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Full-Text Articles in Law
Unshackling Plea Bargaining From Racial Bias, Elayne E. Greenberg
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 …
Nearsighted And Colorblind: The Perspective Problems Of Police Deadly Force Cases, Jelani Jefferson Exum
Nearsighted And Colorblind: The Perspective Problems Of Police Deadly Force Cases, Jelani Jefferson Exum
Faculty Publications
In dealing with the recently publicized instances of police officers' use of deadly force, some reform efforts have been focused on the entities that are central to the successful prosecutions of police–the prosecutor and the grand jury. Some have suggested special, independent prosecutors for these cases so that the process of deciding whether to seek charges against police officers remains untainted by the necessary cooperative relationship between the police department and the prosecutor's office. Others have urged more transparency in the grand jury process so that the public can scrutinize a prosecutor's efforts in presenting evidence for an indictment. Still …
From Rapists To Superpredators: What The Practice Of Capital Punishment Says About Race, Rights And The American Child, Robyn Linde
Faculty Publications
At the turn of the 20th century, the United States was widely considered to be a world leader in matters of child protection and welfare, a reputation lost by the century’s end. This paper suggests that the United States’ loss of international esteem concerning child welfare was directly related to its practice of executing juvenile offenders. The paper analyzes why the United States continued to carry out the juvenile death penalty after the establishment of juvenile courts and other protections for child criminals. Two factors allowed the United States to continue the juvenile death penalty after most states in …