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Full-Text Articles in Law

Forced To Play And Forced To Pay: The Indigent Counsel Fee In Massachusetts As A Cost Of Being Charged With A Crime, Stanislaw Krawiecki May 2023

Forced To Play And Forced To Pay: The Indigent Counsel Fee In Massachusetts As A Cost Of Being Charged With A Crime, Stanislaw Krawiecki

University of Massachusetts Law Review

When indigent defendants in Massachusetts are charged with a crime and receive a court-appointed lawyer, they are also charged something else: a fee. This $150 fee is imposed on criminal defendants by the state as soon as they receive a constitutionally guaranteed "free" legal defense. The Article focuses on this inherent contradiction and identifies its far-reaching effects in undermining individuals’ constitutional protections. Massachusetts’s indigent counsel fee "chills" the right to counsel, creating a straightforward result for indigent individuals who are faced with a choice between paying for a "free" lawyer and not disclaiming their constitutional right to one. The deeper …


How To Expand Rape By Deception And Protect Consent, Ricardo Licea May 2022

How To Expand Rape By Deception And Protect Consent, Ricardo Licea

University of Massachusetts Law Review

The trend towards accepting the violation of consent as the underlying wrong addressed by rape law conflicts with the almost universal rejection of rape by deception. Rape by deception is limited to fraud in the factum, however the exclusion of fraud in the inducement finds no support under a consent framework. The principal objections to the expansion of rape by deception are that it will criminalize common behavior, that rape by deception produces only minor harm, and that self-protection is a viable alternative. Analogizing from the criminalization of deception to obtain money shows that the criminal deception statutes need not …


A Breath Of Fresh Air: A Constitutional Amendment Legalizing Marijuana Through An Article V Convention Of The States, Ryan C. Griffith, Esq. Jun 2021

A Breath Of Fresh Air: A Constitutional Amendment Legalizing Marijuana Through An Article V Convention Of The States, Ryan C. Griffith, Esq.

University of Massachusetts Law Review

Criminal enforcement of anti-marijuana laws by the United States federal government has been non-sensical for more than twenty years. Culminating, ultimately, in an anomaly within American jurisprudence when California legalized marijuana in 1996 in direct violation of federal law, yet the federal government did little to stop it. Since then, a majority of states have followed California and legalized marijuana. Currently, thirty-six states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana despite federal law. Every year billions of dollars are spent on the federal enforcement of anti-marijuana laws while states collect billions in tax revenue from marijuana sales. Even …


The Law Of The Groves: Whittling Away At The Legal Mysteries In The Prosecution Of The Groveland Boys, William R. Ezzell Nov 2016

The Law Of The Groves: Whittling Away At The Legal Mysteries In The Prosecution Of The Groveland Boys, William R. Ezzell

University of Massachusetts Law Review

This Article tells the legal story of one of the South’s most infamous trials – the Groveland Boys prosecution in central Florida. Called “Florida’s Little Scottsboro,” the Groveland case garnered international attention in 1949 when four young black men were accused of the gang rape of a white woman in the orange groves north of Orlando. Several days of rioting, Ku Klux Klan activity, three murders, two trials, and three death penalty verdicts followed, in what became the most infamous trial in Florida history. The appeals of the trial reached the United States Supreme Court, with the NAACP’s Thurgood Marshall …


Supermax’S Kryptonite? Wilkinson V. Austin: The Due Process Challenge To Ohio’S Super-Maximum Security Prison, Adam Miller Dec 2014

Supermax’S Kryptonite? Wilkinson V. Austin: The Due Process Challenge To Ohio’S Super-Maximum Security Prison, Adam Miller

University of Massachusetts Law Review

This note discusses the Supreme Court’s holding in Wilkinson that OSP’s system for inmate placement in its Supermax facility does not violate the Equal Protection Clause. Part II will summarize OSP’s purpose and condition, and will focus on Ohio’s New Policy regarding inmate placement. Part III will examine Supreme Court precedent and the Court’s conclusions of law in determining whether inmates have a protected liberty interest in avoiding assignment to OSP and the due process implications of the inmate selection process to OSP. Part IV will question the Supreme Court’s disregard of the adverse mental effects in inmates subjected to …


A Critique Of The Second Circuit’S Analysis In Nicholas V. Goord, John Dorsett Niles Dec 2014

A Critique Of The Second Circuit’S Analysis In Nicholas V. Goord, John Dorsett Niles

University of Massachusetts Law Review

The Case Note proceeds as follows. Part I traces the historical and procedural facts underlying Nicholas. Part II describes the legal backdrop against which the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decided the case. Part III steps through the Second Circuit’s majority opinion, and Part IV critiques the opinion. Part V concludes the Case Note by discussing the ramifications of Nicholas for future DNA-indexing cases.


Spreading Democracy Everywhere But Here: The Unlikely Prospect Of Foreign National Defendants Asserting Treaty Violations In American Courts After Sanchez-Llamas V. Oregon And Medellin V. Dretke, Miriam F. Miquelon-Weismann Dec 2014

Spreading Democracy Everywhere But Here: The Unlikely Prospect Of Foreign National Defendants Asserting Treaty Violations In American Courts After Sanchez-Llamas V. Oregon And Medellin V. Dretke, Miriam F. Miquelon-Weismann

University of Massachusetts Law Review

To squarely address this decisional quagmire, this article examines the binding effect of ICJ orders, entered pursuant to its compulsory jurisdiction, on American courts; earlier decisions of the Supreme Court penalizing foreign nationals for failing to timely raise individual treaty claims; the effect on treaty enforcement in domestic courts after the executive branch’s recent foreign policy decision to withdraw from compulsory ICJ jurisdiction; the current policy disputes dividing the United States and the ICJ; and, the national interest, or lack thereof, in treaty compliance. The article concludes that the government’s current claim that a “long standing presumption” exists to prevent …


The Case For Extending Pretrial Diversion To Include Possession Of Child Pornography, Sarah J. Long Dec 2014

The Case For Extending Pretrial Diversion To Include Possession Of Child Pornography, Sarah J. Long

University of Massachusetts Law Review

Pretrial diversion removes offenders with a low-risk of reoffending from the penal system and instead sends them to supervised treatment programs. The result is lower cost to the state and a second chance for those who successfully complete the program. Typically, violent crimes, such as murder and attempted murder, are exempt from pretrial diversion. Notably, sex related crimes are also ineligible in all jurisdictions. By excluding all sex-related crimes from pretrial diversion, possession of child pornography is adjudicated by the courts. As a result, young, first-time offenders who may be candidates for treatment are bundled with physical offenders, members of …


Furman, After Four Decades, J. Thomas Sullivan Mar 2014

Furman, After Four Decades, J. Thomas Sullivan

University of Massachusetts Law Review

Problems of racial discrimination in the imposition of capital sentences, disclosure of misconduct by prosecutors and police, inconsistency in the quality of defense afforded capital defendants, exoneration of death row inmates due to newly available DNA testing, and, most recently controversies surrounding the potential for cruelty in the execution process itself continue to complicate views about the morality, legality, and practicality of reliance on capital punishment to address even the most heinous of homicide offenses. Despite repeated efforts by the Supreme Court to craft a capital sentencing framework that ensures that death sentences be imposed fairly in light of the …


Watching The Watchers: The Growing Privatization Of Criminal Law Enforcement And The Need For Limits On Neighborhood Watch Associations, Sharon Finegan Mar 2014

Watching The Watchers: The Growing Privatization Of Criminal Law Enforcement And The Need For Limits On Neighborhood Watch Associations, Sharon Finegan

University of Massachusetts Law Review

On the night of February 26, 2012, George Zimmerman, a member of a neighborhood watch program, was patrolling his community in Sanford, Florida, when he spotted Trayvon Martin, a seventeen-year-old Africa-American high school student, walking through the neighborhood. Zimmerman dialed 911 and indicated that he was following "a real suspicious guy". The police dispatcher requested that Zimmerman discontinue following Martin, but he ignored the request and approached the teenager. In the resulting confrontation, Zimmerman used his legally owned semi-automatic handgun to shoot and kill Trayvon Martin. Martin, who was unarmed, had been returning from a local convenience store. George Zimmerman …


Un-Torturing The Definition Of Torture And Employing The Rule Of Immigration Lenity, Irene Scharf Jan 2013

Un-Torturing The Definition Of Torture And Employing The Rule Of Immigration Lenity, Irene Scharf

Faculty Publications

In the first three sections, I examine the background of the Convention in the context of international human rights instruments (Section I); the context for a critique of the CAT’s definition of torture, given the legislative history of the Convention and an existing statute that could aid in correcting the misinterpretation adversely affecting CAT enforcement (Section II); and the adverse international implication of the United States’ restrictive meaning of torture (Section III). In a concluding section (IV), I offer possible solutions to the problem, invoking a robust principle of Immigration Lenity to prevent the return of potential torture victims to …


Joining The Legal Significance Of Adolescent Development Capacities With The Legal Rights Provided By In Re Gault, Hilary B. Farber, Donna M. Bishop Jan 2007

Joining The Legal Significance Of Adolescent Development Capacities With The Legal Rights Provided By In Re Gault, Hilary B. Farber, Donna M. Bishop

Faculty Publications

Our discussion is presented in seven parts. In Part I, we briefly sketch historical conceptions of adolescence and its relationship to foundational principles of the juvenile court, and juvenile court practice from its inception in the late nineteenth century through the mid-1960s. In order to more fully appreciate both the strengths and weaknesses of the Gault decision, we pay special attention to the larger social and legal context in which the case was decided. Part II is devoted to a discussion of Gault. We argue that although Gault represents a valiant attempt to impose the rule of law on …


Nevada Case Threatens To Expand Terry Stops, Shaun B. Spencer Jan 2004

Nevada Case Threatens To Expand Terry Stops, Shaun B. Spencer

Faculty Publications

This term, the U.S. Supreme Court will review a Nevada decision authorizing police to arrest people for refusing to identify themselves. If affirmed, the decision could reshape how privacy is viewed in the criminal context throughout the United States, and could prompt the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to depart from the Supreme Court’s approach to stop-and-frisk cases. The case is Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court, 59 P.3d 1201 (Nev. 2002), cert. granted, 124 S. Ct. 430 (2003).