Judges Commons^™

Does Unconscious Racial Bias Affect Trial Judges?, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Sheri Johnson, Andrew J. Wistrich, Chris Guthrie

Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Race matters in the criminal justice system. Black defendants appear to fare worse than similarly situated white defendants. Why? Implicit bias is one possibility. Researchers, using a well-known measure called the implicit association test, have found that most white Americans harbor implicit bias toward Black Americans. Do judges, who are professionally committed to egalitarian norms, hold these same implicit biases? And if so, do these biases account for racially disparate outcomes in the criminal justice system? We explored these two research questions in a multi-part study involving a large sample of trial judges drawn from around the country. Our results …

Batson Ethics For Prosecutors And Trial Court Judges, Sheri Lynn Johnson

Sheri Lynn Johnson

No abstract provided.

Does Unconscious Racial Bias Affect Trial Judges?, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Sheri Johnson, Andrew J. Wistrich, Chris Guthrie

Sheri Lynn Johnson

Race matters in the criminal justice system. Black defendants appear to fare worse than similarly situated white defendants. Why? Implicit bias is one possibility. Researchers, using a well-known measure called the implicit association test, have found that most white Americans harbor implicit bias toward Black Americans. Do judges, who are professionally committed to egalitarian norms, hold these same implicit biases? And if so, do these biases account for racially disparate outcomes in the criminal justice system? We explored these two research questions in a multi-part study involving a large sample of trial judges drawn from around the country. Our results …

The Color Of Truth: Race And The Assessment Of Credibility, Sheri Lynn Johnson

Sheri Lynn Johnson

No abstract provided.

Immigrants Unshackled: The Unconstitutional Use Of Indiscriminate Restraints, Fatma Marouf

Fatma Marouf

Impeachment Exception To The Exclusionary Rules: Policies, Principles, And Politics, The , James L. Kainen

James L. Kainen

The exclusionary evidence rules derived from the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments continue to play an important role in constitutional criminal procedure, despite the intense controversy that surrounds them. The primary justification for these rules has shifted from an "imperative of judicial integrity" to the "deterrence of police conduct that violates... [constitutional] rights." Regardless of the justification it uses for the rules' existence, the Supreme Court continues to limit their breadth "at the margin," when "the acknowledged costs to other values vital to a rational system of criminal justice" outweigh the deterrent effects of exclusion. The most notable limitation on …

Case For A Constitutional Definition Of Hearsay: Requiring Confrontation Of Testimonial, Nonassertive Conduct And Statements Admitted To Explain An Unchallenged Investigation, The , James L. Kainen

James L. Kainen

Crawford v. Washington’s historical approach to the confrontation clause establishes that testimonial hearsay inadmissible without confrontation at the founding is similarly inadmissible today, despite whether it fits a subsequently developed hearsay exception. Consequently, the requirement of confrontation depends upon whether an out-of-court statement is hearsay, testimonial, and, if so, whether it was nonetheless admissible without confrontation at the founding. A substantial literature has developed about whether hearsay statements are testimonial or were, like dying declarations, otherwise admissible at the founding. In contrast, this article focuses on the first question – whether statements are hearsay – which scholars have thus far …

“Far From The Turbulent Space”: Considering The Adequacy Of Counsel In The Representation Of Individuals Accused Of Being Sexually Violent Predators, Michael L. Perlin, Heather Ellis Cucolo

Michael L Perlin

Abstract:

For the past thirty years, the US Supreme Court's standard of Strickland v. Washington has governed the question of adequacy of counsel in criminal trials. There, in a Sixth Amendment analysis, the Supreme Court acknowledged that simply having a lawyer assigned to a defendant was not constitutionally adequate, but that that lawyer must provide "effective assistance of counsel," effectiveness being defined, pallidly, as requiring simply that counsel's efforts be “reasonable” under the circumstances. The benchmark for judging an ineffectiveness claim is simply “whether counsel’s conduct so undermined the proper function of the adversarial process that the trial court cannot …