Law Commons^™

Is Felony Murder The New Depraved Heart Murder: Considering The Appropriate Punishment For Drunken Drivers Who Kill, Dora W. Klein

Faculty Articles

In recognition of the increasing use of felony-murder statutes to prosecute drunken drivers who kill, this Article considers various criticisms and defenses of the felony-murder rule as they apply specifically to felony DWI cases. Part II of this Article discusses several recent precedent setting cases in which drunken drivers who killed were prosecuted under felony murder statutes. Part III explores whether such prosecutions are proper, given the existence of special narrower vehicular manslaughter provisions that a legislature might have intended to be the sole means of prosecuting drunk drivers who kill. Part IV discusses three particular limiting doctrines-merger, inherent dangerousness, …

All For One: A Review Of Victim-Centric Justifications For Criminal Punishment, Adam J. Macleod

Faculty Articles

Disparate understandings of the primary justification for criminal punishment have in recent years divided along new lines. Retributivists and consequentialists have long debated whether a community ought to punish violators of legal norms primarily because the violator has usurped communal standards (the retributivist view), or rather merely as a means toward some end such as rehabilitation or deterrence (the consequentialist view). The competing answers to this question have demarcated for some time the primary boundary in criminal jurisprudential thought.

A new fault line appears to have opened between those who maintain the historical view that criminal punishment promotes the common …