Law Commons^™

Decisions To Prosecute Battered Women's Homicide Cases: An Exploratory Study, Sarah N. Welling, Diane Follingstad, M. Jill Rogers, Frances Jillian Priesmeyer

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Discretionary decisions to prosecute cases in which a battered woman kills her partner were investigated using several research strategies and targeting a range of case elements. Law students presented with case elements reported they would consider legal elements over nonlegal (or ‘supplemental’) elements when making a decision to prosecute. In contrast, law students assessed through an open-ended format as to important case factors for deciding to prosecute spontaneously generated high proportions of supplemental case elements compared with legal factors. Vignette comparisons of 42 case elements on participants’ likelihood to prosecute identified salient factors including legal and supplemental variables. Themes from …

Kentucky Criminal Law Experts Call For Reform, Cortney E. Lollar

Law Faculty Popular Media

In this article for Bench & Bar Magazine (the Kentucky Bar Association's magazine), Professor Cortney Lollar discusses the Second Annual Forum on Criminal Law in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

Toward A Common Law Of Plea Bargaining, Wesley Macneil Oliver

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Friction In Reconciling Criminal Forfeiture And Bankruptcy: The Criminal Forfeiture Part, Sarah N. Welling, Jane Lyle Hord

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The federal government uses two general types of asset forfeiture, criminal and civil. This Article addresses criminal forfeiture, which allows the government to take property from defendants when they are convicted of crimes. It is “an aspect of punishment imposed following conviction of a substantive criminal offense.” The goal of this Article is to give an overview of the forfeiture process, specifically in relation to claims victims and creditors might assert as third-party claimants.

Cost Conscious Justice: The Case For Wholly-Informed Discretionary Sentencing In Kentucky, Emily M. Grant

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Turning Jails Into Prisons—Collateral Damage From Kentucky's War On Crime, Robert G. Lawson

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The primary purpose of this article is to scrutinize Kentucky's ever-increasing reliance on local jails for the incarceration of state prisoners. This objective cannot be achieved without an examination of the problems that compel counties and cities to allow (and even encourage) the state to capture their jails for this use. The first half of the article (Parts I-IV) provides general information about jails (including some pertinent history), contains a detailed description of jail functions (including some that have descended upon jails by default), and concludes with a discussion of what the state has done over two decades to convert …

Cyberlaundering: The Risks, The Responses, Sarah N. Welling, Andy G. Rickman

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This Article discusses the potential use of electronic cash for money laundering and possible government responses to the problem. Parts I and II provide an overview of electronic cash. Part III explores the effects that electronic cash can have on money laundering. Part IV explains through a series of hypotheticals how "cyberlaundering" can occur. Part V analyzes the federal government's response to the threat of money laundering with electronic cash. Part VI concludes the Article with suggestions.

White Collar Crime From Scratch: Some Observations On The East European Experience, Sarah N. Welling

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This Essay recounts the Author’s experiences with an American Bar Association program called the Central and East European Law Initiative (CEELI). The Author traveled in Eastern Europe and focused on white collar crime issues in Poland. The Author was exposed to Eastern Europe's conversion to democracy and a market economy and the role of white collar crime in this conversion. Poland is drafting white collar crime statutes from scratch. There is also the opportunity that Poland’s effort can help us examine our attitudes toward white collar crime.

Self-Defense In Kentucky: A Need For Clarification Or Revision, Robert G. Lawson, William S. Cooper

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Recent prosecutions have pushed Kentucky’s concept of self-defense beyond the limits of tolerance for complexity and confusion. There is little doubt that there exists a critical need to clarify or to revise the Kentucky law of self-defense. A demonstration of this need and a description of its nature are the principal objectives of this article. To accomplish these objectives, it is necessary to provide some information about the recent history of homicide and self-defense in Kentucky and to describe some important recent interpretations of this law by the Supreme Court of Kentucky.

Victims In The Criminal Process: A Utilitarian Analysis Of Victim Participation In The Charging Decision, Sarah N. Welling

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Crime victims are currently being given the right to participate in criminal prosecutions at both the sentencing and plea bargaining stages. These are important steps in a criminal prosecution, but both the sentence and the plea bargain are dependent on the initial charging decision which determines what crime is to be prosecuted or whether there is to be any prosecution at all. As a prerequisite to both a plea bargain or a sentence, the charging decision is the crux of the prosecution.

Given the importance of the charging decision, and the fact that some jurisdictions have granted victims a right …

Confronting Rape Shield, Allison I. Connelly

Law Faculty Popular Media

In this newsletter article, Professor Connelly discusses the difficulties faced by defense attorneys in addressing rape shield laws.

Victim Participation In Plea Bargains, Sarah N. Welling

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

There is a trend in the criminal law today to focus on the rights of victims. This trend has been manifested in actions by legislatures, courts, the President of the United States and others. Various programs have been implemented to ameliorate the crime victim's experience. For example, many states now provide compensation for victims, and victim/witness assistance programs have sprung up around the country. It has also been suggested that the victim's lot should be improved by granting them a right to participate in the prosecution of the defendant. This article examines whether victims should be accorded a right to …

Silencing Gideon's Trumpet: The Plight Of The Indigent Prisoner, Allison I. Connelly

Law Faculty Popular Media

In this newsletter article, Professor Connelly discusses the difficulties faced by indigent prisoners in gaining access to the justice system.

Kentucky Law Survey: Criminal Law, Linda K. West

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Kentucky Law Survey: Criminal Procedure, William H. Fortune

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Many important criminal procedure cases were decided by the Kentucky appellate courts during the Survey period-too many to permit meaningful comment on each case. The author has selected those criminal procedure cases he feels are most significant and has not attempted to comment on penal code cases, most of which involve matters of criminal law.

Intracorporate Plurality In Criminal Conspiracy Law, Sarah N. Welling

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The concept of conspiracy currently plays a significant role in three areas of substantive law: antitrust, civil rights, and criminal law. Although the role of conspiracy in these substantive areas of law differs in many ways, all three require that the conspiracy consist of a plurality of actors. Determining what constitutes a plurality of actors when all the alleged conspirators are agents of a single corporation poses a continuing problem.

This problem raises two distinct questions. The first is whether, when one agent acts alone within the scope of corporate business, the agent and the corporation constitute a plurality. The …

Financial Screening In Criminal Cases—Impractical And Irrelevant, William H. Fortune

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In 1970 Chief Justice Burger, commenting on the work of the ABA Advisory Committee, compared the criminal justice system to a three-legged stool, one leg the judge, the second leg the prosecution, and the third leg the defense lawyer: "We concluded very quickly that that third leg in this context was as essential as the third leg of a stool. We have not quite said it ought to be jurisdictional that you have three parts to this enterprise but we have come very, very close to it." It is time to admit the overriding social need for attorney representation and …

Kentucky Penal Code: The Culpable Mental States And Related Matters, Robert G. Lawson

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

All efforts to improve the criminal law of this commonwealth prior to 1972 were directed toward relatively narrow problems. Legislative changes in the law had been made from time to time, almost always without conscious regard for the manner in which related principles were affected. Defects of considerable importance resulted. The criminal law became substantially disjointed and difficult of administration. Unjust and inequitable treatment of offenders was more prominent than its opposite. In some instances sanctions were clearly inadequate for the type of behavior sought to be controlled. In others they were grossly disproportionate to the social harms used to …

Criminal Law Revision In Kentucky: Part Ii—Inchoate Crimes, Robert G. Lawson

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Kentucky, like other jurisdictions, imposes criminal sanctions for conduct that is designed to achieve a criminal result but fails for some reason to accomplish its anti-social objective. Such conduct is punishable, if at all, as criminal attempt, criminal conspiracy, or criminal solicitation. In looking toward revision, attention should be focused initially upon the objectives to be promoted by classifying unsuccessful, anti-social conduct as criminal behavior.

First: There is obviously need for a firm basis for the intervention of law enforcement agencies to prevent a person dedicated to the commission of a crime from consummating it. In determining that basis, attention …

Criminal Law Revision In Kentucky: Part I—Homicide And Assault, Robert G. Lawson

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

At the present time the Kentucky Commission on Law Enforcement and Crime Prevention and the Legislative Research Commission are jointly engaged in a project designed to revise the state's substantive criminal law. This effort is justifiable only if the existing law is defective and the "revision will result in significant improvement in [criminal law] administration." A cursory examination of the criminal statutes, with no reference to case law, leaves not the slightest doubt as to the need for revision. Until now no major attempt at revision has ever been undertaken in this state. As a consequence, the statutes are devoid …

A Study Of The Report Of The Committee On Criminal Law, Roy Mitchell Moreland, Robert E. Hatton Jr.

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.