Digital Commons Network^™

The Moral Politics Of Social Control: Political Culture And Ordinary Crime In Cuba, Deborah M. Weissman, Marsha Weissman

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

In With The New, Out With The Old: Expanding The Scope Of Retroactive Amelioration, S. David Mitchell

Faculty Publications

The legislative decision to amend a statute and reduce a sentence but not to apply it retroactively to pending prosecutions or to finalized convictions is in accord with the principles of retroactivity, but contrary to legitimate goals of punishment, i.e. deterrence and retributivism. Genarlow Wilson, convicted at seventeen of aggravated child molestation, a felony, for consensual oral sex with a fifteen-year old classmate, was sentenced to a mandatory minimum of ten years. While his appeal was pending, the Georgia Legislature reclassified the conduct as a misdemeanor and reduced the sentence to a maximum of one year but decided not to …

Aall Review: Find 50-State Law Surveys Fast!, Michele Lucero

Faculty Publications

As a librarian, have you ever had the challenge of finding and compiling that needle-in-a-haystack 50-State survey? Or locating the resources to retrieve that subject survey quickly? What about a regulatory survey? Cheryl Rae Nyberg, of the University of Washington, Gallagher Law Library and author of Subject Compilation of State Laws (2006-07) An Annotated Bibliography, provided shortcuts and tips on how to quickly locate a 50-state law survey by any topic. This article is a brief summary of where a librarian can locate 50-state law surveys fast!

Paranoid Personality Has A Dimensional Latent Structure: Taxometric Analyses Of Community And Clinical Samples, John F. Edens, David K. Marcus, Leslie C. Morey

Faculty Publications

Although paranoid personality is one of the most commonly diagnosed personality disorders and is associated with numerous negative life consequences, relatively little is known about the structural properties of this condition. This study examines whether paranoid personality traits represent a latent dimension or a discrete class (i.e., taxon). In Study 1, the authors conducted taxometric analyses of paranoid personality disorder criteria in a sample of 731 patients participating in the Collaborative Longitudinal Study of Personality Disorders project (Gunderson et al., 2000) who had been administered a semistructured diagnostic interview for personality disorders according to criteria of the Diagnostic and Statistical …

The Effects Of School-Wide Positive Behavior Support On School Climate: A Middle School Logitudinal Study, K. Richard Young, Ryan H. Shatzer, Ellie L. Young, Paul Caldarella, Richard E. West

Faculty Publications

Questions: What strategies and resources are needed to implement a successful SWPBS program in middle schools? How can you measure the effects of SWPBS in middle schools?

Heinous, Atrocious, And Cruel: Apprendi, Indeterminate Sentencing, And The Meaning Of Punishment, W. David Ball

Faculty Publications

Under Apprendi v. New Jersey, any fact that increases an offender's maximum punishment must be found by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. The Apprendi literature has focused on the allocation of power between judge and jury, ignoring entirely the role of the parole board in indeterminate sentences-that is, sentences which terminate in discretionary parole release. In an indeterminate sentence, a judge makes a pronouncement about the length of the prescriptive sentence to be imposed, but the parole board decides the actual sentence that is, in fact, imposed.

In this Article, I explore the Apprendi ramifications of indeterminate sentencing. In …

Atrocity Crimes Litigation: 2008 Year-In-Review, Beth Van Schaack

Faculty Publications

This survey of 2008's top developments in these international fora will focus on the law governing international crimes and applicable forms of responsibility. Several trends in the law are immediately apparent. The tribunals continue to delineate and clarify the interfaces between the various international crimes, particularly war crimes and crimes against humanity, which may be committed simultaneously or in parallel with each other. Several important cases went to judgment in 2008 that address war crimes drawn from the Hague tradition of international humanitarian law, and the international courts are demonstrating a greater facility for adjudicating highly technical aspects of this …

Testimonial Deficiencies And Evidentiary Uncertainties In International Criminal Trials, Nancy Amoury Combs

Faculty Publications

In this article, the author describes the flaws inherent in the process of international criminal tribunals which seek to punish the inhumane actions of dictators. The author first describes how international criminal trials confront severe impediments to accurate factfinding. It continues on to discuss the failure of witnesses in these tribunals to accurately convey the information needed to make a fully- informed decision. This problem is compounded by the fact that what clear information is provided during witness testimony often is inconsistent with the information that the witness previously provided in a pre-trial statement. The author also explores the causes …

Prosecutorial Shaming: Naming Attorneys To Reduce Prosecutorial Misconduct, Adam M. Gershowitz

Faculty Publications

This Article explores the unfortunately large number of instances in which appellate courts reverse convictions for serious prosecutorial misconduct but do not identify the names of the prosecutors who committed that misconduct. Because judges are reluctant to publicly shame prosecutors whose cases are reversed, this Article advocates that a neutral set of third parties undertake the responsibility of publicly identifying prosecutors who have committed serious misconduct. The naming of prosecutors will shame bad actors, provide a valuable pedagogical lesson for junior prosecutors, and signal to trial judges that certain prosecutors must be monitored more closely to avoid future misconduct.

Searching Cell Phones Incident To Arrest: Can Courts And Legislatures Impose Limits On A Bright Line Rule?, Adam M. Gershowitz

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of Different Types And Patterns Of Services On Successful Reunification, California Social Work Education Center (Calswec), Amy D'Andrade

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Off-Court Misbehavior: Sports Leagues And Private Punishment, Janine Young Kim, Matthew J. Parlow

Faculty Publications

This Essay examines how professional sports leagues address (apparently increasing) criminal activity by players off of the field or court. It analyzes the power of professional sports leagues and, in particular, the commissioners of those leagues, to discipline wayward athletes. Such discipline is often met with great controversy - from players’ unions and commentators alike - especially when a commissioner invokes the “in the best interest of the sport” clause of the professional sports league’s constitution and bylaws. The Essay then contextualizes such league discipline in criminal punishment theory - juxtaposing punishment norms in public law with incentives and rationales …

Bargaining In The Shadow Of (International) Law: What The Normalization Of Adjudication In International Governance Regimes Means For Dispute Resolution, Andrea K. Schneider

Faculty Publications

After examining the similar goals and values that drive the simultaneous increase in international trials and the decrease in U.S. trials, the article then examines the challenges international adjudication poses to dealing with human rights violations and transitional justice situations. Simplistically, these tensions can be viewed as the need to strike a balance between peace and justice, top-down implementation and bottom-up impact, and process efficiency and conflict customization. The good news is that these challenges have been slowly working themselves out as the next generation of international adjudication models continues to improve. This continued improvement and normalization leads to an …

Bark And Bite: The Environmental Sentencing Guidelines After Booker, Michael M. O'Hear

Faculty Publications

The federal sentencing guidelines for environmental crimes bark loudly, calling for sentences of imprisonment for all but the most trivial of environmental offenses. Although the terms of imprisonment are not long, the prospect of even a short period of incarceration is doubtlessly capable of getting the attention of the white-collar professionals who typically commit environmental offenses. Research I conducted in 2004, however, indicated that the bark of the environmental guidelines was considerably worse than their bite. Judges “departed” below the applicable guidelines range in an unusually high percentage of environmental cases, barely one-third of convicted environmental defendants received prison sentences, …

He Speaks Not, Yet He Says Everything; What Of That?: Text, Context, And Pretext In State V. Jeffrey Dahmer, Gregory J. O'Meara S.J.

Faculty Publications

In State v. Dahmer, the defense attempted to lead the jury through a series of inferences to conclude that the defendant was insane at the time he committed each of the fifteen murders charged; it portrayed a client who was fully cooperative and honest once the authorities arrested him. To make this approach work, the defense needed narrative distance between the defendant and the jury so he could not be cross examined about his meticulous planning of each murder or his prior inconsistent statements. This paper briefly lays out the development of the defense of insanity, focusing on the different …

Outlawing Amnesty: The Return Of Criminal Justice In Transitional Justice Schemes, Lisa J. Laplante

Faculty Publications

Until recently, immunity measures like amnesties were considered an acceptable part of promoting transitional justice in countries seeking to address past episodes of systematic violations of human rights. Politically sensitive context of countries seeking to broker peace between oppositional forces often outweighed the moral imperative of punishing those responsible for perpetrating human rights atrocities. Latin America exemplified this trend in the 1980s, while also popularizing truth commissions. The resulting truth v. justice debate eventually sidelined criminal trials in transitional justice schemes, accepting amnesty as lawful. However, growing international human rights and international criminal law jurisprudence began to slowly put in …

Rethinking Drug Courts: Restorative Justice As A Response To Racial Injustice, Michael M. O'Hear

Faculty Publications

Specialized drug treatment courts have become a popular alternative to more punitive approaches to the "war on drugs," with nearly 2,000 such courts now established across the United States. One source of their appeal is the belief that they will ameliorate the dramatic racial disparities in the nation's prison population - disparities that result in large measure from the long sentences handed out for some drug crimes in conventional criminal courts. However, experience has shown that drug courts are not a "do-no-harm" innovation. Drug courts can produce both winners and losers when compared to conventional court processing, and there are …

The Intersection Of Dispute Systems Design And Transitional Justice, Andrea Kupfer Schneider

Faculty Publications

Dispute Systems Design (DSD), the process of creating structures to deal with repeated or systemic disputes, can be applied to both the most mundane and the most horrific of conflicts. We know that human rights violations can be perpetrated by governments or non-state actors, can be regional or national, and can be targeted against a particular group or have random victims. We know that these violations can occur as a spurt of extreme violence over a short time or can last for generations. We also know, historically, of many different methods by which to deal with human rights violations.

The …

Death Penalty Appeals And Habeas Proceedings: The California Experience, Gerald F. Uelmen

Faculty Publications

Despite spending more than any other state on its implementation and administration, California today is saddled with a death penalty law that can be described only as completely dysfunctional. We have the longest death row in America, with approximately 670 inmates awaiting execution. Typically, the lapse of time between sentence and execution is twenty-five years, twice the national average, and is growing wider each year. One hundred nineteen inmates have spent more than twenty years on California's death row. Most of them will certainly die before they are ever executed. Since restoration of the death penalty in 1978, the leading …

Assuring Your Child Receives Support For Positive Behavior In The Classroom, Mark D. Weist

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Scientific Evidence And Prosecutorial Misconduct In The Duke Lacrosse Rape Case, Paul C. Giannelli

Faculty Publications

The need for pretrial discovery in criminal cases is critical. A defendant's right to confrontation, effective assistance of counsel, and due process often turns on pretrial disclosure. This essay discusses a case that demonstrates this point.

The Nrc Report And Its Implications For Criminal Litigation, Paul C. Giannelli

Faculty Publications

The National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, issued a landmark report on forensic science in February 2009. In the long run, the report’s recommendations, if adopted, would benefit law enforcement and prosecutors. The recommendations would allow forensic science to develop a strong scientific basis and limit evidentiary challenges regarding the reliability of forensic evidence. In keeping with its congressional charge, however, the NRC Committee did not directly address admissibility issues. Nevertheless, given its content, the report will inevitably be cited in criminal cases. Indeed, within months, the United States Supreme Court cited the report, noting …

Jail Visitation: An Assessment Of Organizational Policy And Information Availability, Alicia H. Sitren, Hayden P. Smith, Brandon K. Applegate, Laurie A. Gould

Faculty Publications

Jail inmates face substantial emotional, economic, legal, and other challenges when they are incarcerated. The extent to which they are able to maintain contacts with individuals on the outside can substantially determine how well they cope with these concerns, and visitation is the primary way that such links may be maintained. To date, no systematic assessment of jail visitation policies has been conducted. The current study examined the availability of visitation policy information and the content of policies for national samples of large and small jails. The results suggest that large jails provide more opportunities for visitation and that they …

The Jena Six, Mass Incarceration, And The Remoralization Of Civil Rights, Joseph E. Kennedy

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

No Way Out? The Question Of Unilateral Withdrawals Of Referrals To The Icc And Other Human Rights Courts, Michael P. Scharf, Patrick Dowd

Faculty Publications

Growing out of the authors' work for the International Criminal Court, which was sponsored by a grant from the Open Society Institute, No Way Out examines one of the most vexing legal questions facing the International Criminal Court - whether a State that has referred a case to the Court can subsequently withdraw its referral as part of a domestic peace agreement? The issue has arisen with respect to Uganda's interest in withdrawing its self-referral as part of a peace deal with the leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army. This article examines the Rome Statute, the drafting history, and the …

Foreword: After Guantanamo, Michael P. Scharf, Sonia Vohra

Faculty Publications

“Guantanamo Bay.” To many around the world those two words conjure up haunting images of orange jumpsuit-clad detainees imprisoned behind barbed-wire fences, subjected to the cruelest imaginable interrogation techniques, and held indefinitely without trial, or awaiting trial before military commissions whose procedures violate international law. It is no surprise, then, that the new U.S. administration perceived the Guantanamo Bay detention center and associated detainee policies as an indelible stain on America's moral authority and an impediment to the success of future U.S. foreign policy.

Religion And Academic Achievement Among Adolescents, Benjamin Mckune, John P. Hoffmann

Faculty Publications

In this article, we examine the association between religiosity and academic achievement among adolescents. Recent research demonstrates a positive association between religiosity and academic success. However, some studies show that this association is due to family and community factors; for example, variation in levels of family capital among religious affiliates could explain it. Yet whether religious factors affect academic achievement among adolescents might also be due to the concordance or discordance of religiosity between parents and their children. Using data for two years from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we examine the associationbetween adolescents‘ religiosity, parents‘ religiosity, and …

Obstacles On The Road To Gender Justice: The International Criminal Tribunal For Rwanda As Object Lesson, Beth Van Schaack

Faculty Publications

Although the substantive law concerned with gender violence is now well established, and the principle of legality can no longer serve as a barrier to prosecutions for gender violence, significant obstacles remain to ensuring a robust system of gender justice in international criminal law in the face of continued violations. These obstacles are less visible than defects in positive law because they emerge in the practice of international criminal law at crucial yet shrouded stages of the penal process: investigation, charging, pre-trial plea negotiations, trial preparation, theprovision of protective measures, and appeals. Most importantly, strong positive law is irrelevant where …

Place Matters (Most): An Empirical Study Of Prosecutorial Decision-Making In Death-Eligible Cases, David Sloss, Katherine Barnes, Stephen Thaman

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Foreword: Security Detention, Michael P. Scharf, Gwen Gillespie

Faculty Publications

Foreword to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center at Case Western Reserve University organized a two-day experts meeting on security detention, Cleveland, OH, 2009