Law Commons^™

Texas Law's Life Or Death Rule In Capital Sentencing: Scrutinizing Eight Amendment Violations And The Case Of Juan Guerrero, Jr., John Niland, Riddhi Dasgupta

St. Mary's Law Journal

The United States Supreme Court has never explained the Eighth Amendment’s impact in noncapital cases involving a mentally retarded or brain-injured defendant. The Court has not provided guidance to legislatures or lower courts concerning the acceptable balancing of aggravating and mitigating factors and the role that mitigating factors must play in the sentencing decision. A definitive gap exists between the protections afforded to a criminal defendant facing a life sentence as opposed to those confronted with the death penalty. The Court requires sentencing procedures to consider aggravating and mitigating factors, including mental retardation and brain damage, when imposing a death …

A Witness To Justice, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

In the 1988 film The Accused, a young woman named Sarah Tobias is gang raped on a pinball machine by three men while a crowded bar watches. The rapists cut a deal with the prosecutor. Sarah's outrage at the deal convinces the assistant district attorney to prosecute members of the crowd that cheered on and encouraged the rape. This film shows how Sarah Tobias, a woman with little means and less experience, intuits that according to the law rape victims are incredible witnesses to their own victimization. The film goes on to critique what the right kind of witness would …

Danforth, Retroactivity, And Federalism, J. Thomas Sullivan

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

It's About Time: The Need For A Uniform Approach To Using A Prior Conviction To Impact A Witness., Robert F. Holland

St. Mary's Law Journal

In Texas, no uniform approach exists in determining whether to admit evidence of a prior conviction as a technique to impeach a witness. This lack of uniformity leads to significant consequences for the parties and poses a potential prejudicial effect on the truthful character of a witness. Furthermore, there is currently no bright-line judicial standard when evaluating the admissibility of certain prior convictions. Although the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in Theus v. State provided a non-exhaustive set of factors for trial judges to consider, the court has yet to clarify particular aspects of how to properly apply Texas Rule …

The Castle Doctrine: An Expanding Right To Stand Your Ground Comment., Denise M. Drake

St. Mary's Law Journal

Recently, the Texas Legislature passed Senate Bill 378 effectively terminating a person’s “duty to retreat” when confronted with a criminal attack of either great bodily injury or death. Complicated issues of innocence and guilt arise when one employs deadly force as a means of self-defense. Furthermore, tragic mistakes occur when people preemptively resort to deadly force before the realization of such a threat. Societal questions still exist concerning the possibility that self-defense will turn into self-justice. Critics argue the law encourages a vigilante society, substituting law enforcement help with self-justice. Conversely, supporters believe the bill serves as a deterrent from …

A Meaningless Relationship: The Fifth Circuit's Use Of Dismissed And Uncharged Conduct Under The Federal Sentencing Guidelines Recent Development., Erin A. Higginbotham

St. Mary's Law Journal

The Fifth Circuit’s failure to require the uncharged conduct to have a meaningful relationship with the conduct of conviction is flawed. An amendment of section 5K2.21 specifically approved the consideration of uncharged or dismissed offenses to serve as a basis for an upward departure to reflect the actual seriousness of the offense. Confusion amongst federal circuit courts of appeal arose as to whether such conduct included uncharged or dismissed criminal offenses. Interpreting the amendment’s language has caused a circuit split. The Fifth Circuit erroneously interpreted section 5K2.21 as to require nothing more than a “remote connection” between the uncharged crime …

The “Csi Effect”: Better Jurors Through Television And Science?, Michael D. Mann

ExpressO

This Comment discusses how television shows such as CSI and Law & Order create heightened juror expectations. This will be published in the Buffalo Public Interest Law Journal's 2005-2006 issue.

On The Potential Of Neuroscience: A Comment On Greene And Cohen’S "For The Law, Neuroscience Changes Nothing And Everything", Theodore Y. Blumoff

ExpressO

In a recent article, Joshua Greene and Jonathan Cohen add their voices to an emerging discussion about the place of neuroscience in law and social policy. They argue convincingly that new data from the developing field of neuroscience will dramatically and positively change our legal system. I agree with their conclusions, but I believe that their commitment to a kind of neuroscientific determinism or essentialism is wrong, unnecessary, and even dangerous; it would move law in a direction that eliminates ongoing, normative decision-making. In the essay I have attached, I first set the stage by discussing the commitment of our …

Role-Based Policing: Restraining Police Conduct “Outside The Legitimate Investigative Sphere”, Eric J. Miller

ExpressO

The last quarter of a century has produced a growing legitimacy crisis in the criminal justice system arising from profound and familiar differences in race and class. The same tactics used to win the War on Crime also harassed and intimidated the very people policing was supposed to protect, sending disproportionate numbers of young minority men and women to prison as part of War On Drugs.

In this article, I take up challenge of social norms theorists who advocate empowering police and local communities through a variety of traditional and newly minted public order offenses. My claim is that the …

Fair Notice And Fair Adjudication: Two Kinds Of Legality, Paul H. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

We distinguish our form of government and our legal system from others by our commitment to the rule of law. In the criminal law, in particular, this commitment is aggressively enforced through a series of doctrines that taken together demand a prior legislative enactment of a prohibition expressed with precision and clarity, traditionally bannered as the legality principle. But it is argued in this article that the traditional legality principle analysis conflates two distinct issues: one relating to the ex ante need for fair notice, the other to the ex post concern for fair adjudication. There are in fact two …

Aboilishing The Texas Jury Shuffle., Michael M. Gallgher

St. Mary's Law Journal

This Article argues that the Texas Legislature should abolish the jury shuffle and join the other forty-nine states who have already done so. The jury shuffle, when requested, is a procedure which results in a random shuffling of the names of the jury pool members. Texas attorneys currently possess an entirely cost and risk free procedure through which they can discriminate against potential jurors on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity, or anything else that suits their fancy. An attorney can request a jury shuffle without stating a reason and a judge cannot ask why a shuffle was requested or …

Hines 57: The Catchall Case To The Texas Kidnapping Statute., Karen Bartlett

St. Mary's Law Journal

This Recent Development asserts that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals’ refusal to define “substantial interference” in relation to the kidnapping statute, opens the floodgates for every act of confinement or movement committed in the course of a substantive offense constituting kidnapping. The Court maintains it is up to the jury to define the term. If the Texas Legislature does not narrowly define the kidnapping statute, virtually every assault, robbery, sexual assault, and some murders will constitute both the substantive offense plus kidnapping. Furthermore, such logic would in effect bootstrap murder into capital murder, which happened in Herrin v. State. …

Stranded In The Wastelands Of Unregulated Roadway Police Powers: Can Reasonable Officers Ever Rescue Us., Keith S. Hampton

St. Mary's Law Journal

This Article describes the present state of roadway police power and explores the vulnerability of drivers and occupants to police abuse, specifically using pretextual stops. Today, state and federal courts have made many police power accommodations to the constitutional reasonableness requirement. Current Fourth Amendment jurisprudence justifies almost all conceivable police seizures of people in vehicles. If the police officer can point out any traffic law violation, he can arrest. And if he can arrest under those circumstances, then the already blurred line between detentions and arrest becomes inconsequential, constitutionally speaking. This Article proposes that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals …

Righting Victim Wrongs: Responding To Philosophical Criticisms Of The Nonspecific Victim Liability Defense, Aya Gruber

Publications

Modern criminal law is intensely one-sided in its treatment of victims and defendants. Crime victims and criminal defendants do not enter the trial process on an equal moral footing. Rather, from the beginning victims are assumed blameless, truthful, and even beyond doubt, while defendants are guilty, not worthy of credence, and immoral. This one-sided view of victims, however, is a fiction. As any other people, victims differ in their characterizations. Some are indeed trustworthy, truthful, blameless and ultimately innocent. Others, however, are bad actors themselves, have memory failures, falsely identify, provoke, and even lie. Some victims are in fact, and …

Victim Wrongs: The Case For A General Criminal Defense Based On Wrongful Victim Behavior In An Era Of Victims' Rights, Aya Gruber

Publications

Criminal law scholarship is rife with analysis of the victims' rights movement. Many articles identify with the outrage of victims harmed by deviant criminal elements. Other scholarly pieces criticize the movement's denuding of defendants' constitutional trial rights. The point upon which proponents and opponents of the movement tend to agree, however, is that the victim should never be blamed for the crime. The helpless, harmed, innocent victim is someone with whom we can all identify and someone to whom we can all express sympathy. Victim blaming, by all accounts, is an act of legal heresy to feminists, victim advocates, and …

Appeals From Pleas Of Guilty And Nolo Contendere: History And Procedural Considerations., Kevin Yeary

St. Mary's Law Journal

The changing history of appeal rights—made through decisional interpretation by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals—highlights the importance of staying current on interpretations of procedural and substantive rules. Lawyers owe their clients a duty to understand the history of the right to appeal from a conviction following a guilty plea. Additionally, they owe their clients a duty to understand substantive and procedural requirements for maintaining such appeals, as well as to stay abreast of changes affecting these appeals. Recently, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals handed down several opinions drastically reshaping the landscape for appeals following pleas of guilty and …

Foreword: Is Justice Just Us?, Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This is a review of JUSTICE, LIABILITY AND BLAME, by Paul Robinson and John Darley. The book is a summary of 18 studies which surveyed lay subjects about their attitudes toward various aspects of criminal law doctrine, including the act requirement for attempt, omission liability, accomplice liability, the felony-murder role, and the intoxication and insanity defenses. In virtually every study, the authors found that the subjects disagreed with the Model Penal Code's position, the common law's position, or both. The authors contend that results of surveys such as theirs should play a significant role in designing criminal doctrine, both because …

Dead Man Talking: Competing Narratives And Effective Representation In Capital Cases Essay., Jeffrey J. Pokorak

St. Mary's Law Journal

As Karl Hammond’s case indicates, to serve justice, balance between the Kill Story and Human Story is necessary in a capital trial. This Essay seeks, through deconstruction of Karl Hammond’s case, to identify and illustrate the values of telling these combating stories. Part III describes the Kill Story and the Human Story in Karl’s case from the record of his trial, appeals, and petitions. Part III also demonstrates how the failure to tell one side of the story in either the guilt-innocence phase or the punishment phase can have a prejudicial effect on the jury’s decision. Part IV then discusses …

Ex Post Facto Laws: Supreme Court New York County People V. Griffin (Decided December 5, 1996

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Use Of A Pen Register May Be A Search Within The Purview Of Article I, Section 9 Of The Texas Constitution., Angie Patrick

St. Mary's Law Journal

In Richardson v. State, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted Richardson’s second petition for discretionary review to determine whether law enforcement’s use of a pen register constitutes a search. The use of a pen register may be a search within the purview of Article I, Section 9 of the Texas Constitution. Courts use the reasonable-expectation-of-privacy test, from Katz v. United States, to determine whether a search has occurred under the Fourth Amendment. In Richardson, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reviewed whether the use of a pen register equates to a search despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s determination in …

Trying To Make Ends Meet: Reconciling The Law And Practice Of Human Rights Amnesties Symposium - Human Rights In The Americas - Commentary., Robert O. Weiner

St. Mary's Law Journal

The problem of amnesty for widespread human rights violations in the Americas illustrates the credibility gap in public international law. This Commentary reviews applicable standards and attempts to identify a minimum state response to past human rights violations. It also examines the question of amnesties, offers certain legal interpretations, and presents some criteria for an amnesty framework which might be reconcilable with the state’s international obligations. This Commentary’s aim is not to suggest amnesties are a proper response to the problem of past human rights abuses, however, it does acknowledge amnesties have so far been the most common response. It …

A Functional Analysis Of Criminal Law, Paul H. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

The criminal law has three primary functions. First, it must define and announce the conduct that is prohibited (or required) by the criminal law. Such rules of conduct, as they have been called, provide ex ante direction to members of the community as to the conduct that must be avoided (or that must be performed) upon pain of criminal sanction. This may be termed the rule articulation function of the doctrine. When a violation of the rules of conduct occurs, the criminal law takes on a different role. It must decide whether the violation merits criminal liability. This second function, …

The Role Of Harm And Evil In Criminal Law: A Study In Legislative Deception?, Paul H. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

What is the role of the occurrence of harm or evil in criminal law? What should it be? Answers to these questions commonly use the distinction between what is called an objective and a subjective view of criminality. To oversimplify, the objective view maintains that the occurrence of the harm or evil defined by the offense is highly relevant. The subjectivist view maintains that such harm or evil is irrelevant; only the actor's culpable state of mind regarding the occurrence of the harm or evil is important. The labels tend to overstate a rather subtle distinction. The objectivist or harmful …

Legitimating The Illegitimate: A Comment On 'Beyond Rape', Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Professor Dripps's provocative proposal, as I understand it, is that we think of sex as a commodity and rape as the theft of that commodity. Understood as such, the theft of sex accomplished through violence or the threat of violence is a twofold wrong: it violates our "negative" right to refuse to have sex with anyone for any or no reason, and violence or the threat of violence infringes our right to personal, physical security. Therefore, the violent expropriation of sex should be punished as a major felony, as is violent rape, at least in theory.

Furthermore, according to Dripps, …

Use Of Excessive Physical Force Against An Inmate May Constitute Cruel And Unusual Punishment Even Though The Prisoner Does Not Suffer Significant Injury., Anthony A. Avey

St. Mary's Law Journal

In Hudson v. McMillian, the Supreme Court held that use of excessive physical force against an inmate may constitute cruel and unusual punishment even though the prisoner does not suffer any significant injury. The Eighth Amendment has evolved significantly since its adoption in 1791, becoming a complex line of authority which over time expanded the rights of criminals and convicts. Recent cases have attempted to mold the varying Eight Amendment standards into a more cohesive legal doctrine. These efforts were meant to clarify the doctrine of cruel and unusual punishments; however, the divergent interpretations of these decisions rendered Eighth Amendment …

Heitman V. State: The Question Left Unanswered., Matthew W. Paul, Jeffrey L. Van Horn

St. Mary's Law Journal

In Heitman v. State, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals appeared to break with the court’s prior holdings to announce it would no longer “automatically adopt and apply” to the search and seizure provisions of the Texas Constitution “the Supreme Court’s interpretations of the Fourth Amendment.” The reaction to Heitman was immediate and striking. Heitman is obviously a significant decision that could impact Texas criminal jurisprudence for decades. Yet, the decision left many questions unanswered, including whether the search and seizure provision should be construed as placing greater restrictions on law enforcement than the Fourth Amendment of the United States …

The Scope Of The Eighth Amendment Does Not Include A Per Se Bar To The Use Of Victim Impact Evidence In The Sentencing Phase Of A Capital Trial., Jimmie O. Clements Jr.

St. Mary's Law Journal

In Payne v. Tennessee, the United States Supreme Court held the scope of the Eighth Amendment does not include a per se bar to the use of victim impact evidence in the sentencing phase of a capital trial. As a result of Payne, the realm of information admissible during the sentencing phase of a capital trial now includes victim impact evidence. The use of victim impact evidence improperly diverts the sentencer’s attention away from the defendant’s moral blameworthiness to the victim’s character and reputation. Although advocates of victim’s rights may see this decision as a victory, the reasoning of the …

Equality Theory, Marital Rape, And The Promise Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

During the 1980s a handful of state judges either held or opined in dicta what must be incontrovertible to the feminist community, as well as to most progressive legal advocates and academics: the so-called marital rape exemption, whether statutory or common law in origin, constitutes a denial of a married woman's constitutional right to equal protection under the law. Indeed, a more obvious denial of equal protection is difficult to imagine: the marital rape exemption denies married women protection against violent crime solely on the basis of gender and marital status. What possibly could be less rational than a statute …

Causing The Conditions Of One's Own Defense: A Study In The Limits Of Theory In Criminal Law Doctrine, Paul H. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

One widely-stated goal of criminal law theory is to create the set of rules that best implements our collective sense of justice. To reach this goal, the theorist continuously adjusts his theory so that it generates rules that better reflect our fundamental notions of justice. These rules, moreover, must function as workable doctrine, which in the context of criminal law means precise statutory provisions. It is this process of theoretical refinement and translation that is the topic of this article. Can good theory generate results that approximate our collective sense of justice? Can the theoretical refinements be translated into workable …

Ignorance And Mistake In The Criminal Law, Edwin Roulette Keedy

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.