Law Commons^™

Whom Do Prosecutors Protect?, Vida Johnson

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Prosecutors regard themselves as public servants who fight crime and increase community safety on behalf of their constituents. But prosecutors do not only seek to protect those they are supposed to serve. Instead, prosecutors often trade community safety, privacy, and even the constitutional rights of the general public to enlarge police power. Prosecutors routinely advocate for weaker public rights, shield police from public accountability, and fail to prosecute police when they break the law.

This Article will show how prosecutors often protect police at the expense of the public. This Article suggests a novel theory of evaluating the conduct of …

Reforming Competence Restoration Statutes: An Outpatient Model, Susan A. Mcmahon

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Defendants who suffer from mental illness and are found incompetent to stand trial are often ordered committed to an inpatient mental health facility to restore their competence, even if outpatient care may be the better treatment option. Inpatient facilities are overcrowded and place the defendants on long waiting lists. Some defendants then spend weeks, months, or even years in their jail cell, waiting for a transfer to a hospital bed.

Outpatient competence restoration programs promise to relieve this pressure. But even if every state suddenly opened a robust outpatient competence restoration program, an obstacle looms: the statutes governing competence restoration, …

Some Themes In The Proposed Federal Rules Of Evidence, Paul F. Rothstein

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Although the Federal Rules of Evidence are under consideration by Congress, it is unlikely that many of their major themes will be reversed. The present article examines some of these themes as they appear in the Supreme Court-approved draft. The aim is merely to make more explicit the effects of the Rules and suggest some questions for study.

The Second Circuit Review: Ix. Evidence: Introduction, Paul F. Rothstein

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The past year's developments in the law of evidence have been characterized by a hardening attitude toward criminal defendants. The United States Supreme Court's evidentiary rulings during the term covered by the Second Circuit Review (1971-72) manifested this trend (although not uniformly). For example, police stop-and-frisk authority was broadened (and with it the use of evidence obtained therefrom); the scope of the immunity from criminal prosecution required to be granted by a governmental body before self-incriminatory statements can be compelled from a witness was narrowed; the right to have counsel at line-ups was limited to postindictment or post-charge line-ups (with …