Law Commons^™

Fall 2017 Symposium: The Challenge Of Crime In A Free Society: Fifty Years Later, Roger Fairfax

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

My longstanding interest in the Johnson Crime Commission traces back to my earlier scholarly work on the history of criminal law reform movements, going back to the progressive criminal justice reform agenda in the early twentieth century and the activities of private law-reform coalitions and government-sponsored crime commissions during the interwar period, including the Wickersham Commission and the American Law Institute's various model code projects. This research eventually led me to the Johnson Commission, the subject of this Symposium.

Treatment Of Domestic Terrorism Cases: Class And Mental Health In The Criminal System, Yolanda C. Rondon

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

User-Generated Evidence, Rebecca Hamilton

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Around the world, people are using their smartphones to document atrocities. This Article is the first to address the implications of this important development for international criminal law. While acknowledging the potential benefits such user-generated evidence could have for international criminal investigations, the Article identifies three categories of concern related to its use: (i) user security; (ii) evidentiary bias; and (iii) fair trial rights. In the absence of safeguards, user-generated evidence may address current problems in international criminal justice at the cost of creating new ones and shifting existing problems from traditional actors, who have institutional backing, to individual users …

Rethinking The Effects Of A Guilty Plea On The Right To Challenge One's Statute Of Conviction, Hannah Roberts

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

The Grand Jury's Role In The Prosecution Of Unjustified Police Killings - Challenges And Solutions, Roger Fairfax

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

One of the most profound tests of trust in a society is when the state must be relied upon to hold itself accountable for violating the rights of the governed. Nowhere is this more true than in the context of the prosecution of law enforcement officers for unjustified violence against civilians. The reasons for this are twofold. First, it should go without saying that police perform a vital - and extremely difficult and dangerous - function, and bravely serve as the prophylactic between civil society and complete chaos. As President Obama recently wrote, "[p]olice officers are the heroic backbone of …

Blog Post: Supreme Court Supports Immigrant’S Right To Understand Consequences Of Conviction, Jenny Roberts

Popular Media

The author of the following post about the Supreme Court’s decision in Jae Lee v. United States drafted an amicus brief in the case for several national immigrant rights organizations.

In 2010, Padilla v. Kentucky established that criminal defense lawyers must advise clients about the deportation consequences of a conviction, as part of their duties under the Sixth Amendment right to the effective assistance of counsel. Jose Padilla won in the Supreme Court because his trial lawyer erroneously informed him that he would not be deported after pleading guilty to drug trafficking because he had been in the U.S. for …

Domestic Homicides: The Continuing Search For Justice, Caroline Anne Forell

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Thinking Outside The Jury Box: Deploying The Grand Jury In The Guilty Plea Process, Roger Fairfax

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

There is near-universal agreement that the engine of the modern American criminal justice system is plea bargaining.'Given the ubiquity of plea bargaining, the Supreme Court and the rest of the legal community have begun setting their sights on how the practice might be better regulated. At the same time, many hold the view that the grand jury has outlived its usefulness in the administration of criminal justice and is a relic of a time gone by. Even before recent calls for the abolition of the grand jury in the wake of high-profile cases that seemed to cast the institution in …

Should The American Grand Jury Survive Ferguson, Roger Fairfax

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The grand jurors deliberated in secret, as the masses demanded the indictment of the would-be defendants. Ultimately, the grand jury would refuse to indict, enraging the many who believed justice had been denied

Big Data And Predictive Reasonable Suspicion, Andrew Ferguson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The Fourth Amendment requires “reasonable suspicion” to seize a suspect. As a general matter, the suspicion derives from information a police officer observes or knows. It is individualized to a particular person at a particular place. Most reasonable suspicion cases involve police confronting unknown suspects engaged in observable suspicious activities. Essentially, the reasonable suspicion doctrine is based on “small data” – discrete facts involving limited information and little knowledge about the suspect.But what if this small data is replaced by “big data”? What if police can “know” about the suspect through new networked information sources? Or, what if predictive analytics …

Expunging America's Rap Sheet In The Information Age, Jenny Roberts

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

"Getting a Second Chance After a Criminal Record.", "Want to Expunge Your Record?', "South Carolina Debating If It Should be Easier to Expunge a Brush with the Law." "Making a Fresh Start in Little Village." These are only some of the headlines of newspaper articles and television segments that came up in a Google Alert for "expungement" during one typical week in late 2014. The same week, in Cincinnati, Ohio, city council members backed expungement of low-level marijuana convictions. Expungement news that week was not limited to the United States. In Jamaica, the legislature passed a bill that allows expungement …

Teaching The Wire: Integrating Capstone Policy Content Into The Criminal Law Curriculum, Roger Fairfax

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

When I first proposed teaching a seminar on The Wire at the George Washington University Law School in 2010, I encountered very disparate reactions. Those unfamiliar with the show generally wondered whether the law school curriculum was any place for a course with the name of a popular television drama in the title. Those who had heard glowing things about, but had not seen, The Wire typically professed their intention to watch the show but shared the skepticism of the former group on its suitability as the focus of a law school course. Finally, those who had viewed the series …

Teaching The Methods Of White-Collar Practice: Investigatios, Roger Fairfax

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

When Ijoined the George Washington University Law School [GW] faculty after practice as a federal prosecutor and white-collar criminal defense attorney, I quickly learned that a GW law student interested in exploring white-collar crime had a great many courses from which to choose. Several of my full-time colleagues teach courses that cover various topics relevant to white-collar crime, including a computer crimes course, a course in criminal tax litigation, and courses on anti-corruption in government contracting and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act [FCPA]. GW is also fortunate to have a dedicated and talented adjunct faculty, which includes a former senior …

Teaching 'The Wire': Fiction As Pedagogical Tool, Roger Fairfax

Presentations

No abstract provided.

Searching For Solutions To The Indigent Defense Crisis In The Broader Criminal Justice Reform Agenda, Roger Fairfax

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

As we mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Gideon v. Wainwright decision, the nearly universal assessment is that our indigent defense system remains too under-resourced and overwhelmed to fulfill the promise of the landmark decision, and needs to be reformed. At the same time, fiscal necessity and moral outrage have prompted a historic reexamination of outdated policies that have led to an overreliance on incarceration and inefficiencies in the administration of criminal justice. This Essay argues that there are synergies between the indigent defense reform agenda and the broader criminal justice reform agenda, which places a premium on cost-effective, evidence-based, …

Fifty State Survey Of Criminal Laws Prohibiting Sexual Abuse Of Individuals In Custody, Brenda V. Smith

The Project on Addressing Prison Rape - Surveys

This document provides information regarding enacting state, statute number, statute title, coverage, definition and notes, penalties, and defenses (if given) for criminal laws prohibiting sexual abuse of inmates by staff.

The "Smart On Crime" Prosecutor, Roger Fairfax

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

"Smart on Crime" criminal justice reforms have emerged in recent years as shrinking government budgets and exploding incarceration rates have prompted scrutiny of the efficiency and efficacy of existing criminal justice approaches. Policymakers across the country have sought out new strategies designed to prevent crime and recidivism, enhance community safety, reduce our reliance on incarceration, and save taxpayer dollars. As a result, law enforcement, courts, and correctional agencies have been implementing innovative approaches in areas such as diversion, problem-solving courts, alternatives to incarceration, and ex-offender re-entry. However, the role of prosecutors and prosecutorial agencies in this story is often overlooked. …

Challenges And Choices In Criminal Law Course Design Commentary Symposium: Criminal Law Pedagogy, Roger Fairfax

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

I thoroughly enjoy every course in my teaching package, but the first-year Criminal Law course occupies a special place in my heart. The subject matter in the Criminal Law course is perhaps the most compelling of any offered in the first-year curriculum. As such, it provides Criminal Law instructors the tremendous opportunity to capture the imagination of students and to highlight the nexus between law in books and law in action.

What Use Are Legal Academics?, Roger Fairfax

Presentations

No abstract provided.

Batson's Grand Jury Dna, Roger Fairfax

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Batson v. Kentucky was a landmark decision imposing constitutional restrictions on peremptory challenges in the petit jury selection process. Batson was a culmination of a long line of cases addressing racial discrimination in jury selection. However, the role of anti-discrimination doctrine in grand jury selection is often overlooked when the story of Batson is considered. Many of the key equal protection cases underpinning the Batson decision were grand jury cases. Furthermore, the evidentiary framework applied to challenges to race-based peremptory strikes in Batson was forged in a century's worth of grand jury discrimination doctrine. This Essay, prepared for the "Batson …

Overcriminalization: Is There A Problem To Solve?, Roger Fairfax

Presentations

No abstract provided.

Conceptualizing The Law From A Gender Perspective: Conceptions Regarding Victim And Accused, Gladys Acosta Vargas

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Blaming “Culture:” “Cultural” Evidence In Homicide Prosecutions And A New Perspective On Blameworthiness, Christian G. Ohanian

American University Criminal Law Brief

No abstract provided.

Grand Jury Innovation: Toward A Functional Makeover Of The Ancient Bulwark Of Liberty, Roger Fairfax

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The grand jury is a "much maligned" organ of the criminal justice system.' Regularly employed in only about half of the states and grudgingly tolerated in the federal system,2 the American grand jury for two centuries has been criticized as costly, ineffective, overly-compliant, and redundant. Prescriptions have ranged from reforms designed to improve the grand jury's performance of its traditional filtering and charging functions to the outright abolition of the grand jury. Consequently, much of the scholarly defense of the grand jury seemingly has done little more than attempt to justify its very existence.

This Article seeks to take the …

Modes Of Discretion In The Criminal Justice System, Roger Fairfax

Presentations

No abstract provided.

When Human Experimentation Is Criminal, Song Richardson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Medical researchers engaged in human experimentation commit criminal acts seemingly without consequence. Whereas other actors who violate bodily integrity and autonomy are routinely penalized with convictions for assault, fraud, and homicide, researchers escape criminal punishment. This Article begins to scrutinize this undercriminalization phenomenon and provides a framework for understanding why researchers are not prosecuted for their crimes. It argues that their exalted social status, combined with the perceived social benefit of their research, immunizes them from use of the criminal sanction. Whether these constitute sufficient grounds to give researchers a pass from punishment is a significant question because the state's …

Ignorance Is Effectively Bliss: Collateral Consequences, Silence, And Misinformation In The Guilty-Plea Process, Jenny Roberts

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

In the 2009-2010 term, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide if it matters whether a criminal defense lawyer correctly counsels a client about the fact that the client faces deportation as a result of a guilty plea. Under prevailing constitutional norms in almost every jurisdiction, a lawyer does not have a duty to tell her client about many serious but "collateral" consequences of a guilty plea. Yet, in every jurisdiction that has considered the issue, that very same lawyer will run afoul of her duties if she affirmatively misrepresents a collateral consequence-every jurisdiction, that is,except Kentucky. The Supreme Court of …

A Fair Trial, Not A Perfect One: The Early Twentieth-Century Campaign For The Harmless Error Rule, Roger Fairfax

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

From just after the turn of the twentieth century through World War II, there was a great deal of activity around criminal justice reform. Much like today, many commentators in the early twentieth century considered the American criminal justice system to be broken. With regard to all of its phases-substance, sentencing, and procedure-the criminal justice system was thought to be inefficient and ineffective, and it failed to inspire the confidence of the bench, bar, or public.

Against this backdrop, a group of reformers sought to address the shortcomings of early twentieth-century criminal justice-during what I consider the "Golden Age" of …

Integrating Comparative Criminal Law: Criminal Law And Procedure, At Home And Abroad, Roger Fairfax

Presentations

No abstract provided.

Vicarious Criminal Liability And The Constitutional Dimensions Of Pinkerton, Alex Kreit

American University Law Review

This article considers what limits the constitution places on holding someone criminally liable for another's conduct. While vicarious criminal liability is often criticized, there is no doubt that it is constitutionally permissible as a general matter. Under the long-standing felony murder doctrine, for example, if A and B rob a bank and B shoots and kills a security guard, A can be held criminally liable for the murder. What if, however, A was not involved in the robbery but instead had a completely separate conspiracy with B to distribute cocaine? What relationship, if any, does the constitution require between A's …