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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Dignitary Confrontation Clause, Erin L. Sheley
The Dignitary Confrontation Clause, Erin L. Sheley
Faculty Scholarship
For seventeen years, the Supreme Court’s Confrontation Clause jurisprudence has been confused and confusing. In Crawford v. Washington (2004), the Court overruled prior precedent and held that “testimonial” out-of-court statements could not be admitted at trial unless the defendant had an opportunity to cross-examine the declarant, even when the statement would be otherwise admissible as particularly reliable under an exception to the rule against hearsay. In a series of contradictory opinions over the next several years, the Court proceeded to expand and then seemingly roll back this holding, leading to widespread chaos in common types of cases, particularly those involving …
Autopsy Reports And The Confrontation Clause: A Presumption Of Admissibility, Daniel J. Capra, Joseph Tartakovsky
Autopsy Reports And The Confrontation Clause: A Presumption Of Admissibility, Daniel J. Capra, Joseph Tartakovsky
Faculty Scholarship
Courts nationwide are divided over whether autopsy reports are “testimonial” under the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause. Resolving that split will affect medical examiners as dramatically as Miranda did police. This article applies the latest Supreme Court jurisprudence to the work of modern medical examiners in a comprehensive inquiry. It argues that autopsy reports should be presumed non-testimonial—a presumption overcome only by a showing that law enforcement involvement materially influenced the examiner’s autopsy report.
The Right To Plea Bargain With Competent Counsel After Cooper And Frye: Is The Supreme Court Making The Ordinary Criminal Process Too Long, Too Expensive, And Unpredictable In Pursuit Of Perfect Justice, Bruce A. Green
Faculty Scholarship
In Lafler v. Cooper and Missouri v. Frye, the Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of criminal defendants who were deprived of a favorable plea offer because of their lawyers’ professional lapses. In dissent, Justice Scalia complained that “[t]he ordinary criminal process has become too long, too expensive, and unpredictable,” because of the Court’s criminal procedure jurisprudence; that plea bargaining is “the alternative in which...defendants have sought relief,” and that the two new decisions on the Sixth Amendment right to effective representation in plea bargaining would add to the burden on the criminal process. This essay examines several aspects of …
Frye And Lafler: No Big Deal, Gerard E. Lynch
Frye And Lafler: No Big Deal, Gerard E. Lynch
Faculty Scholarship
The only surprise about the Supreme Court’s recent decisions in Missouri v. Frye and Lafler v. Cooper is that there were four dissents. The decisions are straightforward recognitions that the defendants in those cases received unquestionably derelict representation, to their considerable prejudice. The decisions do not represent a novelty in the law, but rather continue the longstanding recognition by the courts that “plea bargaining” is an integral part of our criminal justice system – indeed, I have argued at length that it is our criminal justice system – and that minimal competence of defense lawyers in dealing with that process …
Significant Entanglements: A Framework For The Civil Consequences Of Criminal Convictions, Colleen F. Shanahan
Significant Entanglements: A Framework For The Civil Consequences Of Criminal Convictions, Colleen F. Shanahan
Faculty Scholarship
A significant and growing portion of the U.S. population is or has recently been in prison. Nearly all of these individuals will face significant obstacles as they struggle to reintegrate into society. A key source of these obstacles is the complex, sometimes unknown, and often harmful collection of civil consequences that flow from a criminal conviction. As the number and severity of these consequences have grown, courts, policymakers, and scholars have struggled with how to identify and understand them, how to communicate them to defendants and the public, and how to treat them in the criminal and civil processes. The …
Penalty And Proportionality In Deportation For Crimes, Maureen A. Sweeney, Hillary Scholten
Penalty And Proportionality In Deportation For Crimes, Maureen A. Sweeney, Hillary Scholten
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Gideon'S Ghost: Providing The Sixth Amendment Right To Counsel In Times Of Budgetary Crisis, Heather P. Baxter
Gideon'S Ghost: Providing The Sixth Amendment Right To Counsel In Times Of Budgetary Crisis, Heather P. Baxter
Faculty Scholarship
This Article discusses how the budget crisis, caused by the recent economic downturn, has created a constitutional crisis with regard to the Sixth Amendment Right to Counsel. The landmark case of Gideon v. Wainwright required states, under the Sixth Amendment, to provide free counsel to indigent criminal defendants. However, as a result of the current financial crisis, many of those who represent the indigent have found their funding cut dramatically. Consequently, Gideon survives, if at all, only as a ghostly shadow prowling the halls of criminal justice throughout the country.
This Article analyzes specific budget cuts from various states and …
Judicial Nullification Of Juries: Use Of Acquitted Conduct At Sentencing, Eang L. Ngov
Judicial Nullification Of Juries: Use Of Acquitted Conduct At Sentencing, Eang L. Ngov
Faculty Scholarship
At trial, defendants are afforded a panoply of rights right to counsel, to proof beyond a reasonable doubt, to confront witnesses, and to exclude inadmissible evidence. However, these rights, except for the right to counsel, disappear at sentencing. In deciding a defendant’s sentence, a court may consider conduct that has not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt and even conduct of which the jury has acquitted the defendant. Consideration of acquitted conduct has resulted in dramatic increases in the length of defendants’ sentences sometimes resulting in life imprisonment based merely on a judge’s finding that a defendant more likely than …
Crawford, Retroactivity, And The Importance Of Being Earnest, J. Thomas Sullivan
Crawford, Retroactivity, And The Importance Of Being Earnest, J. Thomas Sullivan
Faculty Scholarship
In this article Professor Sullivan examines the Supreme Court's evolving Confrontation Clause jurisprudence through its dramatic return to pre-Sixth Amendment appreciation of the role of cross-examination in the criminal trial reflected in its 2004 decision in Crawford v. Washington. He discusses the past quarter century of the Court's confrontation decisions and their impact on his client, Ralph Rodney Earnest, recounting the defendant's conviction and twenty-four-year litigation journey through state and federal courts to his eventual release from prison in the only successful attempt to use Crawford retroactively known to date.
Lethal Fiction: The Meaning Of "Counsel" In The Sixth Amendment , Bruce A. Green
Lethal Fiction: The Meaning Of "Counsel" In The Sixth Amendment , Bruce A. Green
Faculty Scholarship
Charles Bell, Donald Paradis, and Shirley Tyler were tried in different states for murder. Each was convicted and sentenced to death. Charles Bell was represented at trial by a recent law school graduate who had never before tried a criminal case to completion. Donald Paradis's lawyer had passed the bar exam six months earlier, had never previously represented a criminal accused, and had not elected courses in criminal law, criminal procedure, or trial advocacy while in law school. Shirley Tyler's trial lawyer was also a member of the bar for only a few months. He had defended one previous assault …
Impeachment Exception To The Exclusionary Rules: Policies, Principles, And Politics, The , James L. Kainen
Impeachment Exception To The Exclusionary Rules: Policies, Principles, And Politics, The , James L. Kainen
Faculty Scholarship
The exclusionary evidence rules derived from the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments continue to play an important role in constitutional criminal procedure, despite the intense controversy that surrounds them. The primary justification for these rules has shifted from an "imperative of judicial integrity" to the "deterrence of police conduct that violates... [constitutional] rights." Regardless of the justification it uses for the rules' existence, the Supreme Court continues to limit their breadth "at the margin," when "the acknowledged costs to other values vital to a rational system of criminal justice" outweigh the deterrent effects of exclusion. The most notable limitation on …