Law Commons^™

Judicial Resistance To New York's 2020 Criminal Legal Reforms, Angelo Petrigh

Faculty Scholarship

Scholars have examined judiciaries as organizations with their own culture and considered how this organizational culture can form a significant impediment to the implementation of reforms.²² There is a strong connection between judicial culture and a reform’s ability to accomplish its stated goals. Some go so far as to state that most reforms will fail because of the difficulty in altering judicial culture.²³ These studies sometimes focus on legislators misunderstanding the actual effects of legislation when it was drafted, or on the failure to account for particularities in a law’s implementation by undervaluing the fragmentation, adversarial nature, and …

Imagining The Progressive Prosecutor, Benjamin Levin

Publications

As criminal justice reform has attracted greater public support, a new brand of district attorney candidate has arrived: the “progressive prosecutors.” Commentators increasingly have keyed on “progressive prosecutors” as offering a promising avenue for structural change, deserving of significant political capital and academic attention. This Essay asks an unanswered threshold question: what exactly is a “progressive prosecutor”? Is that a meaningful category at all, and if so, who is entitled to claim the mantle? In this Essay, I argue that “progressive prosecutor” means many different things to many different people. These differences in turn reveal important fault lines in academic …

Prosecuting In The Shadow Of The Jury, Anna Offit

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This article offers an unprecedented empirical window into prosecutorial discretion drawing on long-term participatory research between 2013 and 2017. The central finding is that jurors play a vital role in federal prosecutors’ decision-making, professional identities, and formulations of justice. This is because even the remote possibility of lay scrutiny creates an opening for prosecutors to make common sense assessments of (1) the evidence in their cases, (2) the character of witnesses, defendants and victims, and (3) their own moral and professional character as public servants. By facilitating explicit consideration of the fairness of their cases from a public vantage point, …

Hearsay And The Confrontation Clause, Lynn Mclain

All Faculty Scholarship

This speech was delivered to the Wicomico Co. Bar Association on October 28th, 2016. It is an updated version of the 2012 speech, available at http://scholarworks.law.ubalt.edu/all_fac/924/ .

Overview: Only an out-of-court statement ("OCS") offered for the truth of the matter that was being asserted by the out-of-court declarant ("declarant") at the time when s/he made the OCS ("TOMA") = hearsay ("HS"). If evidence is not HS, the HS rule cannot exclude it. The Confrontation Clause also applies only to HS, but even then, only to its subcategory comprising "testimonial hearsay." Cross-references to "MD-EV" are to section numbers of L. MCLAIN, …

Making Juvenile Justice More Humane And Effective, Julie Ellen Mcconnell

Law Faculty Publications

Long commutes, high costs and too much time away from family are among the most common frustration for workers in Virginia. But while those annoyances may be tolerable when it comes to our daily commutes, they have become an unfortunate feature of Virginia’s youth justice system, which confines hundreds of youth in large institutions far from their homes.

When young people have regular visits with their family and other members of the community, they have a much higher chance of being rehabilitated and successfully returning to those communities. Currently, many incarcerated youth in Virginia are held far from their families, …

Taser Time: Electroshock Injustice Coming Soon To Athens-Clarke County, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

Popular Media

On Sunday, Apr. 19, 2015, an article in the daily newspaper in Athens announced that Athens-Clarke County Police have already received a shipment of 145 tasers and will soon begin using them on the citizenry of this county.

Although taser electroshock devices are technically classified as nonlethal weapons, this means only that their purpose is to avoid fatalities, not that they are incapable of resulting in fatalities. Use of a nonlethal weapon may and sometimes does result in death or serious injury. In recent years, at least 600 Americans, perhaps as many as 1,000, have died suddenly, unexpectedly, or shortly …

The Expanding Use Of The Res Gestae Doctrine, H. Patrick Furman, Ann England

Publications

This article provides a brief history of the doctrine of res gestae and an analysis of its current usage in both Colorado state and federal courts.

Turning Jails Into Prisons—Collateral Damage From Kentucky's War On Crime, Robert G. Lawson

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The primary purpose of this article is to scrutinize Kentucky's ever-increasing reliance on local jails for the incarceration of state prisoners. This objective cannot be achieved without an examination of the problems that compel counties and cities to allow (and even encourage) the state to capture their jails for this use. The first half of the article (Parts I-IV) provides general information about jails (including some pertinent history), contains a detailed description of jail functions (including some that have descended upon jails by default), and concludes with a discussion of what the state has done over two decades to convert …

Evidence: Survey Of Recent Developments In Indiana Law, J. Alexander Tanford

Articles by Maurer Faculty

With rare exceptions, Indiana evidence law progresses slowly and holds closely to the traditional concepts of the common law. This Survey Article collects the several important cases decided during the past year that continue this development of Indiana's common law of evidence. A general word of caution is in order concerning the Indiana appellate courts' evidence cases. Most evidence issues arise in criminal cases, in which convicted defendants allege error in the admission of evidence against them or in the exclusion of evidence offered in their defense. A ruling in favor of the defendant could result in the reversal of …

Mens Rea And The Colorado Criminal Code, Marianne Wesson

Publications

No abstract provided.

Florida's Legislative Response To Furman: An Exercise In Futility?, Charles W. Ehrhardt, Harold Levinson

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Capital Punishment In Florida: Analysis And Recommendations, Charles W. Ehrhardt, Phillip A. Hubbart, Harold Levinson, William Mckinley Smiley, Thomas A. Wills

Scholarly Publications

The Supreme Court's decision abolishing the death penalty, at least as it existed in most jurisdictions, hardly represents the final resolution of the controversy over capital punishment. Given substantial public sentiment which apparently favors capital punishment in some form-voiced, for example, in the results of the recent referendum in California-various legislative bodies will face the question of whether capital punishment can and should be legislatively reinstated. In December 1972 the State of Florida became the first jurisdiction to pass judgment on this question. The legislature enacted a bill allowing imposition of the death penalty in certain circumstances. The two articles …

Criminal Law Notes: The Uniform Controlled Substance Act Of 1973 -- A Hiatus In Criminal Law, F. Thomas Schornhorst

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Ex-Convict's Right To Vote, David H. Getches

Publications

No abstract provided.

Comments And Casenotes: To Kill A Mockingbird - Star Decisis And M'Naghten In Maryland, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

There are certain pillars of jurisprudence which, despite the erosive elements of time and progress, remain sacred. After more than a century of judicial dialogue the venerable M'Naghten Rule survives as the prevailing test to determine criminal responsibility. The rule states: "To establish a defense on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved that, at the time of the committing of the act, the party accused was labouring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or if he did know …

Comments On Recent Cases, Charles W. Ehrhardt

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Postscript: Proposals For A Long-Range Program, Jerome Hall

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Prosecution Appeals In West Virginia, Frank Edward Horack Jr.

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.