a community right, not an individual one as currently understood. Using original historical research, I show that even the Sixth Amendment jury trial right, which sounds grammatically like a right of the accused, is actually a restatement of the collective right in Article III. The central claim of this Article is that nothing in the Sixth Amendment was meant to change this historical understanding and confer an individual right on defendants. My reading of the historical jury right has many important implications in both sentencing law …