Law Commons^™

Sinyolo Muchiya V The People Appeal No 139/2021 [24 August 2023], O'Brien Kaaba, Ndindase Chirwa

SAIPAR Case Review

It is not often that female complainants of sexual assaults are readily believed by criminal justice institutions. Often, they are re-victimised and turned into suspects instead of being seen as victims. The law itself is often blind to their plight and unique needs. Poor and insensitive investigations, cautionary rules of evidence, insensitive cross examination, among others, combine to condemn them to secondary citizenship in the criminal justice system. Often, the criminal justice system in sexual assault cases unfairly tilts in favour of an accused without considering the needs of victims (and their families) and the public.

Fortunately, in this case …

James Kapembwa V The People Appeal No. 53/2022 (23 February 2023), Mwami Kabwabwa

SAIPAR Case Review

The appellant James Kapembwa was charged with defilement contrary to section 138 of the Penal Code Act chapter 87 of the Laws of Zambia. He was convicted of the offence and sentenced to 15 years imprisonment with hard labour by the High Court of Zambia. Unsatisfied with the decision of the High Court, the appellant appealed to the Court of Appeal against his conviction and sentence.

On 23rd February 2023, The Court of Appeal handed down its judgment in respect of the aforesaid application for leave to appeal against sentencing and conviction. It held that the appellant had known the …

S V Lifumbela And Others 2022 (1) Nr 205 (Sc), Dunia P. Zongwe

SAIPAR Case Review

The Lifumbela case stems straight from the High Treason Trial, Namibia’s longest and – probably – most expensive judicial saga. In S v Lifumbela, the Supreme Court of Namibia had to settle an appeal against the convictions and sentences of 30 accused implicated in the High Treason Trial. Despite the big stakes involved in this matter, the apex court did not manage to rise to this once-in-a-lifetime occasion and seize this historic moment.

By confirming that the appellants committed high treason, murder, and attempted murder on the basis of conspiracy (i.e., an incomplete crime), the Namibian Supreme Court upended the …

The People V Ronald Kaoma Chitotela Sspd/034/2022, Muna B. Ndulo, Milimo Moyo

SAIPAR Case Review

In a recent decision, Magistrate Jennipher Bwalya sitting in Zambia's Economic and Financial Crimes Court (EFCC) discharged former tourism minister Ronald Chitotela in a case he was arrested for, on two counts of possessing property reasonably suspected to be proceeds of crime. Chitotela's arrest had been at the hands of the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC). In 2019, the ACC had signed a consent settlement with Chitotela which, apparently, gave the EFCC a basis for discharging Chitotela. Chitotela raised a preliminary issue before the EFCC, asking Lusaka magistrate Jennipher Bwalya to dismiss the matter he was recently arrested for, arguing that, under …

Semmy Lasco Kavinga V The People Appeal No 51/2018 (21 August 2019), O'Brien Kaaba

SAIPAR Case Review

The law on sentencing in Zambia is to a great extent chaotic and in disarray. No clear standards are set by the superior courts to guide lower courts and litigants. Often the sentences are at variance with constitutional norms and there has been no sustained effort to align the law of sentencing with constitutional standards, save for a few cases concerning corporal punishment. Somehow, a judicial culture has evolved and continues to grow of sentencing people without regard for constitutional norms. Yet the constitution is the supreme law, the ultimate source of all law and ought to permeate all laws …

A Detailed Assessment Of The Sexual Assault Prevalence Statistics At The Center Of The Military Justice Reform Movement, Brian L. Cox

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

“Twenty thousand service members experience sexual assault every year” while “only a tiny fraction of those end up with any kind of action at all in the military justice system.” Lynn Rosenthal, director of the DoD Independent Review Commission, recently offered this observation at a press conference while summarizing the findings reflected in the commission’s report. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand indicated in a recent blog post that “an estimated 20,500 service members are sexually assaulted every year” to make the case that there “is an epidemic of sexual assault in the military and the current military justice system has proven incapable …

Measuring The Effectiveness Of The Proposal To Divest Military Commanders Of Disposition Authority For Sexual Assault Cases: A Comparative Quantitative Analysis, Brian L. Cox

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

As suggestions to modify the practice of the U.S. military justice system return to the fore of American political discourse, the perennial proposal to divest commanders of authority to convene courts-martial to adjudicate allegations of sexual assault is once again at the center of the debate. While reformists are adamant that the suggested revision would support efforts to end what has been characterized as an “epidemic of rape” in the U.S. military, the precise connection between the “reform” and the desired improved outcomes remains tenuous. An assessment of jurisdictions that have already divested commanders of such authority could provide persuasive …

Misdemeanor Appeals, Nancy J. King, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Misdemeanor cases affect far more people than felony cases, outnumbering felony cases by more than three to one. Yet little empirical information exists on many aspects of misdemeanor prosecutions. This Article provides the first quantitative look at appellate review in misdemeanor cases nationwide. It uses data drawn from a random sample of direct criminal appeals decided by every state appellate court in the nation, unpublished aggregate data on misdemeanor trial court cases provided by the Court Statistics Project, and published state court statistics.

We provide the first estimate of the rate of appellate review for misdemeanors, concluding that appellate courts …

Aiding And Abetting In International Criminal Law, Oona A. Hathaway, Alexandra Francis, Aaron Haviland, Srinath Reddy Kethireddy, Alyssa T. Yamamoto

Cornell Law Review

To achieve justice for violations of international law such as genocide, torture, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, it is essential to address complicity for international crimes. Beginning in the 1990s, there was a proliferation of international and hybrid criminal tribunals, which sought to hold perpetrators of these crimes accountable and, in turn, generated an explosion of international criminal law jurisprudence. Nonetheless, the contours of aiding and abetting liability in international criminal law remain contested. Courts-both domestic and international-have long struggled to identify the proper legal standard for holding actors liable for aiding and abetting even the most serious violations …

Lying About God (And Love?) To Get Laid: The Case Study Of Criminalizing Sex Under Religious False Pretense In Hong Kong, Jianlin Chen

Cornell International Law Journal

Section 120 of the Hong Kong Crimes Ordinances— which traces its origin to the U.K. and which is replicated in several other English common law jurisdictions— criminalizes procurement of sexual acts through false representation. Recently, prosecutors used this provision to indict individuals who procured sexual acts on the pretext of performing luck-improving religious rituals. Beyond presenting the first-ever systematic examination of these intriguing fraudulent sex court cases, this Article makes two arguments. First, this Article explains how the strong skepticism, and at times, instinctive rejection by the judges of the purported religious proclamations not only confirm the scholarly concerns over …

Speaking Louder Than Words: Finding An Overt Act Requirement In The Hobbs Act, Matthew Ladew

Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy

Federal conspiracy law has a problem. It is sometimes easier to put someone in prison for twenty years than it is to put her away for five— for the very same crime. This situation stems from a bright-line rule to which the Supreme Court has long adhered: when Congress wants an overt act requirement, Congress will explicitly so specify. Consider the resulting status quo. The general federal conspiracy statute requires proof of an overt act. Its maximum sentence is five years. In contrast, the Hobbs Act contains no overt act requirement, yet it provides for a maximum sentence of twenty …

What Unconditional Credence In Individual Desert Claims Does Retributivism Require?, Emad H. Atiq

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Punishing a person based on low unconditional credence in their deservingness to be punished is consistent with retributivist deontological principles. Negative retributivism absolutely prohibits the intentional or knowing infliction of undeserved harm on individuals identified as undeserving, not the intentional or knowing infliction of risks of undeserved harm on individuals. Meanwhile, the knowing infliction of undeserved harm on some unidentified individuals generates not overriding reasons against punishment, but pro tanto reasons against punishment that are to be weighed against other non-overriding reasons for punishment like crime prevention. The upshot is that uncertainty regarding any identified person’s deservingness to be punished …

Legal Vs. Factual Normative Questions & The True Scope Of Ring, Emad H. Atiq

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

When is a normative question a question of law rather than a question offact? The short answer, based on common law and constitutional rulings, is: it depends. For example, if the question concerns the fairness of contractual terms, it is a question of law. If it concerns the reasonableness of dangerous risk-taking in a negligence suit, it is a question of fact. If it concerns the obscenity of speech, it was a question of fact prior to the Supreme Court's seminal cases on free speech during the 1970s, but is now treated as law-like. This variance in the case law …

Convictions Of Innocent People With Intellectual Disability, Sheri Johnson, John H. Blume, Amelia Courtney Hritz

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In Atkins v. Virginia, the Supreme Court held that executing individuals with intellectual disability violates the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause of the Eighth Amendment. In addition to concerns over culpability and deterrence, the Court’s judgment in Atkins was informed by the heightened “risk of wrongful execution” faced by persons with intellectual disability. This essay explores that question both anecdotally and quantitatively, hoping to illuminate the causes of wrongful conviction of persons with intellectual disability. We provide examples from our experiences in the Cornell Death Penalty Clinic and cases brought to our attention by defense attorneys. We also present data …

Agency And Insanity, Stephen P. Garvey

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Article offers an unorthodox theory of insanity. According to the traditional theory, insanity is a cognitive or volitional incapacity arising from a mental disease or defect. As an alternative to the traditional theory, some commentators have proposed that insanity is an especially debilitating form of irrationality. Each of these theories faces fair-minded objections. In contrast to these theories, this Article proposes that a person is insane if and because he lacks a sense of agency. The theory of insanity it defends might therefore be called the lost-agency theory.

According to the lost-agency theory, a person lacks a sense of …

State Criminal Appeals Revealed, Michael Heise, Nancy J. King, Nicole A. Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Every state provides appellate review of criminal judgments, yet little research examines which factors correlate with favorable outcomes for defendants who seek appellate relief. To address this scholarly gap, this paper exploits the Survey of Criminal Appeals in State Courts (2010) dataset, recently released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the National Center for State Courts (hereinafter, “NCSC Study”). The NCSC Study is the first and only publicly available national dataset on state criminal appeals and includes unprecedented information from every state court in the nation with jurisdiction to review criminal judgments. We focus on two subpools of state …

The House Always Wins: Systemic Disadvantage For Criminal Defendants And The Case Against The Prosecutorial Veto, Evan G. Hall

Cornell Law Review

No abstract provided.

When Empathy Bites Back: Cautionary Tales From Neuroscience For Capital Sentencing, Sheri Lynn Johnson, Amelia Courtney Hritz, Caisa Elizabeth Royer, John H. Blume

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The neuroscience of empathy provides one more reason to believe that the decision to sentence another human being to death is inevitably an arbitrary one, and one that cannot be divorced from either race or caprice. While we can tinker with aspects of capital trials that exacerbate caprice and discrimination stemming from empathy, we cannot alter basic neural responses to the pain of others and therefore cannot rationalize (in either sense of the word) empathic responses.

Decolonising Sex: Fifty Shades Of Rape, Roseline K. Njogu

Southern African Journal of Policy and Development

This article explores how ideas of patriarchy have shaped the nature and effect of rape law. It argues that rape law reinforces patriarchy, and because of the inherent inconsistencies between the male roles of aggressor and protector, it has remained ineffective. Taking Kenya as its springboard, it analyses how ideas of sexual relations within and outside marriage are transplanted through colonialism; and how they morph and merge with analogous indigenous conceptions to entrench and formalise the continued subjugation of the female body. It explores the unintended consequences of the internationalisation of English Monogamy; and rape law reform and its continuity/discontinuity …

The Changing Market For Criminal Law Casebooks, Jens David Ohlin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In the following Review, I analyze the leading criminal law casebooks on the market and describe the ways in which they do — and do not — respond to the needs of criminal law teachers. At least part of the issue is the changing nature of law teaching — what actually happens in the classroom has changed in the last three decades. Moreover, there may be less uniformity in classroom practice than in the past; in other words, what works in one law school might not work in another, due in part to the changing profile of law students, as …

"Nobody's Saying We're Opposed To Complying": Barriers To University Compliance With Vawa And Title Ix, Charlotte Savino

Cornell Law Library Prize for Exemplary Student Research Papers

Part I of this note will explore the government’s action in addressing sexual assault on campus, including the history of VAWA, the Clery Act, and Title IX. Part II will posit barriers to compliance, including ambiguous mandates, due process issues of private adjudication, and privacy law. Part III encapsulates the current political landscape and the laws that are under consideration. Part IV concludes with the financial and legal consequences of university action and inaction, including lawsuits brought by victims, lawsuits brought by the accused, Department of Education and Office of Civil Rights fines, and admissions consequences as prospective students actively …

Channeling Unilateralism, Maggie Gardner

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

When crime reaches across borders to threaten human security or undermine democracy, states often respond by adopting multilateral treaties that obligate each of them to suppress the transnational crime at home. These treaties help, but only to the extent that parties comply with them. Because states generally cannot enforce their laws outside their own territory, transnational criminals can evade prosecution as long as some states are unable or unwilling to meet these treaty commitments. One solution for improving compliance with these treaties may be, counterintuitively, more unilateralism. Using case studies on transnational bribery and drug trafficking, as well as thick …

The Death Penalty: Should The Judge Or The Jury Decide Who Dies?, Valerie P. Hans, John H. Blume, Theodore Eisenberg, Amelia Courtney Hritz, Sheri L. Johnson, Caisa Elizabeth Royer, Martin T. Wells

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article addresses the effect of judge versus jury decision making through analysis of a database of all capital sentencing phase hearing trials in the State of Delaware from 1977– 2007. Over the three decades of the study, Delaware shifted responsibility for death penalty sentencing from the jury to the judge. Currently, Delaware is one of the handful of states that gives the judge the final decision-making authority in capital trials. Controlling for a number of legally relevant and other predictor variables, we find that the shift to judge sentencing significantly increased the number of death sentences. Statutory aggravating factors, …

A Tale Of Two (And Possibly Three) Atkins: Intellectual Disability And Capital Punishment Twelve Years After The Supreme Court's Creation Of A Categorical Bar, John H. Blume, Sheri Lynn Johnson, Paul Marcus, Emily C. Paavola

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article examines empirically the capital cases decided by the lower courts since the United States Supreme Court created the categorical ban against the execution of persons with intellectual disability twelve years ago in the Atkins decision.

Authority, Ignorance, And The Guilty Mind, Stephen P. Garvey

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Searching For The Hinterman: In Praise Of Subjective Theories Of Imputation, Jens David Ohlin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

How should international courts distinguish between principals and accessories? The ICC answered this question with Roxin’s Control Theory of Perpetration; defendants should be convicted as principals if they control the crime individually, jointly with a co-perpetrator, indirectly via an organized apparatus of power, or as indirect co-perpetrators (via a combination of the previous doctrines). As the ICC adopted the control requirement, however, some of its decisions have allowed lower mental states such as recklessness or dolus eventualis to meet the standard for principal perpetration under the Control Theory. Other decisions have asserted that intent or knowledge is required though their …

Sexual Violence By Educators In South African Schools: Gaps In Accountability, University Of The Witwatersrand. Centre For Applied Legal Studies, Cornell Law School. Avon Global Center For Women And Justice, Cornell Law School. International Human Rights Clinic

Avon Global Center for Women and Justice and Dorothea S. Clarke Program in Feminist Jurisprudence

In many South African schools, educators have sexually harassed and abused the learners in their care. This serious human rights violation is widespread and well known. However, its actual incidence is difficult to determine as many cases of educator-learner abuse are never reported. Such harassment and abuse – which occurs with frequency not only in South Africa but also worldwide – has devastating consequences for the health and education of the learners, mainly girls, who experience it. Over the past decade, South Africa has adopted important laws and policies to address this grave human rights problem, yet sexual violence persists …

The Unexonerated: Factually Innocent Defendants Who Plead Guilty, John H. Blume, Rebecca K. Helm

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

Several recent high profile cases, including the case of the West Memphis Three, have revealed (again), that factually innocent defendants do plead guilty. And, more disturbingly, in many of the cases, the defendant’s innocence is known, or at least highly suspected, at the time the plea is entered. Innocent defendants plead guilty most often, but not always, in three sets of cases: first, low level offenses where a quick guilty plea provides the key to the cellblock door; second, cases where defendants have been wrongfully convicted, prevail on appeal, and are then offered a plea bargain which will assure their …

Victim Gender And The Death Penalty, Caisa Elizabeth Royer, Amelia Courtney Hritz, Valerie P. Hans, Theodore Eisenberg, Martin T. Wells, John H. Blume, Sheri Lynn Johnson

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Previous research suggests that cases involving female victims are more likely to result in death sentences. The current study examines possible reasons for this relationship using capital punishment data from the state of Delaware. Death was sought much more for murders of either male or female white victims compared to murders of black male victims. Analyzing capital sentencing hearings in Delaware from 1977-2007 decided by judges or juries, we found that both characteristics of the victims and characteristics of the murders differentiated male and female victim cases. The presence of sexual victimization, the method of killing, the relationship between the …

Targeting And The Concept Of Intent, Jens David Ohlin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

International law generally prohibits military forces from intentionally targeting civilians; this is the principle of distinction. In contrast, unintended collateral damage is permissible unless the anticipated civilian deaths outweigh the expected military advantage of the strike; this is the principle of proportionality. These cardinal targeting rules of international humanitarian law are generally assumed by military lawyers to be relatively well settled. However, recent international tribunals applying this law in a string of little-noticed decisions have completely upended this understanding. Armed with criminal law principles from their own domestic systems, often civil law jurisdictions, prosecutors, judges and even scholars have progressively …