Digital Commons Network^™

Devil In A White Coat: The Temptation Of Forensic Evidence In The Age Of Csi, J. Herbie Difonzo, Ruth C. Stern

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

On October 13, 2006, a couple and their two small children were found shot to death on a desolate stretch of Florida highway. Police found tracks along the roadway belonging to a van or sport utility vehicle. Concluding that the killer and the victims may have been traveling together, police also noted that the victims may have been lying down or kneeling when shot. The mother's defensive posture indicated that she had tried to shield the children from the bullets with her body. No footprints were found in the vicinity and the only physical evidence on the scene consisted of …

Domestic Violence As A Crime Of Pattern And Intent: An Alternative Reconceptualization, Alafair Burke

Hofstra Law Faculty Scholarship

Social scientists almost universally describe domestic violence as an ongoing pattern of conduct motivated by the batterer's desire for power and control over the victim. The criminal statutes used to prosecute domestic violence, however, almost universally describe discrete acts of conduct, without reference to the actor's motivation or other acts of conduct. Although some scholars have questioned the fit between domestic violence and the criminal statutes used to prosecute it, previously only Professor Deborah Tuerkheimer has called for a reconceptualization of the crime of domestic violence to fill the gap. This Article seeks to build on Professor Tuerkheimer's work by …

The Geographies Of Policing, R Yarwood

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Interpersonal Communication As A Branch Of Relationship Management In Law Enforcement, Nermin Ferkic

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Police officers are often recognized as tough action figures whose only job is to fight ruthless criminals. A highly rated TV show called "Cops" presents police officers as such figures. Police officers drive noticeable squad cars with top lights and a printed motto reading "to protect and serve." They are well known for their work equipment, such as: night sticks, pepper sprays, armor, handcuffs, and most noticeably, guns. This, of course, easily confirms people's idea that police officers' jobs are all about using their physical abilities. However, while working as a police officer and with police officers I realized that …

An Overview Of Youth And Adolescence In Ireland, Kevin Lalor, Áine De Róiste, Maurice Devlin

Books/Book chapters

No abstract provided.

Guess Who's Not Coming To Dinner: A Review Of The Policies And Practices In Three Urban Iowa School Districts To Recruit Teachers From Underrepresented Backgrounds, Willie B. Barney

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Although student diversity in public schools has increased at a rapid pace, teacher diversity has not matched the student pace. Schools in the United States have had a difficult time identifying strategies for the effective recruitment and hire of teachers from ethnically underrepresented backgrounds. The shortage has left many questioning the merit of their efforts.

The purpose of this study was to identify the steps taken by Iowa's urban school districts to recruit and hire teachers from ethnically underrepresented backgrounds. Four research questions were examined using a qualitative research methodology. Using inquiry techniques, school district personnel participated in individual interviews …

A Public Choice Theory Of Criminal Procedure, Keith N. Hylton, Vikramaditya Khanna

Faculty Scholarship

We provide an additional justification for the pro-defendant bias in Anglo-American criminal procedure that supplements the most commonly forwarded justifications to date. The most commonly forwarded rationale for the prodefendant bias is that the costs of false convictions-specifically, the sanctioning and deterrence costs associated with the erroneous imposition of criminal sanctions-are greater than the costs of false acquittals. We argue that this rationale provides at best a partial justification for the extent of prodefendant procedural rules. Under our justification, prodefendant protections serve primarily as constraints on the costs associated with rent seeking in the law enforcement process. The theory developed …

“Respectful Consideration” After Sanchez-Llamas V. Oregon: Why The Supreme Court Owes More To The International Court Of Justice, Steven Arrigg Koh

Faculty Scholarship

This Note argues that the doctrine of “respectful consideration” has emerged as little more than a hollow acknowledgement of the ICJ before the Court engages in its own independent interpretation of the Vienna Convention. It further argues that, while the ICJ has no actual legal authority to interpret the Vienna Convention from the U.S. domestic perspective, the Supreme Court should nonetheless treat ICJ decisions with greater deference. Specifically, Justice Stephen Breyer’s test from his Sanchez-Llamas dissent accords the proper level of deference by permitting, in limited circumstances, the remedies of suppression of the evidence and exceptions to state procedural default …

After Atrocity Examples From Africa: The Right To Education And The Role Of Law In Restoration, Recovery, And Accountability, Erika George

Faculty Scholarship

This article begins to consider these important questions through a discussion of the multiple models used to address, and redress massive human rights violations in South Africa, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone. I argue that lawyers and policy makers working to advance the rule of law must consider the role of law in transitional societies not only as a means of ensuring that perpetrators of grave human rights abuses are held accountable, but also as a foundation for the future. I submit that for the rule of law to take root, the conditions of a society must be fertile; and respect …

Life Stress, Adjustment, And Religious Support In African Americans., Jemour Maddux

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The paper sought to extend the work on religious coping in African Americans by exploring the religious moderators of the relationship between stress and adjustment between cultures. Specifically, the goal of the present investigation was to identify whether the buffering effects of religious moderators (i.e., religious coping and religious support) on the relationship between stress and adjustment varied by race. Many studies on African Americans supports that social and individualistic coping styles are respectively predictors of positive and negative adjustment. Results partially supported that religious support in African Americans was a better predictor of adjustment than religious coping. Overall, this …

Convicted Drunk Drivers Placed In Two Community-Based Programs: A Look At Program Outcomes, Kerisha L. Alexander

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In Vigo County, Indiana, convicted drunk drivers are placed in varied community-based correctional programs. Two such programs are electronically monitored home detention and day reporting centers. Specifically, adult offenders convicted of drunk driving and sentenced to either program for an additional condition of their probation were the target of this study. The objective was two-fold. First, offenders who were placed in either program between February 1, 2002, and January 31, 2003, were compared in terms of exit status from the programs. Second, post-program recidivism was examined only for those offenders who successfully exited the program. Individual, case and program characteristics …

Life Stress, Adjustment, And Religious Support In African Americans, Jemour A. Maddux

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The paper sought to extend the work of Johnson, Kristeller, and Sheets' (2004) study by exploring the religious moderators of the relationship between stress and adjustment between cultures. Specifically, the goal of the present investigation was to identify whether the buffering effects of religious moderators (i.e., religious coping and religious support) on the relationship between stress and adjustment varied by race, as suggested by a wealth of studies on African Americans that support social and individualistic coping styles are key predictors of positive and negative outcomes, respectively. As predicted, religious support in African Americans was a better predictor of adjustment …

The Lived Experience Of Individuals With Cancer: Death Anxiety, Relationships, And *Isolation, Christopher Wilson

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The experience of living with cancer is complex and multidimensional. A qualitative approach was used to explore the lived experience of individuals with cancer along three specific dimensions: death anxiety, relationships, and isolation. The participants were over 18 years old, lived in the Midwest, and were actively being treated for cancer. A number of themes emerged from the data. The participants discussed the importance of maintaining a positive attitude and outlook, utilizing sources of support, and the strength and support obtained from religious beliefs. Additionally, there was a process participants described as they came to terms with having cancer. Participants …

Phishing With A Poisoned Bait, Warren B. Chik

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article discusses the problem of dealing with electronic fraud and identity theft under the current Singapore criminal law.

The Bush Administration's Terrorist Surveillance Program And The Fourth Amendment's Warrant Requirement: Lessons From Justice Powell And The Keith Case, Tracey D. Maclin

Faculty Scholarship

This article was written for a symposium issue of the University of California at Davis Law Review on the fortieth anniversary of Katz v. United States. The article analyzes the Bush Administration's claim that the President has the authority to order warrant less electronic surveillance of communications between American citizens and persons abroad suspected of having connections with foreign terrorists groups. When evaluating this claim, my article focuses on a case that could be characterized as more constitutionally robust and stronger Katz. That case is United States v. United States District Court, also known as Keith. The Keith ruling held …

The Expressive Capacity Of International Punishment: The Limits Of The National Law Analogy And The Potential Of International Criminal Law, Robert D. Sloane

Faculty Scholarship

Modern international criminal law (ICL) developed in the aftermath of World War II as an alternative to the proposal, espoused by Winston Churchill among others, that major Axis war criminals be summarily executed on sight. Because of this pedigree and the unconscionable nature of the crimes, ICL jurisprudence and scholarship have largely neglected the paramount question fundamental to any criminal justice system: the justifications for and legitimate goals of punishment. Insofar as a coherent jurisprudence of ICL sentencing can be said to exist at all, it remains correspondingly impoverished and unprincipled - comparable in some respects to that of the …

Distorted Reflections Of Battered Women Who Kill: A Response To Professor Dressler, Joan H. Krause

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Security And Human Rights, Liora Lazarus, Benjamin J. Goold

All Faculty Publications

In the wake of the events of September 11th, the task of reconciling issues of security with a respect for fundamental human rights has emerged as one of the key challenges facing governments throughout the world. Although the issues raised by the rise of security have been the subject of considerable academic interest, to date much of the debate surrounding the impact of security on human rights has taken place within particular disciplinary confines. In contrast, this collection of essays from leading academics and practitioners in the fields of criminal justice, public law, international law, international relations and legal philosophy …

Public Protection, Proportionality, And The Search For Balance, Benjamin J. Goold, Liora Lazarus, Gabriel Swiney

All Faculty Publications

This report examines how courts in the UK and Europe respond when human rights and security appear to conflict. It compares cases from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). It examines how rights are applied and how courts use the concept of proportionality to mediate conflicts between rights and security. The report concludes that British courts are less consistent in their application of proportionality than countries with constitutional rights protections which tend to be more rigorous in their protections of rights than are countries, like the UK, that rely instead on the …

Toward A History Of Children As Witnesses, David S. Tanenhaus, William Bush

Scholarly Works

This brief essay offers a selective overview of recent trends in the historical scholarship on American childhood from the origins of the American Revolution to the early years of the Cold War. This overview of the literature has two purposes. First, it highlights recent socio-cultural scholarship that presents substantive challenges to the conventional ways of understanding the history of children and the law. Second, in so doing, it points out that legal histories concerned solely with doctrinal matters can, and often do, present a limited and distorted window into the past. Instead, the essay argues that the place of children, …

The Aggregate Harmony Metric And A Statistical And Visual Contextualization Of The Rehnquist Court: 50 Years Of Data, Peter A. Hook

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article contains aggregated data from fifty years of the annual matrixes of justice inter-agreement for particular Supreme Court terms published by the Harvard Law Review (1956 to 2005 terms). Aggregating how often any two justices sided together on cases for a particular term relative to the amount of cases the two justices heard together allows one to derive a measure of the particular term that reflects the relative amount of agreement or disagreement for the term. This new metric, called the Aggregate Harmony Metric, allows for comparative benchmarks. For instance, the 2005 term, with an aggregate agreement of 70%, …

Special Issues Raised By Rape Trials, Aviva A. Orenstein

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Rape cases reveal core conflicts in the space where evidence, law, and ethics intersect. Such conflicts include the tension between victim protection and the rights of the accused, the challenges attorneys face trying to negotiate the demands of sensitive and emotionally difficult cases, and the role of the law in counteracting stereotypes and bias.

In this essay, I will begin by presenting the cultural milieu surrounding rape allegations, briefly reviewing attitudes towards perpetrators and victims. Next, I will attempt to capture the legal zeitgeist concerning rape, focusing on two recent phenomena: the reversal of false rape convictions based on DNA …

Using Federal And State Laws To Promote Secure Housing For Survivors Of Domestic Violence, Deborah A. Widiss, Emily J. Martin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Scholarly Discourse, Public Perceptions, And The Cementing Of Norms: The Case Of The Indian Supreme Court And A Plea For Research, Jayanth K. Krishnan

Articles by Maurer Faculty

For economic and nuclear reasons, India has received considerable attention over the last decade from observers in the United States. But attuned Americans are well-aware of India's rich culture and status as a shining constitutional democracy for most of its post-1947 independent history. For all that India has accomplished, however, its public has long viewed its government officials with great disdain. At the same time, a fascinating norm exists in this society which holds one institution in exceedingly high regard - the Indian Supreme Court.

In this article, I seek to examine what accounts for this counter-intuitive norm. As opposed …

Through The Quarantine Looking Glass: Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis And Public Health Governance, Law, And Ethics, David P. Fidler, Lawrence O. Gostin, Howard Markel

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Uncomfortable Performances: Discovering A Subversive Scenario For Rape Discourse, Annamaria Ruffino

LSU Master's Theses

Current trends in representations of rape show a new fascination with a rape scenario, a fascination that puts a normative slant on discourse surrounding rape. Normalizing the rape scenario carries various consequences for women; the first and foremost is that it turns the experience of rape into an entertainment commodity, thus causing women’s voices to be appropriated into dominant discourses and the capitalist project. One possible way to circumvent this normalization is to look toward feminist performance strategies in order to subvert this rape scenario and the discourses surrounding it from within. In this thesis, I explore ways to accomplish …

Blakely's Silver Lining; Sentencing Guidelines, Judicial Discretion, And Crime, Joanna Shepherd

UC Law Journal

The Supreme Court's recent decisions in United States v. Booker and Blakely v. Washington, invalidating mandatory criminal sentencing guidelines, could have the unexpected benefit of reducing crime. This Article is the first to use regression analysis to explore the relationship between sentencing guidelines and crime. It shows that adoption of guidelines is associated with significant increases in crime, contrary to the expectations of many of the original supporters of sentencing guidelines.

After developing several economic theories about the relationship between guidelines and crime, the author investigates this relationship empirically using a large, state-level data set. The analysis shows that guidelines …

Analysis Of The Association Between Socio-Demographic Variables, Juvenile Offending, And Formal Vs. Informal Juvenile Justice System Handling In A Non-Urban Sample, Stephen W. Phillippi, Jr.

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

PURPOSE: This study compares and contrasts first-time juvenile offenders enrolled in a community-based intervention program whose cases were processed either informally or formally, and examines empirically- and conceptually-relevant contributors to re-offending. METHODS: This is a longitudinal, secondary analysis of 1072 male and female offenders. The study includes descriptive univariate analyses; chi-square bivariate analyses of each independent variable with the dependent variables (level of processing and recidivism at both one and three years); and binary logistic regression analyses to identify significant predictors of the dependent variables. Independent variables include age, gender, race, family structure, marital status of biological parents, family income, …

Initiative Funding Through Targeted Taxes: Proposition 63, Mental Health, And The Crossroads Of Direct Democracy, Andrew M. Holmes

UC Law Journal

It took over forty-one years, but on November 2, 2004, President John F. Kennedy's vision of mental health care became a reality in California when 53.8% of the voters of California ratified Proposition 63. Proposition 63 (the Proposition) was criticized, however, the proponents of sought to bring relief to California's mental health system after decades of broken promises. The controversy surrounding Proposition 63 is not whether treatment for the mentally ill is a priority of the State but whether the novel funding structure is abusive.

The Note will first trace the roots of the controversy through a historical analysis of …

Authentically Innocent: Juries And Federal Regulatory Crimes, Jeffrey A. Meyer

UC Law Journal

Few ideals reign more supreme than the jury as conscience of our community and moral arbiter of a criminal defendant's conduct. These ideals are no more than myth for most federal criminal cases today. For a wide range of the most commonly charged federal crimes, judges routinely instruct juries to convict defendants regardless of their moral culpability. This issue arises with regulatory or public order crimes, which include drug trafficking, weapons, immigration, and environmental offenses. They are usually general intent crimes, defined by Congress without identifying precisely what the prosecution must prove a defendant knew or intended. General intent crimes …