Law Commons^™

Colorado V. Spring, Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Supreme Court Case Files

No abstract provided.

Wimberly V. Labor & Industrial Relations Commission Of Missouri, Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Supreme Court Case Files

No abstract provided.

Mccleskey V. Kemp, Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Supreme Court Case Files

No abstract provided.

Kelly V. Robinson, Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Supreme Court Case Files

No abstract provided.

Pennsylvania V. Ritchie, Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Supreme Court Case Files

No abstract provided.

An Analysis Of Public Attitudes Toward The Insanity Defense, Valerie P. Hans

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Results from a public opinion survey of knowledge, attitudes, and support for the insanity defense indicate that people dislike the insanity defense for both retributive and utilitarian reasons: they want insane law-breakers punished, and they believe that insanity defense procedures fail to protect the public. However, people vastly overestimate the use and success of the insanity plea. Several attitudinal and demographic variables that other researchers have found to be associated with people's support for the death penalty and perceptions of criminal sentencing are also related to support for the insanity defense. Implications for public policy are discussed.

Silencing Gideon's Trumpet: The Plight Of The Indigent Prisoner, Allison I. Connelly

Law Faculty Popular Media

In this newsletter article, Professor Connelly discusses the difficulties faced by indigent prisoners in gaining access to the justice system.

Jury Instructions: A Bibliography. Part Ii: Criminal Jury Instructions, Cheryl R. Nyberg, Jane Williams, Carol Boast

Librarians' Articles

Pattern jury instructions are used by trial judges to explain the law to jurors in language that they can understand and that provide consistency from one trial to another. This criminal jury instructions bibliography of 169 entries is a companion to a previous bibliography on civil jury instructions. An index to acronyms for both criminal and civil jury instructions is also included.

The Twelve-Person, Unanimous Jury: Does It Have More Than History To Recommend It?, Richard O. Lempert

Articles

My focus today will be on the twelve-person unanimous jury and on the contrasts between such juries and six-person juries or twelve-person juries than can return verdicts by ten-two or nine-three votes. Until about fifteen years ago, it appeared that the sixth and seventh amendments required all federal juries to have twelve members who reached unanimous verdicts, and it appeared possible that the Supreme Court would force the states to conform to the federal standards. Instead, the court did almost the opposite. It sanctioned juries as small as size six in state criminal cases and federal civil cases, and it …

Compelling Testimony In Alaska: The Coming Rejection Of Use And Derivative Use Immunity, Jeff M. Feldman

Articles

Until 1972, when the Supreme Court upheld a federal use andderivative use immunity statute in Kastigar v. United States, virtually every court that considered the issue of the compulsion of testimony favored transactional immunity. It appears that most courts interpreted the Supreme Court's 1892 decision in Counselman v. Hitchcock as finding only transactional immunity constitutional. Since Kastigar, the Alaska Supreme Court has had several opportunities totake sides in the debate over the grant of immunity constitutionally required to compel testimony. On each such occasion, the court has expressed a preference for transactional immunity, but has carefullyavoided resolving the …

Criminal Justice Issues In Revolutionary Nicaragua, Stephen C. Thaman

All Faculty Scholarship

In this article, the author discusses his experiences traveling to Nicaragua in May 1985, as a part of a group of American lawyers and law professors invited by the Nicaraguan Association of Democratic Justice to consult on the judicial process, as well as a revolutionary struggle within the Nicaraguan institutions responsible for criminal justice. This article addresses current criminal procedure, special tribunals, and popular anti-Somocista tribunals. It also discusses a pilot project geared to improve criminal justice issues in Nicaragua.

Police Interrogation And Confessions, Yale Kamisar

Book Chapters

In the police interrogation room, where, until the second third of the century, police practices were unscrutinized and virtually unregulated, constitutional ideals collide with the grim realities of law enforcement.

Gates, Leon And The Compromise Of Adjudicatory Fairness: (Part Ii)-Aggressive Majoritarianism, Willful Deafness, And The New Exception To The Exclusionary Rule, Joel J. Finer

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This Article will offer an elaboration of the idea of judicial "aggressiveness" (which Professor Stone, by and large, leaves undefined) through examination of the majority opinion in United States v. Leon and its application in Massachusetts v. Sheppard. It will also advance the thesis that the majority in Leon exhibited a particular kind of aggressiveness--willful deafness.

Closing Argument Procedure, J. Alexander Tanford

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Legal scholars have paid little attention to closing arguments. There are few publications that touch on this phase of the trial process, most focusing on the substance of prosecution arguments in criminal cases. As a result, too few of the legal principles and doctrines of closing argument procedure are understood, especially in civil trials. The purpose of this article is to set out a more comprehensive picture of this body of law than has been done previously, and to define and analyze its major doctrines.

The Bad Faith-Harassment Exception To The Younger Doctrine: Exploring The Empty Universe, C. Keith Wingate

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Conflicts-Of-Interest Disqualification In Medical Malpractice Litigation, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

Less than two decades ago it was thought sufficient to say, "When a practitioner is in doubt on an ethical question, the best answer is usually No." A more recent commentator has suggested, however, that "[s]uch platitudes have become increasingly inadequate to guide the attorney facing conflicts of interests in the private practice of law." Because of the general vagueness of the American Bar Association's Model Code of Professional Responsibility, and of state codes based on it, courts have begun to fashion a vast "common law" of conflicts of interest A particularly controversial entry to this body of common law …

Attempting The Impossible: The Emerging Consensus, Ira Robbins

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Impossible attempts are situations in which an actor fails to consummate a substantive crime because he is mistaken about attendant circumstances. Professor Robbins divides mistakes regarding circumstances into three categories: mistakes of fact, mistakes of law, and mistakes of mixed fact and law. Courts and commentators disagree primarily over the identification and treatment of mixed fact law cases. Professor Robbins surveys each category of mistake. He then examines the objective, subjective, and hybrid approaches to dealing with the mixed fact/law category. The objective approach requires an objective manifestation of the actor's intent before conviction is allowed. The subjective approach permits …

Prosecutorial Discretion In Japan: A Response, Daniel H. Foote

Articles

Marsha Goodman's Prosecutorial Discretion in Japan, with its thoroughly researched description of the manner in which that discretion is exercised-including several new case studies-is an important addition to English-language literature on the Japanese legal system and raises numerous interesting issues regarding the Japanese criminal justice system.

Goodman focuses much of her attention on the lengthy battle over the abuse of prosecutorial discretion doctrine in Japan. This discussion provides a fine example of a classic pattern of legal debate in Japan. As in this case, defense counsel familiar with an issue frequently initiate movements for change in criminal procedure standards …

A Report And Analysis Of The Military Mental Nonresponsibility Defense, Darryll K. Jones

Journal Publications

Due to the intense pressures of warfare, and the more common stress related demands placed on the peacetime service member, the mental nonresponsibility defense should be more often legitimately asserted in a military criminal trial. Further, those who place demands on service members have an obligation to ensure that the nonresponsibility defense is substantively and procedurally fair. This article analyzes the nonresponsibility defense, beginning with the procedural aspects and later examining significant substantive issues and how they are resolved by the United States Court of Military Appeals. The procedural section will discuss how the nonresponsibility issue is raised, the defendant's …

Subpoenas To Criminal Defense Lawyers: Proposal For Limits, Ellen Y. Suni

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Compulsory Process, Right To, Peter K. Westen

Book Chapters

The first state to adopt a constitution following the Declaration of Independence (New Jersey, 1776) guaranteed all criminal defendants the same ‘‘privileges of witnesses’’ as their prosecutors. Fifteen years later, in enumerating the constitutional rights of accused persons, the framers of the federal Bill of Rights bifurcated what New Jersey called the ‘‘privileges of witnesses’’ into two distinct but related rights: the Sixth Amendment right of the accused ‘‘to be confronted with the witnesses against him,’’ and his companion Sixth Amendment right to ‘‘compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor.’’ The distinction between witnesses ‘‘against’’ the accused and witnesses …

Hearsay Rule, Peter K. Westen

Book Chapters

The hearsay rule is a non constitutional rule of evidence which obtains in one form or another in every jurisdiction in the country. The rule provides that in the absence of explicit exceptions to the contrary, hearsay evidence of a matter in dispute is inadmissible as proof of the matter. Although jurisdictions define "hearsay" in different ways, the various definitions reflect a common principle: evidence that derives its relevance in a case from the belief of a person who is not present in court—and thus not under oath and not subject to cross-examination regarding his credibility—is of questionable probative value.

The Federal Rules Of Criminal Procedure, James Boyd White

Book Chapters

After the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (1938) established a uniform set of procedures for the trial of civil cases in federal courts, Congress authorized the supreme court to make rules for the trial of federal criminal cases as well. With two Justices dissenting, the Supreme Court adopted the rules in 1944 and submitted them to Congress, which, by silence, approved them.

Attorney Loyalty And Client Perjury - A Postscript To Nix V. Whiteside, Bennett L. Gershman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

How much, if at all, can a criminal defense lawyer cooperate in his or her client's decision to commit perjury? Courts, commentators, and bar committees have grappled with this question for years without offering clear or consistent guidelines. Any principled response must take into account some very hard questions. Under what circumstances, for instance, does the lawyer ever really "know" that his client's proposed testimony is false? Is it sufficient if the lawyer simply disbelieves his client's story, or that of his client's witnesses? Does it make any difference if the attorney learns of a plan to perjure during the …

Why Prosecutors Misbehave, Bennett L. Gershman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The author, perhaps the nation's top authority on prosecutorial misconduct, raises and analyzes two questions: Why does this misconduct occur? (It often pays off.) And why does it continue? (There are no effective sanctions.)

Religion And Procedure, Robert E. Rodes

Journal Articles

God has no use for procedural rules since He knows the full truth and is able to exercise absolute justice simultaneously alongside complete mercy. This paper discusses the religious significance of legal rules of procedure in light of this truth. It finds that since we, unlike God, are inherently fallible, we are forced to implement procedures in the legal pursuit of our goals of truth, justice, and mercy. These procedures remain imperfect in implementing these goals, as compromises must often be made between competing values such as mercy on one hand and justice on the other. Nevertheless, though legal procedure …

The Death Penalty, Ellen Y. Suni

Faculty Works

In 1977, the Missouri legislature adopted a comprehensive statutory scheme defining capital murder and prescribing procedures to be utilized in imposing the death penalty in this state. After making minor revisions in the scheme, the legislature substantially revamped the homicide statutes in 1983. Included in this revision were changes in the definition of the substantive offense and revisions in the grounds and procedures for imposition of the death penalty. These legislative revisions and judicial interpretations have substantially broadened the class of defendants to whom the death penalty is applicable and substantially decreased the likelihood of successful appeal from a sentence …

The Improper Use Of Presumptions In Recent Criminal Law Adjudication, Charles W. Collier

UF Law Faculty Publications

This note argues that, in developing the contemporary mandatory-permissive standard, the Supreme Court has misunderstood the effects of presumptions on juries. Presumptions that are ‘permissive’ in theory may nevertheless be ‘mandatory’ in fact, thereby leading some juries to convict regardless of their beliefs and inclinations. Thus, these legal presumptions may undermine the moral sense and political function of the jury.

Part I of this note shows, through doctrinal analysis, that the mandatory-permissive distinction is an anomaly in the Court's jurisprudence. Part II shows that this distinction is at variance with a substantial body of empirical social science research. This part …