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Criminal Law Commons

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Articles 1 - 6 of 6

Full-Text Articles in Criminal Law

Successive But Not Successful: Does The Aedpa Allow Federal Prisoners To Reassert Previously Presented Claims For Habeas Relief?, Michael P. Bitgood May 2024

Successive But Not Successful: Does The Aedpa Allow Federal Prisoners To Reassert Previously Presented Claims For Habeas Relief?, Michael P. Bitgood

Texas A&M Law Review

The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) unequivocally bars state prisoners from reasserting previously presented claims for habeas relief. Currently, the circuits are embroiled in a disagreement regarding whether the AEDPA also bars federal prisoners in the same way, and federal prisoners’ potentially viable claims for habeas relief hang in the balance. Prior to the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Jones v. United States, six circuits agreed that the AEDPA does bar federal prisoners’ previously asserted habeas claims, but the Sixth Circuit alone disagreed. Now, the Jones decision aligns the Ninth Circuit with the Sixth Circuit’s position. …


Self-Defense And Political Rage, Erin Sheley May 2024

Self-Defense And Political Rage, Erin Sheley

Texas A&M Law Review

This Article considers how American political polarization and the substantive issues driving it raise unique challenges for adjudicating self-defense claims in contexts of political protest. We live in an age where roughly a quarter of the population believes it is at least sometimes justifiable to use violence in defense of political positions, making political partisans somewhat more likely to pose a genuine threat of bodily harm to opponents. Furthermore, the psychological literature shows that people are more likely to perceive threats from people with whom they politically disagree and that juries tend to evaluate reasonableness claims according to their own …


The Unintended Consequences Of Torture's Ineffectiveness, Russell L. Christopher May 2024

The Unintended Consequences Of Torture's Ineffectiveness, Russell L. Christopher

Texas A&M Law Review

Whether torture to extract true information—for example, military secrets or the location of a terrorist-planted bomb—is morally permissible and empirically effective is widely disputed. But many agree that such torture’s effectiveness is a necessary condition for its permissibility; if ineffective, then it is impermissible. Thus, the empirical issue has become crucial in deciding the moral issue. This Article addresses the empirical issue with a novel, non-empirical argument. Torture’s ineffectiveness not only ensures torture’s impermissibility but also exposes torture victims to criminal liability for any offenses they are tortured into committing. With torture as the most extreme and horrific form of …


A Federal Inmate’S Right To Stay Home, Jordan Thorn May 2024

A Federal Inmate’S Right To Stay Home, Jordan Thorn

Texas A&M Law Review

Since the start of the COVID–19 pandemic, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (“BOP”) has, for the first time in history, placed tens of thousands of inmates onto home confinement. Likely due to the unprecedented nature and rapid release of inmates to contain the virus, the BOP failed to timely update their policies and procedures surrounding the disciplinary system of inmates on home confinement. This failure to update resulted in the BOP removing inmates from home confinement and placing them back in prison for minor violations. Furthermore, when the BOP chose to remove an inmate from home confinement, it did so …


Manufactured State Immigration Emergencies As State Vigilantism, Kate Huddleston Mar 2024

Manufactured State Immigration Emergencies As State Vigilantism, Kate Huddleston

Texas A&M Law Review

President Trump shattered norms when he declared a national emergency at the U.S.–Mexico border to build a border wall. State governors have now followed that lead in taking up what Justice Jackson, dissenting in Korematsu v. United States (1944), called the “loaded weapon” of emergency—doing so, like Trump, in the context of the border. Governors of Texas, Arizona, and Florida have all issued state declarations of emergency based on (1) migration, and (2) the Biden administration’s purported failure to engage in immigration enforcement. These state emergency declarations have not been studied or even identified in legal literature as a state …


Rico's Long Arm, Randy D. Gordon Mar 2024

Rico's Long Arm, Randy D. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

RICO has for over 50 years presented something of a parlor game for lawyers, mostly because its text leaves wide latitude in interpretation. And, as is often the case with RICO, resolution of one question begets more. The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Yegiazaryan v. Smagin proves no exception. Here, the Court brought some clarity to a question left open by RJR Nabisco: viz, what must one plead and prove to satisfy the “domestic injury” requirement necessary to invoke an extraterritorial application of RICO. The Court held that a foreign plaintiff can indeed, given the right facts and circumstances, establish …