Digital Commons Network^™

Capital Punishment, Psychiatrists And The Potential Bottleneck Of Competence , Jacob M. Appel

Journal of Law and Health

The purpose of this paper is to merge two largely separate bodies of writing on the subject of psychiatric participation in capital punishment. Much has already been written from the perspective of legal academics regarding the rights of prisoners to be free from unwanted medical care if the purpose of providing such care is to render them fit for execution. Medical ethicists have also written much on the degree to which physicians, and specifically psychiatrists, may participate in facilitating the death penalty before they become so complicit as to violate accepted standards of professional ethics. Surprisingly, these two fields of …

¡Silencio! Undocumented Immigrant Witnesses And The Right To Silence, Violeta R. Chapin

Publications

At a time referred to as "an unprecedented era of immigration enforcement," undocumented immigrants who have the misfortune to witness a crime in this country face a terrible decision. Calling the police to report that crime will likely lead to questions that reveal a witness's immigration status, resulting in detention and deportation for the undocumented immigrant witness. Programs like Secure Communities and 287(g) partnerships evidence an increase in local immigration enforcement, and this Article argues that undocumented witnesses' only logical response to these programs is silence. Silence, in the form of a complete refusal to call the police to report …

Have You Been Drinking Tonight Ms. Prynne - Ohio's Scarlet Letter For Ovi/Dui Offenders: A Violation Of First Amendment Protection Against Compelled Speech, William Livingston

Cleveland State Law Review

This note examines the history of scarlet letter punishments. These types of sanctions raise many constitutional concerns; this Note will specifically address First Amendment compelled speech. Different standards of constitutional review for First Amendment violations and probation conditions will also be discussed. The note will also explain how Ohio's special license plate violates the First Amendment. Because the license plate is a legislative requirement that infringes upon free speech and eliminates judicial sentencing discretion, the state's interest must pass strict scrutiny. This analysis will confirm that the state's interest is legitimate but not compelling. The special license plate fails to …

Do Sex Offender Registration And Notification Laws Affect Criminal Behavior?, J. J. Prescott, Jonah E. Rockoff

Articles

Sex offenders have become the targets of some of the most far-reaching and novel crime legislation in the U.S. Two key innovations in recent decades have been registration and notification laws which, respectively, require that convicted sex offenders provide valid contact information to law enforcement authorities, and that information about sex offenders be made public. Using the evolution of state law during the 1990s and 2000s, we study how registration and notification affect the frequency of reported sex offenses and the incidence of such offenses across victims. We find evidence that registration reduces the frequency of sex offenses by providing …

Censoring Crimes, Barak Y. Orbach, Allison S. Woolston

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

Concerns regarding the harmful influence of films on youth and adults have always motivated censorship and justified, in some minds, greater government control over content. Many motion pictures portray illegal conduct-theft, robbery, embezzlement, arson, drug dealing, assault, rape, murder, treason, and other crimes. In most instances, commission of the underlying crime is not needed for the production of the film. Despite the perpetual fear of the "capacity for evil" of films, the legality of motion pictures that commercialize crimes has not been studied as a concept. This Essay explores the reasons for this neglect and examines the problems this omission …

Humanitarian Law Project And The Supreme Court's Construction Of Terrorism, Wadie E. Said

Publications

No abstract provided.

Cost Conscious Justice: The Case For Wholly-Informed Discretionary Sentencing In Kentucky, Emily M. Grant

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Hot Crimes: A Study In Excess, Steven P. Grossman

All Faculty Scholarship

Societies appear to be subject, every now and then, to periods of moral panic. . . . [I]ts nature is presented in a stylized and stereotypical fashion by the mass media; the moral barricades are manned by editors, bishops, politicians and other right thinking people; socially accredited experts pronounce their diagnoses and solutions; ways of coping are evolved or (more often) restored to; . . . sometimes the panic passes over and is forgotten . . . at other times it has more serious and long-lasting repercussions and might produce such as those in legal and social policy or even …

Constitutional Rights In The Balance: Modern Exclusionary Rules And The Toleration Of Police Lawlessness In The Search For Truth, Stephen C. Thaman

All Faculty Scholarship

This article explores the tension in modern criminal procedure between the goal of ascertaining the material truth of the criminal charge and the respect for important human rights of criminal suspects during the investigation of the alleged criminal responsibility. It examines two major areas where police run the risk of violating and often do violate the constitutional rights of criminal suspects during interrogations and during invasions of privacy in the form of dwelling searches and interception of confidential communications. The approaches of modern democracies to this dilemma run from the strict exclusion of all direct and indirect evidence (fruits of …

'The Mess We’Re In': Five Steps Towards The Transformation Of Prison Cultures, Lynn S. Branham

All Faculty Scholarship

Few dispute that conditions in prisons need to be improved – that, for example, prisoners with mental-health problems need to have those problems addressed, and addressed effectively, while they are confined. But the more fundamental question is whether prisons can be, not just improved, but transformed. Transformation in this context means deep and sustained changes in the ethos of those who work and live in prisons. That ethos would reflect at least four precepts: (1) hope as an imperative; (2) the viability of renewal; (3) the catharsis that attends personal responsibility and accountability; and (4) the duty and call, extending …

Less Than We Might: Meditations On Life In Prison Without Parole, Robert Blecker

Articles & Chapters

Today, death penalty opponents mostly claim life without parole (LWOP) as their genuinely popular substitute punishment for the worst of the worst. These abolitionists embrace LWOP as cheaper, equally just, and equally effective - a punishment that eliminates the state’s exercise of an inhumane power to kill helpless human beings who pose no immediate threat. Furthermore, they insist, LWOP allows the criminal justice system to reverse sentencing mistakes. Some even characterize it as a punishment worse than death.

Thousands of hours in several states, interviewing and observing more than a hundred convicted killers, along with dozens of correctional officers who …

Turning The Corner On Mass Incarceration?, David Cole

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

For the first time in forty years, the national incarceration rate is flattening out, even falling in state prisons. For the first time in three decades, the number of adults under any kind of correctional supervision—in prison or jail or on probation or parole—fell in 2009. At the same time, legal reforms that might have seemed impossible in prior years have increasingly been adopted, reducing penalties for certain crimes, eliminating mandatory sentencing for others, and increasing expenditures for reintegration of prisoners into society. And racial disparities, a persistent and deep-rooted problem in the American criminal justice system, after rising for …

Throwing Away The Key: Has The Adam Walsh Act Lowered The Threshold For Sexually Violent Predator Commitments Too Far?, Tamara Rice Lave

Articles

No abstract provided.

From Oglethorpe To The Overthrow Of The Confederacy: Habeas Corpus In Georgia, 1733-1865, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

Georgia Law Review

This Article provides, for the first time, a comprehensive
account of the writ of habeas corpus in Georgia not

primarily focused on use of the writ as a post conviction
remedy. The Article covers the 132-year period stretching
from 1733, when the Georgia colony was established, to
1865, when the American Civil War came to a close. Part
II of this Article, which examines the writ of habeas corpus
in colonial Georgia, begins by briefly summarizing the
history and development of the writ in England, and then
analyzes the reception and availability in the colony of the
common law writ …

Under International Standards Of Justice, Can Audio Or Video Recordings Of Distress Calls And Footage From Vessels Allegedly Subjected To Piratical Attacks Be Admitted Into Evidence? How Would Authenticity Be Proved? Does This Deny The Opportunity To Cross-Examine?, Baker & Mckenzie Llp

War Crimes Memoranda

No abstract provided.

What Domestic And International Legal Efforts Can Best Ensure The Freezing Of Assets And Money Acquired Through Acts Of Piracy?, Baker & Mckenzie Llp

War Crimes Memoranda

No abstract provided.

Randomization And The Fourth Amendment, Bernard Harcourt, Tracey L. Meares

Faculty Scholarship

Randomized checkpoint searches are generally taken to be the exact antithesis of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment. In the eyes of most jurists checkpoint searches violate the central requirement of valid Fourth Amendment searches – namely, individualized suspicion. We disagree. In this Article, we contend that randomized searches should serve as the very lodestar of a reasonable search. The notion of "individualized" suspicion is misleading; most suspicion in the modem policing context is group based and not individual specific. Randomized searches by definition are accompanied by a certain level of suspicion. The constitutional issue, we maintain, should not turn on …

Staying Out Of Court: Leadership Factors For Consideration As Higher Education Administrators, Steven R. Briggs

Parameters of Law in Student Affairs and Higher Education (CNS 670)

Higher education leaders have a tremendous responsibility as it relates to legal concerns. This guidebook is intended to assist leaders in higher education by providing factors for which administrators serving in a student affairs or higher education leadership role should consider. This guidebook is designed to offer five recommendations for best practices. The guidebook will also review the 2007 rape and murder of a Eastern Michigan University student in demonstrating how leaders at this institution failed to follow these five factors of best practice and thus providing examples of negligence or tort liability, which has best been defined as civil …

Prolegomenon On The Status Of The Hopey, Changey Thing In American Criminal Justice, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

This is an introductory essay to Volume 23, Number 2, of the FEDERAL SENTENCING REPORTER, which considers the state of American criminal justice policy in 2010, two years after the "Change" election of 2008. Part I of the essay paints a statistical picture of trends in federal criminal practice and sentencing over the last half-decade or so, with particular emphasis on sentence severity and the degree of regional and inter-judge sentencing disparity. The statistics suggest that the expectation that the 2005 Booker decision would produce a substantial increase in the exercise of judicial sentencing discretion and a progressive abandonment of …

Hope And Betrayal On Death Row, David Cole

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

Independent Correctional Oversight Mechanisms Across The United States: A 50-State Inventory, Michele Deitch

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.

Getting To Yes In A Plra World, Elizabeth Alexander

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reflections On A Government Model Of Correctional Oversight, Richard T. Wolf

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.

Ensuring Progress: Accountability Standards Recommended By The National Prison Rape Elimination Commission, Jamie Fellner

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.

Oversight Of Law Enforcement Is Beneficial And Needed—Both Inside And Out, Barbara Attard

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Ombudsman As A Monitor Of Human Rights In Canadian Federal Corrections, Howard Sapers, Ivan Zinger

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Quixotic Dilemma, California’S Immutable Culture Of Incarceration, Geri Lynn Green

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.

Opening Up A Closed World: What Constitutes Effective Prison Oversight?, Michael B. Mushlin, Michele Deitch

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.

Criminal Law And Procedure, Virginia B. Theisen, Stephen R. Mccullough

University of Richmond Law Review

The authors have endeavored to select from the many cases and bills those that have the most significant practical impact on the daily practice of criminal law in the Commonwealth. Due to space constraints, the authors have stayed away from discussing settled principles, with a focus on the "take away" for a particular case.

Changing The Sentence Without Hiding The Truth: Judicial Sentence Modification As A Promising Method Of Early Release, Cecelia Klingele

William & Mary Law Review

Last year, as the State of California struggled with a $42 billion budget deficit, its financial inability to correct constitutionally deficient prison conditions led a federal court to order the release of 40,000 state prisoners. In Oregon, Michigan, Connecticut, Vermont, and Delaware, spending on corrections now exceeds spending on higher education. Across the nation, more than one of every one hundred Americans is behind bars. When the financial crisis of 2008 dealt its blow, state correctional budgets were already nearing a breaking point. Now, in the wake of unprecedented budget shortfalls, state governments have been forced to confront a difficult …