Law Commons^™

The Miranda Custody Requirement And Juveniles, Paul Marcus

Faculty Publications

Concerns about the interrogation process and the ability of minors to navigate the criminal justice system often intersect. The impact of the age of juveniles can be seen in a variety of judicial decisions, most markedly those dealing with punishment. But judicial concern for juveniles goes well beyond sentencing. The interrogation process raises especially grave fears.

Since the Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling in Miranda v. Arizona disallowing compelled inculpatory statements by criminal suspects and defendants, there has been concern as to whether juveniles fully understand and appreciate their rights as articulated in Miranda and based in the Fifth …

Pimentel V. State, 133 Nev. Adv. Op. 31 (June 22, 2017), Ping Chang

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court determined that (1) the challenge-to-fight theory under NRS 200.450 is not vague and overbroad, (2) all bench conferences must be recorded in criminal trials, (3) self-defense is not available as a defense in a violation of NRS 200.450, and (4) an expert witness cannot impeach defendant’s testimony with statements defendant made during court-ordered psychiatric evaluation.

Stewart V. State, 133 Nev. Adv. Op. 20 (May 4, 2017), Margarita Elias

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

Before his interrogation, Tommy Laquade Stewart (“Stewart”) was given LVMPD’s Miranda warning pursuant to Miranda v. Arizona.[1] Stewart then agreed to speak with detectives without an attorney. He was subsequently charged and convicted of kidnapping and robbery. On appeal, Stewart argued that there was insufficient evidence to support the convictions and that the Miranda warning was legally insufficient. The Court disagreed and affirmed the district court’s judgment of conviction.

[1] 384 U.S. 436 (1966).

Revisiting Our Administrative System Of Criminal Justice, Benjamin E. Rosenberg

Res Gestae

Nineteen years after Judge Lynch’s piece, "Our Administrative System of Criminal Justice," this Article considers recent developments in the criminal justice system and whether Judge Lynch’s observations have withstood the test of time. It suggests that Judge Lynch’s observation—that our criminal justice system has strayed far from the model of the adversarial system—remains as true today as it was when he made it in 1998. It further explains that developments in the nineteen years since the publication of “Our Administrative System of Criminal Justice” have caused the criminal justice system to stray even further from the adversarial model and in …

The Miranda App: Metaphor And Machine, Andrew Ferguson, Richard Leo

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

For fifty years, the core problem that gave rise to Miranda – namely, the coercive pressure of custodial interrogation – has remained largely unchanged. This article proposes bringing Miranda into the twenty-first century by developing a “Miranda App” to replace the existing, human Miranda warnings and waiver process with a digital, scripted computer program of videos, text, and comprehension assessments. The Miranda App would provide constitutionally adequate warnings, clarifying answers, contextual information, and age-appropriate instruction to suspects before interrogation. Designed by legal scholars, validated by social science experts, and tested by police, the Miranda App would address several decades of …

Who Should Own Police Body Camera Videos?, Laurent Sacharoff, Sarah Lustbader

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Numerous cities, states, and localities have adopted police body camera programs to enhance police accountability in the wake of repeated instances of police misconduct, as well as recent reports of more deep-seated police problems. These body camera programs hold great promise to achieve accountability, often backed by millions of dollars of federal grants.

But so far, this promise of accountability has gone largely unrealized, in part because police departments exercise near-total control over body camera programs and the videos themselves. In fact, the police view these programs chiefly as a tool of ordinary law enforcement rather than accountability — as …

Costs Of Pretrial Detention, Shima Baughman

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Spending on U.S. incarceration has increased dramatically over the last several decades. Much of this cost is on incarcerating pretrial detainees—inmates not convicted of a crime—which constitute the majority of individuals in our nation’s jails. Current statutory schemes give judges almost complete discretion to order pretrial detention based on unexplained or unidentified factors. With this discretion, judges tend to make inconsistent decisions in every jurisdiction, some releasing almost all defendants—including the most dangerous—and others detaining most defendants—even those who are safe to release. There are constitutional and moral reasons to evaluate our current detention scheme, but even the fiscal impact …

Firepower To The People: Gun Rights & Self-Defense To Curb Police Misconduct, Spearit

Articles

This Article represents a polemic against the most harmful aspects of the policing status quo. At its core, the work asserts the right of civilians to defend against unlawful deadly police conduct. It argues that existing gun and self-defense laws provide a practical and principled basis for curbing police misconduct. It also examines legislative trends in gun laws to show that much of most recent liberalizing of gun rights is a direct response to self-defense concerns sparked by mass public shootings. The expansion of gun rights and self-defense comes at a time when ongoing police killings of Black civilians menace …