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Full-Text Articles in Law
Life Without Parole Sentencing In North Carolina, Brandon L. Garrett, Travis M. Seale-Carlisle, Karima Modjadidi, Kristen M. Renberg
Life Without Parole Sentencing In North Carolina, Brandon L. Garrett, Travis M. Seale-Carlisle, Karima Modjadidi, Kristen M. Renberg
Faculty Scholarship
What explains the puzzle of life without parole (LWOP) sentencing in the United States? In the past two decades, LWOP sentences have reached record highs, with over 50,000 prisoners serving LWOP. Yet during this same period, homicide rates have steadily declined. The U.S. Supreme Court has limited the use of juvenile LWOP in Eighth Amendment rulings. Further, death sentences have steeply declined, reaching record lows. Although research has examined drivers of incarceration patterns for certain sentences, there has been little research on LWOP imposition. To shed light on what might explain the sudden rise of LWOP, we examine characteristics of …
Declining Corporate Prosecutions, Brandon L. Garrett
Declining Corporate Prosecutions, Brandon L. Garrett
Faculty Scholarship
In the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis, people across the United States protested that "too big to jail" banks were not held accountable after the financial crisis. Little has changed. Newly collected data concerning enforcement during the Trump Administration has made it possible to assess what impact a series of new policies has had on corporate enforcement. To provide a snapshot comparison, in its last twenty months, the Obama Administration levied $I4.15 billion in total corporate penalties by prosecuting seventy-one financial institutions and thirty-four public companies. During the first twenty months of the Trump Administration, corporate penalties declined to …
The Decline Of The Virginia (And American) Death Penalty, Brandon L. Garrett
The Decline Of The Virginia (And American) Death Penalty, Brandon L. Garrett
Faculty Scholarship
The American death penalty is disappearing. Death sentences and executions have reached the lowest levels seen in three decades. Even the states formerly most aggressive in pursuit of death sentences have seen death sentences steadily decline. Take Virginia, which has the highest rate of executions of any death penalty state, and which has executed the third highest number of prisoners since the 1970s. How times have changed. There has not been a new death sentence in Virginia since 2011. Only seven counties have imposed death sentences in the past decade in Virginia. There are now two or fewer trials a …
The Development And Evolution Of The U.S. Law Of Corporate Criminal Liability And The Yates Memo, Sara Sun Beale
The Development And Evolution Of The U.S. Law Of Corporate Criminal Liability And The Yates Memo, Sara Sun Beale
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The Development And Evolution Of The U.S. Law Of Corporate Criminal Liability, Sara Sun Beale
The Development And Evolution Of The U.S. Law Of Corporate Criminal Liability, Sara Sun Beale
Faculty Scholarship
In the United States, corporate criminal liability developed in response to the industrial revolution and the rise in the scope and importance of corporate activities. This article focuses principally on federal law, which bases corporate criminal liability on the respondeat superior doctrine developed in tort law. In the federal system, the formative period for the doctrine of corporate criminal liability was the early Twentieth Century, when Congress dramatically expanded the reach of federal law, responding to the unprecedented concentration of economic power in corporations and combinations of business concerns as well as new hazards to public health and safety. Both …
The Story Of Ewing: Three Strikes Laws And The Limits Of The Eighth Amendment Proportionality Review, Sara Sun Beale
The Story Of Ewing: Three Strikes Laws And The Limits Of The Eighth Amendment Proportionality Review, Sara Sun Beale
Faculty Scholarship
In 1994 California enacted the nation's harshest "three strikes" law. Under this law, any felony can serve as a third strike, and conviction of a third strike requires a mandatory prison sentence of 25 years to life. In Ewing v. California, 538 U.S. 11 (2003), the Supreme Court held that sending a drug addict who shoplifted three golf clubs to prison for 25 years to life under the three strikes law did not violate the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the Eighth Amendment. The chapter for the forthcoming Criminal Law Stories tells the story of the Ewing case, describing …
Is Now The Time For Major Federal Sentencing Reform?, Sara Sun Beale
Is Now The Time For Major Federal Sentencing Reform?, Sara Sun Beale
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The North Carolina Racial Justice Act: An Essay On Substantive And Procedural Fairness In Death Penalty Litigation, Neil Vidmar
The North Carolina Racial Justice Act: An Essay On Substantive And Procedural Fairness In Death Penalty Litigation, Neil Vidmar
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
The Psychology Of Trial Judging, Neil Vidmar
The Psychology Of Trial Judging, Neil Vidmar
Faculty Scholarship
Trial court judges play a crucial role in the administration of justice for both criminal and civil matters. Although psychologists have studied juries for many decades, they have paid relatively little attention to judges. Recent writings, however, suggest that there is increasing interest in the psychology of judicial decision making. In this article, I review several selected areas of judicial behavior in which decisions appear to be influenced by psychological dispositions, but I caution that a mature psychology of judging field will need to consider the influence of the bureaucratic court setting in which judges are embedded, judges’ legal training, …
The Upside Of Overbreadth, Samuel W. Buell
The Upside Of Overbreadth, Samuel W. Buell
Faculty Scholarship
Overbreadth in criminal liability rules, especially in federal law, is abundant and much lamented. Overbreadth is avoidable if it results from normative mistakes about how much conduct to criminalize or from insufficient care to limit open texture in statutes. Social planners cannot so easily avoid overbreadth if they cannot reach behaviors for which criminalization is well justified without also reaching behaviors for which it is not. This mismatch problem is acute if persons engaging in properly criminalized behaviors deliberately alter their conduct to avoid punishment and have resources to devote to avoidance efforts. In response to such efforts, legal actors …
Reforming Punishment Of Financial Reporting Fraud, Samuel W. Buell
Reforming Punishment Of Financial Reporting Fraud, Samuel W. Buell
Faculty Scholarship
Present sentencing law in criminal cases of financial reporting fraud is embarrassingly flawed. The problem is urgent given that courts are now regularly sentencing corporate offenders, sometimes (but sometimes not) to extremely punitive terms of imprisonment. Policing of fraud by multiple jurisdictions in a federal system means that principled sentencing law is necessary not only for first-order policy reasons but also for coordination of sanctioning efforts. Proportionality and rationality demand that sentencing law have an agreed scale for measuring cases of financial reporting fraud in relation to each other, a sound methodology for fixing a given case on that scale, …
What’S Law Got To Do With It? The Political, Social, Psychological And Other Non-Legal Factors Influencing The Development Of (Federal) Criminal Law, Sara Sun Beale
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Law’S Emperor, Sara Sun Beale
The New Reno Bluesheet: A Little More Candor Regarding Prosecutorial Discretion, Sara Sun Beale
The New Reno Bluesheet: A Little More Candor Regarding Prosecutorial Discretion, Sara Sun Beale
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Procedural Issues Raised By Guidelines Sentencing: The Constitutional Significance Of The “Elements Of The Sentence”, Sara Sun Beale
Procedural Issues Raised By Guidelines Sentencing: The Constitutional Significance Of The “Elements Of The Sentence”, Sara Sun Beale
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.