Law Commons^™

Playing By The Rule: How Aba Model Rule 8.4(G) Can Regulate Jury Exclusion, Anna Offit

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Discrimination during voir dire remains a critical impediment to empaneling juries that reflect the diversity of the United States. While various solutions have been proposed, scholars have largely overlooked ethics rules as an instrument for preventing discriminatory behavior during jury selection. Focusing on the ABA Model Rule 8.4(g), which regulates professional misconduct, this article argues that ethics rules can, under certain conditions, offer an effective deterrent to exclusionary practices among legal actors. Part I examines the specific history, evolution, and application of revised ABA Model Rule 8.4(g). Part II delves into the ways that ethics rules in general, despite their …

Managing Digital Discovery In Criminal Cases, Jenia I. Turner

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The burdens and challenges of discovery—especially electronic discovery—are usually associated with civil, not criminal cases. This is beginning to change. Already common in white-collar crime cases, voluminous digital discovery is increasingly a feature of ordinary criminal prosecutions.

This Article examines the explosive growth of digital evidence in criminal cases and the efforts to manage its challenges. It then advances three claims about criminal case discovery in the digital age. First, the volume, complexity, and cost of digital discovery will incentivize the prosecution and the defense to cooperate more closely in cases with significant amounts of electronically stored information (ESI). Second, …

Beyond The Bright Line: A Contemporary Right-To-Counsel Doctrine, Pamela R. Metzger

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The current right-to-counsel doctrine was developed in the 1970's. It created a bright-line rule still in effect today. The right to counsel attaches only at "critical stages" of a criminal prosecution. Under this critical stage doctrine, the right to counsel only attaches after the initiation of formal adversary proceedings and only applies to confrontations between the accused and the prosecution or law enforcement. In the years following the Supreme Court's development of the critical stage doctrine, national trends of mandatory sentencing and sentencing guidelines revolutionized criminal procedure and dramatically altered the roles of the system's key players.

Now, defense counsel's …