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Articles 1 - 6 of 6
Full-Text Articles in Law
Mens Rea, Criminal Responsibility, And The Death Of Freddie Gray, Michael Serota
Mens Rea, Criminal Responsibility, And The Death Of Freddie Gray, Michael Serota
Michigan Law Review First Impressions
Who (if anyone) is criminally responsible for the death of Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old African-American man who died from injuries suffered while in the custody of Baltimore police? This question has been at the forefront of the extensive coverage of Gray’s death, which has inspired a national discussion about law enforcement’s relationship with black communities. But it is also a question that may never be fairly resolved for reasons wholly unrelated to the topic of community policing, with which Gray’s death has become synonymous. What may ultimately hamper the administration of justice in the prosecution of the police officers involved …
Decisions To Prosecute Battered Women's Homicide Cases: An Exploratory Study, Sarah N. Welling, Diane Follingstad, M. Jill Rogers, Frances Jillian Priesmeyer
Decisions To Prosecute Battered Women's Homicide Cases: An Exploratory Study, Sarah N. Welling, Diane Follingstad, M. Jill Rogers, Frances Jillian Priesmeyer
Law Faculty Scholarly Articles
Discretionary decisions to prosecute cases in which a battered woman kills her partner were investigated using several research strategies and targeting a range of case elements. Law students presented with case elements reported they would consider legal elements over nonlegal (or ‘supplemental’) elements when making a decision to prosecute. In contrast, law students assessed through an open-ended format as to important case factors for deciding to prosecute spontaneously generated high proportions of supplemental case elements compared with legal factors. Vignette comparisons of 42 case elements on participants’ likelihood to prosecute identified salient factors including legal and supplemental variables. Themes from …
Developmental Detour: How The Minimalism Of Miller V. Alabama Led The Court's "Kids Are Different" Eighth Amendment Jurisprudence Down A Blind Alley, Mary Berkheiser
Developmental Detour: How The Minimalism Of Miller V. Alabama Led The Court's "Kids Are Different" Eighth Amendment Jurisprudence Down A Blind Alley, Mary Berkheiser
Akron Law Review
With its narrow ruling, Miller has taken the Eighth Amendment kids are different jurisprudence on a deleterious detour that could lead Miller and Jackson and others like them to a certain dead end. Where Miller went wrong is the subject of this paper. It begins with Graham and the significance of the Court’s ruling that the Eighth Amendment categorically precludes imposition of a sentence of life without parole on a juvenile nonhomicide offender. Next, this paper turns to the Supreme Court’s decision in Miller, parsing the Court’s reliance on precedent and the reasoning that led it to adopt a ruling …
Drag Racing, Assumption Of Risk, And Homicide, Roni M. Rosenberg
Drag Racing, Assumption Of Risk, And Homicide, Roni M. Rosenberg
Roni M Rosenberg
U.S. courts are divided with regard to the question of whether it is appropriate to convict a participant in a drag race of homicide for the death of another participant. The context is not one in which decedent is killed as a result of colliding with the defendant; rather the death is cause by a collision with a third party or a guard rail. The controversy revolves around on central question: whether there is a causal connection between defendant's participation in the race and the death of decedent. Courts that convict of manslaughter hold that such a causal connection exists, …
Excusing Murder? Conservative Jurors’ Acceptance Of The Gay Panic Defense, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Jessica Salerno, Bette L. Bottoms, B. L. Harrington, Dave Kemner
Excusing Murder? Conservative Jurors’ Acceptance Of The Gay Panic Defense, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Jessica Salerno, Bette L. Bottoms, B. L. Harrington, Dave Kemner
Psychology Faculty Scholarship
We conducted a simulated trial study to investigate the effectiveness of a “gay-panic” provocation defense as a function of jurors’ political orientation. Mock jurors read about a murder case in which a male defendant claimed a victim provoked the killing by starting a fight, which either included or did not include the male victim making an unwanted sexual advance that triggered a state of panic in the defendant. Conservative jurors were significantly less punitive when the defendant claimed to have acted out of gay panic as compared to when this element was not part of the defense. In contrast, liberal …
A Provocative Defense, Aya Gruber
A Provocative Defense, Aya Gruber
Publications
It is common wisdom that the provocation defense is, quite simply, sexist. For decades, there has been a trenchant feminist critique that the doctrine reflects and reinforces masculine norms of violence and shelters brutal domestic killers. The critique is so prominent that it appears alongside the doctrine itself in leading criminal law casebooks. The feminist critique of provocation embodies several claims about provocation's problematically gendered nature, including that the defense is steeped in chauvinist history, treats culpable sexist killers too leniently, discriminates against women, and expresses bad messages. This Article offers a (likely provocative) defense of the provocation doctrine. While …