Law Commons^™

Double Jeopardy, The Federal Sentencing Guidelines, And The Subsequent-Prosecution Dilemma, Elizabeth T. Lear

Elizabeth T Lear

The choice to embrace a real-offense regime probably constitutes the single most controversial decision made by the Federal Sentencing Commission in drafting the Federal Sentencing Guidelines ("Guidelines"). Real-offense sentencing bases punishment on a defendant's actual conduct as opposed to the offense of conviction. The Guidelines sweep a variety of factors into the sentencing inquiry, including criminal offenses for which no conviction has been obtained. Under the Guidelines, therefore, prosecutorial charging decisions and even verdicts of acquittal after jury trial may have little impact at sentencing.

Long before the adoption of the Guidelines, courts bent on rationalizing the real-offense regime devised …

Is Conviction Irrelevant?, Elizabeth T. Lear

Elizabeth T Lear

Since 1986, the country has been witness to a revolution in federal sentencing practice: indeterminate sentencing, dominated by discretion and focused on the rehabilitative prospects of the offender, has been replaced by guidelines infused with offense-based considerations. As sweeping as the change in sentencing procedure has been, the system retains troubling aspects of the former regime. The most controversial among these is the Guidelines' reliance on unadjudicated conduct to determine proper punishment levels. This approach is a variation on “real offense” sentencing, which severs the punishment inquiry from the offense of conviction, focusing instead on an offender's "actual" conduct. Under …

Decriminalization, Police Authority, And Routine Traffic Stops, Jordan Woods

Jordan Blair Woods

Positively Punitive: How The Inventor Of Scientific Criminology Who Died At The Beginning Of The Twentieth Century Continues To Haunt American Crime Control At The Beginning Of The Twenty-First, Jonathan Simon

Jonathan S Simon

The article presents a historical interpretation of changes in the penal system of the U.S. Penology is linked with incarceration rate outcomes. Rhetoric is considered in consistency with penalty themes and rehabilitation. The practice of positivist criminology is reflected when proponents viewed themselves as opposition to legal officials' crime control policy ideas.

Governing Through Crime Metaphors, Jonathan Simon

Jonathan S Simon

No abstract provided.

The New Penology: Notes On The Emerging Strategy Of Corrections And Its Implications, Malcolm M. Feeley, Jonathan Simon

Jonathan S Simon

The new penology argues that an important new language of penology is emerging. This new language, which has its counterparts in other areas of the law as well, shifts focus away from the traditional concerns of the criminal law and criminology, which have focused on the individual, and redirects it to actuarial consideration of aggregates. This shift has a number of important implications: It facilitates development of a vision or model of a new type of criminal process that embraces increased reliance on imprisonment and that merges concerns for surveillance and custody, that shifts away from a concern with punishing …

Megan's Law: Crime And Democracy In Late Modern America, Jonathan Simon

Jonathan S Simon

Deals with a study which explored the complex entanglements of democracy and governing through crime in the United States. Discussion on crime control as an integral part of democratic penal traditions; How the embedding of governing through crime into the new regime of liberal governance took shape in the country; Details on the adoption of `Megan's Law.'

Teaching Criminal Law In An Era Of Governing Through Crime, Jonathan Simon

Jonathan S Simon

No abstract provided.

Response To Commentators, Michelle Dempsey

Michelle Madden Dempsey

This short essay responds to commentators who generously contributed to Criminal Law & Philosophy’s symposium on my book, PROSECUTING DOMESTIC VIOLENCE (Oxford University Press 2009)

Brief Of Amici Curiae -- Heien V. State Of North Carolina, Charles E. Maclean, Adam Lamparello

Adam Lamparello

Reasonable suspicion of unlawful activity cannot be predicated on conduct that does not violate the law. Put differently, if reasonableness — or reasonable suspicion — is to mean anything, it means that apparent violations of the law must be based on actual violations of the law. The North Carolina Supreme Court’s decision sends a message to drivers throughout the country that they cannot be wrong about what the law requires, even where law enforcement is wrong — dead wrong — about what the law proscribes.

Modern Criminal Law Of Australia By Jeremy Gans, Jodie O'Leary, Elizabeth Greene

Jodie O'Leary

No abstract provided.

Neurotechnologies At The Intersection Of Criminal Procedure And Constitutional Law, Amanda C. Pustilnik

Amanda C Pustilnik

The rapid development of neurotechnologies poses novel constitutional issues for criminal law and criminal procedure. These technologies can identify directly from brain waves whether a person is familiar with a stimulus like a face or a weapon, can model blood flow in the brain to indicate whether a person is lying, and can even interfere with brain processes themselves via high-powered magnets to cause a person to be less likely to lie to an investigator. These technologies implicate the constitutional privilege against compelled, self-incriminating speech under the Fifth Amendment and the right to be free of unreasonable search and seizure …

Ignorance Of The Law: A Maxim Reexamined, Ronald A. Cass

Ronald A. Cass

No abstract provided.

Paroline, Restitution, And Transferred Scienter: Child Pornography Possessors And Restitution Based On A Commerce-Clause Derived, Aggregate Proximate Cause Theory, Adam Lamparello, Charles Maclean

Adam Lamparello

This Article responds to the Fifth Circuit’s decision in In re Amy Unknown, which is before the United States Supreme Court on granted writ of certiorari. This Article poses a more logical and legal construct, derived from Commerce Clause analysis, that although each individual possessor of child pornography appears to contribute almost imperceptibly to the victim’s harm, the aggregate effect of possession is sufficient to satisfy the causal nexus required for restitution.

Amicus Brief -- Freddie Lee Hall V. State Of Florida, Adam Lamparello, Charles Maclean

Adam Lamparello

IQ cutoffs violate the Constitution. In Atkins v. Virginia, the United States Supreme Court recognized three distinct components to intellectual disability: (1) an intelligence quotient; (2) deficits in adaptive functioning; and (3) onset prior to eighteen. The Florida Supreme Court interpreted Fla. Stat. § 921.137(1) to bar evidence of adaptive disability and early onset if a defendant scored above a 70 on an IQ test. As Justice Perry recognized in his partial dissent, that interpretation will lead to the execution of a retarded man. The Amicus brief argues that the Florida Supreme Court's decision should be reversed because it prohibits …

Abidor V. Napolitano: Suspicionless Cell Phone And Laptop Searches At The Border Compromise The Fourth And First Amendments, Adam Lamparello, Charles Maclean

Adam Lamparello

The article explores the December 31, 2013 Abidor decision where the federal district court upheld the ongoing application of the border search exception as applied to deep, forensic searches of laptops and other digital devices. That exception allows suspicionless searches of any persons, effects, and “closed containers” crossing a border into the United States, and laptops and external hard drives are generally considered “closed containers” under the border search exception. We argue that the border search exception, grounded as it is in pre-digital age fact patterns, should no longer serve as precedent for border searches of the immense memories of …

Back To The Future: Returning To Reasonableness And Particularity Under The Fourth Amendment, Adam Lamparello, Charles Maclean

Adam Lamparello

Issuing one-hundred or fewer opinions per year, the United States Supreme Court cannot keep pace with opinions that match technological advancement. As a result, in Riley v. California and United States v. Wurie, the Court needs to announce a broader principle that protects privacy in the digital age. That principle, what we call “seize but don’t search,” recognizes that the constitutional touchstone for all searches is reasonableness. When do present-day circumstances—the evolution in the Government’s surveillance capabilities, citizens’ phone habits, and the relationship between the NSA and telecom companies—become so thoroughly unlike those considered by the Supreme Court thirty-four years …

Amicus Brief -- Riley V. California And United States V. Wurie, Charles E. Maclean, Adam Lamparello

Adam Lamparello

Warrantless searches of cell phone memory—after a suspect has been arrested, and after law enforcement has seized the phone—would have been unconstitutional at the time the Fourth Amendment was adopted, and are unconstitutional now. Simply stated, they are unreasonable. And reasonableness—not a categorical warrant requirement—is the “touchstone of Fourth Amendment analysis.”

Riley V. California: Privacy Still Matters, But How Much And In What Contexts?, Adam Lamparello, Charles Maclean

Adam Lamparello

Private information is no longer stored only in homes or other areas traditionally protected from warrantless intrusion. The private lives of many citizens are contained in a digital device no larger than the palm of their hand—and carried in public places. But that does not make the data within a cell phone any less private, just as the dialing of a phone number does not voluntarily waive an individual’s right to keep their call log or location private. Remember that we are not talking about individuals suspected of committing violent crimes. The Government is recording the calls and locations of …

American Hustle: Abscam, Entrapment And The Senate Expulsion Trial Of Harrison Williams, Henry P. Biggs Phd

Henry P Biggs PhD

American Hustle: Abscam, Entrapment and The Senate Expulsion Trial of Harrison Williams

The recent success of the film American Hustle has renewed curiosity in the events surrounding the Abscam scandal and its subsequent trials. This article begins by detailing the Abscam proposition as well as its players, moving on to address the contours of the defense of entrapment those accused frequently invoked. The article then focuses on the analyses of specific Abscam cases that claimed this defense. Finally, the article considers the specific case of Harrison Williams, a senator from New Jersey and the highest official ensnared in Abscam, documenting …

Crossing The Fault Line In Corporate Criminal Law, Amy Sepinwall

Amy J. Sepinwall

Why is it that so few bankers have been prosecuted and punished in the wake of the financial meltdown? Pundits are quick to point to inadequate funding for addressing financial crime or, more cynically, the revolving door between government regulatory agencies and Wall Street. But the ultimate answer may be at once more banal and more dispiriting, lying as it does at the very foundations of our criminal law.

The conception of responsibility underpinning much of our criminal law contemplates the individual in isolation from others. As a result, our criminal law has tremendous difficulty tracking culpability in organizational contexts. …

Responsible Shares And Shared Responsibility: In Defense Of Responsible Corporate Officer Liability, Amy Sepinwall

Amy J. Sepinwall

When a corporation commits a crime, whom may we hold criminally liable? One obvious set of defendants consists of the individuals who perpetrated the crime on the corporation’s behalf. But according to the responsible corporate officer (“RCO”) doctrine, the government may also prosecute and punish those corporate executives who, although perhaps lacking “consciousness of wrongdoing,” nonetheless have “a responsible share in the furtherance of the transaction which the statute outlaws.” In other words, under the RCO doctrine, a corporate executive can come to bear criminal responsibility for an offense of her corporation that she neither participated in nor culpably failed …

Kidnapping Incorporated: The Unregulated Youth-Transportation Industry And The Potential For Abuse, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

Last Words: A Survey And Analysis Of Federal Judges' Views On Allocution In Sentencing, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

The Price Is Wrong: Reimbursement Of Expenses For Acquitted Criminal Defendants, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins