Law Commons^™

Falling Away Into Disease: Disability-Deviance Narratives In American Crime Control, Matt Saleh

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Who in society is predisposed to crime? Many of us are familiar with cultural narratives that trace criminal behavior to some cognitive defect in the perpetrator. For instance, we might recall the persistent media allusions to Adam Lanza’s Asperger Syndrome after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, despite evidence that individuals on the autism spectrum are, on average, not more likely, and are quite possibly less likely, to commit serious crime in their lifetime. Similarly, popular narratives about the relationship between “mental illness” and violence are pervasive, despite the broad meaning of the terminology and a deeply-misunderstood …

Race, Class, And Second Chances: The Impact Of Multiple Identities On Reentry And Reintegration, S. David Mitchell

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Race, class, and other identities directly impact the process of reentry and the successful reintegration back into society for individuals who have had prior involvement in the criminal justice system. Collectively, persons convicted of a crime face numerous legal barriers that interfere with or prevent successful reentry and reintegration back into society, such as being prevented from securing housing and obtaining employment among other collateral consequences. For many, the process of reentry and reintegration is made even more difficult because of prior discriminatory policies and practices that were based solely on demographic factors, some of which are innate or …

You Have The Right To Remain Powerless: Deprivation Of Agency By Law Enforcement And The Legal And Carceral Systems, Marco Maldonado, Michael Onah, Jennifer Merrigan

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

The charges against Philadelphia Police Officer Phillip Nordo read like an episode of The Shield. The grand jury presentment, should you have the stomach for it, is closer to Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. For over twenty years, Officer Nordo groomed, sexually assaulted, and used crime reward funds to pay off vulnerable men in Philadelphia. Whether in his transport van, prison visiting rooms, or police interrogation rooms, he regularly exploited his unfettered access to and absolute control over vulnerable individuals. Though he was not convicted until 2022, the communities he stalked and preyed upon knew exactly …

Categorically Caged: The Case For Extending Early Release Eligibility To Inmates With Violent Offense Convictions, Jenna M. Codignotto

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Susan Farrell faced both physical and sexual abuse from her husband before he was killed in 1989. Although Ms. Farrell maintained her innocence and urged that it was her son who killed her husband, she was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy charges, resulting in a life sentence without parole. After serving thirty years of her sentence at the Michigan Department of Corrections, Ms. Farrell’s tragic life met a no less tragic end. In April 2020, one month after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, Ms. Farrell seized in her cell for forty-five minutes before dying from the virus. She …

Righting The Wrongfully Convicted: How Kansas's New Exoneree Compensation Statute Sets A Standard For The United States, Scott Connolly

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Part I of this Note will document the increasing prevalence of exonerations and provide a perspective on how significantly the landscape of postconviction justice has developed since the late 1980s. Such developments include DNA testing, greater awareness of false confessions, and a more thorough understanding of the unreliability of eyewitnesses. Part II will demonstrate the devastating impact that wrongful imprisonment has on exonerees. Finally, Part III of this Note will provide a snapshot of the current landscape of exoneree compensation laws. It will highlight the fact that many of the laws that exist do not provide sufficient resources and …

Stingray Cell-Site Simulator Surveillance And The Fourth Amendment In The Twenty-First Century: A Review Of The Fourth Amendment In An Age Of Surveillance, And Unwarranted, Harvey Gee

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

This Review discusses two timely and insightful books examining the changing relationship between privacy and the Fourth Amendment in the digital era. Part I discusses the tensions between the need to protect privacy rights and the slowly evolving legal landscape during a time of rapidly changing technology, to introduce David Gray’s The Fourth Amendment in an Age of Surveillance. His book explains how the Fourth Amendment, though embattled, can have a prominent role in twenty-first century discussions of privacy, technology, and surveillance. Gray’s analysis is engaged to broaden the conversation about Stingray technology. This section analyzes a sampling of …

To Knock Or Not To Knock? No-Knock Warrants And Confrontational Policing, Brian Dolan

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

This Note proceeds in three parts. Part I begins by explaining what no-knock warrants are and why they are used. Part I then addresses recent state legislative efforts to reform no-knock warrant use and argues that these efforts, however well-intentioned, are insufficient. Part I will also provide a brief history of how no-knock warrant use developed and gives an overview of the current status of state law regarding no-knock warrants. Part II argues that, contrary to the arguments of no-knock proponents, elimination of no-knock warrants and strict adherence to the knock-and-announce requirement is a more effective way to ensure …

Locked Up, Shut Up: Why Speech In Prison Matters, Evan Bianchi, David Shapiro

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

This Article proceeds in three Parts. Part I describes the deferential Turner standard that governs First Amendment claims brought by prisoners. Virtually every word uttered or written to a prisoner and virtually every word uttered or written by a prisoner receives extremely limited legal protection. Largely as a result of this legal regime, senseless censorship is all too common in American prisons. Jailers and prison officials seem to have received the message that they can ban speech with impunity.

Part II argues that the combination of Turner deference and mass incarceration divests prisoners of expressive power, thereby distorting public …

Fragmenting The Community: Immigration Enforcement And The Unintended Consequences Of Local Police Non-Cooperation Policies, Natashia Tidwell

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Part I traces the historical roots of the relationship between local police and federal immigration authorities, beginning with the changes in enforcement strategy precipitated by the September 11, 2001 attacks and leading up to the launch of S-Comm. The federal government's increased reliance on local police to supplement its internal enforcement efforts has raised several Tenth Amendment concerns as the states struggle to define the proper scope of their "inherent authority" to act in immigration matters, with officials in some so-called sanctuary cities insisting that their inherent authority to enforce federal immigration law is commensurate with the sovereign right …