Law Commons^™

Compelled Statements From Police Officers And Garrity Immunity, Steven D. Clymer

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In this Article, Professor Steven Clymer describes the problem created when police departments require officers suspected of misconduct to answer internal affairs investigators' questions or face job termination. Relying on the Supreme Court's decision in Garrity v. New Jersey, courts treat such compelled statements as immunized testimony. That treatment not only renders such a statement inadmissible in a criminal prosecution of the suspect police officer, it also may require the prosecution to shoulder the daunting and sometimes insurmountable burden of demonstrating that its physical evidence, witness testimony, and strategic decisionmaking are untainted by the statement. Because police internal affairs …

Economic Hardship As Coercion Under The Protocol On International Trafficking In Persons By Organized Crime Elements, Linda A. Malone

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Unreasonable Probability Of Error, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Faculty Scholarship

In Strickland v. Washington, the Supreme Court sought to create a uniform standard to guarantee effective assistance of counsel to criminal defendants, to "ensure a fair trial," and to assure the reliability of "a just result."' Justice O'Connor's majority opinion created a two-pronged test for overturning a trial verdict: deficient performance and resulting prejudice. The Court explicitly established a difficult burden for proving deficient performance,² but set a moderate standard for prejudice as the "reasonable probability that, but for counsel's unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different. A reasonable probability is a probability sufficient …

Lawyer Crimes: Beyond The Law?, Charles W. Wolfram

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Section 5: Criminal Law And Procedure, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

Knockin' On Heaven's Door: Rethinking The Role Of Religion In Death Penalty Cases, Gary J. Simson, Stephen P. Garvey

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Religion has played a prominent role at various points of capital trials. In jury selection, peremptory challenges have been exercised against prospective jurors on the basis of their religion. At the sentencing phase, defendants have offered as mitigating evidence proof of their religiosity, and the prosecution has introduced evidence of the victim's religiosity. In closing argument, quotations from the Bible and other appeals to religion have long been common. During deliberations, jurors have engaged in group prayer and tried to sway one another with quotes from scripture.

Such practices have not gone unquestioned. Rather remarkably, however, the questions have almost …

Seventh Biennial Statewide Survey Of Drug And Alcohol Use Among California Students In Grades 7, 9 And 11, California Attorney General's Office, Gregory Austin Ph.D., Rodney Skager Ph.D.

California Agencies

No abstract provided.

Whose News About Justice? [Review Essay], Mark Findlay

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Review of two books: Whose News About Justice? Nicholas Cowdery (2001), Getting Justice Wrong, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, ISBN 1865083224 & Jock Collins, Greg Noble, Scott Poynting & Paul Tabar (2001), Kebabs, Kids, Cops and Crime, Pluto Press, Sydney, ISBN 1864031131.

Prosecuting Conduit Campaign Contributions - Hard Time For Soft Money, Robert D. Probasco

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, there have been several high-profile prosecutions for violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act, involving contributions nominally by one individual but funded or reimbursed by another individual deemed to be the true contributor. Prosecutions of these “conduit contribution” cases have been surprising in at least three significant respects. First, the prosecutions have been based on violations of FECA’s reporting requirements and may not have involved any violations of the substantive prohibitions or limitations of contributions. Second, the defendants were the donors rather than campaign officials who actually filed reports with FECA. Third, the cases were prosecuted as …

The Ex Ante Function Of The Criminal Law, Paul H. Robinson, John M. Darley, Kevin M. Carlsmith

All Faculty Scholarship

Criminal legal codes draw clear lines between permissible and illegal conduct, and the criminal justice system counts on people knowing these lines and governing their conduct accordingly. This is the "ex ante" function of the law; lines are drawn, and because citizens fear punishments or believe in the moral validity of the legal codes they do not cross these lines. But do people in fact know the lines that legal codes draw? The fact that several states have adopted laws that deviate from other state laws enables a field experiment to address this question. Residents (N = 203) of states …

Forecasting Life And Death: Juror Race, Religion, And Attitude Toward The Death Penalty, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen P. Garvey, Martin T. Wells

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Determining whether race, sex, or other juror characteristics influence how capital case jurors vote is difficult. Jurors tend to vote for death in more egregious cases and for life in less egregious cases no matter what their own characteristics. And a juror's personal characteristics may get lost in the process of deliberation because the final verdict reflects the jury's will, not the individual juror's. Controlling for the facts likely to influence a juror's verdict helps to isolate the influence of a juror's personal characteristics. Examining each juror's first sentencing vote reveals her own judgment before the majority works its will. …

Quiet Rebellion? Explaining Nearly A Decade Of Declining Federal Drug Sentences, Frank O. Bowman Iii, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This is the first of two articles, the second of which will appear in January 2002 edition of the Iowa Law Review, in which we seek an explanation for the little-noticed and hitherto unexamined fact that the average length of prison sentences imposed in federal court for narcotics violations has been declining steadily since 1991-92.

According to figures maintained by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, in the eight years between 1991 and 1999, the average federal drug sentence decreased from 95.7 months to 75.2 months, a drop of 22%, or nearly two years, per defendant. United States …

"Whodunit" Versus "What Was Done": When To Admit Character Evidence In Criminal Cases, Sherry F. Colb

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In virtually every jurisdiction in the United States, the law of evidence prohibits parties from offering proof of an individual's general character traits to suggest that, on a specific occasion, the individual behaved in a manner consistent with those traits. In a criminal trial in particular, the law prohibits a prosecutor's introduction of evidence about the defendant's character as proof of his guilt. In this Article, Professor Colb proposes that the exclusion of defendant character evidence is appropriate in one category of cases but inappropriate in another. In the first category, which Professor Colb calls "whodunit" cases, the parties agree …

Innocence Protection Act: Death Penalty Reform On The Horizon, Ronald Weich

All Faculty Scholarship

The criminal justice pendulum may be swinging back in the direction of fairness. The Innocence Protection Act of 2001, introduced in both the Senate and the House of Representatives earlier this year, promises meaningful reforms in the administration of capital punishment in the United States.

Unlike previous slabs at reform, the Innocence Protection Act (lPA) has a real chance to become law because it commands unusually broad bipartisan support. The Senate bill (S. 486) is sponsored by Democrat Pat Leahy of Vermont and Republican Gordon Smith of Oregon. The House bill (H.R. 912) is sponsored by Democrat Bill Delahunt of …

Lifesaving Welfare Safety Net Access For Battered Immigrant Women And Children: Accomplishments And Next Steps, Leslye Orloff

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The United States is currently experiencing one of the largest waves of immigration in its history. Contrary to common assumptions, more than half of new immigrants are women. Despite this fact, U.S. immigration policy and most agencies serving immigrants have remained blind to gender differences and have treated all immigrants alike.

Quiet Rebellion? Explaining Nearly A Decade Of Declining Federal Drug Sentences With Michael Heise, Frank O. Bowman Iii, Michael Heise

Faculty Publications

The Article begins with an examination of three primarily empirical questions. First, is the trend real? In other words, is the apparent decrease in federal drug sentences merely a species of statistical hiccup, a random fluctuation that could move easily and rapidly in the other direction? Or is the decline in average drug sentences large enough, and the trend prolonged enough, that we can safely conclude that something meaningful is occurring?

Female Gangs: A Focus On Research, Us Department Of Justice

Juvenile Justice Bulletin

No abstract provided.

Keeping Children Safe: Ojjdp's Child Protection Division, Us Department Of Justice

Juvenile Justice Bulletin

No abstract provided.

Choosing And Using Child Victimization Questionnaires, Us Department Of Justice

Juvenile Justice Bulletin

No abstract provided.

Anticipating Space Needs In Juvenile Detention And Correctional Facilities, Us Department Of Justice

Juvenile Justice Bulletin

No abstract provided.

Punishing Dangerousness: Cloaking Preventive Detention As Criminal Justice, Paul H. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

Laypersons have traditionally thought of the criminal justice system as being in the business of doing justice: punishing offenders for the crimes they commit. Yet during the past several decades, the justice system's focus has shifted from punishing past crimes to preventing future violations through the incarceration and control of dangerous offenders. Habitual-offender statutes, such as "three strikes" laws, authorize life sentences for repeat offenders. Jurisdictional reforms have decreased the age at which juveniles may be tried as adults. Gang membership and recruitment are now punished. "Megan's Law" statutes require community notification of convicted sex offenders. "Sexual predator" statutes provide …

Dialectics And Domestic Abuse, Katharine K. Baker

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Comparison Of Four Restorative Conferencing Models, Us Department Of Justice

Juvenile Justice Bulletin

No abstract provided.

Community Policing In Local Police Departments, 1997 And 1999, Us Department Of Justice

National Institute of Justice Office of Justice Programs

No abstract provided.

The Jury In The Twenty-First Century: An Interdisciplinary Conference--Introduction, Susan Herman, Lawrence Solan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Convicting The Innocent Beyond A Reasonable Doubt: Some Lessons About Jury Instructions From The Sheppard Case, Lawrence Solan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Why A Federal Death Penalty Moratorium?, Rory K. Little

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

International Criminal Jurisprudence Comes Of Age: The Substance And Procedure Of An Emerging Discipline, Nancy Amoury Combs

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Book Review, David S. Tanenhaus

Scholarly Works

This ambitious book impressively chronicles forms of imprisonment in American history from Columbus’s crossing in 1492, with at least four convicts among his crew, to the rise of five hundred years later of a “prison-industrial complex,” which employs over half a million people and incarcerates more than one million others. According to Christianson, a former investigative reporter and gubernatorial aide who is now contributing editor of The Criminal Law Bulletin, director of the New York Death Penalty Documentation Project, and chairman of the Board of the Safer Society Foundation, With Liberty for Some “is a history of how we …

Causation, Contribution And Legal Liability: An Empirical Study, Lawrence Solan, John Darley

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.