Law Commons^™

Bargaining Without The Blindfold: Adapting Criminal Discovery Practice To A Plea-Based System, Alex Karambelas

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

In 2015, Terrell Gills was arrested on charges related to a Dunkin’ Donuts robbery in Queens, based on a partial DNA match. His attorney’s investigation yielded news articles about two other Dunkin’ Donuts robberies in the same area, which took place in the same week. In the eighteen months following his arraignment, Mr. Gills was incarcerated at Rikers Island because he was unable to afford his $10,000 bail. During that period, Mr. Gills’s attorney made repeated requests for information related to the other two robberies. It was not until four days before trial that the prosecution disclosed reports from …

Can A Person's "Slate" Ever Really Be "Cleaned"? The Modern-Day Implications Of Pennsylvania's Clean Slate Act, Kimberly E. Capuder

St. John's Law Review

(Exceprt)

In 2006, Khalia was arrested for a “low-level counterfeiting charge.” While Khalia was innocent and never convicted for the charged offense, she still had a criminal record. Because she was concerned that future employers would “view her as a thief,” she never applied to any of her dream jobs. But once Khalia’s arrest record was automatically sealed, she finally had enough confidence to send in a job application to a prestigious consulting firm, and was offered the position. Khalia believes that her newly sealed criminal record “means a future without judgment.” And this future without judgment was made possible …

Revoking Supervised Release In The Age Of Legal Cannabis, Zachary J. Weiner

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Supervised release—part of the original sentence following a guilty verdict—is a system by which federal probation officers monitor prisoners released from federal prison. In imposing supervised release, sentencing judges set conditions that each supervisee must comply with, or risk reincarceration at the discretion of the sentencing judge. Certain conditions of supervised release are prescribed by statute and others are crafted by judges.

If a defendant violates the terms of supervised release by possessing cannabis products, the statutory regime provides the sentencing judge with two options: revoke the defendant’s supervised release and reincarcerate her or, alternatively, release the defendant from …

Reversing The Evils Of Federal Mandatory Minimum Sentences: Is Clemency The Only Answer?, Melissa Johnson

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

Thirty-five years ago, Alice Marie Johnson lived a full life. She was a wife, a mother of five children, and a manager at FedEx. Then divorce, the death of one of her children, and job loss shattered her world. Ms. Johnson was able to find employment as a factory worker, a role which paid only a fraction of her former salary and was insufficient to support her children. Desperate and burdened, she became a telephone mule for drug dealers. She was instructed to “pass phone messages [and] [w]hen people came to town . . . [to tell] them what …

Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy: Mental Disease Or Defect That Can Trigger A Successful Criminal Defense, Thomas Mosczczynski

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

When he was a child, he was called kind, gentle and even sweet. He started playing football at a young age that ripened into a successful high school career that lasted from 2004 to 2007. He was a dominant force on the gridiron under the Friday night lights as he played both offense and defense—rarely missing a play. College scouts took notice, and suddenly, the world was his oyster. A small-town kid from Bristol, Connecticut became the talk of college recruiters across the country. In 2007, a year after the death of his father, the quiet kid from Bristol …

When Public Defenders And Prosecutors Plea Bargain Race – A More Truthful Narrative, Elayne E. Greenberg

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

This paper challenges prevailing stereotypes about public defenders and prosecutors and updates those stereotypes with a more accurate narrative about how reform-minded public defenders and prosecutors can plea bargain race to yield more equitable justice outcomes.

I was invited to the discussion about criminal justice reform in plea bargaining, because of my work in dispute resolution, dispute system design, and discrimination. Plea bargaining is a justice system negotiation that is used in upwards of 97% of criminal case dispositions. Unlike many of my colleagues in criminal justice reform who have also had years of experience working in the criminal …

Victims, Right?, Anna Roberts

Faculty Publications

In criminal contexts, a “victim” is typically defined as someone who has been harmed by a crime. Yet the word commonly appears in legal contexts that precede the adjudication of whether a crime has occurred. Each U.S. state guarantees “victims’ rights,” including many that apply pre-adjudication; ongoing “Marsy’s Law” efforts seek to expand and constitutionalize them nationwide. At trial, advocates, judges, and jury instructions employ this word even though the existence or not of crime (and thus of a crime victim) is a central question to be decided. This usage matters in part because of its possible consequences: it risks …

Unshackling Plea Bargaining From Racial Bias, Elayne E. Greenberg

Faculty Publications

“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, [but] if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”

Dr. Maya Angelou

When an African American male defendant tries to plea bargain an equitable justice outcome, he finds that the deep-rooted racial bias that casts African American men as dangerous, criminal and animalistic, compromises his justice rights. Plea bargaining has become the preferred process used to secure convictions for upwards of 97 percent of cases because of its efficiency. This efficiency, however, comes at a cost. The structure and process of plea bargaining makes it more likely that the historical racial …