Criminal Procedure Commons^™

Excessive Force: Justice Requires Refining State Qualified Immunity Standards For Negligent Police Officers, Angie Weiss

Seattle University Law Review Online

At the time this Note was written, there was no Washington state equivalent of the § 1983 Civil Rights Act. As plaintiffs look to the Washington state courts as an alternative to federal courts, they will find that Washington state has a different structure of qualified immunity protecting law enforcement officers from liability.

In this Note, Angie Weiss recommends changing Washington state's standard of qualified immunity. This change would ensure plaintiffs have a state court path towards justice when they seek to hold law enforcement officers accountable for harm. Weiss explains the structure and context of federal qualified immunity; compares …

Letter And Introduction: An Introduction By Angela J. Davis, Angela J. Davis

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

A Third-Party Doctrine For Digital Metadata, H. Brian Holland

Faculty Scholarship

For more than four decades, the third-party doctrine was understood as a bright-line, categorical rule: there is no legitimate privacy interest in any data that is voluntarily disclosed or conveyed to a third party. But this simple rule has dramatic effects in a world of ubiquitous networked computing, mobile technologies, and the commodification of information. The digital devices that facilitate our daily participation in modern society are connected through automated infrastructures that are designed to generate vast quantities of data, nearly all of which is captured, utilized, and stored by third-party service providers. Under a plain reading of the third-party …

The Defender General, Daniel Epps, William Ortman

Scholarship@WashULaw

The United States needs a Defender General—a public official charged with representing the collective interests of criminal defendants before the Supreme Court of the United States. The Supreme Court is effectively our nation’s chief regulator of criminal justice. But in the battle to influence the Court’s rulemaking, government interests have substantial structural advantages. As compared to counsel for defendants, government lawyers—and particularly those from the U.S. Solicitor General’s office—tend to be more experienced advocates who have more credibility with the Court. Most importantly, government lawyers can act strategically to play for bigger long-term victories, while defense lawyers must zealously advocate …

Criminal Law In Crisis, Benjamin Levin

Scholarship@WashULaw

In this Essay, I offer a brief account of how the COVID-19 pandemic lays bare the realities and structural flaws of the carceral state. I provide two primary examples or illustrations, but they are not meant to serve as an exhaustive list. Rather, by highlighting these issues, problems, or (perhaps) features, I mean to suggest that this moment of crisis should serve not just as an opportunity to marshal resources to address the pandemic, but also as a chance to address the harsh realities of the U.S. criminal system. Further, my claim isn’t that criminal law is in some way …