Law Commons^™

When Police Volunteer To Kill, Alexandra L. Klein

Faculty Articles

The Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of lethal injection, yet states continue to struggle with drug shortages and botched executions. Some states have authorized alternative methods of execution, including the firing squad. Utah, which has consistently carried out firing squad executions throughout its history, relies on police officers from the jurisdiction where the crime took place to volunteer to carry out these executions. This represents a plausible-and probable method for other states in conducting firing squad executions.

Public and academic discussion of the firing squad has centered on questions of pain and suffering. It has not engaged with the …

Rwu Law News: The Newsletter Of Roger Williams University School Of Law 04-2021, Michael M. Bowden, Barry Bridges, Political Roundtable

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Law School News: 'Unmatched Opportunities' 12-16-2020, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Location Tracking And Digital Data: Can Carpenter Build A Stable Privacy Doctrine?, Evan H. Caminker

Articles

In Carpenter v United States, the Supreme Court struggled to modernize twentieth-century search and seizure precedents for the “Cyber Age.” Twice previously this decade the Court had tweaked Fourth Amendment doctrine to keep pace with advancing technology, requiring a search warrant before the government can either peruse the contents of a cell phone seized incident to arrest or use a GPS tracker to follow a car’s long-term movements.

Foreword: Abolition Constitutionalism, Dorothy E. Roberts

All Faculty Scholarship

In this Foreword, I make the case for an abolition constitutionalism that attends to the theorizing of prison abolitionists. In Part I, I provide a summary of prison abolition theory and highlight its foundational tenets that engage with the institution of slavery and its eradication. I discuss how abolition theorists view the current prison industrial complex as originating in, though distinct from, racialized chattel slavery and the racial capitalist regime that relied on and sustained it, and their movement as completing the “unfinished liberation” sought by slavery abolitionists in the past. Part II considers whether the U.S. Constitution is an …

The Miranda Case Fifty Years Later, Yale Kamisar

Articles

A decade after the Supreme Court decided Miranda v. Arizona, Geoffrey Stone took a close look at the eleven decisions the Court had handed down “concerning the scope and application of Miranda.” As Stone observed, “[i]n ten of these cases, the Court interpreted Miranda so as not to exclude the challenged evidence.” In the eleventh case, the Court excluded the evidence on other grounds. Thus, Stone noted, ten years after the Court decided the case, “the Court ha[d] not held a single item of evidence inadmissible on the authority of Miranda.” Not a single item. To use …

Carpenter V. United States: Brief Of Scholars Of Criminal Procedure And Privacy As Amici Curiae In Support Of Petitioner, Andrew Ferguson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Amici curiae are forty-two scholars engaged in significant research and/or teaching on criminal procedure and privacy law. This brief addresses issues that are within amici’s particular areas of scholarly expertise. They have a shared interest in clarifying the law of privacy in the digital era, and believe that a review of scholarly literature on the topic is helpful to answering the question in this case. This brief is co-authored by Harry Sandick, Kathrina Szymborski, & Jared Buszin of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP.Carpenter v. United States presents an opportunity to reconsider the Fourth Amendment in the digital age. Cell …

Gideon V. Wainwright A Half Century Later, Yale Kamisar

Reviews

When he was nearing the end of his distinguished career, one of my former law professors observed that a dramatic story of a specific case "has the same advantages that a play or a novel has over a general discussion of ethics or political theory." Ms. Houppert illustrates this point in her very first chapter.

A Rejoinder To Professor Schauer's Commentary, Yale Kamisar

Articles

It is quite a treat to have Professor Frederick Schauer comment on my Miranda article.1 Professor Schauer is a renowned authority on freedom of speech and the author of many thoughtful, probing articles in other areas as well, especially jurisprudence. I am pleased that in large measure, Schauer, too, laments the erosion of Miranda in the last four-and-a-half decades2 and that he, too, was unhappy with the pre-Miranda due process/“totality of circumstances”/“voluntariness” test.3 I also like what Schauer had to say about “prophylactic rules,” a term that has sometimes been used to disparage the Miranda rules.4 As Schauer observes, the …

The Pastor, The Burning House, And The Double Jeopardy Clause: The True Story Behind Evans V. Michigan, David A. Moran

Articles

The true story behind Evans v. Michigan is that a man who was probably innocent, and who would almost certainly have been acquitted by the jury, had his trial shortened after it became obvious to the judge that the police had picked up a man who had nothing to do with the fire. In other words, the facts set forth by the Michigan Supreme Court, and repeated by Alito, were grossly misleading. And because I, like Alito, believed the Michigan Supreme Court’s version of the facts, I made a silly mistake when I agreed to take the case. That silly …

Confrontation And Forensic Laboratory Reports, Round Four, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

Crawford v. Washington radically transformed the doctrine governing the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution. Before Crawford, a prosecutor could introduce against an accused evidence of a hearsay statement, even one made in contemplation that it would be used in prosecution, so long as the statement fit within a "firmly rooted" hearsay exception or the court otherwise determined that the statement was sufficiently reliable to warrant admissibility. Crawford recognized that the Clause is a procedural guarantee, governing the manner in which prosecution witnesses give their testimony. Therefore, a prosecutor may not introduce a statement that is testimonial …

Bringing Clarity To Administrative Search Doctrine: Distinguishing Dragnets From Special Subpopulation Searches, Eve Brensike Primus

Articles

Anyone who has been stopped at a sobriety checkpoint, screened at an international border, scanned by a metal detector at an airport or government building, or drug tested for public employment has been subjected to an administrative search or seizure. Searches of public school students, government employees, and probationers are characterized as administrative, as are business inspections and-increasingly-wiretaps and other searches used in the gathering of national security intelligence. In other words, the government conducts thousands of administrative searches every day. None of these searches requires either probable cause or a search warrant. Instead, courts evaluating administrative searches need only …

The Rise, Decline And Fall(?) Of Miranda, Yale Kamisar

Articles

There has been a good deal of talk lately to the effect that Miranda1 is dead or dying-or might as well be dead.2 Even liberals have indicated that the death of Miranda might not be a bad thing. This brings to mind a saying by G.K. Chesterton: "Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason why it was put up."4

Hanging On By A Thread: The Exclusionary Rule (Or What's Left Of It) Lives For Another Day, David A. Moran

Articles

Back when there was a Soviet Union, foreign intelligence officers would anxiously await the May Day parade in Moscow to see who would be standing next to the chairman of the Communist Party and who would be missing from the reviewing platform altogether. Since the Soviet government and the statecontrolled press published very little about what was really going on in the halls of state power, this was considered the most reliable way to determine who was in or out of favor and, by extension, how the domestic and foreign policies of the world's second most powerful country were likely …

Disentangling Administrative Searches, Eve Brensike Primus

Articles

Everyone who has been screened at an international border, scanned by an airport metal detector, or drug tested for public employment has been subjected to an administrative search. Since September 11th, the government has increasingly invoked the administrative search exception to justify more checkpoints, unprecedented subway searches, and extensive wiretaps. As science and technology advance, the frequency and scope of administrative searches will only expand. Formulating the boundaries and requirements of administrative search doctrine is therefore a matter of great importance. Yet the rules governing administrative searches are notoriously unclear. This Article seeks to refocus attention on administrative searches and …

Waiting For The Other Shoe: Hudson And The Precarious State Of Mapp, David A. Moran

Articles

I have no idea whether my death will be noted in the New York Times. But if it is, I fear the headline of my obituary will look something like: "Professor Dies; Lost Hudson v. Michigan' in Supreme Court, Leading to Abolition of Exclusionary Rule." The very existence of this Symposium panel shows, I think, that my fear is well-grounded. On the other hand, I am not quite as fearful that Hudson foreshadows the complete overruling of Mapp v. Ohio2 and Weeks v. United States3 as I was when I published an article just three months after the Hudson decision …

Dickerson V. United States: The Case That Disappointed Miranda's Critics - And Then Its Supporters, Yale Kamisar

Book Chapters

It is difficult, if not impossible, to discuss Dickerson1 intelligently without discussing Miranda whose constitutional status Dickerson reaffirmed (or, one might say, resuscitated). It is also difficult, if not impossible, to discuss the Dickerson case intelligently without discussing cases the Court has handed down in the five years since Dickerson was decided. The hard truth is that in those five years the reaffirmation of Miranda's constitutional status has become less and less meaningful. In this chapter I focus on the Court's characterization of statements elicited in violation of the Miranda warnings as not actually "coerced" or "compelled" but obtained merely …

Souter Passant, Scalia Rampant: Combat In The Marsh, Samuel R. Gross

Articles

Kansas law provides that unless a capital sentencing jury concludes that the mitigating factors that apply to the defendant’s crime outweigh the aggravating factors, it must sentence the defendant to death. The Kansas Supreme Court held that this law violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments because it “impermissibly mandates the death penalty when the jury finds that the mitigating and aggravating circumstances are in equipoise.” On June 26, in Kansas v. Marsh, the Supreme Court reversed in a 5 to 4 opinion by Justice Thomas.

Miranda's Reprieve: How Rehnquist Spared The Landmark Confession Case, But Weakened Its Impact, Yale Kamisar

Articles

June marks the 40th anniversary of one of the most praised, most maligned-and probably one of the most misunderstood-U.S. Supreme Court cases in American history, Miranda v. Arizona. The opinion by Chief Justice Earl Warren conditions police questioning of people in custody on the giving of warnings about the right to remain silent, the right to counsel and the waiver of those rights. 384 U.S. 436. This ruling represents a compromise of sorts between the former elusive, ambiguous and subjective voluntariness/totality-of-the-circumstances test and extreme proposals that would have eliminated police interrogation altogether. But William H. Rehnquist didn't see Miranda that …

Crawford V. Washington, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

On June 9, by granting certiorari in Crawford v. Washington, 02-9410, the Supreme Court signaled its intention to enter once again into the realm of the Confrontation Clause, in which it has found itself deeply perplexed. This time there was a difference, however, because the grant indicated that the Court might be willing to rethink its jurisprudence in this area. Crawford, like Lee v. Illinois, 476 U.S. 530 (1986), and Lilly v. Virginia, 527 U.S. 116 (1999), presents a classic case of what might be called station-house testimony. Michael Crawford was accused of stabbing another man. His wife, Sylvia, was …

Dial-In Testimony, Richard D. Friedman, Bridget Mary Mccormack

Articles

For several hundred years, one of the great glories of the common law system of criminal justice has been the requirement that prosecution witnesses give their testimony in the presence of the accused" face to face," in the time-honored phrase-under oath, subject to cross-examination, and, unless unfeasible, in open court. In the United States, this principle is enshrined in the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment, which provides that "[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right ... to be confronted with the witnesses against him." But now a new way is developing for witnesses for the prosecution …

Miranda Thirty-Five Years Later: A Close Look At The Majority And Dissenting Opinions In Dickerson, Yale Kamisar

Articles

Over the years, Miranda v. Arizona1 has been criticized both for going too far2 and for not going far enough.3 Nevertheless, on the basis of talks with many criminal procedure professors in the sixteen months between the time a panel of the Fourth Circuit upheld a statute (18 U.S.C. § 3501) purporting to "overrule" Miranda and a 7-2 majority of the Supreme Court overturned that ruling in the case of Dickerson v. United States,4 I am convinced that most criminal procedure professors wanted the Supreme Court to do what it did-"reaffirm" Miranda. This is not surprising. As Professor Grano once …

From Miranda To §3501 To Dickerson To...(Symposium: Miranda After Dickerson: The Future Of Confession Law), Yale Kamisar

Articles

Once the Court granted [certiorari in Dickerson] court-watchers knew the hour had come. At long last the Court would have to either repudiate Miranda, repudiate the prophylactic-rule cases [the cases viewing Miranda's requirements as not rights protected by the Constitution, but merely "prophylactic rules"] or offer some ingenious reconciliation of the two lines of precedent. The Supreme Court of the United States, however, doesn't "have to" do anything, as the decision in Dickerson once again reminds us.

Congress' Arrogance, Yale Kamisar

Articles

Does Dickerson v. U.S., reaffirming Miranda and striking down §3501 (the federal statute purporting to "overrule" Miranda), demonstrate judicial arrogance? Or does the legislative history of §3501 demonstrate the arrogance of Congress? Shortly after Dickerson v. U.S. reaffirmed Miranda and invalidated §3501, a number of Supreme Court watchers criticized the Court for its "judicial arrogance" in peremptorily rejecting Congress' test for the admissibility of confessions. The test, pointed out the critics, had been adopted by extensive hearings and debate about Miranda's adverse impact on law enforcement. The Dickerson Court did not discuss the legislative history of §3501 at all. However, …

Joe Grano: The 'Kid From South Philly' Who Educated Us All (In Tribute To Joseph D. Grano), Yale Kamisar

Articles

No serious student of police interrogation and confessions can write on the subject without building on Professor Joseph D. Grano's work or explaining why he or she disagrees with him (and doing so with considerable care). Nor is that all.

On The 'Fruits' Of Miranda Violations, Coerced Confessions, And Compelled Testimony, Yale Kamisar

Articles

Professor Akhil Reed Amar and Ms. Renee B. Lettow have written a lively, provocative article that will keep many of us who teach constitutional-criminal procedure busy for years to come. They present a reconception of the "first principles" of the Fifth Amendment, and they suggest a dramatic reconstruction of criminal procedure. As a part of that reconstruction, they propose, inter alia, that at a pretrial hearing presided over by a judicial officer, the government should be empowered to compel a suspect, under penalty of contempt, to provide links in the chain of evidence needed to convict him.

The Warren Court And Criminal Justice: A Quarter-Century Retrospective, Yale Kamisar

Articles

Many commentators have observed that when we speak of "the Warren Court," we mean the Warren Court that lasted from 1962 (when Arthur Goldberg replaced Felix Frankfurter) to 1969 (when Earl Warren retired). But when we speak of the Warren Court's "revolution" in American criminal procedure we mean the Warren Court that lasted from 1961 (when the landmark case of Mapp v. Ohio was decided) to 1966 or 1967. In its final years, the Warren Court was not the same Court that had handed down Mapp or Miranda v. Arizona.

Duckworth V. Eagan: A Little-Noticed Miranda Case That May Cause Much Mischief, Yale Kamisar

Articles

Professor Yale Kamisar, the country's foremost scholar of Miranda and police interrogation, presents an analysis and critique of the Supreme Court's latest interpretation of Miranda. In Duckworth, a 5-4 Court upheld the "if and when" language systematically used by the Hammond, Indiana, Police Department: "We have no way of giving you a lawyer, but one will be appointed for you, if you wish, if and when you go to court." The real issue was whether the police effectively conveyed the substance of a vital part of Miranda: the right to have a lawyer appointed prior to any questioning. Professor Kamisar …

'Comparative Reprehensibility' And The Fourth Amendment Exclusionary Rule, Yale Kamisar

Articles

It is not . . . easy to see what the shock-the-conscience test adds, or should be allowed to add, to the deterrent function of exclusionary rules. Where no deterrence of unconstitutional police behavior is possible, a decision to exclude probative evidence with the result that a criminal goes free to prey upon the public should shock the judicial conscience even more than admitting the evidence. So spoke Judge Robert H. Bork, concurring in a ruling that the fourth amendment exclusionary rule does not apply to foreign searches conducted exclusively by foreign officials. A short time thereafter, when an interviewer …

Loss Of Innocence: Eyewitness Identification And Proof Of Guilt, Samuel R. Gross

Articles

It is no news that eyewitness identification in criminal cases is a problem; it is an old and famous problem. Judges and lawyers have long known that the identification of strangers is a chancy matter, and nearly a century of psychological research has confirmed this skeptical view. In 1967 the Supreme Court attempted to mitigate the problem by regulating the use of eyewitness identification evidence in criminal trials; since then it has retreated part way from that effort. Legal scholars have written a small library of books and articles on this problem, the courts' response to it, and various proposed …