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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Trouble With Time Served, Kimberly Ferzan
The Trouble With Time Served, Kimberly Ferzan
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Every jurisdiction in the United States gives criminal defendants “credit” against their sentence for the time they spend detained pretrial. In a world of mass incarceration and overcriminalization that disproportionately impacts people of color, this practice appears to be a welcome mechanism for mercy and justice. In fact, however, crediting detainees for time served is perverse. It harms the innocent. A defendant who is found not guilty, or whose case is dismissed, gets nothing. Crediting time served also allows the state to avoid internalizing the full costs of pretrial detention, thereby making overinclusive detention standards less expensive. Finally, crediting time …
Misdemeanors By The Numbers, Sandra G. Mayson, Megan T. Stevenson
Misdemeanors By The Numbers, Sandra G. Mayson, Megan T. Stevenson
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Recent scholarship has underlined the importance of criminal misdemeanor law enforcement, including the impact of public-order policing on communities of color, the collateral consequences of misdemeanor arrest or conviction, and the use of misdemeanor prosecution to raise municipal revenue. But despite the fact that misdemeanors represent more than three-quarters of all criminal cases filed annually in the United States, our knowledge of misdemeanor case processing is based mostly on anecdote and extremely localized research. This Article represents the most substantial empirical analysis of misdemeanor case processing to date. Using multiple court-record datasets, covering several million cases across eight diverse jurisdictions, …
Brief Of National Law Professors Of Criminal, Procedural, And Constitutional Law, In Re Humphrey, California Supreme Court, Regarding The Imposition Of Money Bail And Conditions Of Pretrial Release, Sandra G. Mayson, Kellen R. Funk
Brief Of National Law Professors Of Criminal, Procedural, And Constitutional Law, In Re Humphrey, California Supreme Court, Regarding The Imposition Of Money Bail And Conditions Of Pretrial Release, Sandra G. Mayson, Kellen R. Funk
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When the government proposes to incarcerate a person before trial, it must provide thorough justification, whether the mechanism of detention is a transparent detention order or its functional equivalent, the imposition of unaffordable money bail. A court contemplating money bail must determine whether it is likely to result in detention. If so, and the court nonetheless wishes to impose it, the court must find, by clear and convincing evidence established through an adversary hearing, that the unaffordable bail amount serves a compelling interest of the state that no less restrictive condition of release can meet. This will rarely be the …
Pretrial Detention And Bail, Megan Stevenson, Sandra G. Mayson
Pretrial Detention And Bail, Megan Stevenson, Sandra G. Mayson
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Our current pretrial system imposes high costs on both the people who are detained pretrial and the taxpayers who foot the bill. These costs have prompted a surge of bail reform around the country. Reformers seek to reduce pretrial detention rates, as well as racial and socioeconomic disparities in the pretrial system, while simultaneously improving appearance rates and reducing pretrial crime. The current state of pretrial practice suggests that there is ample room for improvement. Bail hearings are often cursory, with no defense counsel present. Money-bail practices lead to high rates of detention even among misdemeanor defendants and those who …
The Downstream Consequences Of Misdemeanor Pretrial Detention, Paul Heaton, Sandra G. Mayson, Megan Stevenson
The Downstream Consequences Of Misdemeanor Pretrial Detention, Paul Heaton, Sandra G. Mayson, Megan Stevenson
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In misdemeanor cases, pretrial detention poses a particular problem because it may induce otherwise innocent defendants to plead guilty in order to exit jail, potentially creating widespread error in case adjudication. While practitioners have long recognized this possibility, empirical evidence on the downstream impacts of pretrial detention on misdemeanor defendants and their cases remains limited. This Article uses detailed data on hundreds of thousands of misdemeanor cases resolved in Harris County, Texas — the third largest county in the U.S. — to measure the effects of pretrial detention on case outcomes and future crime. We find that detained defendants are …
Criminal Justice And (A) Catholic Conscience, Leo E. Strine Jr.
Criminal Justice And (A) Catholic Conscience, Leo E. Strine Jr.
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This article is one person's reflections on how an important influence on his own sense of moral values -- Jesus Christ -- affects his thinking about his own approach to his role as a public official in a secular society, using the vital topic of criminal justice as a focal point. This article draws several important lessons from Christ's teachings about the concept of the other that are relevant to issues of criminal justice. Using Catholicism as a framework, this article addresses, among other things, capital punishment and denying the opportunity for redemption; the problem of racial disparities in the …
Neuroprediction: New Technology, Old Problems, Stephen J. Morse
Neuroprediction: New Technology, Old Problems, Stephen J. Morse
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Neuroprediction is the use of structural or functional brain or nervous system variables to make any type of prediction, including medical prognoses and behavioral forecasts, such as an indicator of future dangerous behavior. This commentary will focus on behavioral predictions, but the analysis applies to any context. The general thesis is that using neurovariables for prediction is a new technology, but that it raises no new ethical issues, at least for now. Only if neuroscience achieves the ability to “read” mental content will genuinely new ethical issues be raised, but that is not possible at present.