Law Commons^™

A Case Study Of Process Servers In Clark County, Nevada In The District Attorney Criminal Division, Amy M. Meedel

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In 1996 the job classification of Process Server was created in the Clark County District Attorney Criminal Division in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was implemented by DA Stewart L. Bell as a cost-saving measure meant as a reclassification of the position of Investigator. Since the initial job posting, the duties appropriate to the position of Process Server have been and remain in question. No written, measurable job performance standards have been established and no consistent training or supervision provided. A review of the literature suggests wide variance in what may be considered appropriate job duties for this classification, though the …

Power, Policy, And The Hyde Amendment: Ensuring Sound Judicial Interpretation Of The Criminal Attorney's Fees Law, Lawrence Judson Welle

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

From Property To Personhood: What The Legal System Should Do For Children In Family Violence Cases, Leigh Goodmark

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Independent Counsel Statute: A Premature Demise, Julian A. Cook Iii

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Admitting Expert Testimony On Battered Woman Syndrome In Virginia Courts: How Peeples Changed Virginia Self-Defense Law, Marybeth H. Lenkevich

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Delaware's Capital Jury Selection: Inadequate Voir Dire And The Problem Of Automatic Death Penalty Jurors, Adam M. Gershowitz

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Practical Magic: A Few Down-To-Earth Suggestions For The New Sentencing Commission, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

Most of the contributions to this outpouring of advice to the new Sentencing Commissioners have to do with the substance of the Guidelines. What follows here is far more prosaic - some suggestions not about what the Commission should do, but about how the Commission should work. I make these suggestions with some trepidation, recognizing the difficulty of the task the new members have undertaken. However, I hope the perspective of one who practiced before and after the Guidelines as a federal prosecutor, participated in the internal workings of the Commission as Special Counsel in 1995-96, and has been a …

High Crimes And Misdemeanors: Defining The Constitutional Limits On Presidential Impeachment, Frank O. Bowman Iii, Stephen L. Sepinuck

Faculty Publications

This Article had its genesis in a statement by the authors submitted to the House Judiciary Committee during its proceedings regarding the impeachment of President Clinton. This final much expanded version appears after the conclusion of the Clinton impeachment proceedings in the Senate, and it is certainly informed by the course those proceedings took. Strictly speaking, however, this is not an article “about” the Clinton impeachment. Although this Article draws some conclusions from the treatment by the House and Senate of the fundamental allegations against President Clinton, it does not address in detail the specific facts underlying those allegations. The …

Neonaticide And The Misuse Of The Insanity Defense, Megan C. Hogan

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Section 7: Criminal Law And Procedure, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

Formal Legal Truth And Substantive Truth In Judicial Fact-Finding – Their Justified Divergence In Some Particular Cases, Robert S. Summers

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Truth is a fundamental objective of adjudicative processes; ideally, ‘substantive’ as distinct from ‘formal legal’ truth. But problems of evidence, for example, may frustrate finding of substantive truth; other values may lead to exclusions of probative evidence, e.g., for the sake of fairness. ‘Jury nullification’ and ‘jury equity’. Limits of time, and definitiveness of decision, require allocation of burden of proof. Degree of truth-formality is variable within a system and across systems.

The Jury And Scientific Evidence, Richard O. Lempert

Articles

Read court decisions and commentaries from 100, or evenfive years ago, and you will find that experts and scientific evidence were causing problems then just as they are causing problems now. I do not think that Daubert, Kumho Tire, or any change in a rule of evidence will keep expert scientific testimony from being a difficult area for the legal system. Yet we must still ask: "What are the best terms on which to deal with scientific experts, and how can weimprove the system?"

Insane Fear: The Discriminatory Category Of "Mentally Ill And Dangerous", Sherry F. Colb

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article considers the constitutional and moral implications of the distinction the law draws between different classes of dangerous people, depending upon their status as mentally ill or mentally well. Those who are mentally well benefit from the right to freedom from incarceration unless and until they commit a crime. By contrast, dangerous people who are mentally ill are subject to potentially indefinite "civil" preemptive confinement.

In a relatively recent case, Kansas v. Hendricks, the United States Supreme Court upheld the post-prison civil confinement of Leroy Hendricks, a man who had served prison time after pleading guilty to child molestation. …

Departing Is Such Sweet Sorrow: A Year Of Judicial Revolt On "Substantial Assistance" Departures Follows A Decade Of Prosecutorial Indiscipline (Prosecution Law Symposium), Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

the first section of this essay is devoted to demonstrating the courts' errors. Nonetheless, considered together, these opinions are perhaps an understandable reflection of judicial unease with an important component of the federal sentencing system — the longstanding, but increasingly common, practice of making deals with criminal defendants to reduce their sentences in return for testimony against their accomplices. This Article's second section will consider the most common criticisms of the system of bargaining for testimony under the United States Sentencing Guidelines (the Guidelines) to determine whether Singleton and Sealed Case may be good policy even if they are bad …

Defending Substantial Assistance: An Old Prosecutor's Meditation On Singleton, Sealed Case, And The Maxfield-Kramer Report, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

This essay begins with a brief analysis of the panel and en banc opinions in Sealed Case and Singleton, and then turns to the more arresting question of whether the panel decisions were transitory aberrations or something more. Particularly if one considers Singleton and Sealed Case together with the Sentencing Commission's staff report on substantial assistance practice (the “Maxfield - Kramer Report”), it is difficult to escape the conclusion that unease with the current substantial assistance regime is growing. Unlike many observers, I view §5K1.1 as a very good thing, an invaluable prosecutorial tool against group criminality, but a tool …

Juries, Hindsight, And Punitive Damage Awards: Failures Of A Social Science Case For Change, Richard O. Lempert

Articles

In their recent Arizona Law Review article entitled What Juries Can't Do Well: The Jury's Performance As a Risk Manager,' Professors Reid Hastie and W. Kip Viscusi purport to show that juries are likely to do a poor job in setting punitive damages, largely because jurors cannot avoid the influence of what is called "hindsight bias," or the tendency to see the likelihood of an event higher in retrospect than it would have appeared before it happened. In particular, they argue that hindsight bias and other cognitive biases undermine the utility of jury-set punitive damage awards as risk management devices. …

The Influence Of Extra-Legal Factors On The Sentencing Of Drug Offenders In A Determinant Sentencing State, Ramonsa D. White

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to investigate how extralegal factors such as race, gender, and age influence judicial sentencing decisions. This research utilizes data collected by the Washington State Sentencing Guidelines Commission for the fiscal years of July 1989 to July 1992. For the purpose o~ this study, only data specifically relating to drug convictions were analyzed.

Multivariate analyses were conducted to see if extralegal factors were significantly related to sentence length, whether or not offenders receive a prison sanction, and whether or not offenders receive the first time offender waiver. Analysis was done using both legal and extra-legal …

Factors That Affect Recidivism Of Offenders On Electronic Monitoring In Norfolk, Virginia, Michael P. O'Toole

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to investigate which factors impact offenders' recidivism on electronic monitoring. Research on electronic monitoring has mainly concentrated on individual program completion rates. A review of the available literature on electronic monitoring reveals few evaluative studies focusing on offender recidivism. No long term recidivism studies are available for electronic monitoring. The present research reviews 277 offenders five years after completing their electronic monitoring sentence in Norfolk, Virginia. The following factors as they may relate to offenders' recidivism, while on electronic monitoring are measured: current offense, prior conviction, offenders' age, sentence length, and employment history. Analyses …

The Globalisation Of Crime, Mark Findlay

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

As with many emergent themes in today's society, globalisation is simple and complex. Put simply, it is the collapsing of time and space; the process whereby through mass communication, multi-national commerce, internationalised politics, and transnational regulation we seem to be moving inexorably towards a single culture. The more complex interpretation of globalisation is as paradox - wherein there are as many pressures driving us in the direction of the common culture as those keeping us apart.

Constitutional Criminal Procedure: A Two Year Survey, James P. Fleissner, Jeffrey R. Harris

Mercer Law Review

This Article surveys significant constitutional criminal procedure decisions of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit issued during 1997 and 1998. The "constitutional" branch of criminal procedure focuses on the interpretation of the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments to the United States Constitution. In selecting "significant" decisions, we emphasized questions of first impression, other noteworthy cases, and issues likely to interest attorneys practicing in the courts of the Eleventh Circuit. We have endeavored to summarize the selected decisions and provide commentary that, hopefully, will illuminate the issues and assist the reader in understanding the importance and implications …

Federal Sentencing Guidelines, James T. Skuthan, Rosemary T. Cakmis

Mercer Law Review

The Eleventh Circuit decided several cases this past year covering a broad range of United States Sentencing Guidelines ("U.S.S.G.") issues. Two areas of particular concern were firearms and departures.

Due to the 1995 Supreme Court decision in Bailey v. United States, several defendants had their firearm convictions vacated and were resentenced. Thus, the Eleventh Circuit in 1998 was faced with reviewing these resentencings to determine the applicability of guideline enhancements for firearms.

The court also decided several cases relating to downward departures based on cultural differences, a defendant's impulse control disorder, the over-representation of a career offender's prior record, …

Invaluable Tool Vs. Unfair Use Of Private Information: Examining Prosecutors' Use Of Jurors' Criminal History Records In Voir Dire, Lance Salyers

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Standing Of The United States: How Criminal Prosecutions Show That Standing Doctrine Is Looking For Answers In All The Wrong Places, Edward A. Hartnett

Michigan Law Review

The Supreme Court insists that Article III of the Constitution requires a litigant to have standing in order for her request for judicial intervention to constitute a "case" or "controversy" within the jurisdiction of a federal court; it also insists that the "irreducible constitutional minimum" of standing requires (1) that the litigant suffer an "injury in fact"; (2) that the person against whom the judicial intervention is sought have caused the injury; and (3) that the requested judicial intervention redress the injury. The requisite injury in fact, the Court repeatedly declares, must be "personal," "concrete and particularized," and "actual or …

Television In The Courtroom: Mightier Than The Pen?, Richard P. Matsch

Michigan Law Review

In his Introduction, author Ronald L. Goldfarb explains that his purpose is to address all the arguments advanced against televised trials, cover the points made by proponents of televised trials, and find a sensible solution to what he believes is the fundamental issue: "How can we best blend new media technologies with our traditional and revered commitment to democracy and justice?" (p. xxiv). He ends the book with this prospective paragraph: "I expect that all the courtrooms of the future - state and federal, trial and appellate - will be equipped with cameras. I suggest that all trials should be …

Reforming Juvenile Sentencing, Nora V. Demleitner

Scholarly Articles

Not available.

Waiver Of The Right To Appeal Sentencing In Plea Agreements With The Federal Government, David E. Carney

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Judicial Politics, Death Penalty Appeals, And Case Selection: An Empirical Study, John H. Blume, Theodore Eisenberg

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Several studies try to explain case outcomes based on the politics of judicial selection methods. Scholars usually hypothesize that judges selected by partisan popular elections are subject to greater political pressure in deciding cases than are other judges. No class of cases seems more amenable to such analysis than death penalty cases. No study, however, accounts both for judicial politics and case selection, the process through which cases are selected for death penalty litigation. Yet, the case selection process cannot be ignored because it yields a set of cases for adjudication that is far from a random selection of cases. …

Communicating With Capital Juries: How Life Versus Death Decisions Are Made, What Persuades, And How To Most Effectively Communicate The Need For A Verdict Of Life, Melissa E. Whitman

Capital Defense Journal

No abstract provided.

Two Decades Of Death: Trashing The Rule Of Law In Virginia, William S. Geimer

Capital Defense Journal

No abstract provided.

Swisher V. Commonwealth 506 S.E.2d 763 (Va. 1998)

Capital Defense Journal

No abstract provided.