Law Commons^™

The Persistence Of Fatal Police Taserings In 2018, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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Fatal police taserings have been a persistent phenomenon in the United States for nearly two decades. Steadily, relentlessly, year after year, month after month, our police kill citizens with tasers. This article reviews the history of fatal police taserings and those that occurred in 2018.

The Case That Stirred The State Of Georgia, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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In the second half of the 19th Century, hundreds of murders occurred in Georgia, but only two murder cases electrified the entire state. Both cases were the subject of massive amounts of publicity in Georgia newspapers, and for years both cases were ceaselessly talked about in every part of this state.

One of these two notable murder cases was the Woolfolk murder case, involving Tom Woolfolk, nicknamed Bloody Woolfolk, who in 1887 murdered nine members of his family with an axe in Bibb County and after two trials was hanged in 1890. In 1997, I published a book review in …

Neil Gorsuch And The Return Of Rule-Of-Law Due Process, Nathan Chapman

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Something curious happened at the Supreme Court last week. While the country was glued to the Cirque du Trump, the rule of law made a comeback, revived by Neil Gorsuch, whose place on the Court may prove to be one of Trump’s most important legacies.

Unlike the partisan gerrymander and First Amendment cases currently pending before the Court, immigration cases are usually long on textual analysis and short on grand themes. Accordingly, court-watchers didn’t have especially high expectations for Sessions v. Dimaya.

The Persistence Of Fatal Police Taserings In 2017, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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Fatal police taserings are a persistent phenomenon in the United States. Every year dozens of Americans are fatally tasered by our police.This article looks at the number of deaths cause by police tasering during 2017.

The Persistence Of Fatal Police Taserings 2016, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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In this Article, Professor Wilkes updates his research on police tasering by surveying the fatal taserings by police officers that occurred in 2016.

Louisiana Rapper’S Case Speaks To Bigger Problems In The Criminal Justice System, Andrea L. Dennis, Erik Nelson, Michael Render

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This article published on April 25, 2016 at the Huffington Post examines the case of McKinley Phipps. He was sentenced to thirty years of hard labor for a crime that, to this day, he insists he did not commit. During the trial prosecutors used Phipps’s rap persona and lyrics - remixed for special effect - to carefully construct a story of Phipps’s guilt. The article discusses how Phipps lyrics and persona contributed to his conviction and the progress of his appeals.

The Persistence Of Fatal Police Taserings, Part 2, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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This article updates the author's previous article on the statistics on deaths resulting from police taserings.

The Persistence Of Fatal Police Taserings, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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There is, newfound interest in obtaining accurate information about police use of force in this country. This means, among other things, that we need reliable statistics about police violence. We cannot address the problem of unlawful police violence unless we possess adequate statistical information about all police violence, lawful as well as unlawful.

This article explores the violence of police tasering and the statistics of this practice.

Schools Fail To Get It Right On Rap Music, Andrea L. Dennis

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School officials treat rap music as a serious threat to the school environment. Fear and misunderstanding of, as well as bias against, this highly popular and lucrative musical art form negatively shape their perspectives on this vital aspect of youth culture.

As a result, students who express themselves through rap music in a way that challenges the schoolhouse setting risk the possibility of suspension, permanent exclusion and referral to the criminal justice system.

The ongoing case of Taylor Bell is the latest and most complex battleground on which this issue is playing out.

Electroshock Injustice In Athens-Clarke County, Part 4, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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This article, part 4 in a series, reviews the Athens Clarke County Police Department's (ACCPD) decision to purchase tasers and looks at comments from ACCPD's new police chief.

Police Fatally Tase Another Georgian, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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This article looks at the most recent taser fatality in Georgia.

Guerrilla Warfare And The Constitution, Sonja R. West

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Earlier this week, the United States Supreme Court upheld, by a 5-4 vote, the states’ ability to execute death row inmates with a three-drug lethal injection cocktail that critics argue causes excruciating pain. The Court reasoned that states should be allowed to use the drug in question, despite its involvement in several botched executions, in part because states can no longer attain more effective alternatives. In the majority opinion, the justices spin an erroneous tale about “anti-death-penalty advocates” pressuring pharmaceutical companies into refusing to supply other, more humane drugs to the states for use in capital punishment. This alleged radical …

Tasers Kill: Electroshock Injustice In Athens-Clarke County, Part 3, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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The Athens-Clarke County Police Department’s campaign to popularize its decision to begin using taser electroshock weapons on the local citizenry must be recognized for what it is—a public-relations crusade based on clever misrepresentations and shifty evasions, as well as outright denials of fact. This articles reviews the the concerns about implementing tasers in Athens.

Electroshock Injustice Coming To Athens-Clarke County Part 2: More On The "Benefits" Of Police Tasering, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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This article reviews the Athens-Clarke County police department's arguments in implementing tasers and argues against using them in police enforcement.

Taser Time: Electroshock Injustice Coming Soon To Athens-Clarke County, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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On Sunday, Apr. 19, 2015, an article in the daily newspaper in Athens announced that Athens-Clarke County Police have already received a shipment of 145 tasers and will soon begin using them on the citizenry of this county.

Although taser electroshock devices are technically classified as nonlethal weapons, this means only that their purpose is to avoid fatalities, not that they are incapable of resulting in fatalities. Use of a nonlethal weapon may and sometimes does result in death or serious injury. In recent years, at least 600 Americans, perhaps as many as 1,000, have died suddenly, unexpectedly, or shortly …

Suffocated Habeas Corpus And Merciless Clemency In The Execution Of Warren Hill, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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On Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2015, the state of Georgia executed Warren Lee Hill, Jr. by lethal injection at the state prison in Jackson. This state unconstitutionally wielded its most dangerous and irreversible power, the power to kill. A prisoner with significantly sub-average intellectual functioning, a 54-year old man with the mind of a boy, was strapped down and killed in flagrant violation of a provision of the Bill of Rights intended to maintain human dignity.

This article discusses capital punishment against intellectually disabled individuals and how the erosion of habeas corpus at the Federal and state level and the abandonment …

Shadow Trial: Prosecutors In Ferguson Violated Our Right To An Open Criminal Justice System, Sonja R. West, Dahlia Lithwick

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St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch’s decision to “open up” the grand jury proceedings by including massive amounts of testimony and evidence has been decried as “highly unusual,” “deeply unfair,” and evidence that police officer Darren Wilson received “special treatment.” McCulloch’s move to include a good deal of exculpatory evidence and testimony led to a three-month, closed-door proceeding that included 70 hours of testimony, including 60 witnesses and three medical examiners. The breadth of the evidence presented to the grand jury has led many to declare that it turned the entire proceeding into something that walks and quacks an awful …

The Arrest Of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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Police forces tend to be among the most secretive and least accountable of all organizations. When pressed for accountability or sued for malfeasance, obfuscation and evasiveness are the typical response. The phenomenon is hardly limited to certain countries or societies–the unassailability of police organizations seems to be universal.–Michael H. Fox The serve-and-protect model of police motivation that was drummed into police corps across the country in the aftermath of the response to anti-war demonstrations in the sixties and seventies has been heavily encroached on by the control-and-suppress model.–J. Ackerman The best motto for a police officer is that sticks and …

Throttling Miranda: Right Wing Ideologues Support The Government Against The Individual, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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The 1966 Miranda v. Arizona decision is arguably the most important and undeniably the most famous of all U.S. Supreme Court criminal procedure decisions. The noble purpose of this legal landmark is to prevent Americans taken into custody by police on criminal charges from being subjected to improper interrogation practices calculated to compel citizens to incriminate themselves.

Few people realize that since the early 1970s the Supreme Court has been stealthily choking the life out of Miranda. The latest example of this process of slow strangulation occurred a few weeks ago, on June 1, when the Court in Berghuis …

The Stupidest Lawyering Ever, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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Last Wednesday and Thursday, June 23 and 24, Georgia death row inmate Troy Davis finally got what he has been seeking for over a decade -- a court hearing allowing him to present newly discovered evidence he is innocent of the murder of off-duty policeman Mark MacPhail. That hearing was a disaster, however, because of the cataclysmic blundering of his own attorneys. As he sat in the federal district courtroom in jail garb and leg irons watching events unfold, Davis must surely have come to the sickening realization that his lawyers were guilty of some of the stupidest lawyering on …

Torture And The Tablets Of Eternity, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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The question is whether there should be investigation, prosecution and punishment of those in the Bush administration who authorized or directed torture of prisoners, or who did the actual torturing.

Death Penalty On Deathbed, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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Capital punishment involves killing helpless prisoners. It is uncivilized. It is wrong for the same reasons torture is wrong.

Should Brian Nichols Be Tried In A Federal Court?, Ronald Carlson, Donald E. Wilkes

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Although Brian Nichols has been sentenced in state court to a total of 485 years of imprisonment, the question has been raised whether he should subsequently be tried in federal court for the murder of an off-duty U.S. Customs agent. Prof. Carlson argues in the affirmative, while Prof. Wilkes finds the suggestion "stupendously stupid."

The Writ Of Habeas Corpus In Georgia, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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Lauded as "the Great Writ" and praised as "one of the precious heritages of Anglo-American civilization," the legal writ of habeas corpus marvelously triggers a judicial proceeding in which courts may release individuals from unlawful restraints on their liberty. Indeed, this writ has been a part of Georgia law even prior to the creation of the United States. Today Georgia habeas corpus proceedings commonly involve pretrial confinement on criminal charges, detention in a mental health facility, extradition and postconviction cases. Some of these habeas decisions have even taken on human rights landmark status.

Book Review: The I Chong: Meditations From The Joint (2006), Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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Book Review of THE I CHONG: MEDITATIONS FROM THE JOINT, by Tommy Chong (NY: Simon Spotlight Entertainment, 2006).

Defending The Right To Self-Representation: An Empirical Look At The Pro Se Felony Defendant, Erica J. Hashimoto

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Assistant Professor Erica Hashimoto outlines her research on why felony defendants should continue to have the constitutional right to represent themselves.

Explosive Dynamic Entry: The Increasing Militarization Of The Police Makes Citizens Into Enemies, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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At 6 a.m. on Friday, May 16, 2003, 57-year old Alberta Spruill was in her residence, Apartment 6F at 310 W. 143rd Street in the Harlem Section of New York City, preparing to leave for work. Spruill, a quiet, church-going woman, was a municipal worker, employed at the Division of Citywide Administrative Services. She had been a city employee for 29 years, and each weekday would take the bus to her job. To her, that Friday morning must have seemed like the beginning of just another ordinary day. She mercifully did not know that she would never again head for …

A Little Bit Of Shooty Face, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed government sources, recently revealed that American intelligence agents and law enforcement officials stationed in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay have been authorized to use “a little bit of smacky face” to make prisoners talk during interrogation. “If you don’t violate someone’s human rights some of the time, you probably aren’t doing your duty,” one anonymous U. S. official was quoted as saying. Americans were assured, however, that the face-slapping of prisoners to induce them to talk was nothing to worry about. There would be no revival of the third degree for persons arrested on …

Sneak And Peak Search Warrants, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

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In his recent article "Taking Liberty with Freedom," author Richard P. Moore reminds us that the USA Patriot Act, signed by President Bush last Oct. 26 in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, "gives the government the kind of sweeping powers of arrest, detention, surveillance, investigation, deportation, and search and seizure that ... assault ... our most basic freedoms."

I want to examine here a single section of the USA Patriot Act--section 213, definitely one of the most sinister provisions of this monstrous statute.

Should Michigan Rule Of Evidence 703 Be Revised?, Brian Benner, Ronald L. Carlson

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Technical witnesses regularly assist the fact-finding process in Michigan trials. Jury or bench trials in federal and state courts routinely feature the appearance of experts. Properly policed by our courts, few forms of testimony hold more promise for advancing the truth-seeking function of American litigation. The expanding presence of experts raises hard questions. Are the Michigan rules in turn with modern needs? Should the state rule controlling the basis for expert opinion be aligned with the federal pattern? If Michigan Rule of Evidence 703 could stand revision, does proper alteration require significant additions not presently contained in either state or …