Law Commons^™

Using International Human Rights Law To Combat Racial Discrimination In The U.S. Criminal Justice System., Terrence Rogers

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Statistics tend to show Black people commit most of the crime in the United States. Those statistics fail to account for unequal treatment of minorities at each stage of the criminal justice system. This unequal treatment may take the form of buy-and-bust operations, racial profiling, street sweeps, and other police activities which target people in low-income communities populated mainly by minorities. The American criminal justice system contains a cyclical, self-perpetuating aspect to the treatment of certain minorities. These perceptions direct a disproportionate amount of law enforcement attention on minorities, which leads to disproportionate arrests of minorities. The result shows racial …

Why The Injection Of Race In Saldano V. State Constitutes Fundamental Error, Diana L. Hoermann

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

This article examines the historical use of a person’s race in the legal system, more specifically in criminal cases. Race should not determine the quality of justice an individual receives. An enlightened criminal justice system would not allow race to determine a person’s fate. However, the Texas criminal justice system allows the consideration of a person’s race in determining whether that person should receive the death penalty. In Victor Hugo Saldano v. The State of Texas, an unpublished opinion, the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals upheld the imposition of the death penalty where the jury heard an expert witness claim …

An Independent And Adequate Procedural Rule Bars A State Prisoner, Who Has Defaulted His Entire Appeal, From Asserting A Federal Claim Unless The Prisoner Demonstrates Cause For, And Actual Prejudice Resulting From, The Procedural Default, Or In The Alternative, Proves A Fundamental Miscarriage Of Justice Will Result If The Federal Habeas Court Fails To Hear The Claim., Jared R. V. Woodfill

St. Mary's Law Journal

The current jurisprudential regime accepts a blanket procedural default policy which denies the federal habeas court its proper constitutional role. An ideological coup d’etat is needed which reappraises the modern procedural default doctrine and supplants it with a rule in the spirit of Fay v. Noia. Such a revolution would emphasize the federal habeas court’s role as a defender of constitutional rights. In an era of multifarious litigation and sociological jurisprudence, a habeas prisoner should not lose his life because a negligent public defender failed to preserve the right in procedural formaldehyde. On April 23, 1982, a court convicted Roger …

Why The Criminal Justice System Can't Control Crime, Gerald S. Reamey

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

Time Changes: Growing Complexity In Texas Sentencing Law, John M. Schmolesky

Faculty Articles

The Seventieth Legislature made criminal sentencing guidelines more onerous, but a number of factors combined to undercut its impact. These changes made the relationships between the legislative, judicial, and administrative components of the criminal justice system become increasingly complex, often resulting in one agency undercutting the decisions of another. Because of the complex web of agencies that have a role in determining the disposition of a convicted defendant, changes in the rules of sentencing must be analyzed at several different levels to determine their true impact.

Despite the apparently more punitive thrust of the new legislation, no clear policy direction …

The Skeleton In The Closet: The Battered Woman Syndrome, Self Defense, And Expert Testimony, Victoria M. Mather

Faculty Articles

The criminal justice system must deal fairly, through the use of expert testimony, with the battered woman who strikes back at her abuser with deadly results. Society-at-large does not understand the battered woman, the batterer, and their relationship; historically, the criminal justice system’s response to the predicament of the battered woman has been ineffective.

The use of expert testimony in homicide cases where an allegedly battered wife kills her abuser and then claims self-defense is a controversial proposition. The evidence, however, shows that women are frequently the victims of abuse, that patterns of behavior associated with battering relationships usually exist, …