Law Commons^™

How Being Right Can Risk Wrongs, Paul H. Robinson, Sarah M. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

This is a chapter from the new book The Vigilante Echo. Previous chapters have made clear that some vigilantism can be morally justified where the government has failed in its promise under the social contract to protect and to do justice. But this chapter explains how even moral vigilante action can be problematic for the larger society. Vigilantes may try to do the right thing but are likely to lack the training and professional neutrality of police. They may be successful, but only on pushing the crime problem to an adjacent neighborhood. Because their open lawbreaking may seem admirable …

Shadow Vigilante Officials Manipulate And Distort To Force Justice From An Apparently Reluctant System, Paul H. Robinson, Sarah M. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

The real danger of the vigilante impulse is not of hordes of citizens, frustrated by the system’s doctrines of disillusionment, rising up to take the law into their own hands. Frustration can spark a vigilante impulse but such classic aggressive vigilantism is not the typical response. More common is the expression of disillusionment in less brazen ways, by a more surreptitious undermining and distortion of the operation of the criminal justice system.

Shadow vigilantes, as they might be called, can affect the operation of the system in a host of important ways. For example, when people act as classic vigilantes …

Steve Dell Mcneill V. The State Of Nevada, 132 Nev. Adv. Op. 54 (July 28, 2016), Adrian Viesca

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Supreme Court determined that the plain language of NRS 213.1243 does not grant the State Board of Parole Commissioners authority to impose additional conditions not enumerated in the statute when supervising sex offenders on lifetime supervision.

How To Change The Philosophy And Practice Of Probation And Supervised Release: Data Analytics, Cost Control, Focus On Reentry, And A Clear Mission, Nora V. Demleitner

Scholarly Articles

None available.

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

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

There is near-universal agreement that the engine of the modern American criminal justice system is plea bargaining.'Given the ubiquity of plea bargaining, the Supreme Court and the rest of the legal community have begun setting their sights on how the practice might be better regulated. At the same time, many hold the view that the grand jury has outlived its usefulness in the administration of criminal justice and is a relic of a time gone by. Even before recent calls for the abolition of the grand jury in the wake of high-profile cases that seemed to cast the institution in …

Principled Policing: Warrior Cops And Guardian Officers, Seth W. Stoughton

Faculty Publications

Policing in the United States is in crisis. Public confidence in policing is at the lowest point since the Rodney King beating. A bare majority of Americans still report confidence in the police, and an unprecedented number of people report no or very little confidence in policing. A long history of poor police/community relations in minority and low-income neighborhoods has been exacerbated by egregious acts of misconduct, some of which have been captured on video and shared on social media. Activists, politicians, and police officials themselves have called for better education and equipment, from de-escalation training to body-worn camera systems. …

Reply To Miriam Baer And Michael Doucette’S Reviews Of Two Models Of Pre-Plea Discovery In Criminal Cases, Jenia I. Turner, Allison D. Redlich

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

A Proposal To Allow The Presentation Of Mitigation In Juvenile Court So That Juvenile Charges May Be Expunged In Appropriate Cases, Katherine I. Puzone

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Federal Certificate Of Rehabilitation Program: Providing Federal Ex-Offenders More Opportunity For Successful Reentry, Lisa A. Rich

Faculty Scholarship

The purpose of this Article is to propose a new federal certificate of rehabilitation program. The creation of such a program not only would help the thousands of federal offenders released back into their communities every year overcome employment barriers but would also serve as a model for states to use in addressing the need of their own burgeoning population of former offenders. In order to understand the magnitude of the problem, it is essential to understand the pool of offenders affected by their criminal history, the intent of the federal agencies to assist this disadvantaged group, and the barriers …

Police Reform And The Judicial Mandate, Julian A. Cook

Scholarly Works

In response to a crisis that threatens his tenure as Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel announced in December 2015 reform measures designed to curb aggressive police tactics by the Chicago Police Department (CPD). The reform measures are limited, but aim to reduce deadly police-citizen encounters by arming the police with more tasers, and by requiring that officers undergo deescalation training. Though allegations of excessive force have plagued the department for years, the death of Laquan McDonald, an African-American teenager who was fatally shot by Jason Van Dyke, a white officer with the CPD, was the impetus for the Mayor’s reforms. …

What's Wrong With Sentencing Equality?, Richard A. Bierschbach, Stephanos Bibas

All Faculty Scholarship

Equality in criminal sentencing often translates into equalizing outcomes and stamping out variations, whether race-based, geographic, or random. This approach conflates the concept of equality with one contestable conception focused on outputs and numbers, not inputs and processes. Racial equality is crucial, but a concern with eliminating racism has hypertrophied well beyond race. Equalizing outcomes seems appealing as a neutral way to dodge contentious substantive policy debates about the purposes of punishment. But it actually privileges deterrence and incapacitation over rehabilitation, subjective elements of retribution, and procedural justice, and it provides little normative guidance for punishment. It also has unintended …

Police Suspects, Kate Levine

Faculty Publications

Recent attention to police brutality has brought to the fore how police, when they become the subject of criminal investigations, are given special procedural protections not available to any other criminal suspect. Prosecutors’ special treatment of police suspects, particularly their perceived use of grand juries to exculpate accused officers, has received the lion’s share of scholarly and media attention. But police suspects also benefit from formal affirmative rights that protect them from interrogation by other officers. Police, in most jurisdictions, have a special shield against interrogation known as the Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights (LEOBORs). These statutes and negotiated …

Who Shouldn't Prosecute The Police, Kate Levine

Faculty Publications

The job of prosecuting police officers who commit crimes falls on local prosecutors, as it has in the wakes of the recent killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. Although prosecutors officially represent “the people,” there is no group more closely linked to prosecutors than the officers they work with daily. This article focuses on the undertheorized but critically important role that conflict of interest law plays in supporting the now-popular conclusion that local prosecutors should not handle cases against police suspects. Surprisingly, scholars have paid little attention to the policies and practices of local district attorneys who are tasked …

Values And Assumptions In Criminal Adjudication, Benjamin Levin

Publications

This Response to Andrew Manuel Crespo's Systemic Facts: Toward Institutional Awareness in Criminal Courts proceeds in two Parts. In Part I, I argue that Crespo presents a compelling case for the importance of systemic factfinding to the task of criminal court judges. If, as a range of scholars has argued, criminal courts are increasingly serving a quasi-administrative function, then shouldn’t they at least be administrating accurately? Systemic Facts provides a novel account of how — with comparatively little institutional reform — courts might begin to serve as more effective administrators. However, in Part II, I also argue that Crespo’s account …

Guns And Drugs, Benjamin Levin

Publications

This Article argues that the increasingly prevalent critiques of the War on Drugs apply to other areas of criminal law. To highlight the broader relevance of these critiques, this Article uses as its test case the criminal regulation of gun possession. This Article identifies and distills three lines of drug war criticism and argues that they apply to possessory gun crimes in much the same way that they apply to drug crimes. Specifically, this Article focuses on: (1) race- and class-based critiques; (2) concerns about police and prosecutorial power; and (3) worries about the social and economic costs of mass …