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Full-Text Articles in Law

Vilifying The Vigilante: A Narrowed Scope Of Citizen's Arrest, Ira P. Robbins Dec 2015

Vilifying The Vigilante: A Narrowed Scope Of Citizen's Arrest, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

The doctrine of citizen’s arrest in the United States has been ignored for far too long. In every jurisdiction in the United States, a private person may lawfully detain another and often may even use physical force to do so. Placing such power in the hands of ordinary, untrained individuals creates the possibility that citizens will misuse or abuse the privilege, sometimes with serious consequences for both the arrestor and the arrestee. This risk is compounded by the disparate treatment of the citizen’s arrest doctrine in different jurisdictions and the ambiguities inherent in many of the doctrine’s key features—such as …


Kidnapping Incorporated: The Unregulated Youth-Transportation Industry And The Potential For Abuse, Ira P. Robbins Dec 2013

Kidnapping Incorporated: The Unregulated Youth-Transportation Industry And The Potential For Abuse, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

Strangers come into a child's room in the middle of the night, drag her kicking and screaming into a van, apply handcuffs, and drive her to a behavior modification facility at a distant location. What sounds like a clear-cut case of kidnapping is complicated by the fact that the child's parents not only authorized this intervention, but also paid for it. This scarcely publicized practice-known as the youth-transportation industry-operates on the fringes of existing law. The law generally presumes that parents have almost unlimited authority over their children, but the youth-transportation industry has never been closely examined regarding exactly what …


Last Words: A Survey And Analysis Of Federal Judges' Views On Allocution In Sentencing, Ira P. Robbins Dec 2013

Last Words: A Survey And Analysis Of Federal Judges' Views On Allocution In Sentencing, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

Allocution-the penultimate stage of a criminal proceeding at which the judge affords defendants an opportunity to speak their last words before sentencing-is a centuries-old right in criminal cases, and academics have theorized about the various purposes it serves. But what do sitting federal judges think about allocution? Do they actually use it to raise or lower sentences? Do they think it serves purposes above and beyond sentencing? Are there certain factors that judges like or dislike in allocutions? These questions-and many others-are answered directly in this first-ever study of judges' views and practices regarding allocution. The authors surveyed all federal …


The Price Is Wrong: Reimbursement Of Expenses For Acquitted Criminal Defendants, Ira P. Robbins Dec 2013

The Price Is Wrong: Reimbursement Of Expenses For Acquitted Criminal Defendants, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

"Not guilty" these two simple words elicit intense relieffrom any defendant at the conclusion qf a criminal trial. As one harrowing ordeal ends, however, a new one inevitably takes shape: picking up the pieces of a life shattered physically, emotionally, and, for non- indigent defendants, financially. Where do defendants who have successfully defended themselves against criminal prosecution turn for assistance in paying the debts incurred in securing their freedom? 

Some states, as well as the federal government, have implemented laws that allow acquitted defendants to seek public reimbursement of certain legal expenses they incurred in their defense. These reimbursement methods …


The Death Penalty In The Twenty-First Century , Stephen B. Bright, Edward Chikofsky, Laurie Ekstrand, Harriet C. Ganson, Paul D. Kamenar, Robert E. Morin, William G. Otis, Jasmin Raskin, Ira P. Robbins, Diann Rust-Tierney, Charles F. Shilling, Andrew L. Sooner, Ronald J. Rabak, David V. Drehle, James Wootton Aug 2012

The Death Penalty In The Twenty-First Century , Stephen B. Bright, Edward Chikofsky, Laurie Ekstrand, Harriet C. Ganson, Paul D. Kamenar, Robert E. Morin, William G. Otis, Jasmin Raskin, Ira P. Robbins, Diann Rust-Tierney, Charles F. Shilling, Andrew L. Sooner, Ronald J. Rabak, David V. Drehle, James Wootton

Ira P. Robbins

No abstract provided.


"Bad Juror" Lists And The Prosecutor's Duty To Disclose, Ira P. Robbins Dec 2011

"Bad Juror" Lists And The Prosecutor's Duty To Disclose, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

Prosecutors sometimes use what are known as "bad juror" lists to exclude particular citizens from jury service. Not only does this practice interfere with an open and fair jury-selection process, thus implicating a defendant's right to be tried by a jury of his or her peers, but it also violates potential jurors' rights to serve in this important capacity. But who is on these lists? And is a prosecutor required to disclose the lists to defense counsel? These questions have largely gone unnoticed by legal analysts.
 
This Article addresses the prosecutor's duty to disclose bad-juror lists. It reviews the …


Anthrax Hoaxes, Ira P. Robbins Sep 2004

Anthrax Hoaxes, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

INTRODUCTION: "[Y]ou are a disgusting piece of dirt."' Judge Steven Shutter, a county judge in South Florida, used these words to describe a twenty- four-year-old woman whom he labeled a terrorist2 and who was condemned by the media.3 Aside from name-calling, Judge Shutter raised the woman's bail from $3,500 to $25,000 when he learned the nature of the offense, 'just in case" the woman might be able to afford the lower bond.4 Given the strength of Judge Shutter's animosity toward her, one might assume that Yasmin Kassima Sealey- Doe had provided assistance to the terrorists who attacked the World Trade …


Without Charge: Assessing The Due Process Rights Of Unindicted Co-Conspirators, Ira P. Robbins Dec 2003

Without Charge: Assessing The Due Process Rights Of Unindicted Co-Conspirators, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

The grand jury practice of naming individuals as unindicted co-conspirators routinely results in injury to reputations,lost employment opportunities, and a practical inability to run for public office. Yet, because these individuals are not parties to a criminal trial, they have neither the right to present evidence nor
the opportunity to clear their names. Thus, Professor Robbins argues that the practice violates the Fifth Amendment guarantee that “[n]o person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property,
without due process of law[.]” While prosecutors may offer many justifications to support the practice of naming
unindicted co-conspirators, these reasons …


Magistrate Judges, Article Iii, And The Power To Preside Over Federal Prisoner Section 2255 Proceedings, Ira P. Robbins Dec 2001

Magistrate Judges, Article Iii, And The Power To Preside Over Federal Prisoner Section 2255 Proceedings, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

In 1968, Congress enacted the Federal Magistrates Act to enhance judicial efficiency in the federal courts. Since then, some judicial functions delegated to magistrate judges have been challenged on constitutional grounds: while federal district judges, appointed pursuant to Article III of the United States Constitution, are protected with life tenure and undiminishable salary, thereby enhancing judicial independence, federal magistrate judges, appointed pursuant to Article I, have no such protection. The most recent major challenge to magistrate judge authority came in 2001, when the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in United States v. Johnston, decided that referral …


Justice By The Numbers: The Supreme Court And The Rule Of Four-Or Is It Five?, Ira P. Robbins Dec 2001

Justice By The Numbers: The Supreme Court And The Rule Of Four-Or Is It Five?, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

INTRODUCTION:

In the early hours of April 14, 2000, Robert Lee Tarver died in Alabama's electric chair, even though four Justices of the United States Supreme Court had voted to review the merits of his case. This situation is not unique. Each year, practitioners and pro se litigants alike petition the Supreme Court without fully knowing the rules pursuant to which the Court will decide their client's, or their own, fate. The reason is that the Supreme Court operates under two sets of rules-those that are published and those that are not. The former specify This Article is based on …


Managed Health Care In Prisons As Cruel And Unusual Punishment, Ira P. Robbins Dec 1998

Managed Health Care In Prisons As Cruel And Unusual Punishment, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

INTRODUCTION:

Billy Roberts, a prisoner in an Alabama state prison, had a history of severe psychiatric disorders. He was often put on suicide watch, and received large doses of psychotropic drugs. A managed health care company, Correctional Medical Services (CMS), was responsible for the health care at the prison. After Roberts had a suicidal episode, CMS's statewide mental health care director reportedly put Roberts in an isolation cell rather than a psychiatric care unit. The mental health care director also ordered that Roberts' medication be discontinued pursuant to an alleged policy of CMS to get as many prisoners off psycho- …


George Bush's America Meets Dante's Inferno: The Americans With Disabilities Act In Prison, Ira P. Robbins Dec 1995

George Bush's America Meets Dante's Inferno: The Americans With Disabilities Act In Prison, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

Introduction: The conditions in America's correctional facilities have long been cause for concern. Even those who do not advocate a comfortable quality of life for inmates recognize that basic problems such as overcrowding, inmate violence,' inadequate staffing,2 and increasing costs of building and maintaining prisons have approached crisis levels. Meanwhile, the prison population continues to swell. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the United States Department of Justice, the number of prisoners incarcerated at state and federal prisons annually has grown at a rate of 8.4% in recent years.'


The Revitalization Of The Common-Law Civil Writ Of Audita Querela As A Post-Conviction Remedy In Criminal Cases: The Immigration Context And Beyond, Ira P. Robbins Dec 1991

The Revitalization Of The Common-Law Civil Writ Of Audita Querela As A Post-Conviction Remedy In Criminal Cases: The Immigration Context And Beyond, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

Introduction: An alien lawfully enters the United States in 1972. He gets a job, gets married, and becomes a productive worker in the community. He is subsequently convicted of a felony, such as making false statements on a loan application. As a result, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) brings deportation proceedings against him. The individual will seek any means possible to vacate the conviction, in order to stay in this country.' This Article explores whether the writ of audita querela. primarily used to provide post-judgment relief in civil cases at common law, can be used to challenge criminal …


The Ostrich Instruction: Deliberate Ignorance As A Criminal Mens Rea, Ira P. Robbins Dec 1989

The Ostrich Instruction: Deliberate Ignorance As A Criminal Mens Rea, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

No abstract provided.


Double Inchoate Crimes, Ira P. Robbins Dec 1988

Double Inchoate Crimes, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

American criminal law treats the inchoate crimes of attempt, conspiracy, and solicitation as substantive offenses punishable by criminal sanctions. The legal system criminalizes the types. of behavior that constitute these offenses to intervene before an actor completes the intended illegal act. Some jurisdictions now recognize the concept of double inchoate crimes, punishing inchoate offenses that are the immediate objects of other inchoate offenses. In this Article, Professor Robbins examines the concept of double inchoate crimes, first by tracing the evolution of inchoate offenses and then by reviewing the judicial development of double inchoate crimes. Arguing that double inchoate crimes are …


Impact Of The Delegation Doctrine On Prison Privatization, Ira P. Robbins May 1988

Impact Of The Delegation Doctrine On Prison Privatization, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

Few people would argue that the state of our nation's prisons and jails is ideal. Apart from whatever other ills plague these institutions, overcrowding is pervasive. Populations have doubled in a decade, and with preventive detention, mandatory minimum sentences, habitual offender statutes, and the abolition of parole in some jurisdictions, there is no relief in sight. Some states are even leasing or purchasing prison space in other states. And it is costing the taxpayers more than seventeen million dollars a day to operate the facilities, with estimates ranging up to sixty dollars a day per inmate.


Privatizing Corrections: Defining The Issues, Ira P. Robbins Apr 1987

Privatizing Corrections: Defining The Issues, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

No abstract provided.


Should Prisons Be Privately Run?: No Quick Fixes, Ira P. Robbins Mar 1987

Should Prisons Be Privately Run?: No Quick Fixes, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

No abstract provided.


Attempting The Impossible: The Emerging Consensus, Ira P. Robbins Dec 1985

Attempting The Impossible: The Emerging Consensus, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

Impossible attempts are situations in which an actor fails to consummate a substantive crime because he is mistaken about attendant circumstances. Professor Robbins divides mistakes regarding circumstances into three categories: mistakes of fact, mistakes of law, and mistakes of mixed fact and law. Courts and commentators disagree primarily over the identification and treatment of mixed fact law cases. Professor Robbins surveys each category of mistake. He then examines the objective, subjective, and hybrid approaches to dealing with the mixed fact/law category. The objective approach requires an objective manifestation of the actor's intent before conviction is allowed. The subjective approach permits …


Legal Aspects Of Prison Riots, Ira P. Robbins Dec 1981

Legal Aspects Of Prison Riots, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

Introduction: Riots are a recurrent phenomenon in American prisons. In the 1950s and the early 1970s, major riots erupted in prisons across the country, and many have occurred in the past several years.' Riots will continue to occur as long as the dominant function of prisons is the custodial confinement of inmates. As one commentator explains, "The way to make a strong bomb is to build a strong perimeter and generate pressure inside. Similarly, riots occur where ... pressures and demands are generated in the presence of strong custodial confinement."

When such a bomb detonates and a prison riot erupts, …


Book Review: A Theory Of Criminal Justice By Jan Corecki. New York: Columbia University Press. 1979. Pp. Xv, 185. $15.00., Ira P. Robbins Jan 1981

Book Review: A Theory Of Criminal Justice By Jan Corecki. New York: Columbia University Press. 1979. Pp. Xv, 185. $15.00., Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

Review of A Theory of Criminal Justice by Jan Corecki. New York: Columbia University Press. 1979. Pp. xv, 185. $15.00.


Solipsism And Criminal Liability, Ira P. Robbins Dec 1979

Solipsism And Criminal Liability, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

A viable legal system and a free society can endure and progress only by continuing to debate fundamental principles. Thus, often it is useful to return to underlying precepts in order to refine and comprehend more fully the contemporary state of knowledge. This article posits the case of the solipsist-one who denies the existence of all physical reality and maintains that his own ego alone exists-as a criminal defendant. Others, most notably Professor Lon L. Fuller, have expounded upon the manifold ways in which certain harsh necessities, externally impose upon common people, can test the rules of the criminal law. …


The Cry Of Wolfish In The Federal Courts: The Future Of Federal Judicial Intervention In Prison Administration, Ira P. Robbins Dec 1979

The Cry Of Wolfish In The Federal Courts: The Future Of Federal Judicial Intervention In Prison Administration, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

Introduction: In Bell v. Wolfish, the United States Supreme Court held that, with respect to conditions or restrictions having no specific constitutional source for protection, a pretrial detainee in a federal correctional center has a right under the due process clause of the fifth amendment to be free from any punitive conditions or restrictions during detention. The Court further held that all of the challenged practices and conditions were valid because they were rationally related to the legitimate non-punitive purposes of the detention center. Thus, the correctional facility could place two detainees in a cell built for one, prohibit …


A Constitutional Analysis Of The Prohibition Against Collateral Attack In The Mexican-American Prisoner Exchange Treaty, Ira P. Robbins Sep 1978

A Constitutional Analysis Of The Prohibition Against Collateral Attack In The Mexican-American Prisoner Exchange Treaty, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

Introduction: On November 25, 1976, the United States and Mexico concluded a bilateral treaty providing for reciprocal prisoner exchange, so that a national of one party to the agreement could complete his sentence in his home country.' The objectives of the agreement essentially were twofold: first, there was a need to ameliorate relations with Mexico on the delicate matter of the abuse of American citizens confined in Mexican prisons; second, there was a strong desire to alleviate special hardships, such as those respecting living conditions and prospects for rehabilitation, resulting from imprisonment in a foreign country.
The Treaty was ratified …


Punitive Conditions Of Prison Confinement: An Analysis Of Pugh V. Locke And Federal Court Supervision Of State Penal Administration Under The Eighth Amendment, Ira P. Robbins Apr 1977

Punitive Conditions Of Prison Confinement: An Analysis Of Pugh V. Locke And Federal Court Supervision Of State Penal Administration Under The Eighth Amendment, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

The 1960's marked a watershed for the criminal justice system. In such areas as search and seizure, right to counsel and the privilege against self-incrimination, the federal courts first defined substantive constitutional rights and then imposed them upon disinclined functionaries at the state level. At first, these innovations raised thorny questions of constitutional interpretation about the rights involved, but, as is especially visible in the search and seizure area, the debate more recently has focused on the remedy chosen by the Supreme Court for enforcing these rights against the states.' This pattern of escalating federal involvement in the criminal justice …


Learning By Redoing, Review Of A. Von Hirsch, Doing Justice: The Choice Of Punishments, Ira P. Robbins Dec 1976

Learning By Redoing, Review Of A. Von Hirsch, Doing Justice: The Choice Of Punishments, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

Book review of Doing Justice: The Choice of Punishments. By Andrew von Hirsch. New York: Hill & Wang, 1976. Pp. xi, 179. $8.95.