Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Keyword
- Publication Type
Articles 1 - 6 of 6
Full-Text Articles in Law
The First Amendment And Speech Urging Suicide: Lessons From The Case Of Michelle Carter And The Need To Expand Brandenburg'S Application, Clay Calvert
UF Law Faculty Publications
This Article examines the level of First Amendment protection that applies when a defendant-speaker is charged with involuntary manslaughter based on successfully urging a person to commit suicide. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts’ February 2019 decision in Commonwealth v. Carter provides a timely analytical springboard. The Article argues that courts should adopt the United States Supreme Court’s test for incitement created a half-century ago in Brandenburg v. Ohio before such speech is deemed unprotected by the First Amendment. It contends this standard is appropriate even in involuntary manslaughter cases where intent to cause a specific result is not required …
Unusual Deference, William W. Berry Iii
Unusual Deference, William W. Berry Iii
Florida Law Review
Three Eighth Amendment decisions—Harmelin v. Michigan, Pulley v. Harris, and McCleskey v. Kemp—have had enduring, and ultimately, cruel and unusual consequences on the administration of criminal justice in the United States. What links these cases is the same fundamental analytical misstep—the decision to ignore core constitutional principles and instead defer to state punishment practices. The confusion arises from the text of the Eighth Amendment where the Supreme Court has read the “cruel and unusual” punishment proscription to rest in part on majoritarian practices. This is a classical analytical mistake—while the Amendment might prohibit rare punishments, it does not make the …
Convictions Based On Character: An Empirical Test Of Other-Acts Evidence, Michael D. Cicchini, Lawrence T. White
Convictions Based On Character: An Empirical Test Of Other-Acts Evidence, Michael D. Cicchini, Lawrence T. White
Florida Law Review
Despite the time-honored judicial principle that “we try cases, rather than persons,” courts routinely allow prosecutors to use defendants’ prior, unrelated bad acts at trial. Courts acknowledge that jurors could improperly use this other acts evidence as proof of the defendant’s bad character. However, courts theorize that if the other acts are also relevant for a permissible purpose—such as proving the defendant’s identity as the perpetrator of the charged crime—then a cautionary instruction will cure the problem, and any prejudice is “presumed erased from the jury’s mind.” We put this judicial assumption to an empirical test. We recruited 249 participants …
Redefining “Particularly Serious Crimes” In Refugee Law, Mary Holper
Redefining “Particularly Serious Crimes” In Refugee Law, Mary Holper
Florida Law Review
Refugees are not protected from deportation if they have been convicted of a “particularly serious crime” (PSC) which renders them a danger to the community. This raises questions about the meaning of “particularly serious” and “danger to the community.” The Board of Immigration Appeals, Attorney General, and Congress have interpreted PSC quite broadly, leaving many refugees vulnerable to deportation without any consideration of the risk of persecution in their cases. This trend is disturbing as a matter of refugee law, but it is even more disturbing because it demonstrates how certain criminal law trends have played out in immigration law. …
Implicit Racial Bias And Students' Fourth Amendment Rights, Jason P. Nance
Implicit Racial Bias And Students' Fourth Amendment Rights, Jason P. Nance
UF Law Faculty Publications
Tragic acts of school violence such as what occurred in Columbine, Newtown, and, more recently, in Parkland and Santa Fe, provoke intense feelings of anger, fear, sadness, and helplessness. Understandably, in response to these incidents (and for other reasons), many schools have intensified the manner in which they monitor and control students. Some schools rely on combinations of security measures such as metal detectors; surveillance cameras; drug-sniffing dogs; locked and monitored gates; random searches of students’ belongings, lockers, and persons; and law enforcement officers. Not only is there little empirical evidence that these measures actually make schools safer, but overreliance …
Reconceptualizing Criminal Justice Reform For Offenders With Serious Mental Illness, E. Lea Johnston
Reconceptualizing Criminal Justice Reform For Offenders With Serious Mental Illness, E. Lea Johnston
UF Law Faculty Publications
Roughly 14% of male inmates and 31% of female inmates suffer from one or more serious mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depressive disorder. Policymakers and the public widely ascribe the overrepresentation of offenders with serious mental illness in the justice system to the “criminalization” of the symptoms of this afflicted population. The criminalization theory posits that the criminal justice system has served as the primary agent of social control over symptomatic individuals since the closure of state psychiatric hospitals in the 1950s and the tightening of civil commitment laws. The theory identifies untreated mental illness as …