Criminal Law Commons^™

Answering The Call From Victims Of Dating Violence: Georgia’S New Dating Violence Law, Sydney K. Parish

Georgia Criminal Law Review

Dating violence is a topic that has garnered increased awareness in recent days, both in the media and in the legal field. Many states have begun to pass legislation in attempt to address this issue and provide relief for victims of dating violence. In the summer of 2021, the state of Georgia passed House Bill 231, what later became known as Georgia’s Dating Violence law. This Article first examines our nation’s history of intimate partner violence to show why dating violence legislation was so desperately needed and how these legislative reforms have attempted to heal a system that for so …

The Death Dignity Demands: The Eighth Amendment Requires Incarcerated People Decide Their Method Of Execution, Kali A. Haney

Georgia Criminal Law Review

Recently, there have been a number of incarcerated people on death-row challenging their method of execution and proposing an alternative: usually, firing squad. Courts are hesitant to grant this request for a number of reasons, including the rare use of the firing squad. But there is substantial evidence this method is the most humane. Additionally, it appears incarcerated people think so, which is why so many in recent years chose—or petitioned for—death by firing squad rather than lethal injection or electrocution. As pharmaceutical companies halt their drugs’ distribution to prisons, prisons are forced to come up with their own—often more …

The Use Of Oral Fluid Samples To Test For Driving Under The Influence Of Marijuana, Ian Wise

Georgia Criminal Law Review

Driving Under the Influence of Drugs (DUID) cases pose unique challenges to the criminal justice system. An evidentiary chemical test is a vital piece of evidence in a DUID prosecution because unlike alcohol, drugs do not cause impairment in a uniform fashion. Breath tests cannot detect drugs, and the intrusiveness of blood and urine tests has been the focus of Court cases over the past half-century with decisions in Missouri v. McNeely and Birchfield v. North Dakota curtailing the government’s ability to obtain this evidence without a warrant.

The need for a less intrusive alternative is driven by the doubling …

Protecting Our Nation’S Children In The Technological Age: Arguing For An Interpretation Of “Sexual Activity” In 18 U.S.C. § 2422(B) That Does Not Require Physical Contact, Allison Fine

Georgia Criminal Law Review

Our Nation’s justice system values “equal protection under the law.” This represents the belief that all individuals should be treated equally under the law regardless of personal characteristics. Traditionally, we think about this in a context of things like race, gender, or ethnicity. However, this also encompasses the general idea that individuals nationwide should be accountable to and protected by the same laws. As it relates to criminal law, this notion highlights the importance of uniformity in a criminal justice system. Without consistent application and execution, a criminal justice system will never be fair or “equal.”

The federal child enticement …

Purpose’S Purposes: Culpability, Liberty, Legal Wrongs, And Accomplice Mens Rea, Kevin Cole

Georgia Criminal Law Review

The federal mens rea for accomplice liability—important in its own right and also as an example to the states—is unsettled. Three cases from the just completed Supreme Court term hint (somewhat surprisingly) at various directions the justices might take. This essay examines the cases with a particular focus on the alternative explanations that might be given for the traditional requirement of purposeful facilitation for accomplice liability. The purpose requirement is contestable so long as it is justified in terms of a narrow conception of culpability. It is better understood as serving a liberty-enhancing function. The liberty focus clarifies difficult questions …

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 …

Searching Govinfo.Gov/, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

This U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) database provides access to information legal, legislative, and regulatory information produced on multiple subjects by the U.S. Government. Content includes congressional bills, congressional committee hearings and prints (studies), reports on legislation, the text of laws, regulations, and executive orders and multiple U.S. Government information resources covering subjects from accounting to zoology.

What's Said In The Booth Never Stays In The Booth: A Comparative Analysis Of The Use Of Rap Lyrics In American And English Criminal Trials, Yekaterina Shrayber

Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Osint In Criminal Investigations: Leveraging Open-Source Data To Combat Cybercrime And Organized Criminal Activities, Azariah Vaughan

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

In today's modern age driven by digital innovations, the widespread adoption of technology has transformed criminal activities, leading to the emergence of cybercrime as a significant challenge for law enforcement agencies globally. Cybercrime acts have left a considerable dent on criminal activities and nowadays that we are halfway into the subsequent technological era stands as one of the most crucial issues for law enforcement agencies all around the globe. The aim of this work is to discuss the relationship between cybercrime and organized crime and the importance of OSINT within criminal investigations in supporting law enforcement itself. Particularly, due to …

Narrowing From Below: How Lower Courts Can Limit Castro-Huerta, Michaela B. Parks

Arkansas Law Review

This Note will offer a plan for how Indian country can move forward in the wake of what anti-tribal sovereignty entities want to be a devasting decision. This Note advocates for a judicial remedy plan. Specifically, it calls upon lower courts to narrow Castro-Huerta from below to limit the effects of the decision. Part II provides a brief introduction to federal Indian law, a general overview of criminal jurisdiction in Indian country, and concludes with a summary of Castro-Huerta. Part III outlines two approaches to limiting that lower courts can use to narrow Castro-Huerta from below: textual limiting and fact-to-fact …

Worthless Checks? Clemency, Compassionate Release, And The Finality Of Life Without Parole, Daniel Pascoe

Northwestern University Law Review

Life without parole (LWOP) sentences are politically popular in the United States because, on their face, they claim to hold prisoners incarcerated until they die, with zero prospect of release via the regularized channel of parole. However, this view is procedurally shortsighted. After parole there is generally another remedial option for lessening or abrogating punishment: executive clemency via pardons and commutations. Increasingly, U.S. legal jurisdictions also provide for the possibility of compassionate release for lifers, usually granted by a parole board.

On paper, pardon, commutation, and compassionate release are thus direct challenges to the claim that an LWOP sentence will …

A New Private Law Of Policing, Cristina Carmody Tilley

Brooklyn Law Review

American law and American life are asymmetrical. Law divides neatly in two: public and private. But life is lived in three distinct spaces: pure public, pure private, and hybrid middle spaces that are neither state nor home. Which body of law governs the shops, gyms, and workplaces that are formally accessible to all, but functionally hostile to Black, female, poor, and other marginalized Americans? From the liberal midcentury onward, social justice advocates have treated these spaces as fundamentally public and fully remediable via public law equity commands. This article takes a broader view. It urges a tort law revival in …

The Minimalist Alternative To Abolitionism: Focusing On The Non-Dangerous Many, Christopher Slobogin Professor Of Law

Vanderbilt Law Review

In "The Dangerous Few: Taking Seriously Prison Abolition and Its Skeptics," published in the Harvard Law Review, Thomas Frampton proffers four reasons why those who want to abolish prisons should not budge from their position even for offenders who are considered dangerous. This Essay demonstrates why a criminal law minimalist approach to prisons and police is preferable to abolition, not just when dealing with the dangerous few but also as a means of protecting the non-dangerous many. A minimalist regime can radically reduce reliance on both prisons and police, without the loss in crime prevention capacity and legitimacy that is …

Foreword: The Legal Profession And Social Change, Atinuke O. Adediran, Bruce A. Green

Fordham Law Review

Fordham University School of Law’s Stein Center for Law and Ethics has collaborated with the Fordham Law Review every year since the late 1990s to encourage, collect, and publish scholarly writings on different aspects of the legal profession, including its norms, regulation, organization, history, and development—that is, on themes relating to what law schools loosely call “legal ethics.” The legal profession is an important subject of study for legal scholars, among others. Although one U.S. Supreme Court Justice, himself a former law professor, airily derided legal ethics as the “least analytically rigorous . . . of law-school subjects,” we dispute …

Community Responsive Public Defense, Alexis Hoag-Fordjour

Fordham Law Review

This colloquium asks us to consider how social change is influencing the legal profession and the legal profession’s response. This Essay applies these questions to organizing around criminal injustice and the response from public defenders. This Essay surfaces the work of four innovative indigent defense organizations that are engaged with and duty-bound to the communities they represent. I call this “community responsive public defense,” which is a distinct model of indigent defense whereby public defenders look to their clients and their clients’ communities to help shape advocacy, strategy, and representation.

Methodologically, this Essay relies primarily on qualitative interviews with leaders …

Regulating The Public Defender Identity, Irene Oritseweyinmi Joe

Fordham Law Review

The public defender institution has trouble meeting its mission. This is partly because, despite the specific and clear purpose of representing indigent defendants in criminal proceedings, public defender offices rely on various centering principles to meet this objective. The institution falters if it chooses a centering principle that unwittingly complicates its ability to meet the institution’s central mission. For public defender leaders tasked with developing and maintaining an institutional identity for a particular office, neither legal nor professional regulations supply the type of considerations that guarantee that an adopted identity will comply with core institutional responsibilities. This project seeks to …

Extraordinary Punishment: Conditions Of Confinement And Compassionate Release, Meredith B. Esser

Fordham Law Review

People experience severe forms of harm while incarcerated, including medical neglect, prolonged solitary confinement, sexual and physical violence, and a host of other ills. But civil rights litigation under the Eighth Amendment—the most common vehicle through which people seek to redress these harms—presents significant practical and doctrinal barriers to incarcerated plaintiffs. Most notably, the Eighth Amendment’s “deliberate indifference” standard asks not whether a person has been harmed, but instead requires plaintiffs to demonstrate a criminally reckless mental state on the part of prison officials. Further, Eighth Amendment remedies are limited to damages or injunctions, which may not adequately redress a …

No More Nixon: A Proposed Change To Rule 17(C) Of The Federal Rules Of Criminal Procedure, Norah Senftleber

Fordham Law Review

Today, the standard for subpoenas under Rule 17(c) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, espoused in United States v. Nixon, provides for limited, almost useless, pretrial subpoena power for criminal defendants. When subpoenaing a third party, a defendant must show (1) relevancy, (2) admissibility, and (3) specificity for documents that they have not yet gained access to. This narrow scope of Rule 17(c) has long engendered criticism from judges, scholars, and practitioners alike. Yet, Rule 17(c) has not been changed, either by judicial opinion or amendment.

Following years of criticism, the Advisory Committee on Criminal Rules (“Advisory Committee”) …

Social Ecology, Preventive Intervention, And The Administrative Transformation Of The Criminal Legal System, Mark R. Fondacaro

Georgia State University Law Review

This Article outlines an administrative model of criminal justice that provides a conceptual framework and empirical justification for transforming our criminal legal system from a backward-looking, adjudicative model grounded in principles of retribution toward a forward-looking model grounded in consequentialist principles of justice aimed at crime prevention and recidivism reduction. The Article reviews the historical roots and justifications for our current system, along with recent advances in the behavioral, social, and biological sciences that inform why and how the system fuels injustice. The concept of social ecology is introduced as an organizing framework for: (1) understanding why individuals do or …

Police Chases And Pit Maneuvers: Examining The Role Of Officer Conduct In Pursuit-Related Felony Murder Convictions, Margaret L. R. Dubose

Georgia State University Law Review

The United States Supreme Court has described a police officer's decision to terminate a high-speed car chase by making physical contact with the fleeing vehicle as a "choice between two evils." Indeed, while many speed-related deaths occur on Georgia's roadways without the involvement of law enforcement, deaths also transpire when officers choose to make such contact through Precision Intervention Technique (PIT) maneuvers.

In 2015, a Georgia jury found a driver guilty of committing felony murder—a conviction which carries with it a life sentence. The victim, a passenger in the driver's speeding car, died after a law enforcement officer performed a …