Law Commons^™

Testa, Crain, And The Constitutional Right To Collateral Relief, Carlos Manuel Vázquez, Stephen I. Vladeck

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In Montgomery v. Louisiana, the U.S. Supreme Court held that state prisoners have a constitutional right to relief from continued imprisonment if the prisoner’s conviction or sentence contravenes a new substantive rule of constitutional law. Specifically, the Court held that prisoners with such claims are constitutionally entitled to collateral relief in state court—at least if the state courts are open to other claims for collateral relief on the ground that their continued imprisonment is unlawful. In our article, The Constitutional Right to Collateral Post-Conviction Relief, we argued that, under two lines of Supreme Court decisions interpreting the Supremacy …

Envisioning Abolition Democracy, Allegra M. Mcleod

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

For decades, police in Chicago chained people in their custody to the wall in dark, windowless rooms and subjected their captives to beatings, electric shocks, anal rape, and racial abuse. In July 2016, members of the #LetUsBreathe Collective, created in the aftermath of numerous police killings in Chicago and elsewhere, occupied vacant lots adjacent to the Chicago Police Department’s Homan Square facility — one of the locations where such abuse occurred. The Collective sought justice, not through recourse to the criminal courts or civil litigation, but instead by reconceptualizing justice in connection with efforts to end reliance on imprisonment and …

Mental Disorder And Criminal Justice, Stephen J. Morse

All Faculty Scholarship

This paper is a chapter that will appear in REFORMING CRIMINAL JUSTICE: A REPORT OF THE ACADEMY FOR JUSTICE BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN SCHOLARSHIP AND REFORM (Erik Luna ed., Academy for Justice 2018). The criminal law treats some people with severe mental disorders doctrinally and practically differently at virtually every stage of the criminal justice process, beginning with potential incompetence to stand trial and ending with the question of competence to be executed, and such people have special needs when they are in the system. This chapter begins by exploring the fundamental mental health information necessary to make informed judgements …

The Constitutional Right To Collateral Post-Conviction Review, Carlos Manuel Vázquez, Stephen I. Vladeck

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

For years, the prevailing academic and judicial wisdom has held that, between them, Congress and the Supreme Court have rendered post- conviction habeas review all but a dead letter. But in its January 2016 decision in Montgomery v. Louisiana, the Supreme Court may have dramatically upended that understanding in holding—for the first time—that there are at least some cases in which the Constitution itself creates a right to collateral post-conviction review, i.e., cases in which a prisoner seeks to enforce retroactively a “new rule” of substantive constitutional law under the familiar doctrine of Teague v. Lane.

On the …

Ministers Of Justice And Mass Incarceration, Lissa Griffin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Over the past few years, scholars, legislators, and politicians have come to recognize that our current state of “mass incarceration” is the result of serious dysfunction in our criminal justice system. As a consequence, there has been significant attention to the causes of mass incarceration. These include the war on drugs and political decisions based on a “law and order” perspective. Congressional and state legislative enactments increased the financing of the expansion of police powers and provided for severely punitive sentencing statutes, thereby giving prosecutors uniquely powerful weapons in securing guilty pleas. All of this occurred as crime rates dropped. …

Residual Impact: Resentencing Implications Of Johnson's Potential Ruling On Acca's Constitutionality, Leah Litman

Articles

In January 2015, the Supreme Court directed the parties to brief and argue an additional question in Johnson v. United States: “Whether the residual clause in the Armed Career Criminal Act of 1984, 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii), is unconstitutionally vague.” The order represents an unusual move because the defendant had not raised the vagueness issue and the Court issued the order after it had already heard argument on the question raised in the petition for certiorari. Commentators therefore view the order as a signal that the Court will likely invalidate the residual clause. This decision will have been several years …

Substantive Habeas, Kimberly A. Thomas

Articles

Substantive Habeas identifies the US. Supreme Court's recent shift in its habeas jurisprudence from procedure to the substance of habeas review and explores the implications of this change. For decades, the US. Supreme Court has attempted to control the flood of habeas corpus petitions by imposing procedural requirements on prisoners seeking to challenge constitutional error in their cases. These restrictive procedural rules have remained at the center of habeas decision making until recently. Over the past few years, instead of further constraining the procedural gateway for habeas cases, the Supreme Court has shifted its focus to the substance of habeas. …

Human Rights Infringements In Brazil’S Penitentiary System Understood Through Access To Healthcare, Sara Morris

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Brazil has a reputation of being home to some of the worst penitentiary conditions worldwide, eventually leading the United Nations to make an appeal to the Brazilian government in 2003 to analyze their systems and make necessary improvements. The poor conditions and lack of access to legal counsel, living space, and specifically healthcare, cause riots and uprisings within prisons that in the past have lead to death of prisoners and guards. Prisons serve a very specific purpose in society, and according to most social theorists that is to reform, not to torture. In Brazil there is no capital punishment, so …

Effective Trial Counsel After Martinez V. Ryan: Focusing On The Adequacy Of State Procedures, Eve Brensike Primus

Articles

Everyone knows that excessive caseloads, poor funding, and a lack of training plague indigent defense delivery systems throughout the states, such that the promise of Gideon v. Wainwright is largely unfulfilled. Commentators have disagreed about how best to breathe life into Gideon . Many disclaim any possibility that federal habeas corpus review of state criminal cases could catalyze reform give n the many procedural obstacle s that currently prevent state prisoners from getting into federal court. But the Supreme Court has recently taken a renewed interest in using federal habeas review to address the problem of ineffective attorneys in state …

A Crisis In Federal Habeas Law, Eve Brensike Primus

Reviews

Everyone recognizes that federal habeas doctrine is a mess. Despite repeated calls for reform, federal judges continue to waste countless hours reviewing habeas petitions only to dismiss the vast majority of them on procedural grounds. Broad change is necessary, but to be effective, such change must be animated by an overarching theory that explains when federal courts should exercise habeas jurisdiction. In Habeas for the Twenty-First Century: Uses, Abuses, and the Future of the Great Writ, Professors Nancy King and Joseph Hoffmann offer such a theory. Drawing on history, current practice, and empirical data, King and Hoffmann find unifying themes …

The Illusory Right To Counsel, Eve Brensike Primus

Articles

Imagine a woman wrongly accused of murdering her fianc6. She is arrested and charged with first-degree murder. If convicted, she faces a mandatory sentence of life without the possibility of parole. Her family scrapes together enough money to hire two attorneys to represent her at trial. There is no physical evidence connecting her to the murder, but the prosecution builds its case on circumstantial inferences. Her trial attorneys admit that they were so cocky and confident that she would be acquitted that they did not bother to investigate her case or file a single pre-trial motion. Rather, they waived the …

Review Of “Sisters Outside: Radical Activists Working For Women Prisoners, By Jodie Michelle Lawston”, Lisa A. Leitz

Peace Studies Faculty Articles and Research

Book review of Jodie Michelle Lawston's "Sisters Outside: Radical Activists Working for Women Prisoners".

A Structural Vision Of Habeas Corpus, Eve Brensike Primus

Articles

As scholars have recognized elsewhere in public law, there is no hermetic separation between individual rights and structural or systemic processes of governance. To be sure, it is often helpful to focus on a question as primarily implicating one or the other of those categories. But a full appreciation of a structural rule includes an understanding of its relationship to individuals, and individual rights can both derive from and help shape larger systemic practices. The separation of powers principle, for example, is clearly a matter of structure, but much of its virtue rests on its promise to help protect the …

Procedural Obstacles To Reviewing Ineffective Assistance Of Trial Counsel Claims In State And Federal Postconviction Proceedings., Eve Brensike Primus

Articles

Ineffective assistance of trial counsel is one of the most frequently raised claims in state and federal postconviction petitions. This is hardly surprising given reports of trial attorneys who refuse to investigate their cases before trial, never meet with their clients before the day of trial, and fail to file any motions or object to inadmissible evidence offered at trial. Unfortunately, the current structure of indigent defense funding makes it impossible for many public defenders to provide effective representation to their clients.

Managed Health Care In Prisons As Cruel And Unusual Punishment, Ira Robbins

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

INTRODUCTION:Billy Roberts, a prisoner in an Alabama state prison, had a history of severe psychiatric disorders. He was often put on suicide watch, and received large doses of psychotropic drugs. A managed health care company, Correctional Medical Services (CMS), was responsible for the health care at the prison. After Roberts had a suicidal episode, CMS's statewide mental health care director reportedly put Roberts in an isolation cell rather than a psychiatric care unit. The mental health care director also ordered that Roberts' medication be discontinued pursuant to an alleged policy of CMS to get as many prisoners off psycho- tropic …

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.

Hunger Strikes And The State's Right To "Force Feed": Recent Australian Experience, Mark Findlay

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Whether or not it is the nature of the protest itself which makes it unsuitable for resolution in a court-room situation, the case law relating to "hunger strikes" (and State's response) is both sparse and insignificant. Perhaps on the basis of its uniqueness alone, the case of Schneidas v. Corrective Services Commission(New South Wales) and Others should be of particular interest to jurists on both sides of the Irish border.

Legal Aspects Of Prison Riots, Ira Robbins

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Introduction: Riots are a recurrent phenomenon in American prisons. In the 1950s and the early 1970s, major riots erupted in prisons across the country, and many have occurred in the past several years.' Riots will continue to occur as long as the dominant function of prisons is the custodial confinement of inmates. As one commentator explains, "The way to make a strong bomb is to build a strong perimeter and generate pressure inside. Similarly, riots occur where ... pressures and demands are generated in the presence of strong custodial confinement."When such a bomb detonates and a prison riot erupts, a …

Race And Sentencing Equality In Kentucky, Robert L. Hurley

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Disparity in sentencing felons based on racial considerations has long has been considered a problem for civil libertarians and scholars alike. Examining data gathered in Kentucky, this thesis addresses this issue through the application of recently developed methodological techniques. Utilizing an index of sentencing equality, this study shows that while differences do exist in black and white offender offense characteristics, these differences do not account for the variations in sentences rendered in cases of white as opposed to black felons. This exploratory research reviews and critiques previous research and provides evidence which should prove useful in resolving the problem of …