Law Commons^™

Posthumous Organ Donation As Prisoner Agency And Rehabilitation, Amanda Seals Bersinger, Lisa Milot

Scholarly Works

Unlike U.S. citizens generally, who are encouraged to become organ donors through drivers' license designations, advance directives, and state registries, in most instances inmates are barred from donating their organs until release.

To date, the scholarship in favor of allowing inmates to donate their organs has largely focused on the benefit these donations could offer patients languishing on organ transplant lists, while objections center on the vulnerability of the imprisoned potential donors and their inability to make decisions freely. A donor-focused case for donation, however, is missing in this debate. This Article fills that gap by setting out the philosophical …

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

Popular Media

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.

Popular Media

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.

Popular Media

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.

Police Reform And The Judicial Mandate, Julian A. Cook

Scholarly Works

In response to a crisis that threatens his tenure as Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel announced in December 2015 reform measures designed to curb aggressive police tactics by the Chicago Police Department (CPD). The reform measures are limited, but aim to reduce deadly police-citizen encounters by arming the police with more tasers, and by requiring that officers undergo deescalation training. Though allegations of excessive force have plagued the department for years, the death of Laquan McDonald, an African-American teenager who was fatally shot by Jason Van Dyke, a white officer with the CPD, was the impetus for the Mayor’s reforms. …

Police Culture In The Twenty-First Century: A Critique Of The President's Task Force's Final Report, Julian A. Cook

Scholarly Works

In response to a series of events involving police-citizen encounters, including those in Ferguson, Missouri, and Staten Island, New York, that have strained relations between law enforcement and the communities (primarily minority) that they serve, President Barack Obama established a task force charged with developing a set of recommendations designed to improve police practices and enhance public trust. Headed by Charles Ramsey, Commissioner of the Philadelphia Police Department, and Laurie Robinson, former Assistant Attorney General for the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs, and currently a Professor of Criminology, Law, and Society at George Mason University, the eleven-member …

Policing In The Era Of Permissiveness: Mitigating Misconduct Through Third-Party Standing, Julian A. Cook

Scholarly Works

On April 4, 2015, Walter L. Scott was driving his vehicle when he was stopped by Officer Michael T. Slager of the North Charleston, South Carolina, police department for a broken taillight. A dash cam video from the officer’s vehicle showed the two men engaged in what appeared to be a rather routine verbal exchange. Sometime after Slager returned to his vehicle, Scott exited his car and ran away from Slager, prompting the officer to pursue him on foot. After he caught up with Scott in a grassy field near a muffler establishment, a scuffle between the men ensued, purportedly …