Law Commons^™

Putting A Slam On Alcohol Violators Through Dram- How The State Of Ohio Can Improve The Day-To-Day Safety Of Its Residents Through Dram Laws, Steven Iwanek

Honors Projects

In the realm of legal frameworks governing the service and consumption of alcohol, Dram Shop Liability Laws play a pivotal role in holding establishments accountable for the consequences of alcohol-related incidents. These laws, known as dram laws, vary across states, delineating the responsibilities of alcohol servers and establishments in preventing the overconsumption of alcohol and the resultant harm. This examination delves into a comprehensive background of dram laws, particularly focusing on their historical evolution, their present implications, and the imperative need for refinement.

As societal dynamics and patterns of alcohol consumption evolve, so too must the legislative mechanisms designed to …

O-High-O: A Policy Note On Ohio's Current Push For Recreational Marijuana Legislation And How Other States Have Created Successful Recreational Marijuana Laws, Alexander M. Stewart

Et Cetera

Many states have gone on to pass comprehensive recreational marijuana laws that have greatly benefitted their economy, public health, and criminal justice system. Ohio currently allows for the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes, and there has been past attempts to enact legislation that would legalize the recreational use of marijuana, but the past proposals failed to gain the widespread support required to become law. This Note seeks to analyze and understand other states’ legislation in an attempt to understand what successful recreational marijuana legislation looks like. This Note concludes with a comprehensive proposal that contains all the essential elements …

Due Process Junior: Competent (Enough) For The Court, Tigan Woolson

Journal of Law and Health

There are many reports presenting expert policy recommendations, and a substantial volume of research supporting them, that detail what should shape and guide statutes for juvenile competency to stand trial. Ohio has adopted provisions consistent with some of these recommendations, which is better protection than relying on case law and the adult statutes, as some states have done. However, the Ohio statute should be considered a work in progress.

Since appeals courts are unlikely to provide meaningful review for the substance of a juvenile competency determination, the need for procedures for ensuring that the determination is initially made in a …

Capital Punishment Of Young Adults In Light Of Evolving Standards Of Science And Decency: Why Ohio Should Raise The Minimum Age For Death Penalty Eligibility To Twenty-Five (25), Talia Stewart

Cleveland State Law Review

Up until the Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling in Roper v. Simmons, juveniles could constitutionally be executed for qualifying criminal offenses. The Roper Court raised the minimum age for execution to eighteen, citing both a national consensus against executing minors, as well as recent research (at the time) showing that juveniles are more vulnerable to negative influences and outside pressures. Since Roper, the Supreme Court has remained silent regarding the requisite minimum age for execution and has left the decision up to individual states. While a slim majority of states have now abolished the death penalty in its entirety, …

The Federal Sentencing Guidelines: A Guideline To Remedy Ohio's Sentencing Disparities For White-Collar Criminal Defendants, Joelle Livorse

Cleveland State Law Review

Over the past few decades, white-collar crimes have significantly increased across the country, especially in Ohio. However, Ohio’s judges are ill-equipped to handle the influx of cases. Unlike federal judges who are guided by the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s Federal Sentencing Guidelines, Ohio’s judges have significantly more sentencing discretion because the Ohio legislature provides minimal guidance for these crimes. As a result, Ohio’s white-collar criminal defendants are experiencing dramatic sentencing variations. To solve this problem, Ohio should look to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines and neighboring states to adopt and create an innovative sentencing model tailored to white-collar crime. Unlike the federal …

Juvenile Life Without Parole: How The Supreme Court Of Ohio Should Interpret Montgomery V. Louisiana, Grace O. Hurley

Cleveland State Law Review

Regardless of the numerous differences between juveniles and adults, some states, including the State of Ohio, continue to impose upon juvenile homicide offenders one of the harshest forms of punishment: life without parole. In 2016, the United States Supreme Court decided Montgomery v. Louisiana, and in doing so, the Court reiterated its previous contention that a sentence of juvenile life without parole should only be imposed upon juvenile homicide offenders whose crimes reflect "irreparable corruption." The Supreme Court of Ohio has yet to apply the Court’s Montgomery decision, but this Note suggests that if it does, the court should …

Legislative Reform Or Legalized Theft?: Why Civil Asset Forfeiture Must Be Outlawed In Ohio, Alex Haller

Cleveland State Law Review

Civil asset forfeiture is a legal method for law enforcement to deprive United States citizens of their personal property with little hope for its return. With varying degrees of legal protection at the state level, Ohio legislators must encourage national policy reform by outlawing civil asset forfeiture in Ohio. Ohio Revised Code Section 2981.05 should be amended to outlaw civil asset forfeiture by requiring a criminal conviction prior to allowing the seizure of an individual’s property. This Note proposes two plans of action that will restore Ohio resident’s property rights back to those originally afforded in the United States Constitution.

Creating The Best: A Two-Prong Policy Approach To Improve The Quality Of Future Certified Ohio Peace Officers, Amy English

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

This qualitative client applied study explained and explored a two-fold approach that could be used to implement policy changes that will aid small Ohio police departments in commissioning intellectually developed and psychologically suited individuals for employment in law enforcement. Several issues needed to be addressed in order to accomplish these policy changes. Criminological theories were correlated to deviant behaviors of criminally charged Ohio police officers. Past legislated police reform acts were addressed. Past studies of police officer higher education were analyzed. Finally, the implementation factors for psychological evaluations as a police academy pre-enrollment requirement were identified. This study, based on …

The Stereotyped Offender: Domestic Violence And The Failure Of Intervention [Batterer Intervention Program (Bip) Standards Data, As Of 2015], Carolyn B. Ramsey

Research Data

These 19 comparative data tables relating to state and local certification standards for batterer intervention programs (BIPs), as of 2015, are electronic Appendices B-T to Carolyn B. Ramsey, The Stereotyped Offender: Domestic Violence and the Failure of Intervention, 120 Penn. St. L. Rev. 337 (2015), available at http://scholar.law.colorado.edu/articles/56/. Appendix A is not reproduced here because it simply contains citations to the state and local standards, but it is published with the journal article.

Covering Up An Infection With A Bandage: A Call To Action To Address Flaws In Ohio's Anti-Hazing Legislation, Justin M. Burns

Akron Law Review

Hazing is not just a student and education problem – it is a society problem. There have been attempts to address the problem, such as educational programming, adopting anti-hazing policies in schools, and condemning hazing through legislatures. However, these attempts, including Ohio’s 1983 anti-hazing statute, only punish the hazing as an “act;” put differently, these approaches characterize hazing as an activity that someone does to someone. But after considering human development and the reality of how hazing has materialized in our communities, hazing is not something done do people, but why something is done to them.

For example, consider an …

O'Connor's Firsts, Phyllis L. Crocker

Akron Law Review

Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor will make her mark on the Ohio court system and on the laws of Ohio in many ways. She made two significant marks her first day as Chief Justice: she was the first woman elected to the position of Chief Justice in Ohio and in her swearing-in speech she called for review of the death penalty in Ohio.1 Both were meaningful to me personally and as a citizen of Ohio. I appreciated her acknowledging her place in history and her willingness to tackle, right from the beginning of her tenure, the important topic of the death …

Chief Justice O'Connor's Juvenile Justice Jurisprudence: A Consistent Approach To Inconsistent Interests, Yvette Mcgee-Brown, Kimberly A. Jolson

Akron Law Review

Part II of this Article examines the growth of the juvenile justice system as a system apart from the adult criminal system. It reviews the goals of the juvenile court system—to treat children differently than adults, to rehabilitate, and to protect both the child and society. Part II also discusses the gradual movement to harsher sentencing of young offenders and transferring those offenders to the adult criminal justice system, as well as the subsequent exhortation of the United States Supreme Court that youth in the juvenile justice system must be afforded the protection of constitutional rights. Part III.A explains the …

Supermax’S Kryptonite? Wilkinson V. Austin: The Due Process Challenge To Ohio’S Super-Maximum Security Prison, Adam Miller

University of Massachusetts Law Review

This note discusses the Supreme Court’s holding in Wilkinson that OSP’s system for inmate placement in its Supermax facility does not violate the Equal Protection Clause. Part II will summarize OSP’s purpose and condition, and will focus on Ohio’s New Policy regarding inmate placement. Part III will examine Supreme Court precedent and the Court’s conclusions of law in determining whether inmates have a protected liberty interest in avoiding assignment to OSP and the due process implications of the inmate selection process to OSP. Part IV will question the Supreme Court’s disregard of the adverse mental effects in inmates subjected to …

Appellate Division, First Department, People V. Bradley, Kathleen Egan

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Sentencing, Drugs, And Prisons: A Lesson From Ohio, Jelani Jefferson Exum

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Prison overcrowding has become a familiar story. Current data shows that more than 1 in 100 adults in America—over 2 million people—are incarcerated, earning the United States the distinction of having the highest incarceration rate in the world. It should not be a surprise, therefore, that state and federal prisons are reaching and exceeding capacity. Nor should it be a shock that drug offenders take up many of the beds in those overcapacity prisons. Relative to other crimes, drug sentencing in the United States has been increasingly harsh since the 1970s, and the prison population is feeling the effects …

"Because Ladies Lie": Eliminating Vestiges Of The Corroboration And Resistance Requirements From Ohio's Sexual Offenses, Patricia J. Falk

Cleveland State Law Review

The Ohio General Assembly has made considerable progress in modernizing the state’s rape laws, eliminating many of the substantive and procedural obstacles to the successful prosecution of criminals. Yet, Ohio’s contemporary sexual offense provisions include vestiges of both the corroboration and resistance requirements. More specifically, the corroboration requirement (1) still applies to the crime of sexual imposition and (2) is used as a grading factor in gross sexual imposition. The resistance requirement (1) has been eliminated from rape and gross sexual imposition, but not sexual battery and sexual imposition, and (2) the wording of the existing resistance-elimination provisions is legally …

Do You Know Where Your Dna Is? The Need For Dna Legislation In Ohio, Elizabeth Collins

Journal of Law and Health

This Note examines the several privacy and safety issues stemming from DNA theft. Part II discusses constitutional and common law regarding the abandonment of property, particularly under the Fourth Amendment, and explains how the Fourth Amendment does not protect individuals from DNA theft. Part III details the many consequences resulting from DNA theft. These risks, among countless others, include employment and insurance discrimination, family turmoil caused by paternity testing which is often inaccurate and conducted without consent, genetic stalking, security risks, and the unauthorized publication of personal medical information and ancestral information. Part IV examines DNA theft legislation adopted by …

Striking A Balance: Why Ohio's Felony-Arrestee Dna Statute Is Unconstitutional And Ripe For Legistlative Action, Brendan Heil

Cleveland State Law Review

This Note argues that Ohio’s felony-arrestee DNA statute violates Article I, section 14 of the Ohio Constitution and the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The initial physical swab and the subsequent database searches of an arrestee’s DNA sample, while the arrestee is in custody or being prosecuted, do not violate the Fourth Amendment. However, the inclusion of an innocent person’s DNA in Ohio’s DNA database, subject to repeated searches over time, violates both the Ohio and federal constitutional protections against unreasonable searches. Broadly written DNA statutes trample people’s civil rights, and more carefully drawn legislation could meet the …

An Unappealing Decision For New York Dwi Defendants - People V. Pealer, Christopher Gavin

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

It’S In The Bag: Voluntariness, Scope, And The Authority To Grant Consent - United States V. Harris, Daniel Fier

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Ohio's Aggressive Attack On Medical Identity Theft, Stanley C. Ball

Journal of Law and Health

This note explains the severity of medical identity theft and the state and federal legislative reactions to the problem. Specifically, the note discusses data breach notification statutes that require healthcare providers to notify consumers when the systems holding customer personal information are breached. The note concludes that Ohio’s data breach notification statute, which does not expressly cover healthcare providers, should be amended to protect residents from medical identity theft and provide redress when healthcare providers violate state law.

The Unified Sealed Theory: Updating Ohio's Record-Sealing Statute For The Twenty-First Century, Michael H. Jagunic

Cleveland State Law Review

This Note will argue that Ohio's record sealing statute is still a viable means to achieve this balance, but that it must be supplemented by additional laws in order to remain effective. Part II provides a short history of record sealing and expungement in the United States and explains how Ohio's record sealing statute effectively deals with some common criticisms of record sealing. Part III then briefly examines why sealing and expungement statutes are becoming increasingly ineffective due to the proliferation of electronic criminal records and the rise of the data-mining industry. Part IV critiques some of the proposed solutions …

Inconsistent Methods For The Adjudication Of Alleged Mentally Retarded Individuals: A Comparison Of Ohio's And Georgia's Post-Atkins Frameworks For Determining Mental Retardation, Scott R. Poe

Cleveland State Law Review

This Note compares Ohio's and Georgia's post-Atkins frameworks for determining mental retardation. Ohio's framework offers a fairer application of Atkins and should serve as a guide for a national legal standard for use by state trial courts to determine mental retardation. Specifically, Ohio's use of preponderance of the evidence is a more appropriate standard of proof for determining mental retardation because it better reaches the overall goal in Atkins. Allowing the judge to make the mental retardation determination protects the alleged mentally retarded defendant from potential jury bias. Because Ohio's and Georgia's definitions of mental retardation are substantially similar and …

Gps Monitoring: A Viable Alternative To The Incarceration Of Nonviolent Criminals In The State Of Ohio, Matthew K. Kucharson

Cleveland State Law Review

This article will discuss the emergence of GPS technology in the field of criminal law and propose that Ohio embrace GPS monitoring as an alternative to the incarceration of nonviolent offenders. Part II will begin by briefly outlining the history of GPS technology. Part II will then discuss the use of GPS monitoring in the field of law enforcement. Specifically, this Part will illustrate the different components necessary for the implementation of an effective GPS monitoring program and explain the use of inclusion and exclusion zones. Part III will examine the status of Ohio's state prison system and will focus …

Removing The Roadblocks To Successful Domestic Violence Prosecutions: Prosecutorial Use Of Expert Testimony On The Battered Woman Syndrome In Ohio, Matthew P. Hawes

Cleveland State Law Review

This note contends that Ohio should join the modern trend and allow expert testimony on the battered woman syndrome in a limited form in domestic violence prosecutions. Part II of this note explores the syndrome and its origins. Part III provides background on the evidentiary uses of the syndrome in Ohio. It discusses the emergence of the battered woman syndrome in Ohio courts, and then examines the unsuccessful initial attempts by prosecutors in Ohio to use expert testimony on the syndrome.Part IV looks at how several jurisdictions outside of Ohio have addressed this issue. Part V presents the argument that …

The Failure Of Ohio's Drug Treatment Initiative, Tamara Karel

Cleveland State Law Review

In the summer of 2002, proponents of Issue 1 "The Ohio Drug Treatment Initiative," (hereafter referred to as the Initiative) succeeded in getting the proposal on the November ballot. The Initiative proposed an amendment to the Ohio Constitution that would have required courts to approve requests for treatment when made by eligible nonviolent drug offenders. The Amendment sought to (1) allocate a fixed amount of the state's General Revenue Fund to pay for the opening and operating of new treatment centers, (2) limit prison sentences for users and possessors to ninety days, and (3) provide for the sealing and expungement …

The Grand Jury And Exculpatory Evidence: Should The Prosecutor Be Required To Disclose Exculpatory Evidence To The Grand Jury, Ali Lombardo

Cleveland State Law Review

In 1992, the United States Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Williams that the federal courts do not have the supervisory power to require prosecutors to present exculpatory evidence to the grand jury. This Note argues that the Williams decision is flawed because it diminishes crucial rights of defendants and because it prevents the grand jury from fulfilling its protective function. In Section II, this Note examines the historical background and purpose of the grand jury in England and America. Section III discusses the Williams decision and the rationale behind both the majority and dissenting opinions. It also discusses …

On Seeking Controlling Law And Re-Seeking Death Under Section 2929.06 Of The Ohio Revised Code , Margery B. Koosed

Cleveland State Law Review

This article explores and analyzes the two-pronged legal dilemma that confronted the court in State v. Marshall: in Ohio, finding the correct sentencing law is often difficult; and a recent amendment to the resentencing portion of that law, S.B. 258, destroys the efficiency that was characteristic of Ohio's previous resentencing framework. Consequently, Part II of this article examines the facts and holding of State v. Marshall and suggests that finding the applicable law must be simplified. Practitioner handbooks are often confusing and incomplete, in part as the Ohio legislature generates an ever-changing body of law. Justice and the lives of …

Some Legislative History And Comments On Ohio's New Criminal Code , Harry J. Lehman, Alan E. Norris

Cleveland State Law Review

Having briefly outlined the history of the formal development of the Act, it is the purpose of this Article to discuss in narrative form the legislative process on certain key provisions which were the subject of much debate and disagreement. These areas of disagreement include murder and felony penalties, especially minimum sentences; capital punishment to conform to the U.S. Supreme Court's Furman decision as well as other changes; parole eligibility for those serving life sentences for a capital offense; early release on parole, also known as shock parole; eligibility for probation; definition of reasonable doubt and jury instructions on reasonable …

Presumptions - Constitutional Validity Of Statute Establishing Proof Of Reputation As Prima Facie Evidence Of Commission Of Crime

Michigan Law Review

The rise and sway of the gangster as a menace to American social and economic security has led, of late, to the employment of unique means of combating lawlessness. Faced by a tremendous increase in the difficulties lying in the path of those seeking the conviction of professional criminals for major crimes, the police and prosecutors often turn towards a means of fighting crime originally devised to make life uncomfortable for petty off enders. The enforcement of the pistol laws and the vagrancy statutes against millionaire gangsters, and repeated arrests on suspicion, have been resorted to as a means of …