Law Commons^™

Victims’ Participation In An Era Of Multi-Door Criminal Justice, Béatrice Coscas-Williams, Hadar Dancig-Rosenberg, Michal Alberstein

Connecticut Law Review

Victims’ right to participate in their cases—to hear and be heard—has gained formal recognition in both common law and continental legal cultures over the past two decades. Paradoxically, even as victims’ rights are acknowledged, their participation in the judicial process is increasingly circumscribed due to the proliferation of abbreviated and efficiency oriented judicial procedures. Focusing on this paradox, this Article uncovers and analyzes the level of victims’ participation in an era of convergence and transformation of legal cultures and traditions. By exploring new ways to conceptualize the role of victims within contemporary criminal legal systems, this Article explores various and …

The Connecticut Clean Slate Law

Connecticut Law Review

By erasing or sealing criminal records, Clean Slate policies propose a second-chance opportunity of employment, housing, and education to thousands of Americans. In targeting the archaic and inaccessible processes of expunging and sealing records, Clean Slate ambitiously pursues economic and public safety policy goals. In 2021, Connecticut joined the states devoted to ascribing to these goals when it enacted a Clean Slate law that aids thousands of Connecticut residents who face major disadvantages as a result of misdemeanor or low-level felony records stemming from years-old convictions.

Supporters of Connecticut’s Clean Slate law theorize that without the barriers imposed by criminal …

A New And Improved Doctrine Of Double Effect: Not Just For Trolleys

Connecticut Law Review

In its standard formulation, the doctrine of double effect (DDE) permits an action that causes foreseeable and harmful, even dire, collateral consequences, so long as the actor merely foresees but does not intend them and the harms are proportional to the benefit. Yet DDE’s critics question the moral distinction between intending a bad outcome, on one hand, and merely knowing that the actions will result in the bad outcome but acting in exactly the same way, on the other. After all, except in a few narrow circumstances, criminal law in the United States treats intent and knowledge as equally culpable …

An Empirical Study Of The Nation's First Court Animal Advocate Law, Jessica Rubin, Tara Cooley

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Pretrial Disparity And The Consequences Of Money Bail, Miguel De Figueiredo, Dane Thorley

Faculty Articles and Papers

Catalyzed by the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, support for criminal justice reform in the United States has become a groundswell, with reformers demanding an end to racial and socioeconomic disparities in all aspects of policing, prosecution, adjudication, and incarceration. While high-profile cases of police misconduct during arrest remain in the limelight, a growing and politically diverse chorus of voices is calling for change at the first point of contact between a defendant and the court system: the bail hearing. Bail decisions are highly consequential in terms of their scale and impact on the lives of defendants, their families, …

Liberty And Just [Compensation] For All: Wrongful Conviction As A Fifth Amendment Taking, Kelly Shea Delvac

Connecticut Law Review

In the United States, over 2,900 people have been exonerated for crimes they did not commit. While some exonerees currently qualify for compensation for their wrongful convictions, less than 40% have received any type of financial support. This Note examines the history of wrongful convictions in America as well as the historical background of the Fifth Amendment. It then looks at the current compensation schemes available to exonerees and analyzes the evolution of takings jurisprudence. This Note argues that a wrongful conviction is a taking of an exoneree’s labor under the Fifth Amendment and, therefore, constitutionally entitles an exoneree to …

The Democratizing Potential Of Algorithms?, Ngozi Okidegbe

Connecticut Law Review

Jurisdictions are increasingly embracing the use of pretrial risk assessment algorithms as a solution to the problem of mass pretrial incarceration. Conversations about the use of pretrial algorithms in legal scholarship have tended to focus on their opacity, determinativeness, reliability, validity, or their (in)ability to reduce high rates of incarceration, as well as racial and socioeconomic disparities within the pretrial system. This Article breaks from this tendency, examining these algorithms from a democratization of criminal law perspective. Using this framework, it points out that currently employed algorithms are exclusionary of the viewpoints and values of the racially marginalized communities most …

Public Matters? Comparing Decision-Making By Appointed And Elected Prosecutors In Cases Of Deadly Use-Of-Force By Police In The Hartford Judicial District And Suffolk County, Andrew E. Dubsky

Honors Scholar Theses

This thesis dissects prosecutor discretion for appointed and elected prosecutors after a “catalyst” event shifts public opinion. Previous studies have shown that elected prosecutors are more likely to use discretion favoring the opinion of the public than their appointed counterparts (Bandyopadhyay 2014, Nelson 2014, and Valenti 2011). Because elected prosecutors are more likely to follow public opinion, they should also be more likely to respond to the demands of the public than their appointed counterparts. In effect, elected prosecutors are expected to be more likely to exercise discretion in their charging and prosecuting. To test this, I use the 2014 …

All Roads Lead To Rome: A Jurisprudential Genealogy Of Feminism, Sexual And Gender-Based Violence And International Criminal Law, Jessica M. Zaccagnino

Connecticut Journal of International Law

Sexual and gender-based violence is prevalent in armed conflicts throughout all corners of the world. The elevation—and recognition—of sexual and gender-based violence as violence qua violence is an arduous and continual struggle. Although international humanitarian and human rights law purports to proscribe sexual and gender-based violence, the language of the law often minimizes the gravity of this violence and fails to hold perpetrators accountable. This Article argues that to elevate sexual and gender-based violence crimes in the international humanitarian and criminal law hierarchy, there must be a radical reconceptualization of gender under international law. But, in order to envision the …

Rethinking The Relationship Between Punishment And Policing, Kiel Brennan-Marquez

Faculty Articles and Papers

Responding to Gabriel Mendlow, Why Is it Wrong To Punish Thought?, 127 YALE L. J. 2342 (2018).

Driving The Drug War: Difficulties With Proper Detection Of Thc And Measurement Of Marijuana Intoxication For The Purposes Of Dui Prosecution, Sage La Rue Zitzkat

Dissertations and Honors Papers

No abstract provided.

A Forensic Analysis Of Pulmonary Embolism And Its Missing Link: Causation, William Price

Dissertations and Honors Papers

This paper explores the use of forensics outside of the criminal context, specifically in regard to pulmonary emboli. This paper will analyze what pulmonary embolism are, how they interact with the rest of the body, what causes them, and the legal considerations that arise because of them. Pulmonary embolism is common and deadly, making them a subject in a vast amount of medical malpractice litigation. This paper aims to educate the public and attorneys as to how this condition can be prevented and how to prove pulmonary embolism in civil suits regarding claims of malpractice.

Book Review, Thomas Morawetz

Faculty Articles and Papers

Reviewing Daniel S. Medwed ed., Wrongful Convictions and the DNA Revolution: Twenty-Five Years of Freeing the Innocent, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017 and Sharon Dolovich and Alexandra Natapoff eds., The New Criminal Justice Thinking, New York: New York University Press, 2017.

Big Data Policing And The Redistribution Of Anxiety, Kiel Brennan-Marquez

Faculty Articles and Papers

By equipping police with data, what are we trying to accomplish? Certain answers ring familiar. For one thing, we are trying to make criminal justice decisions, plagued as they often are by inaccuracy and bias, more refined. For another, we are trying to boost the efficiency of governance institutions-police departments, prosecutor's offices, municipal courts-that operate under the pall of scarcity.

For the moment, I want to put answers like these to one side; not because they are wrong, but because they seem like only part of the story. Another goal of big data policing, in addition to those just described, …

Protein Found At The Scene Of The Crime: The Potential For Using Proteomics For Identification, Gavin R. Tisdale

Dissertations and Honors Papers

Hair has long been collected from crime scenes as part of trace evidence. Originally, hair was used for some exclusionary purposes—only general qualities about an unknown source could be determined. Eventually, DNA was used to help identify the source but only if the root was still attached. Within the last two years, however, two major studies have used proteomics—the study of human protein sequences—to extract and identify protein sequences in an unknown source in order to match it to a known source. These two studies support the same hypothesis: proteomics is currently a viable method for narrowing down the source …

Impact Of The “Nirbhaya” Rape Case: Isolated Phenomenon Or Social Change?, Tina P. Lapsia

Honors Scholar Theses

In December 2012, a twenty-three year old college student, who was given the pseudonym “Nirbhaya” (“fearless”), was fatally gang-raped on a private bus in Delhi, India, galvanizing the country to swiftly adopt new legislative measures and catapulting the issue of violence against women in India into the international spotlight. Although assault and rape cases have made India infamous for its high volume of crimes against women, the reaction to this particular incident was much different from before. This paper investigates whether the governmental and societal responses represent social change, as indicated by changing attitudes towards violence against women in India. …

Throw Away The Jail Or Throw Away The Key? The Effect Of Punishment On Recidivism And Social Cost, Miguel De Figueiredo

Faculty Articles and Papers

"We jail too many people and it costs too much. Incarceration is not only expensive, it also is prone to ""hardening"" and negative peer learning effectshat may increase recidivism. With local, state, and federal budgets at a breaking point, politicians and regulators are increasingly considering alternative approaches to preventing crime. Yet, they face a problem. Studies show that incapacitation is a successful way of reducing crime, yet most scholars and policymakers think that the only way to incapacitate is to incarcerate. This study demonstrates that this assumption is problematic, arguing that we should understand incapacitation along a continuum, with incarceration …

A Quite Principled Conceit, Kiel Brennan-Marquez

Faculty Articles and Papers

A Response to Jed Rubenfeld, The Riddle of Rape-by­ Deception and the Myth of Sexual Autonomy, 122 Yale L J 1372 (2013).

Criminal Law’S Tribalism, Molly Townes O'Brien

Connecticut Public Interest Law Journal

No abstract provided.

A Look At In Re Fabian A.: Examining The Extension Of Due Process Protections And Failure To Object As Waiver In The Juvenile Justice System, Elizabeth Bannon

Connecticut Public Interest Law Journal

Vol. 11, No. 1

Developments In Connecticut Criminal Law: 2008, Timothy Everett

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Developments In Connecticut Criminal Law: 2007, Timothy Everett

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Developments In Connecticut Criminal Law: 2006, Timothy Everett

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Causing Death For Compassionate Reasons In American Law, Richard Kay

Faculty Articles and Papers

This essay, a revised version of the United States report on Euthanasia to be presented at the XVII International Congress of Comparative Law, surveys the state of the law, both decisional and statutory, on the permissibility of compassionately motivated actions to terminate human life. It deals with a range of legal categories: suicide, attempted suicide, euthanasia, assisted suicide and the termination of life-sustaining treatment. It highlights the deeply ambivalent attitudes held toward these actions in contemporary America and how this ambivalence has resulted in obscure and artificial distinctions.

On The Value Of Prison Visits With Incarcerated Clients Represented On Appeal By A Law School Criminal Defense Clinic, Timothy Everett

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Retroactivity: What Can We Learn From The Odd Case Of Michael Skakel, Lewis Kurlantzick

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Developments In Connecticut Criminal Law: 2005, Timothy Everett

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Post- Gideon Developments In Law And Lawyering, Timothy Everett

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Adam, Eve, And Emma: On Criminal Responsibility And Moral Wisdom, Thomas Morawetz

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Allocating Resources Among Prisons And Social Programs In The Battle Against Crime, Peter Siegelman, John J. Donohue Iii

Faculty Articles and Papers

This article evaluates the cost and crime-reducing potential of prisons and social spending, setting forth the conditions under which a shift in resources from an expanding prison population into social spending would lead to a reduction in total crime. Preschool enrichment programs coupled with family intervention have generated impressive results in reducing crime in a number of different studies. Targeting of resources toward those children most at risk of criminal behavior is necessary to generate cost-effective crime reduction, but this may be difficult to achieve because of political or constitutional constraints. Given precise targeting, and if a broadly implemented preschool …