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Civil Rights and Discrimination

Michael L Perlin

Law and Society

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

“Far From The Turbulent Space”: Considering The Adequacy Of Counsel In The Representation Of Individuals Accused Of Being Sexually Violent Predators, Michael L. Perlin, Heather Ellis Cucolo Apr 2014

“Far From The Turbulent Space”: Considering The Adequacy Of Counsel In The Representation Of Individuals Accused Of Being Sexually Violent Predators, Michael L. Perlin, Heather Ellis Cucolo

Michael L Perlin

Abstract:

For the past thirty years, the US Supreme Court's standard of Strickland v. Washington has governed the question of adequacy of counsel in criminal trials. There, in a Sixth Amendment analysis, the Supreme Court acknowledged that simply having a lawyer assigned to a defendant was not constitutionally adequate, but that that lawyer must provide "effective assistance of counsel," effectiveness being defined, pallidly, as requiring simply that counsel's efforts be “reasonable” under the circumstances. The benchmark for judging an ineffectiveness claim is simply “whether counsel’s conduct so undermined the proper function of the adversarial process that the trial court cannot …


"Toiling In The Danger And In The Morals Of Despair": Risk, Security, Danger, The Constitution, And The Clinician's Dilemma, Michael L. Perlin, Alison Julia Lynch Feb 2014

"Toiling In The Danger And In The Morals Of Despair": Risk, Security, Danger, The Constitution, And The Clinician's Dilemma, Michael L. Perlin, Alison Julia Lynch

Michael L Perlin

Abstract: Persons institutionalized in psychiatric hospitals and “state schools” for those with intellectual disabilities have always been hidden from view. Such facilities were often constructed far from major urban centers, availability of transportation to such institutions was often limited, and those who were locked up were, to the public, faceless and often seen as less than human.

Although there has been regular litigation in the area of psychiatric (and intellectual disability) institutional rights for 40 years, much of this case law entirely ignores forensic patients – mostly those awaiting incompetency-to-stand trial determinations, those found permanently incompetent to stand trial, those …