Digital Commons Network^™

Sex Offender As Scapegoat: The Monstrous Other Within, John Douard

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Blood Relations: Collective Memory, Cultural Trauma, & The Prosecution & Execution Of Timothy Mcveigh, Jody Lynee Madeira

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, processes of reconstruction - remembering victims, caring for family members and survivors, and punishing the perpetrators - began even as debris from the Murrah Federal Building was being cleared. Based on conclusions obtained from intensive interviews with 27 victims' family members and survivors, this article explores how memory of the bombing as a culturally traumatic event was constructed through participation in groups formed after the bombing and participation in the legal proceedings against perpetrators Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. These acts cultivated the formation of various relationships - between family members and …

Will Penal Populism In Japan Decline?: A Discussion, Setsuo Miyazawa

Faculty Scholarship

I intend to play the role of discussant at a session where five papers have been presented and to draw implications from the perspective I presented in Miyazawa (2007a ). I revise my thesis about penal populism in Japan slightly using the concept of "leadership from the front "presented by Johnson .However, I still conclude that penal populism in Japan is not likely to decline in the near future.

Judge Dredd: Hollywood Fiction Or Las Vegas Reality?, Michael J. Gayan

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Social Science And The Evolving Standards Of Death Penalty Law, Samuel R. Gross, Phoebe C. Ellsworth

Book Chapters

Unlike many of the topics covered in this book, death penalty litigation involves a wide variety of empirical issues. The Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution provides that "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishment inflicted." But what is a "cruel and unusual punishment?" It could be a punishment that is morally unacceptable to the American people, like cutting off noses or hands. Following the other clauses of the amendment, it could be a punishment that is excessive, in that a lesser penalty would achieve the same ends. For example, if a …

The Concept Of "Less Eligibility" And The Social Function Of Prison Violence In Class Society, Ahmed A. White

Publications

No abstract provided.

Extraordinary Chamber For The Cambodian Courts, Eccc, Crimes Against Humanity As Customary International Law In 1975 And The Evidentiary Threshold For Discriminatory Intent, Corey Harkey

War Crimes Memoranda

No abstract provided.

Punishment, Deterrence And Social Control: The Paradox Of Punishment In Minority Communities, Jeffery Fagan, Tracey L. Meares

Faculty Scholarship

Since the early 1970s, the number of individuals in jails and state and federal prisons has grown exponentially. Today, nearly two million people are currently incarcerated in state and federal prisons and local jails. The growth of imprisonment has been borne disproportionately by. African-American and Hispanic men from poor communities in urban areas. Rising.incarceration should have greatly reduced the crime rate. After all, incapacitated offenders were no longer free to rob, assault, steal, or commit other crimes. However, no large-scale reduction in crime was detected until the mid-1990s. The failure of crime rates to decline commensurately with increases in the …

The Empirics Of Prison Growth: A Critical Review And Path Forward, John F. Pfaff

Faculty Scholarship

A growing empirical literature has sought to explain the forces behind the significant expansion of the U.S. prison population over the past thirty years. Unfortunately, the studies to date have suffered from important methodological, conceptual, and definitional problems that have significantly curtailed their ability to identify causal effects. In this Article, I examine several of the central limitations and discuss remedies. I start by reviewing the theories that investigators have sought to test. I then discuss the studies' empirical defects, such as failing to account for endogenous relationships, overlooking the risk of model dependency, ignoring complex dynamic relationships, using variables …

A New Look At Neo-Liberal Economic Policies And The Criminalization Of Undocumented Migration, Teresa A. Miller

Journal Articles

This paper situates the current “crisis” surrounding the arrival and continued presence of undocumented immigrants in the United States within penological trends that have taken root in American law over the past thirty years. It positions the shift from more benevolent to the increasingly harsh legal treatment of undocumented immigrants as the continuation of a succession of legal reforms criminalizing immigrants, and governing immigration through crime. By charting the increasing salience of crime in public perceptions of undocumented immigrants, and comparing the immediately preceding criminal stigmatization of so-called “criminal aliens”, this paper exposes current severity toward undocumented immigrants as consistent …

The Rise Of Spanish And Latin American Criminal Theory, Luis E. Chiesa

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Statistics In The Jury Box: How Jurors Respond To Mitochondrial Dna Match Probabilities, David H. Kaye, Valerie P. Hans, B. Michael Dann, Erin J. Farley, Stephanie Albertson

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article describes parts of an unusually realistic experiment on the comprehension of expert testimony on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequencing in a criminal trial for robbery. Specifically, we examine how jurors who responded to summonses for jury duty evaluated portions of videotaped testimony involving probabilities and statistics. Although some jurors showed susceptibility to classic fallacies in interpreting conditional probabilities, the jurors as a whole were not overwhelmed by a 99.98% exclusion probability that the prosecution presented. Cognitive errors favoring the defense were more prevalent than ones favoring the prosecution. These findings lend scant support to the legal argument that mtDNA …

It's Just Not Cricket: Is The Principle Of Reciprocity Being Honored In The U.S.-U.K. Extradition Treaty?, Richard Goldberger

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Limited Defense Of Clinical Placebo Deception, Adam Kolber

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Civil Disobedience And The Necessity Defense, John Alan Cohan

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “This article will first examine the nature of civil disobedience, and distinguish between direct and indirect civil disobedience. Part II highlights some historical examples of civil disobedience. Part IV then examines the principles of the necessity defense, analyzing each of the elements that make up the defense, illustrated with cases on point. Next, Part V will turn to an analysis of several abortion-protest cases that raise issues different from other types of civil disobedience cases. Part VI then will examine Viet Nam era civil disobedience cases. Following that, Part VIII will explore a unique defense known as the Nuremberg …

Intimate Partner Homicide, Karitta A. Page

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

Using data collected from the Chicago Women's Health Risk Study (Block 2000), this study looked at female perpetrated intimate partner homicide. The purpose of this study was to identify what factors, if any, differentiate between abused women who kill versus abused women who do not kill their intimate partners. Through conducting this study, several factors such as substance abuse, support networks and severe violence were compared between abused women who kill their intimate partner versus those who were abused women but did not kill. It was found that severe abuse, substance abuse by the abuser and the abused person were …

A Gene × Gene Interaction Between Drd2 And Drd4 Is Associated With Conduct Disorder And Antisocial Behavior In Males, Kevin M. Beaver, John Paul Wright, Matt Delisi, Anthony Walsh, Michael G. Vaughn, Danielle Boisvert, Jamie Vaske

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications and Presentations

Background: Antisocial behaviors are complex polygenic phenotypes that are due to a multifactorial arrangement of genetic polymorphisms. Little empirical research, however, has been undertaken that examines gene × gene interactions in the etiology of conduct disorder and antisocial behavior. This study examined whether adolescent conduct disorder and adult antisocial behavior were related to the dopamine D2 receptor polymorphism (DRD2) and the dopamine D4 receptor polymorphism (DRD4).

Methods: A sample of 872 male participants from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) completed self-report questionnaires that tapped adolescent conduct disorder and adult antisocial behavior. DNA was genotyped for DRD2 …

Rights, Wrongs, And Comparative Justifications, Vera Bergelson

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Rights, Wrongs, And Comparative Justifications, Vera Bergelson

Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers

The goal of this article is to rethink the relationship between the concepts of justification and wrongdoing, which play vital roles in the theory of criminal law. Reading George P. Fletcher’s new book, The Grammar of Criminal Law, in the context of his earlier scholarship has led me to one major disagreement with Fletcher as well as with the traditional criminal law doctrine: for Fletcher and many others, wrongdoing and justification mutually exclude each other; for me, they do not.

Consider a hypothetical: a group of people are captured by criminals. The criminals are about to kill everyone but then …

The Place Of Translation In Jerusalem's Criminal Trial Court, Irus Braverman

Journal Articles

The court-appointed translator is largely an invisible actor in the legal space. The Israeli context provides an extreme example of this invisibility: apart from a general statutory definition of the court's obligation to translate criminal proceedings, the work of translation in the Israeli courtroom is mostly unregulated by state law, rendering it highly susceptible to informal manifestations. This article offers a critical empirical investigation into the micropractices of translation performed in the Jerusalem criminal trial court in 2002. On the face of things, the court-appointed translator performs a technical task in the everyday working of the court. Expected to mediate …

When The Price Is Too High: Rethinking China's Deterrence Strategy For Robbery, Peter D. Nestor

Washington International Law Journal

Economic property crime in China has soared since the country enacted market reforms in the early 1980s. Robbery rates are rising faster than most economic property crimes, such as larceny and fraud, and violent crimes, such as rape, murder, and assault. China’s strategy for deterrence is to raise the “price” of the crime by increasing the severity of the penalty. Since 1979, China’s criminal law has permitted the use of the death penalty for robbers in nearly all cases, and courts have applied it regularly and in many different types of robbery cases. Since 1983, China has formally engaged in …

Terrorism And Relative Justice, Mark Findlay

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Terrorist violence and violent justice responses have much in common. While contextually dependant, both forms of violence lay claim to contested legitimacies. The relationships between terrorism and justice responses require both theoretical and empirical examination if the prospects for controlling the violence they perpetrate is to be sharpened.

The New Direct Proximate Cause: How The U.S. Supreme Court Has Attempted To Limit Civil Rico In A Manner Congress Aimed To Protect, Gregory M. Zarin

ExpressO

This comment explores a heavily litigated issue since civil RICO's enactment - its unclear statutory scope and private party standing. To illustrate this issue, this comment explores recent RICO litigation related to the unlawful hiring of undocumented workers as an example of a Congressionally supported application of civil RICO, but in a manner wholly unrelated to organized crime or the mafia. While the Supreme Court has continued to limit civil RICO's outer boundaries, Congress seems to go the complete opposite direction by expanding the statute.

Closing The Loophole In California's Sexually Violent Predatory Act: Jessica's Law's Band-Aid Will Not Result In Treatment For Sexual Predators, Melissa M. Matthews

McGeorge Law Review

No abstract provided.

Death Is Not Different: The Transfer Of Juvenile Offenders To Adult Criminal Courts, Christopher A. Mallett

Social Work Faculty Publications

The US Supreme Court first reviewed a state's statutory procedure for juvenile transfer to adult criminal courts in Kent v. US 1 Morris Kent was a fourteen-year-old first convicted for purse snatching and house-breaking, placed on probation, and later charged at the age of sixteen with robbery and rape. 2 Kent was arrested, presumably admitted to involvement in these crimes after seven hours of interrogation, and placed in a receiving home for one week.

Protecting Children From The Harmful Behavior Of Adults, Eric C. Shedlosky

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

Domestic Violence And Mandatory Arrest Laws: To What Extent Do They Influence Police Arrest Decisions, David Hirschel, Eve Buzawa, April Pattavina, Don Faggiani

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

Effects Of Individual Characteristics On Plea Negotiations Under Sentencing Guidelines, Erika Davis Frenzel, Jeremy Ball

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications and Presentations

Research conducted on the decision points between arrest and sentencing is scarce. The current study attempts to fill this gap by focusing on plea negotiations, examining the effects of individual characteristics on plea bargaining decisions by using two dependent variables – a two-category dependent variable analyzing negotiated pleas vs. non-negotiated pleas and a three-category dependent variable analyzing negotiated pleas, non-negotiated pleas, and bench/jury trial convictions. The results from the multinomial logistic regression indicate that individual characteristics are predictors of negotiated guilty pleas compared to a trial conviction. Black offenders were more likely than white offenders to have their case go …

Exploring The Limits Of The Restorative Justice Paradigm: Restorative Justice And White-Collar Crime, Zvi D. Gabbay

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

Part I of this article introduces the restorative justice paradigm. It defines restorative justice and its basic values and principles and presents two theories which illustrate the goals of restorative interventions and the basic requirements for their commencement. Part II introduces white-collar crime and focuses on high-profile white-collar crime committed by corporate executives. This part discusses the centrality of white-collar crime within the criminal justice system and society in general and reviews the latest developments in legislation and sentencing policies on white-collar crime. Part III argues that the restorative justice paradigm should be applied to high-profile white-collar crime as a …

End Natural Life Sentences For Juveniles, Jeffrey A. Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court in Roper v. Simmons (125 S. Ct. 1183) banned executions of persons who commit capital murder before they reach age 18. Roper overturned death sentences for 72 people in 18 states (Streib, 2005). Most (but not all) were resentenced to natural life or life in prison without the possibility of parole (or JLWOP). Juvenile justice advocates now want to extend Roper’s maturity heuristic, proportionality analysis, aversion to errors, and deference to international laws and norms to argue for a constitutional ban on natural life sentences for adolescent offenders. This move could have a far …