Digital Commons Network^™

Prohibition’S Lingering Shadow: Under-Regulation Of Official Uses Of Force, Wesley M. Oliver

Missouri Law Review

Grand jury determinations that officers would face no charges in the shooting death of Michael Brown or in the choking death of Eric Garner sparked controversy and riots. This is, of course, a challenge to the ability of the criminal justice system’s ability to resolve society’s most contentious issues. Highly contentious racial issues have long defied resolution through deliberative processes, even though the law strives to achieve outcomes that will be viewed as legitimate. Poorly defined rules of criminal procedure, however, have contributed to judicial resolutions that the public finds unsatisfactory. Our constitutional scheme for regulating police – which traces …

Vox Populi: Robert Mcculloch, Ferguson, And The Roles Of Prosecutors And Grand Juries In High-Profile Cases, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Missouri Law Review

The decisions of St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch during the grand jury investigation of the shooting of Michael Brown by Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, have been criticized on a variety of grounds. In an article written for a Missouri Law Review symposium on the shooting and its aftermath, titled “‘No, You Stand Up’: Why Prosecutors Should Stop Hiding Behind Grand Juries,” Professor Ben Trachtenberg takes Mr. McCulloch to task for allowing the grand jury to deliberate without making a recommendation about whether charges should be filed. Professor Trachtenberg asserts that, at the close of the evidentiary …

Building Trust And Breaking Down The Wall: The Use Of Restorative Justice To Repair Police-Community Relationships, Laura Merkey

Missouri Law Review

The town of Ferguson, Missouri, captured national attention when a grand jury failed to indict Darren Wilson, a white police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, three months prior. Similar citizen deaths involving police in both New York City and Cleveland have magnified the tensions felt across the country, and in many cities and communities, the community-police relationships are rapidly becoming untenable. Baltimore, Maryland, is a prime example; protests, riots, and an atmosphere of mistrust pervaded the city for months after the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice. The situation was, simply …

The Death Penalty On The Streets: What The Eighth Amendment Can Teach About Regulating Police Use Of Force, Jelani Jefferson Exum

Missouri Law Review

This Article offers punishment as another lens through which to view police force. The Supreme Court has consistently rejected arguments that the Eighth Amendment is the appropriate vehicle for dealing with excessive police force claims.5 However, reconceptualizing the use of deadly force by police officers as punishment provides a new understanding of the gravity of deadly police force and adds necessary substance to the reasonableness analysis. When police force is likened to punishment, the use of fatal force by police officers can be considered the administration of the death penalty on the streets, absent the procedural protections and focus on …

The Missouri Felony Murder Rule’S Merger Limitation: A Doctrine In Limbo, Jared Guemmer

Missouri Law Review

Unfortunately, recent case law in Missouri obliterated the merger doctrine. This Note aims to expose the faulty reasoning applied by Missouri courts in abrogating the merger doctrine. In Part II, this Note will summarize the history of the merger doctrine, both generally and in Missouri. Then, Part III highlights the recent developments in Missouri law regarding felony murder and the merger doctrine. In Part IV, this Note discusses the purpose of the merger doctrine, the rules of interpretation regarding Missouri’s felony murder provision, and why Missouri courts incorrectly decided the merger doctrine no longer functions as a valid legal theory …

Ferguson And Police Use Of Deadly Force, Richard Rosenfeld

Missouri Law Review

The killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, by Darren Wilson, a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, sparked widespread protests in the St. Louis area and across the nation. Protests and civil unrest resumed after a St. Louis County grand jury declined to indict the police officer.2 Protesters and commentators raised several issues related to the Ferguson incident and police use of deadly force. This Article addresses four of those issues: (1) Why Ferguson? (2) Did the Ferguson killing and ensuing civil unrest increase crime rates in St. Louis? (3) What is known about police use of deadly …

Ferguson: Footnote Or Transformative Event?, S. David Mitchell

Missouri Law Review

“Ferguson.” No longer does this name simply represent the geographical boundaries of a city in St. Louis County formed initially by white flight from St. Louis City and that has become increasingly African American over time. It has come to represent so much more.

One More Call To Respect The Time Of Grand Jurors, Ben L. Trachtenberg

Missouri Law Review

This Article replies briefly to the robust response that Professor Frank O. Bowman III submitted in answer to my earlier contribution to this Issue.

Fourth Amendment Fiduciaries, Kiel Brennan-Marquez

Fordham Law Review

    Fourth Amendment law is sorely in need of reform. To paraphrase Justice Sotomayor’s concurrence in United States v. Jones, the idea that people have no expectation of privacy in information voluntarily shared with third-parties—the foundation of the widely reviled “third-party doctrine”—makes little sense in the digital age.

    In truth, however, it is not just the third-party doctrine that needs retooling today. It is the Fourth Amendment’s general approach to the problem of “shared information.” Under existing law, if A shares information with B, A runs the risk of “misplaced trust”—the risk that B will disclose the information to law …

Enforcing Immigration Equity, Jason A. Cade

Fordham Law Review

    Congressional amendments to the immigration code in the 1990s significantly broadened grounds for removal while nearly eradicating opportunities for discretionary relief. The result has been a radical transformation of immigration law. In particular, the constriction of equitable discretion as an adjudicative tool has vested a new and critical responsibility in enforcement officials to implement rigid immigration rules in a normatively defensible way, primarily through the use of prosecutorial discretion. This Article contextualizes recent executive enforcement actions within this scheme and argues that the Obama Administration’s targeted use of limited enforcement resources and implementation of initiatives such as Deferred Action for …

Academics: The Newsletter Of The Swosu College Of Arts And Sciences, Peter Grant

aCAdemicS: The Newsletter of the SWOSU College of Arts & Sciences

No abstract provided.

Do You Know Where Your Children Are? Caylee's Law And A Parent's Fifth Amendment Privilege Against Self-Incrimination, Daniela Catrocho

Seton Hall Journal of Legislation and Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Gubernatorial Party Affiliation And Crime, Chase Lindsey

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Marriage Equality And The New Maternalism, Cynthia Godsoe

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Setting The Stage For Ferguson: Housing Discrimination And Segregation In St. Louis, Rigel C. Oliveri

Missouri Law Review

The history of St. Louis is replete with discriminatory housing laws, policies, and practices: racially restrictive covenants, redlining, blockbusting and white flight, and exclusionary zoning. While these were common in virtually every part of the United States, they were particularly egregious, widespread, and pervasive in industrial Midwestern cities like Chicago, Detroit, and St. Louis – which saw a large influx of blacks migrating from the south at the close of the nineteenth century. In fact, three of the most foundational housing cases originated in St. Louis. When we look closely at these cases – not just the legal principles that …

No, You “Stand Up”: Why Prosecutors Should Stop Hiding Behind Grand Juries, Ben L. Trachtenberg

Missouri Law Review

This Article argues that prosecutors should not allow grand juries to consider indicting defendants whom the prosecutors themselves believe should not be indicted. To illustrate the problems with this practice, this Article uses the example of St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert P. McCulloch – who encouraged deliberations by the grand jury that heard evidence concerning the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, despite personally believing that Brown’s killer, police officer Darren Wilson, should not be indicted. The arguments against allowing grand juries to conduct such needless deliberations include: (1) the exercise wastes the time of citizens forced to …

Human Trafficking And Film: How Popular Portrayals Influence Law And Public Perception, Jonathan Todres

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

Nationalism And The Rule Of Law: Lessons From The Balkans And Beyond, Joseph L. Derdzinski

International Dialogue

The “classic” debate in contemporary comparative politics is over what matters more in shaping political behavior: culture or institutions. The clear answer is that both are important, it’s just that their relative import depends to a large degree on contextual, temporal factors. Iavor Rangelov seeks to straddle—or bridge?—the two theoretical orientations, demonstrating the iterative lives between institutions and society. Rangelov addresses the eternal (or, at least, for the past couple of decades) question: do institutions really matter in emerging democracies? Or, do other intrinsic factors determine democracy’s course? Privileging the rule of law, Rangelov, through three cases from the Balkans, …

Abandoned Criminal Attempts: An Economic Analysis, Murat C. Mungan

Faculty Scholarship

An attempt is 'abandoned' if the criminal, despite having a chance to continue with his criminal plan, forgoes the opportunity to do so. A regime that makes abandonment a defense to criminal attempts provides an incentive to the offender to withdraw from his criminal conduct prior to completing the previously intended offense. However, the same regime may induce offenders to initiate criminal plans more often by reducing the expected costs associated with such plans. The former effect is called the marginal deterrence effect and the latter is called the ex-ante deterrence effect of the abandonment defense. This Article formalizes a …

Alaska Department Of Corrections: Post-Conviction Incarcerated Population, 2005–2014, Khristy Parker

AJSAC Fact Sheet

This fact sheet presents data on post-conviction incarcerated populations in both in-state or out-of-state institutions supervised by Alaska Department of Corrections (DOC) from 2005–2014. The Fact Sheet focuses on post-conviction incarcerated populations by crime classifications and crime categories overall and within gender. This fact sheet does not include pretrial populations or populations supervised by the Alaska Department of Corrections (DOC) in non-institutional programs.

Does The Punishment Fit The Crime?: A Comparative Note On Sentencing Laws For Murder In England And Wales Vs. The United States Of America, Megan Elizabeth Tongue

Missouri Law Review

This Note explores the differences between the American legal system’s sentencing procedures for murder with the procedures of England and Wales. This Note attempts to determine how this divide occurred and whether the two countries chose the appropriate way to sentence their murderers. In particular, this Note focuses on England’s and Wales’s lack of degrees of murder and the United States’ practice of plea bargaining. Part II discusses the history of American and English criminal law and how these countries similarly evolved from their origins to the late nineteenth century. Part III explores modern criminal law theory progressing from the …

Reverse Broken Windows, Christopher R. Green

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Facing The Ghost Of Cruikshank In Constitutional Law, Martha T. Mccluskey

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Moral Shock And Legal Education, Susan A. Bandes

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Teaching "Ferguson", Chad Flanders

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Teaching Movements, Scott L. Cummings

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

A Reader's Guide To Pre-Modern Procedure, David L. Noll

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

No Employment Protection For Medical Marijuana Users, Liana Abreu

Seton Hall Journal of Legislation and Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Alternative Courts And Drug Treatment: Finding A Rehabilitative Solution For Addicts In A Retributive System, Molly K. Webster

Fordham Law Review

    Sentencing drug crimes and treating drug-addicted defendants often stem from contradictory theories of punishment. In the late twentieth century, courts traded rehabilitation for retributive ideals to fight the “War on Drugs.” However, beginning with the Miami-Dade Drug Court, treatment and rehabilitation have returned to the forefront of sentencing policy in traditional and alternative drug courts.

    Jurisdictions have implemented a variety of policies designed to treat addiction as opposed to punishing it. Community courts, such as the Red Hook Community Justice Center in Brooklyn, New York, community-panel drug courts, such as the Woodbury County Community Drug Court in Iowa, and Hawaii’s …

The Uncomfortable Truths And Double Standards Of Bribery Enforcement, Mike Koehler

Fordham Law Review

    In recent years, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) enforcement has become a top priority for the U.S. government, and government enforcement officials have stated that “we in the United States are in a unique position to spread the gospel of anti-corruption” and that FCPA enforcement ensures not only that the United States “is on the right side of history, but also that it has a hand in advancing that history.”

    However, the FCPA is not the only statute in the federal criminal code concerning bribery. Rather, the FCPA was modeled in large part after the U.S. domestic bribery statute, and …