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Full-Text Articles in Law
Choosing A Criminal Procedure Casebook: On Lesser Evils And Free Books, Ben L. Trachtenberg
Choosing A Criminal Procedure Casebook: On Lesser Evils And Free Books, Ben L. Trachtenberg
Faculty Publications
Among the more important decisions a law teacher makes when preparing a new course is what materials to assign. Criminal procedure teachers are spoiled for choice, with legal publishers offering several options written by teams of renowned scholars. This Article considers how a teacher might choose from the myriad options available and suggests two potentially overlooked criteria: weight and price.
Systemic Barriers To Effective Assistance Of Counsel In Plea Bargaining, Rodney J. Uphoff, Peter A. Joy
Systemic Barriers To Effective Assistance Of Counsel In Plea Bargaining, Rodney J. Uphoff, Peter A. Joy
Faculty Publications
In a trio of recent cases, Padilla v. Kentucky, Missouri v. Frye, and Lafler v. Cooper, the U.S. Supreme Court has focused its attention on defense counsel's pivotal role during the plea bargaining process . At the same time that the Court has signaled its willingness to consider ineffective assistance of counsel claims at the plea stage, prosecutors are increasingly requiring defendants to sign waivers that include waiving all constitutional and procedural errors, even unknown ineffective assistance of counsel claims such as those that proved successful in Padilla and Frye. Had Jose Padilla and Galin Frye been forced to sign …
American Buffalo: Vanishing Acquittals And The Gradual Extinction Of The Federal Criminal Trial Lawyer, Frank O. Bowman Iii
American Buffalo: Vanishing Acquittals And The Gradual Extinction Of The Federal Criminal Trial Lawyer, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Faculty Publications
This essay is an invited response to Professor Ronald Wright's impressive study of the fact that the acquittal rate in federal criminal trials is declining even faster than the rate of trials themselves, Trial Distortion and the End of Innocence in Federal Criminal Justice, 154 U. PA. L. REV. 79 (2005). The essay concurs with Professor Wright's conclusion that one significant factor driving down both federal trial and acquittal rates is the government's use of the markedly increased bargaining leverage afforded to prosecutors by the post-1987 federal sentencing system consisting of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines interacting with various statutory mandatory …
The Model Federal Sentencing Guidelines Project: A Simplified Sentencing Grid, Model Sentencing Guidelines §1.1, Frank O. Bowman Iii
The Model Federal Sentencing Guidelines Project: A Simplified Sentencing Grid, Model Sentencing Guidelines §1.1, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Faculty Publications
This Article is the first of twelve parts of a set of Model Federal Sentencing Guidelines designed to illustrate the feasibility and advantages of a simplified approach to federal sentencing proposed by the Constitution Project Sentencing Initiative. The Model Sentencing Guidelines and the Constitution Project report are all to be published in Volume 18, Number 5 of the Federal Sentencing Reporter. The project is described in an essay titled "'Tis a Gift to be Simple: A Model Reform of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines", available on SSRN at http://ssrn.com/abstract=927929.
The Failure Of The Federal Sentencing System: A Structural Analysis, Frank O. Bowman Iii
The Failure Of The Federal Sentencing System: A Structural Analysis, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Faculty Publications
For most of the last decade, I numbered myself among the supporters of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines and wrote extensively in their defense, while chronicling their defects. In the past year, I have reluctantly concluded that the federal sentencing guidelines system has failed. This Article explains the Guidelines' failure. The Sentencing Reform Act was intended to distribute the power to make sentencing policy and rules and to control individual sentencing outcomes among a range of national and local actors - the U.S. Sentencing Commission, Congress, the federal appellate courts, and the Department of Justice at the national level, and district …
Pour Encourager Les Autres? The Curious History And Distressing Implications Of The Criminal Provisions Of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act And The Sentencing Guidelines Amendments That Followed, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Pour Encourager Les Autres? The Curious History And Distressing Implications Of The Criminal Provisions Of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act And The Sentencing Guidelines Amendments That Followed, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Faculty Publications
This Article presents a legislative history of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the subsequent amendments to the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines. It explains the surprising interaction between the civil and criminal provisions of Sarbanes-Oxley. The Article also provides a dramatic and detailed account of the interplay of political interests and agendas that ultimately led to large sentence increases for serious corporate criminals and blanket sentence increases for virtually all federal fraud defendants. The tale illuminates the substance of the new legislation and sentencing rules, but is more broadly instructive regarding the distribution of power over criminal sentencing between the three branches and …