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Full-Text Articles in Law
Prosecutorial Conflicts Of Interest In Post-Conviction Practice, Keith Swisher
Prosecutorial Conflicts Of Interest In Post-Conviction Practice, Keith Swisher
Keith Swisher
Prosecutors, our ministers of justice, do not play by the same conflict of interest rules. All other attorneys should not, and cannot, attack their prior work in transactional or litigation matters; nor should other attorneys unquestionably represent clients in matters in which the attorneys themselves face disciplinary, civil, or criminal liability. When prosecutors have likely convicted an innocent person, however, prosecutors are asked to review their own prior work objectively and then to undo it. But they understandably suffer from a conflict between their duty to justice and their duty to themselves — their duty to seek the release of …
Defense Counsel, Trial Judges, And Evidence Production Protocols, Darryl K. Brown
Defense Counsel, Trial Judges, And Evidence Production Protocols, Darryl K. Brown
Darryl K. Brown
This essay, a contribution to the 2012 Texas Tech Symposium on the Sixth Amendment, argues that constitutional criminal adjudication provisions are fruitfully viewed not primarily as defendant rights but as procedural components that, when employed, maximize the odds that adversarial adjudication will succeed in its various goals, notably accurate judgments. On this view, the state has an interest in how those procedural mechanisms, especially regarding fact investigation and evidence gathering, are invoked or implemented. Deficient attorney performance, on this view, can be understood as a problem of the state’s adversarial adjudication process, for which public officials—notably judges, whose judgments depend …
Notice-And-Comment Sentencing, Stephanos Bibas, Richard A. Bierschbach
Notice-And-Comment Sentencing, Stephanos Bibas, Richard A. Bierschbach
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Legally Blind: Hyperadversarialism, Brady Violations, And The Prosecutorial Organizational Culture, Hadar Aviram
Legally Blind: Hyperadversarialism, Brady Violations, And The Prosecutorial Organizational Culture, Hadar Aviram
Hadar Aviram
Recently, in Connick v. Thompson (2011), the Supreme Court held that the failure of several prosecutors to disclose to the defense the blood type of the perpetrator, which did not match the defendant’s blood type, was not a systematic defect that required training of staff. According to the Court the prosecutors’ misconduct, and lack of training in Brady discovery duties, did not constitute “deliberate indifference” by the municipality, which would have entitled the exonerated defendant to relief under §1983. This Article criticizes the decision--and Brady policies in general—for their narrowness and excessive reliance on indications of intent or bad faith. …
Two Truths And A Lie: In Re John Z. And Other Stories At The Juncture Of Teen Sex & The Law, Michelle Oberman
Two Truths And A Lie: In Re John Z. And Other Stories At The Juncture Of Teen Sex & The Law, Michelle Oberman
Michelle Oberman
Laws governing adolescent sexuality are incoherent and chaotically enforced, and legal scholarship on the subject neither addresses nor remedies adolescents’ vulnerability in sexual encounters. To posit a meaningful relationship between the criminal law and adolescent sexual encounters, one must examine what we know about adolescent sexuality from both the academic literature and the adults who control the criminal justice response to such interactions. This article presents an in-depth study of In re John Z., a 2003 rape prosecution involving two seventeen-year-olds. Using this case, I explore the implications of the prosecution by interviewing a variety of experts and analyzing the …
Mexico's Crisis: When There's A Will, There's A Way, Melanie M. Reid
Mexico's Crisis: When There's A Will, There's A Way, Melanie M. Reid
Melanie M. Reid
The United States under the Obama administration is committed to many of the tools being advocated in Mexican President Felipe Calderón’s holistic approach to combat drug trafficking. This Article explores the United States’ Merida Initiative policy and critiques its effectiveness. The Beyond Merida Initiative announced in 2010 revamped the prior 2007 initiatives, and provided more emphasis on additional training rather than equipment or direct financial aid to Mexico. Neither initiative corrects problems endemic to Mexico which limits the possibility of success. Corruption, anti-American resentment, and a drastically different legal system in Mexico hinder our efforts to become an effective ally …