Digital Commons Network^™

Racial Disparities In South Carolina's Juvenile Justice System: Why They Exist And How They Can Be Reduced, Grace E. Driggers

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Should I Stay Or Should I Go? South Carolina's Nonlawyer Judges, Christel Purvis

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Shadow Bargainers, Jenny Roberts, Ronald F. Wright, Betina Cutaia Wilkinson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Plea bargaining happens in almost every criminal case, yet there is little empirical study about what actually happens when prosecutors and defense lawyers negotiate. This Article looks into the bargaining part of plea bargaining. It reports on the responses of over 500 public defenders who participated in our nationwide survey about their objectives and practices during plea negotiations.

The survey responses create a rare empirical test of a major tenet of negotiation theory, the claim that attorneys bargain in the "shadow of the trial." This is a theory that some defenders embrace and others reject. Describing the factors they believe …

Confrontation In The Age Of Plea Bargaining [Comments], William Ortman

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Symposium: Expanding Compassion Beyond The Covid-19 Pandemic, Jenny Roberts

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Compassionate relief matters. It matters so that courts may account for tragically unforeseeable events, as when an illness or disability renders proper care impossible while a defendant remains incarcerated, or when family tragedy leaves an inmate the sole caretaker for an incapacitated partner or minor children. It matters too, as present circumstances make clear, when public-health calamities threaten inmates with literal death sentences. It matters even when no crisis looms, but simply when continued incarceration would be "greater than necessary" to achieve the ends of justice.

Structural Sensor Surveillance, Andrew Guthrie Ferguson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

City infrastructure is getting smarter. Embedded smart sensors in roads, lampposts, and electrical grids offer the government a way to regulate municipal resources and the police a new power to monitor citizens. This structural sensor surveillance, however, raises a difficult constitutional question: Does the creation of continuously-recording, aggregated, long-term data collection systems violate the Fourth Amendment? After all, recent Supreme Court cases suggest that technologies that allow police to monitor location, reveal personal patterns, and track personal details for long periods of time are Fourth Amendment searches which require a probable cause warrant. This Article uses the innovation of smart …

Saving The United States From Lurching To Another Sentencing Crisis: Taking Proportionaltiy Seriously And Implementing Fair Fixed Penalties, Sandeep Gopalan

Journal of Legislation (University of Notre Dame)

Unabated tough-on-crime policies in the United States for the past two decades in response to a crime problem have now produced another crisis: too many prisoners. Prison gates are currently literally being opened to release prisoners in a bid to ameliorate the unsustainable cost of detaining more than two million Americans. More than 40,000 drug offenders may be released early from prison pursuant to retrospective sentence reductions which have been implemented for no greater reason than the prison walls are crumbling from overuse. Sentencing is the sharp end of the criminal law. It is the domain where the State acts …

Lawful Searches Incident To Unlawful Arrests: A Reform Proposal, Mark A. Summers

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Can You Hear Me Now: The Impacts Of Prosecutorial Call Monitoring On Defendants' Access To Justice, Hope L. Demer

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Dignity Restoration And The Chicago Police Torture Reparations Ordinance, Andrew S. Baer

Chicago-Kent Law Review

A recent municipal ordinance giving reparations to survivors of police torture in Chicago represents an unprecedented effort by a city government to repair damage wrought by decades of police violence. Between 1972 and 1991, white detectives under Commander Jon Burge tortured confessions from over 118 black criminal suspects on the city’s South and West Sides. Responding to the needs of affected communities, a coalition of torture survivors, their families, civil rights attorneys, and community activists pushed the reparations bill through the City Council on May 6, 2015. Representing the holistic approach favored by survivors, the $5 million reparations package awarded …

Dignity Takings In The Criminal Law Of Seventeenth-Century England And The Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Felipe Acevedo

Chicago-Kent Law Review

When does a punishment for crime cross from being a legitimate goal of the state to a dignity taking? From the Norman Conquest until the middle of the eighteenth-century, the Common Law provided that in addition to execution, the property of convicted felons or traitors was forfeited to the crown and their blood corrupted so that their heirs could not inherit. I argue this is a clear instance of dignity takings. The colonists who traveled to Massachusetts Bay wanted a fresh start and so sought to create a model society based on Biblical law. Using around 6,000 criminal cases from …

Hope [Reviews], Wendy A. Bach

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

To Have And To Hold: Factors To Consider Before Divorcing South Carolina From The Concealed Weapons Permit Requirement, Joseph D. Spate

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Exploring The Parameters Of A Child's Right To Redemption: Some Thoughts, Katherine Hunt Federle

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Lost Opportunity For Sentencing Reform: Plea Bargaining And Barriers To Effective Assistance, Margaret Etienne

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Flying Over The Cuckoo's Nest: How The Mentally Ill Landed Into An Unconstitutional Punishment In South Carolina, Elle Klein

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Coram Nobis And State V. Stinney: Why South Carolina Should Revitalized America's Legal Hail Mary, Kathleen M. Bure

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Land Of The Free, Home Of The Slave: Human Trafficking Legislation In South Carolina, Caroline A. Ross

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Is Miranda Good News Or Bad News For The Police: The Usefulness Of Empirical Evidence, Meghan J. Ryan

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark case of Miranda v. Arizona created a culture in which police officers regularly warn arrestees that they have a right to remain silent, that anything they say can and will be used against them in a court of law, that they have the right to an attorney, and that if they cannot afford one, an attorney will be appointed to them. These Miranda warnings have a number of possible effects. The warnings are meant to inform suspects about negative consequences associated with speaking to the police without the assistance of counsel. In this sense they …

Tracing The Roots Of The Criminalization Of Poverty [Reviews], Wendy A. Bach

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Punishing On A Curve, Adi Leibovitch

Virginia Journal of Criminal Law

Does the punishment of one defendant change because of how she fares in comparison to the other defendants on the judge’s docket? This article demonstrates that the troubling answer is yes. Judges sentence the same case more harshly when their caseloads contain relatively milder offenses, and more leniently when their caseloads contain more serious crimes. I call this problem “punishing on a curve.”

Consequently, the article shows how such relative sentencing patterns put into question the prevailing practice of establishing specialized courts or courts of limited jurisdiction. Because judges are punishing on a curve, the court’s jurisdiction systematically shapes sentencing …

Machine Learning, Automated Suspicion Algorithms, And The Fourth Amendment, Michael L. Rich

Michael L Rich

At the conceptual intersection of machine learning and government data collection lie Automated Suspicion Algorithms, or ASAs, algorithms created through the application of machine learning methods to collections of government data with the purpose of identifying individuals likely to be engaged in criminal activity. The novel promise of ASAs is that they can identify data-supported correlations between innocent conduct and criminal activity and help police prevent crime. ASAs present a novel doctrinal challenge, as well, as they intrude on a step of the Fourth Amendment’s individualized suspicion analysis previously the sole province of human actors: the determination of when reasonable …

The Culture Of Mass Incarceration: Why "Locking Them Up And Throwing Away The Key" Isn't Working And How Prison Conditions Can Be Improved, Melanie M. Reid

Melanie M. Reid

No abstract provided.

"Immigrants Are Not Criminals": Respectability, Immigration Reform, And Hyperincarceration, Rebecca Sharpless

Rebecca Sharpless

The Emerging Neoliberal Penality: Rethinking Foucauldian Punishment In A Profit-Driven Carceral System, Kevin Crow

Kevin Crow

In Loco Aequitatis: The Dangers Of "Safe Harbor" Laws For Youth In The Sex Trades, Brendan M. Conner

Brendan M. Conner

Mandatory Immigration Detention For U.S. Crimes: The Noncitizen Presumption Of Dangerousness, Mark Noferi

Mark L Noferi

Rehabilitation Of Illicit Behaviours In The Post-Rtl Era: Disputes And Proposals, Zhenjie Zhou

Zhenjie ZHOU

How to rehabilitate illicit behaviours that were subject to the re-education through labour system has been a topic of rigorous debate since the abolition of the system. Proposals brought forward so far can generally be categorised into a criminalisation approach and an administrative approach. This article asserts that the rehabilitation of these behaviours shall strictly observe principles of efficiency, transparency and fairness and proposes that the Legislature adopt the Law on Correction of Illicit Behaviour under pilot implementation to consign illicit behaviours that were subject to the re-education through labour system to a mixed decision-making procedure. This will constitute a …

A 'Velvet Hammer': The Criminalization Of Motherhood And The New Maternalism, Eliza Duggan

Eliza Duggan

In 2014, Tennessee became the first state to criminalize the use of narcotics during pregnancy. While women have been prosecuted for the outcomes of their pregnancies and for the use of drugs during pregnancy in the past decades, Tennessee is the first state to explicitly authorize prosecutors to bring criminal charges against pregnant women if they use drugs. This Article suggests that this new maternal crime is reflective of a social and political paradigm called “maternalism,” which enforces the idea that women are meant to be mothers and to perform motherhood in a particular fashion. This concept has developed from …

Is Felony Murder The New Depraved Heart Murder: Considering The Appropriate Punishment For Drunken Drivers Who Kill, Dora W. Klein

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.