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Criminal Law

Cleveland State University

2015

Articles 1 - 6 of 6

Full-Text Articles in Law

Husbands Who Drug And Rape Their Wives: The Injustice Of The Marital Exemption In Ohio’S Sexual Offenses, Patricia J. Falk Jul 2015

Husbands Who Drug And Rape Their Wives: The Injustice Of The Marital Exemption In Ohio’S Sexual Offenses, Patricia J. Falk

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This article argues that Ohio's marital rape exemption fails to vindicate the sexual autonomy and physical integrity of all persons in the state to be free from non-consensual sexual conduct. This protection from unwanted, non-consensual sexual violation should be afforded to Ohioans regardless of the victim's marital relationship to the perpetrator. Furthermore, the state's sexual offense provisions are plagued with inconsistencies and illogical distinctions with respect to the marital immunity. Ohio's partially abolished marital exemption cannot be justified under any coherent theory of justice, appears to survive merely due to inertia, and certainly does not serve the best interests of …

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Shifting Our Focus From Retribution To Social Justice: An Alternative Vision For The Treatment Of Pregnant Women Who Harm Their Fetuses, April L. Cherry Jan 2015

Shifting Our Focus From Retribution To Social Justice: An Alternative Vision For The Treatment Of Pregnant Women Who Harm Their Fetuses, April L. Cherry

Journal of Law and Health

The ways in which society responds to pregnant women whose behavior purportedly harms their fetuses can be explored from a variety of legal vantage points. This article argues that the criminal law model currently used is ineffective. The assignment of criminal liability to pregnant women is often rooted in fetal personhood and maternal deviance discourse. Criminal law solutions fail because they fail to take into account the fact that maternal behavior is often the result of a myriad of the social and economic conditions over which pregnant women have little or no control. The criminal law model, therefore, simply punishes …

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Rejustifying Retributive Punishment On Utilitarian Grounds In Light Of Neuroscientific Discoveries More Than Philosophical Calisthenics! , Robert B. Mccaleb Jan 2015

Rejustifying Retributive Punishment On Utilitarian Grounds In Light Of Neuroscientific Discoveries More Than Philosophical Calisthenics! , Robert B. Mccaleb

Cleveland State Law Review

Each of these unique features [of the Rotten Social Background (RSB) defense] is skeptically received by the classical criminal law mainly because of its fundamentally non-scientific, folk-psychological position on free will. However, discoveries in contemporary neuroscience strongly support each of these features. While chemical, causal, and deterministic brain events indisputably play a central role, RSB is virtually ignored as a frightening intrusion by materialism into the dualist sanctuary of the law. Yet RSB, as an indicator species for the health of the criminal law’s philosophic ecosystem, cannot be discounted out of hand any longer. In fact, the reconciliation of law …

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Rituals Upon Celluloid: The Need For Crime And Punishment In Contemporary Film, J C. Oleson Jan 2015

Rituals Upon Celluloid: The Need For Crime And Punishment In Contemporary Film, J C. Oleson

Cleveland State Law Review

Most members of the public lack first-hand experience with the criminal justice system; nevertheless, they believe that they possess phenomenological knowledge about it. In large part, the public’s understandings of crime and punishment are derived from television and film, which provide modern audiences with a vision of institutions that are normally occluded from view. While public rituals of punishment used to take place on the scaffold, equivalent moral narratives about crime and punishment now occur on film because modern punishment is imposed outside of the public gaze. Yet because crime films distort what they depict, the public’s view of crime …

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The Threat Lives On: How To Exclude Expectant Mothers From Prosecution For Mere Exposure Of Hiv To Their Fetuses And Infants, Shahabudeen K. Khan Jan 2015

The Threat Lives On: How To Exclude Expectant Mothers From Prosecution For Mere Exposure Of Hiv To Their Fetuses And Infants, Shahabudeen K. Khan

Cleveland State Law Review

There is a renewed interest in HIV/AIDS issues given that better treatment is available. The Department of Justice (DOJ), Civil Rights Division, recently published best practice guidelines to reform HIV-specific criminal laws to conform to modern science. The DOJ’s latest guidelines urge states to “reform and modernize” the laws to reflect modern science. There is a lot of unfinished work regarding the ineffectiveness and stigma associated with HIV criminal transmission laws as a whole. These laws are “no good” and counterintuitive in the fight against this unfortunate disease. There have been calls to repeal these laws in their entirety. That …

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Courts Caught In The Web: Fixing A Failed System With Factors Designed For Sentencing Child Pornography Offenders, Brendan J. Sheehan Jan 2015

Courts Caught In The Web: Fixing A Failed System With Factors Designed For Sentencing Child Pornography Offenders, Brendan J. Sheehan

Cleveland State Law Review

This Article introduces a Study, compiling data of 238 internet crimes against children occurring between 2008-2012, and concludes there is no correlation between presentence risk assessment scores and the subsequent sentences imposed by Northeast Ohio judges. The current risk assessment tools are insufficient and should be replaced by a comprehensive multi-factor approach that assesses relevant factors and identifies an offender’s placement on the “Spiral of Abuse” to aid Northeast Ohio judges in crafting fair, just, and consistent sentences for CPOs.

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