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Full-Text Articles in Law

Proximate Cause In Constitutional Torts: Holding Interrogators Liable For Fifth Amendment Violations At Trial, Joel Flaxman May 2007

Proximate Cause In Constitutional Torts: Holding Interrogators Liable For Fifth Amendment Violations At Trial, Joel Flaxman

Michigan Law Review

This Note argues for the approach taken by the Sixth Circuit in McKinley: a proper understanding of the Fifth Amendment requires holding that an officer who coerces a confession that is used at trial to convict a defendant in violation of the right against self-incrimination should face liability for the harm of conviction and imprisonment. Part I examines how the Supreme Court and the circuits have applied the concept of common law proximate causation to constitutional torts and argues that lower courts are wrong to blindly adopt common law rules without reference to the constitutional rights at stake. It …


One Stop, No Stop, Two Stop, Terry Stop: Reasonable Suspicion And Pseudoephedrine Purchases By Suspected Methamphetamine Manufacturers, Andrew C. Goetz May 2007

One Stop, No Stop, Two Stop, Terry Stop: Reasonable Suspicion And Pseudoephedrine Purchases By Suspected Methamphetamine Manufacturers, Andrew C. Goetz

Michigan Law Review

This Note attempts to inject some clarity into courts' reasonable suspicion calculus for cold medicine purchases. It argues that the key factor in analyzing such purchases is whether the purchaser or purchasers appear to be circumventing pseudoephedrine purchasing restrictions in order to obtain inordinately large quantities of pseudoephedrine. Part I provides a general background on the domestic manufacture of methamphetamine in small, clandestine laboratories. Part II then examines the interplay between outward innocence and reasonable suspicion under the Supreme Court's Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Finally, Part III establishes a framework for identifying purchasing strategies that methamphetamine manufacturers commonly use to circumvent …


Keeping The State Out: The Separation Of Law And State In Classical Islamic Law, Lubna A. Alam Apr 2007

Keeping The State Out: The Separation Of Law And State In Classical Islamic Law, Lubna A. Alam

Michigan Law Review

The implementation and enforcement of Islamic law, especially Islamic criminal law, by modem-day Muslim nation-states is fraught with controversy and challenges. In Pakistan, the documented problems and failures of the country's attempt to codify Islamic law on extramarital sexual relations have led to efforts to remove rape cases from Islamic law courts to civil law courts. In striking contrast to Pakistan's experience, the Republic of the Maldives recently commissioned a draft of a penal law and sentencing guidelines based on Islamic law that abides by international norms. The incorporation of Islamic law into the legal systems of various countries around …


Why The County Jail Is Often A Better Choice, Shawn Chapman Holley Jan 2007

Why The County Jail Is Often A Better Choice, Shawn Chapman Holley

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

I have been a criminal defense lawyer in Los Angeles for almost twenty years. I began my career in the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office, representing defendants who were poor and often homeless. For the past twelve years, I have been in private practice, representing defendants who are wealthy and often famous. Having represented criminal defendants coming from such varied economic circumstances, I have witnessed firsthand the criminal justice system’s disparate treatment of those with money and those without. Pay-to-stay jails are yet another example of that disparity. Yet I believe that those without the money to pay for …


A Virtuous State Would Not Assign Correctional Housing Based On Ability To Pay, Bradley W. Moore Jan 2007

A Virtuous State Would Not Assign Correctional Housing Based On Ability To Pay, Bradley W. Moore

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

Pay-to-stay jails expose the moral tension between the dominant theories of punishment: retributivism and deterrence. A turn to a third major moral theory—virtue ethics—resolves this tension. According to virtue ethics, the moral worth of an action follows from both the character of the action and the disposition of the actor. Virtuous acts promote human flourishing— the central goal of life—when they are the right actions performed for the right reasons. The virtue ethics theory of punishment suggests that pay-to-stay jails conflict with the promotion of human flourishing. A virtuous state’s criminal justice system would not include fee-based incarceration because it …


Government Entrepreneurship: How Cop, Direct Supervision, And A Business Plan Helped To Solve Santa Ana's Crime Problems, Paul M. Walters, Russell Davis Jan 2007

Government Entrepreneurship: How Cop, Direct Supervision, And A Business Plan Helped To Solve Santa Ana's Crime Problems, Paul M. Walters, Russell Davis

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

Much has been written about Community Oriented Policing for police agencies and about the Direct Supervision concept for jail operations. Each strategy is at the cutting edge of its respective discipline. This Commentary describes how the progressive City of Santa Ana implemented both strategies— along with a visionary business plan to operate its jail at minimal cost—to combat crime successfully. The City’s business plan relies on entrepreneurship that is too often lacking in government programs. This approach has led to a number of innovations in law enforcement, corrections, and government service. Pay-to-Stay programs provide yet another example of how Santa …


The Dirty Little Secrets About Pay-To-Stay, Laurie L. Levenson, Mary Gordon Jan 2007

The Dirty Little Secrets About Pay-To-Stay, Laurie L. Levenson, Mary Gordon

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

The dirty little secret is out: people with more money get a better deal in our criminal justice system. Anyone who has spent more than a nanosecond in this system knows it to be true, yet that does not make it right. It is an abomination to divert our attention to pay-to-stay programs instead of finding the resources to improve our general jail facilities to make them tolerable for every inmate. Don’t get us wrong—if we suffered the misfortune of being arrested, we would dearly love the opportunity to pay for a private jail facility. However, the pay-to-stay initiative is …


Pay-To-Stay In California Jails And The Value Of Systemic Self-Embarassment, Robert Weisberg Jan 2007

Pay-To-Stay In California Jails And The Value Of Systemic Self-Embarassment, Robert Weisberg

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

The website of the Santa Ana, California-version of Pay-to-Stay uses hotelier-type verbiage in describing features of its alternative jail program. It tells us that the jail “is pleased to host a full range of alternatives to traditional incarceration”; it reassures prospective “clients” seeking flexible work/jail schedules (“Work on Saturday or Sunday? No problem, your weekend days are our weekend days.”); it guarantees “24-hour on-site medical staff”; it accommodates inmates near and far (“We have helped clients with sentences from other counties as well as other states.”); and it generally brags that the jail “is the most modern and comfortable facility …


Pay-To-Stay Programs In California Jails, Michael S. Carona Jan 2007

Pay-To-Stay Programs In California Jails, Michael S. Carona

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

When a person has committed a criminal offense, he or she must be punished to vindicate the law, to acknowledge the suffering of the victim, and to deter future crimes. Imprisonment—the method commonly used to carry out this punishment—becomes increasingly problematic when our jails and prisons, especially in California, are bursting at the seams. As the Sheriff of the eighth largest jail system in the nation, I am responsible for the confinement and care of thousands of inmates in the Orange County Jail system. With a growing inmate population and a shortage of beds, I continue to look for new …


Separate And Unequal: Federal Tough-On-Guns Program Targets Minority Communities For Selective Enforcement, Bonita R. Gardner Jan 2007

Separate And Unequal: Federal Tough-On-Guns Program Targets Minority Communities For Selective Enforcement, Bonita R. Gardner

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article examines the Project Safe Neighborhoods program and considers whether its disproportionate application in urban, majority- African American cities (large and small) violates the guarantee of equal protection under the law. This Article will start with a description of the program and how it operates-the limited application to street-level criminal activity in predominately African American communities. Based on preliminary data showing that Project Safe Neighborhoods disproportionately impacts African Americans, the Article turns to an analysis of the applicable law. Most courts have analyzed Project Safe Neighborhoods' race-based challenges under selective prosecution case law, which requires a showing by the …


It Could Happen To "You": Pay-To-Stay Jail Upgrades, Kim Shayo Buchanan Jan 2007

It Could Happen To "You": Pay-To-Stay Jail Upgrades, Kim Shayo Buchanan

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

In the jails of Los Angeles County, about 21,000 detainees are held in filthy cells so overcrowded—four men in a cell built for two, six to a four-man cell—that, as federal judge Dean D. Pregerson observed in 2006, inmates must stay in their bunks at all times because there is not enough room for them to stand. These men—ninety percent of whom are pretrial detainees— are held in these conditions twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week, and are typically allowed only a single three-hour exercise period weekly. Other inmates are held for days in a county “reception center” …


Secondhand Smoke Signals From Prison, Scott C. Wilcox Jan 2007

Secondhand Smoke Signals From Prison, Scott C. Wilcox

Michigan Law Review

This Note argues that courts should acknowledge current societal and medical perspectives on second hand smoke (SHS) and afford real protection to prisoners against SHS through injunctive relief. Part I examines evidence that conclusively demonstrates the serious risk of harm posed by SHS to the health of inmates. It reports that inmates' long-term exposure to SHS increases their risk of contracting lung cancer, heart disease, and other potentially life threatening conditions. Part II argues that, as required by the Helling standard, contemporary society does not tolerate involuntary, long-term exposure to SHS and that prison officials exhibit deliberate indifference by allowing …


Criminal Justice And The 1967 Detroit 'Riot', Yale Kamisar Jan 2007

Criminal Justice And The 1967 Detroit 'Riot', Yale Kamisar

Articles

Forty years ago the kindling of segregation, racism, and poverty burst into the flame of urban rioting in Detroit, Los Angeles, Newark, and other U.S. cities. The following essay is excerpted from a report by Professor Emeritus Yale Kamisar filed with the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (the Kerner Commission) regarding the disorders that took place in Detroit July 23-28, 1967. The report provided significant material and was the subject of one article in the series of pieces on the anniversary of the disturbances that appeared last summer in The Michigan Citizen of Detroit. Immediately after the disturbances ended, …