Law Commons^™

Criminal Inflictions Of Emotional Distress, Avlana Eisenberg

Scholarly Publications

This Article identifies and critiques a trend to criminalize the infliction of emotional harm independent of any physical injury or threat. The Article defines a new category of criminal infliction of emotional distress (“CIED”) statutes, which include laws designed to combat behaviors such as harassing, stalking, and bullying. In contrast to tort liability for emotional harm, which is cabined by statutes and the common law, CIED statutes allow states to regulate and punish the infliction of emotional harm in an increasingly expansive way.

In assessing harm and devising punishment, the law has always taken nonphysical harm seriously, but traditionally it …

Confronting Evil: Victims' Rights In An Age Of Terror, Wayne A. Logan

Scholarly Publications

This Article examines a unique facet of the victims' rights movement: the use of victim impact evidence in the prosecution of individuals accused of mass killings. The Article provides the first detailed analysis of victim impact evidence employed in the capital trials of those responsible for the bombings in Oklahoma City (168 deaths) and the U.S. Embassy in Kenya (213 deaths), as well as the events of September 11 (almost 3000 deaths), and explores the many difficulties its use presents. These difficulties, the Article argues, warrant attention not only with respect to future U.S. mass killing trials in civilian courts, …

Victims And Prison Release: A Modest Proposal, Erin O'Hara O'Connor

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Victim Impact Evidence In Federal Capital Trials, Wayne A. Logan

Scholarly Publications

Fifteen years ago, in Payne v. Tennessee, the Supreme Court lifted its prohibition on the admission of victim impact evidence (VIE) in the penalty phase of capital trials. According to the Court, admitting evidence on the personal traits of individual murder victims and the toll associated with their killings at once properly allowed the government to show the “uniqueness” of victims, thus counterbalancing defendants’ largely unfettered right to adduce mitigation evidence, and permitted the sentencing authority to under-stand the “specific harm” caused by the murder. In the wake of Payne, Congress authorized use of VIE as a nonstatutory …

Jacob's Legacy: Sex Offender Registration And Community Notification Laws, Practice And Procedure In Minnesota, Wayne A. Logan

Scholarly Publications

Triggered in significant part by the October, 1989, abduction of eleven-year-old Jacob Wetterling in rural St. Joseph, Minnesota, Americans during the 1990s were beset by a "moral panic" over convicted sex offenders living in their midst. To be sure, this panic in itself was not unprecedented in American history. At regular intervals throughout the twentieth century, heinous sexual victimizations, of women and children in particular, preoccupied the nation, often after receiving intense media attention. The 1990s panic, however, was unique in its force and scope, taking tangible form in what has been aptly called a "'legislative' panic." As a result …

A Proposed Check On The Charging Discretion Of Wisconsin Prosecutors, Wayne A. Logan

Scholarly Publications

With the emergence of the increasingly vocal victims' rights movement and a more general punitive emphasis in criminal justice, the issue of prosecutorial discretion in the decision of whether to charge a suspect with a crime has assumed paramount importance. In two recent cases the Wisconsin Supreme Court addressed the fundamental question of whether it is the responsibility of the local prosecutor or the court to charge a suspect with a crime. This Comment examines these two cases, Unnamed Petitioners v. Connors, decided in 1987, and State v. Unnamed Defendant, decided in 1989. The Comment concludes that the charging mechanism …