Law Commons^™

Justice Begins Before Trial: How To Nudge Inaccurate Pretrial Rulings Using Behavioral Law And Economic Theory And Uniform Commercial Laws, Michael Gentithes

William & Mary Law Review

Injustice in criminal cases often takes root before trial begins. Overworked criminal judges must resolve difficult pretrial evidentiary issues that determine the charges the State will take to trial and the range of sentences the defendant will face. Wrong decisions on these issues often lead to wrongful convictions. As behavioral law and economic theory suggests, judges who are cognitively busy and receive little feedback on these topics from appellate courts rely upon intuition, rather than deliberative reasoning, to resolve these questions. This leads to inconsistent rulings, which prosecutors exploit to expand the scope of evidentiary exceptions that almost always disfavor …

The Haves Of Procedure, Ion Meyn

William & Mary Law Review

In litigation, “haves” and “have-nots” battle over what procedures should govern. Yet, much greater hostilities have been avoided—a war between the “haves” themselves. “Criminal haves” (prosecutors) and “civil haves” (institutional players) litigate in separate territories and under different sets of rules. This is good, for them, because they have incompatible objectives. This Article contends that protecting the “haves” from each other has profoundly influenced the development of procedure in the United States.

The “haves” reap significant benefits in being insulated from each other as they seek rules responsive to their unique preferences. A “criminal have” seeks easy access to the …

Designing Plea Bargaining From The Ground Up: Accuracy And Fairness Without Trials As Backstops, Stephanos Bibas

William & Mary Law Review

American criminal procedure developed on the assumption that grand juries and petit jury trials were the ultimate safeguards of fair procedures and accurate outcomes.But nowthat plea bargaining has all but supplanted juries, we need to think through what safeguards our plea-bargaining systemshould be built around. This Symposium Article sketches out principles for redesigning our plea-bargaining system from the ground up around safeguards. Part I explores the causes of factual, moral, and legal inaccuracies in guilty pleas. To prevent and remedy these inaccuracies, it proposes a combination of quasi-inquisitorial safeguards, more vigorous criminal defense, and better normative evaluation of charges, pleas, …

Plea Bargaining And The Substantive And Procedural Goals Of Criminal Justice: From Retribution And Adversarialism To Preventive Justice And Hybrid-Inquisitorialism, Christopher Slobogin

William & Mary Law Review

Plea bargaining and guilty pleas are intrinsically incompatible with themost commonly-accepted substantive and procedural premises of American criminal justice: Plea bargaining routinely results in punishment disproportionate to desert, and guilty pleas are an insult to procedural due process. This Article argues that the only way to align plea bargaining with our criminal justice premises is to change those premises. It imagines a system in which retribution is no longer the lodestar of punishment, and in which party-control of the process is no longer the desideratum of adjudication. If, instead, plea bargaining were seen as a mechanism for implementing a sentencing …

Plea Bargaining's Baselines, Josh Bowers

William & Mary Law Review

In this Symposium Article, I examine the Court’s unwillingness to take seriously the issue of coercion as it applies to plea bargaining practice. It is not so much that the Court has ignored coercion entirely. Rather, it has framed the inquiry in a legalisticmanner that has made immaterial the kinds of considerations we might think most relevant to the evaluation. The Court has refused to ask qualitative questions about felt pressure, prosecutorial motivation, or the risk or reality of excessive punishment. All that matters is legal permissibility. A prosecutor may compel a defendant to plead guilty as long as she …

Judicial Power To Regulate Plea Bargaining, Darryl K. Brown

William & Mary Law Review

Plea bargaining in the United States is in critical respects unregulated, and a key reason is the marginal role to which judges have been relegated. In the wake of Santobello v. New York (1971), lower courts crafted Due Process doctrines through which they supervised the fairness of some aspects of the plea bargaining process. Within a decade, however, U.S. Supreme Court decisions began to shut down any constitutional basis for judicial supervision of plea negotiations or agreements. Those decisions rested primarily on two claims: separation of powers and the practical costs of regulating plea bargaining in busy criminal justice systems. …

A Comparative Look At Plea Bargaining In Australia, Canada, England, New Zealand, And The United States, Carol A. Brook, Bruno Fiannaca, David Harvey, Paul Marcus, Jenny Mcewan, Renee Pomerance

William & Mary Law Review

In a world where the vast majority of criminal cases are resolved through some means other than the popularly depicted criminal trial, it is fundamental to a comprehensive understanding of comparative criminal procedure to study and appreciate the different mechanisms for criminal case resolution in different nations. This Article developed through a series of conversations (and ultimately a panel discussion) between six international criminal justice professionals - practicing attorneys, scholars, and judges - regarding the nature and effects of plea bargaining (and its comparative substitutes) in their respective countries. Providing a comparative look at different mechanisms for criminal case resolution, …

The Prosecutor's Turn, I. Bennett Capers

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Pleading Guilty Without Client Consent, Gabriel J. Chin

William & Mary Law Review

In some cases, lawyers are, and should be, permitted to conclude plea bargains to which their clients have not agreed. Because clients bear the consequences of a conviction, ordinarily, clients should choose between a plea and the possibility of acquittal at trial. Further, clients have the right to decide that even though conviction is practically certain, moral or political reasons warrant insistence on a trial. But some clients have the goal of minimizing incarceration, have been offered reasonable pleas, face substantially greater sentences if convicted after trial, have no plausible ground for acquittal —and nevertheless decline to plead guilty. They …

Why Plea Bargains Are Not Confessions, Brandon L. Garrett

William & Mary Law Review

Is a plea bargain a type of confession? Plea bargaining is often justified as, at its core, a process involving in-court confession. The U.S. Supreme Court’s early decisions approved plea bargains as something “more than a confession which admits that the accused did various acts.” I argue in this Article that plea bargains are not confessions—they do not even typically involve detailed admissions of guilt. The defendant generally admits to acts satisfying elements of the crime—a legally sufficient admission to be sure, but often not under oath, and often not supported by any extensive factual record. Because plea bargains typically …

Thinking Outside The Jury Box: Deploying The Grand Jury In The Guilty Plea Process, Roger A. Fairfax Jr.

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Training For Bargaining, Jenny Roberts, Ronald F. Wright

William & Mary Law Review

While plea bargaining dominates the practice of criminal law, preparation for trial remains central to defense attorneys’ training. Negotiation is still peripheral to that training. Defense lawyers enter practice with little exposure to negotiation techniques and strategies in the plea bargaining context, the most significant skills they will use every day.

Empirical research on plea negotiations has concentrated on outcomes of negotiations rather than the process itself. Our multiphase field study examines the negotiation techniques that attorneys use during plea bargaining as well as their preparation and training for negotiation. This Article explores the data on the training aspects of …

Guilt, Innocence, And Due Process Of Plea Bargaining, Donald A. Dripps

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Plea Bargaining And Disclosure In Germany And The United States: Comparative Lessons, Jenia I. Turner

William & Mary Law Review

This Article analyzes recent trends in plea bargaining and disclosure of evidence in Germany and the United States. Over the last two decades, a number of U.S. jurisdictions have adopted rules requiring broader and earlier discovery in criminal cases. This development reflects a growing consensus that, in a system that resolves most of its cases through guilty pleas, early and extensive disclosure is necessary to ensure fair and informed outcomes.

The introduction of broader discovery in criminal cases in the United States aligns American rulesmore closely with longstanding German rules on access to the investigative file. At the same time, …

Charging On The Margin, Paul T. Crane

William & Mary Law Review

The American criminal justice system has experienced a significant expansion in the number and severity of penalties triggered by misdemeanor convictions. In particular, legislatures have increasingly attached severe collateral consequences to misdemeanor offenses — penalties such as requirements to register as a sex offender, prohibitions on owning or possessing a firearm, and deportation. Although there is a wealth of scholarship studying the effect this development has on defendants and their attorneys, little attention has been paid to the impact collateral consequences have on prosecutorial incentives. This Article starts to remedy that gap by exploring the influence that collateral consequences exert …

Criminal Innovation And The Warrant Requirement: Reconsidering The Rights-Police Efficiency Trade-Off, Tonja Jacobi, Jonah Kind

William & Mary Law Review

It is routinely assumed that there is a trade-off between police efficiency and the warrant requirement. But existing analysis ignores the interaction between law-enforcement investigative practices and criminal innovation. Narrowing the definition of a search or otherwise limiting the requirement for a warrant gives criminals greater incentive to innovate to avoid detection. With limited resources to develop countermeasures, law enforcement officers will often be just as effective at capturing criminals when facing higher Fourth Amendment hurdles. We provide a game-theoretic model that shows that when law-enforcement investigation and criminal innovation are considered in a dynamic context, the police efficiency rationale …

Windsor Beyond Marriage: Due Process, Equality & Undocumented Immigration, Anthony O'Rourke

William & Mary Law Review

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in United States v. Windsor, invalidating part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, presents a significant interpretive challenge. Early commentators have criticized the majority opinion’s lack of analytical rigor, and expressed doubt that Windsor can serve as a meaningful precedent with respect to constitutional questions outside the area of same-sex marriage. This Article offers a more rehabilitative reading of Windsor and shows how the decision can be used to analyze a significant constitutional question concerning the use of state criminal procedure to regulate immigration.

From Windsor’s holding, the Article distills two concrete doctrinal propositions …

The Jurisprudence Of Punishment, Kyron Huigens

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Let The Jury Do The Waive: How Apprendi V. New Jersey Applies To Juvenile Transfer Proceedings, Daniel M. Vannella

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

White-Collar Plea Bargaining And Sentencing After Booker, Stephanos Bibas

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Barking Up The Wrong Tree: The Misplaced Furor Over The Feeney Amendment As A Threat To Judicial Independence, David P. Mason

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Escaping A Rigid Analysis: The Shift To A Fact-Based Approach For Crime Of Violence Inquiries Involving Escape Offenses, Timothy W. Castor

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Should Juvenile Adjudications Count As Prior Convictions For Apprendi Purposes?, Jeremy W. Hochberg

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Theory For Criminal Procedure: Dickerson, Miranda, And The Continuing Quest For Broad-But-Shallow, Donald A. Dripps

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Establishing Uniformity: The Need For A Per Se Rule Against The Grouping Of Money Laundering And Fraud Counts Under The Federal Sentencing Guidelines, Eric C. Tew

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

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.

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

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Herrera V. Collins: The Gateway Of Innocence For Death-Sentenced Prisoners Leads Nowhere, Vivian Berger

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Procedural Issues Raised By Guidelines Sentencing: The Constitutional Significance Of The "Elements Of The Sentence", Sara Sun Beale

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Presentence Interview And The Right To Counsel: A Critical Stage Under The Federal Sentencing Structure, Megan E. Burns

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.