Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Disability Law Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 7 of 7

Full-Text Articles in Disability Law

Take The Motherless Children Off The Street: Fetal Alcohol Syndrome And The Criminal Justice System, Michael L. Perlin, Heather Ellis Cucolo Apr 2023

Take The Motherless Children Off The Street: Fetal Alcohol Syndrome And The Criminal Justice System, Michael L. Perlin, Heather Ellis Cucolo

Articles & Chapters

Remarkably, there has been minimal academic legal literature about the interplay between fetal alcohol syndrome disorder (FASD) and critical aspects of many criminal trials, including issues related to the role of experts, quality of counsel, competency to stand trial, the insanity defense, and sentencing and the death penalty. Nor has there been any literature about the interplay between FASD-related issues and the legal school of thought known as therapeutic jurisprudence.

In this article, the co-authors will first define fetal alcohol syndrome and explain its significance to the criminal justice system. We will then look at the specific role of experts …


A World Of Steel-Eyed Death: An Empirical Evaluation Of The Failure Of The Strickland Standard To Ensure Adequate Counsel To Defendants With Mental Disabilities Facing The Death Penalty, Michael L. Perlin, Talia Roitberg Harmon, Sarah Chatt Jan 2019

A World Of Steel-Eyed Death: An Empirical Evaluation Of The Failure Of The Strickland Standard To Ensure Adequate Counsel To Defendants With Mental Disabilities Facing The Death Penalty, Michael L. Perlin, Talia Roitberg Harmon, Sarah Chatt

Articles & Chapters

Anyone who has been involved with death penalty litigation in the past four decades knows that one of the most scandalous aspects of that process—in many ways, the most scandalous—is the inadequacy of counsel so often provided to defendants facing execution. By now, virtually anyone with even a passing interest is well versed in the cases and stories about sleeping lawyers, missed deadlines, alcoholic and disoriented lawyers, and, more globally, lawyers who simply failed to vigorously defend their clients. This is not news.

And, in the same vein, anyone who has been so involved with this area of law and …


They’Re Planting Stories In The Press: The Impact Of Media Distortions On Sex Offender Law And Policy, Heather Ellis Cucolo, Michael L. Perlin Jan 2013

They’Re Planting Stories In The Press: The Impact Of Media Distortions On Sex Offender Law And Policy, Heather Ellis Cucolo, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

Individuals classified as sexual predators are the pariahs of the community. Sex offenders are arguably the most despised members of our society and therefore warrant our harshest condemnation. Twenty individual states and the federal government have enacted laws confining individuals who have been adjudicated as “sexually violent predators” to civil commitment facilities post incarceration and/or conviction. Additionally, in many jurisdictions, offenders who are returned to the community are restricted and monitored under community notification, registration and residency limitations. Targeting, punishing and ostracizing these individuals has become an obsession in society, clearly evidenced in the constant push to enact even more …


Online Mental Disability Law Education, A Disability Rights Tribunal, And The Creation Of An Asian Disability Law Database: Their Impact On Research, Training And Teaching Of Law, Criminology Criminal Justice In Asia, Michael L. Perlin, Heather Ellis Cucolo, Yoshikazu Ikehara Jan 2013

Online Mental Disability Law Education, A Disability Rights Tribunal, And The Creation Of An Asian Disability Law Database: Their Impact On Research, Training And Teaching Of Law, Criminology Criminal Justice In Asia, Michael L. Perlin, Heather Ellis Cucolo, Yoshikazu Ikehara

Articles & Chapters

Two professors at New York Law School (NYLS) and the director of the Tokyo Advocacy Law Office are engaged in initiatives with the potential to have major influences on the study of law, criminology, and criminal justice: the creation of a Disability Rights Tribunal for Asia and the Pacific (DRTAP), and expansion of NYLS’s online mental disability law program (OMDLP) to include numerous Asian venues.

DRTAP seeks to create a sub-regional body (a Commission and eventually a Court) to hear violations of the UN’s Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This will explicitly inspire scholarship about issues such …


Wisdom Is Thrown Into Jail: Using Therapeutic Jurisprudence To Remediate The Criminalization Of Persons With Mental Illness, Michael L. Perlin Jan 2013

Wisdom Is Thrown Into Jail: Using Therapeutic Jurisprudence To Remediate The Criminalization Of Persons With Mental Illness, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

The common wisdom is that there are two related villains in the saga of the “criminalization of persons with mental illness”: the dramatic elimination of psychiatric hospital beds in the 1970s and 1980s as a result of the “civil rights revolution,” and the failure of the deinstitutionalization movement. Both of these explanations are superficially appealing, but neither is correct; in fact, the causal link between deinstitutionalization and criminalization has never been rigorously tested. It is necessary, rather, to consider another issue to which virtually no attention has been or is being paid: the near-disappearance of mental status issues from the …


Preventing Sex-Offender Recidivism Through Therapeutic Jurisprudence Approaches And Specialized Community Integration, Heather Cucolo, Michael L. Perlin Jan 2012

Preventing Sex-Offender Recidivism Through Therapeutic Jurisprudence Approaches And Specialized Community Integration, Heather Cucolo, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

The public’s panic about the fear of recidivism if adjudicated sex offenders are ever to be released to the community has not subsided, despite the growing amount of information and statistically-reliable data signifying a generally low risk of re-offense. The established case law upholding sex offender civil commitment and containment statutes has rejected challenges of unconstitutionality, and continues to be dominated by punitive undertones. We have come to learn that the tools used to assess offenders for risk and civil commitment are often inaccurate and that meaningful treatment for this population is often unavailable and ineffective. Yet, society continues to …


His Brain Has Been Mismanaged With Great Skill: How Will Jurors Respond To Neuroimaging Testimony In Insanity Defense Cases, Michael L. Perlin Jan 2009

His Brain Has Been Mismanaged With Great Skill: How Will Jurors Respond To Neuroimaging Testimony In Insanity Defense Cases, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

The robust debate over neuroimaging has highlighted a series of law-and-policy questions dealing primarily with reliability, admissibility and availability. When we consider the topic that I will be addressing in this paper - the impact of this evidence on juror decision-making in insanity defense cases - we need to recalibrate our focus so as to incorporate other questions that are as essential (most likely, more essential) to the resolution of the underlying dilemma: (1) to what extent will such evidence - apparently, less inherently easy to falsify - have on jurors whose inherent suspicion of mental state opinion testimony is …