Law Commons^™

No Sense Of Decency, Kathryn E. Miller

Articles

For nearly seventy years, the Court has assessed Eighth Amendment claims by evaluating “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” In this Article, I examine the evolving standards of decency test, which has long been a punching bag for critics on both the right and the left. Criticism of the doctrine has been fierce, but largely academic until recent years. Some fault the test for being too majoritarian, while others argue that it provides few constraints on the Justices’ discretion, permitting their personal predilections to rule the day. For many, the test is seen …

Confronting Silence: The Constitution, Deaf Criminal Defendants, And The Right To Interpretation During Trial, Deirdre M. Smith

Maine Law Review

For most deaf people, interactions with the hearing community in the absence of interpretation or technological assistance consist of communications that are, at most, only partly comprehensible. Criminal proceedings, with the defendant's liberty interest directly at stake, are occasions in which the need for deaf people to have a full understanding of what is said and done around them is most urgent. Ironically, the legal “right to interpretation” has not been clearly defined in either statutory or case law. Although the federal and state constitutions do not provide a separate or lesser set of rights for deaf defendants, their situation …

"Another Day" Has Dawned: The Maine Supreme Judicial Court Holds Laboratory Evidence Subject To The Confrontation Clause In State V. Mangos, Reid Hayton-Hull

Maine Law Review

The Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause guarantees criminal defendants the right to “confront witnesses against them.” Specifically, the Clause ensures a criminal defendant's right to confront witnesses who testify against him by the unique medium, or “crucible,” of cross-examination. Although federal and state rules of evidence prohibiting hearsay and the Confrontation Clause are designed to protect similar interests, whether or not admission of a piece of evidence violates a defendant's rights under the Confrontation Clause is a separate analysis than whether that same piece of evidence is admissible under a rule of evidence. In 2004, the United States Supreme Court held …

Charging On The Margin, Paul T. Crane

Law Faculty Publications

The American criminal justice system has experienced a significant expansion in the number and severity of penalties triggered by misdemeanor convictions. In particular, legislatures have increasingly attached severe collateral consequences to misdemeanor offenses- penalties such as requirements to register as a sex offender, prohibitions on owning or possessing a firearm, and deportation. Although there is a wealth of scholarship studying the effect this development has on defendants and their attorneys, little attention has been paid to the impact collateral consequences have on prosecutorial incentives. This Article starts to remedy that gap by exploring the influence that collateral consequences exert on …

Punitive Compensation, Cortney E. Lollar

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Criminal restitution is a core component of punishment. In its current form, this remedy rarely serves restitution's traditional aim of disgorging a defendant's ill-gotten gains. Instead, courts use this monetary award not only to compensate crime victims for intangible losses, but also to punish the defendant for the moral blameworthiness of her criminal action. Because the remedy does not fit into the definition of what most consider "restitution," this Article advocates for the adoption of a new, additional designation for this prototypically punitive remedy: punitive compensation. Unlike with restitution, courts measure punitive compensation by a victim's losses, not a defendant's …

The Challenges Of Preventing And Prosecuting Social Media Crimes, Thaddeus Hoffmeister

Pace Law Review

The adoption and use of social media by a broad spectrum of criminal defendants has raised some significant challenges for those tasked with crime prevention. This article will look at those challenges through the lens of three cases involving social media: United States v. Drew, United States v. Sayer, and United States v. Cassidy. However, prior to beginning that examination, this article will briefly discuss and categorize the various ways criminal defendants employ social media.

What Is Criminal Restitution?, Cortney E. Lollar

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

A new form of restitution has become a core aspect of criminal punishment. Courts now order defendants to compensate victims for an increasingly broad category of losses, including emotional and psychological losses and losses for which the defendant was not found guilty. Criminal restitution therefore moves far beyond its traditional purpose of disgorging a defendant's ill-gotten gains. Instead, restitution has become a mechanism of imposing additional punishment. Courts, however, have failed to recognize the punitive nature of restitution and thus enter restitution orders without regard to the constitutional protections that normally attach to criminal proceedings. This Article deploys a novel …

Recent Landmark Criminal Law Decisions Of The Supreme Court: The Jurisprudence Of The Supreme Court: Fair Trial, Juvenile Justice, The Death Penalty, And The Right To Counsel, Richard Klein

Richard Daniel Klein

The Supreme Court has recently adjudicated some crucial issues regarding criminal matters and constitutional jurisprudence. The Court expanded the constitutional authority vested in Congress, provided defendants with constitutional remedies and protections, indicated that even a substantial amount of publicity surrounding a trial does not warrant a change of venue, left defense attorneys in awe of their new-found obligations, and settled important divisions among the U.S. circuit courts of appeal. Skilling v. U.S. revealed that a change of venue based on a claim of a tainted jury pool presents a difficult, if not impossible task, for criminal defendants. Padilla expanded the …

Child Pornography And The Restitution Revolution, Cortney E. Lollar

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Victims of child pornography are now successfully seeking restitution from defendants convicted of watching and trading their images. Restitution in child pornography cases, however, represents a dramatic departure from traditional concepts of restitution. This Article offers the first critique of this restitution revolution. Traditional restitution is grounded in notions of unjust enrichment and seeks to restore the economic status quo between parties by requiring disgorgement of ill-gotten gains. The restitution being ordered in increasing numbers of child pornography cases does not serve this purpose. Instead, child pornography victims are receiving restitution simply for having their images viewed. This royalty-type approach …

United States V. Henry: The Further Expansion Of The Criminal Defendant's Right To Counsel During Interrogations, Kevin T. Kerr

Pepperdine Law Review

Despite the Burger Court's history of judicial conservatism, the Supreme Court in United States v. Henry exceeds the liberality of the Warren Court in the area of criminal defendant rights. The decision in Henry clearly provides further limitations upon the government's ability to conduct interrogations. The author examines the Court's factual and legal analysis of the case, emphasizes how the test established in Henry surpasses the rule promulgated in Massiah, and discusses the decision's impact as well as the curious turnabout of Chief Justice Burger.

Avoiding The Insanity Defense Strait Jacket: The Mens Rea Route, Harlow M. Huckabee

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Supreme Court Criminal Law Jurisprudence - October 2008 Term, Richard Klein

Touro Law Review

The last Term of the Supreme Court addressed the constitutionally protected rights of criminal defendants not only at trial but at the post-conviction stage as well. The Court dealt with the defendant's rights to a speedy trial and effective assistance of counsel in Vermont v. Brillon; the claim was that these constitutional protections were substantially frustrated by underfunded public defender offices, thereby leaving the defendant improperly incarcerated for three years. The Court also considered a case wherein the State had utilized a jailhouse snitch to elicit inculpatory statements from a defendant in violation of his Sixth Amendment right to counsel. …

Supreme Court Criminal Law Jurisprudence: Fair Trials, Cruel Punishment, And Ethical Lawyering—October 2009 Term, Richard Klein

Richard Daniel Klein

No abstract provided.

Supreme Court Criminal Law Jurisprudence: Fair Trials, Cruel Punishment, And Ethical Lawyering—October 2009 Term, Richard Klein

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

An Honest Approach To Plea Bargaining, Steven P. Grossman

All Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, the author argues that differential sentencing of criminal defendants who plead guilty and those who go to trial is, primarily, a punishment for the defendant exercising the right to trial. The proposed solution requires an analysis of the differential sentencing motivation in light of the benefit to society and the drawbacks inherent in the plea bargaining system.

Reconceptualizing Criminal Law Defenses, Victoria Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In 1933, one of the leading theorists of the criminal law, Jerome Michael, wrote openly of the criminal law "as an instrument of the state." Today, criminal law is largely allergic to claims of political theory; commentators obsess about theories of deterrence and retribution, and the technical details of model codes and sentencing grids, but rarely speak of institutional effects or political commitments. In this article, the author aims to change that emphasis and to examine the criminal law as a tool for governance. Her approach is explicitly constructive: it accepts the criminal law that we have, places it in …

Departing Is Such Sweet Sorrow: A Year Of Judicial Revolt On "Substantial Assistance" Departures Follows A Decade Of Prosecutorial Indiscipline (Prosecution Law Symposium), Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

the first section of this essay is devoted to demonstrating the courts' errors. Nonetheless, considered together, these opinions are perhaps an understandable reflection of judicial unease with an important component of the federal sentencing system — the longstanding, but increasingly common, practice of making deals with criminal defendants to reduce their sentences in return for testimony against their accomplices. This Article's second section will consider the most common criticisms of the system of bargaining for testimony under the United States Sentencing Guidelines (the Guidelines) to determine whether Singleton and Sealed Case may be good policy even if they are bad …

A Quiet Year: The Supreme Court's Criminal Law Decisions During The 1991 Term, William E. Hellerstein

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Proving The Defendant's Bad Character, Bennett L. Gershman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The classic study of the American jury shows that when a defendant's criminal record is known and the prosecution's case has weaknesses, the defendant's chances of acquittal are thirty-eight percent, compared to sixty-five percent otherwise. Because of the danger that jurors will assume that the defendant is guilty based on proof that his bad character predisposes him to an act of crime, the courts and legislatures have attempted to circumscribe the use of such evidence. Some prosecutors, however, although well aware of the insidious effect such prejudicial evidence can have on jurors, violate the rules of evidence, as well as …

Gender And Crime: Offense Patterns And Criminal Court Sanctions, Ilene H. Nagel, John Hagan

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The relation between gender and criminality is strong, and is likely to remain so. Women have traditionally been much less likely than men to commit violent crimes, and that pattern persists today. Rates of female involvement in some forms of property crime-notably petty theft and fraud-appear to be increasing. However, while the relative increase in women's property crime involvement is significant, female participation even in these crimes remains far less than that of men.

The relation of gender to case processing decisions in the criminal justice system varies from stage to stage. Although the pertinent literature is plagued by methodological …

Havens, Jenkins, And Salvucci, And The Defendant's "Right" To Testify, Craig M. Bradley

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Three recent Supreme Court opinions that enlarge the scope of permissible impeachment may substantially influence the criminal defendant's decision whether to take the stand. In this article, Professor Bradley evaluates the current status of the defendant's "right" to testify, assesses the impact of these cases on that right, and offers cogent advice on effective strategies for practitioners.

Survey Of Criminal Procedure — Alternative Dispositions Of Defendants, Charles Shafer

All Faculty Scholarship

The criminal justice system provides various alternatives for the disposition of criminal defendants. Three of these alternatives, pretrial intervention, drug treatment, and probation, were dealt with in recent New Jersey Supreme Court decisions. The court examined the substantive criteria and procedures used in assigning each disposition and focused primarily on the desire to provide rehabilitative opportunities for each defendant. This note will examine those decisions and the implications of the court's concentration on the goal of rehabilitation.

Charge Reduction: An Intermediary Stage In The Process Of Labelling Criminal Defendants, Ilene Nagel Bernstein, Edward Kick, Jan T. Leung, Barbara Schulz

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The interactionist perspective emphasizes the imperfect correspondence between alleged deviance and societal reactions. Moreover, it is asserted that values of reactors, statuses of the alleged deviant, and bureaucratic constraints of deviance processing organizations help explain some of that imperfection. Focusing on one intermediary deviance processing stage, i.e., plea bargaining, we explore the degree to which our data are consonant with interactionist assumptions. For a sample of 1,435 male and female criminal defendants, we find the favorability of the charge reduction outcome is partly explained by values of reactors, statuses of the defendant, and bureaucratic constraints of the court. Thus, our …

Societal Reaction To Deviants: The Case Of Criminal Defendants, Ilene Nagel Bernstein, William R. Kelly, Patricia A. Doyle

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Recent reformulations of the societal reaction theory argue that the thesis is a perspective rather than a theory, and that the perspective is meant to provide a set of sensitizing concepts to those researching deviance. This research examines the degree of congruence between hypotheses deduced from those assertions and a set of real world occurrences. Data for a sample of male defendants charged with felony offenses are examined to estimate the effects of (1) deviants' social attributes, (2) the specific societal reactors, (3) the values placed on certain offenses and (4) the organizational imperatives of the deviance-controlling organization, controlling for …

The Second Circuit Review: Ix. Evidence: Introduction, Paul F. Rothstein

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The past year's developments in the law of evidence have been characterized by a hardening attitude toward criminal defendants. The United States Supreme Court's evidentiary rulings during the term covered by the Second Circuit Review (1971-72) manifested this trend (although not uniformly). For example, police stop-and-frisk authority was broadened (and with it the use of evidence obtained therefrom); the scope of the immunity from criminal prosecution required to be granted by a governmental body before self-incriminatory statements can be compelled from a witness was narrowed; the right to have counsel at line-ups was limited to postindictment or post-charge line-ups (with …