Law Commons^™

Kids Are Different, Stephen St.Vincent

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

The Supreme Court recently handed down its decision in Graham v. Florida. The case involved a juvenile, Graham, who was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted as an adult of a nonhomicidal crime. The offense, a home invasion robbery, was his second; the first was attempted robbery. Due to Florida's abolition of parole, the judge's imposition of a life sentence meant that Graham was constructively sentenced to life without parole for a nonhomicide crime. Graham challenged this sentence as unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment. Somewhat surprisingly, the Supreme Court invalidated Graham's sentence by a 6-3 majority. By a …

Strong Medicine: Toward Effective Sentencing Of Child Pornography Offenders, Kristin Carlson

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

In recent years, possessors of child pornography have entered the federal criminal justice at an alarming rate. In 2006, child pornography cases accounted for sixty-nine percent of the child exploitation cases that were prosecuted federally. Average federal sentences for these offenses also rose sharply, by about 300 percent over the past fourteen years. The mean sentence imposed for child pornography offenses increased from thirty-six months in 1994 to 109 months by 2008. The severe sentences imposed on possessors of child pornography in federal courts have inspired an ongoing deb ate. Critics feel the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines are too harsh on …

The Impact Of Civilian Aggravating Factors On The Military Death Penalty (1984-2005): Another Chapter In The Resistance Of The Armed Forces To The Civilianization Of Military Justice, Catherine M. Grosso, David C. Baldus, George Woodworth

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In 1984, the U.S. Armed Forces amended its capital punishment system for death eligible murder to bring it into compliance with Furman v. Georgia. Those amendments were modeled after death penalty legislation prevailing in over thirty states. After a brief period between 1986 and 1990, the charging decisions of commanders and the conviction and sentencing decisions of court martial members (jurors) transformed the military death penalty system into a dual system that treats two classes of death eligible murder quite differently. Since 1990, a member of the armed forces accused of a killing a commissioned officer or murder with a …

The Federal Sentencing Guidelines: A Misplaced Trust In Mechanical Justice, Evangeline A. Zimmerman

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In 1984 the Sentencing Reform Act was passed, ending fully discretionary sentencing by judges and allowing for the creation of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines ("FSG" or "Guidelines"). This Note proposes that the Guidelines failed not only because they ran afoul of the Sixth Amendment, as determined by the Supreme Court in 2005, but also because they lacked a clear underlying purpose, had a misplaced trust in uniformity, and were born of political compromise. Moreover, the effect of the FSG was to blindly shunt discretionary decisions from judges, who are supposed to be neutral parties, to prosecutors, who are necessarily partisan. …

Redemption Song: Graham V. Florida And The Evolving Eighth Amendment Jurisprudence, Robert Smith, G. Ben Choen

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

In Graham v. Florida, the Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment prohibits a sentence of life without parole ("LWOP") for a juvenile under eighteen who commits a non-homicide offense. For Terrance Graham, who committed home-invasion robbery at seventeen, the decision does not mean necessarily that he someday will leave the brick walls of Florida's Taylor Annex Correctional Institution. Unlike previous Eighth Amendment decisions, such as Roper v. Simmons, where the Court barred the death penalty for juveniles, this new categorical rule does not translate into automatic relief for members of the exempted class: "A State need not guarantee the …

What Does Graham Mean In Michigan?, Kimberly A. Thomas

Articles

In Graham v. Florida, the United States Supreme Court held that life without parole could not be imposed on a juvenile offender for a nonhomicide crime.1 In this context, the Graham Court extensively discussed the diminished culpability of juvenile criminal defendants, as compared to adults. The Court relied on current scientific research regarding adolescent development and neuroscience. While the narrowest holding of Graham has little impact in Michigan, the science it relies on, and the potential broader implications for adolescents in Michigan, are significant.

Sentence Reduction As A Remedy For Prosecutorial Misconduct, Sonja B. Starr

Articles

Current remedies for prosecutorial misconduct, such as reversal of conviction or dismissal of charges, are rarely granted by courts and thus do not deter prosecutors effectively. Further, such all-or-nothing remedial schemes are often problematic from corrective and expressive perspectives, especially when misconduct has not affected the trial verdict. When granted, these remedies produce windfalls to guilty defendants and provoke public resentment, undermining their expressive value in condemning misconduct. To avoid these windfalls, courts refuse to grant any remedy at all, either refusing to recognize violations or deeming them harmless. This often leaves significant non-conviction-related harms unremedied and egregious prosecutorial misconduct …

Frequency And Predictors Of False Conviction: Why We Know So Little, And New Data On Capital Cases, Samuel R. Gross, Barbara O'Brien

Articles

In the first part of this article, we address the problems inherent in studying wrongful convictions: our pervasive ignorance and the extreme difficulty of obtaining the data that we need to answer even basic questions. The main reason that we know so little about false convictions is that, by definition, they are hidden from view. As a result, it is nearly impossible to gather reliable data on the characteristics or even the frequency of false convictions. In addition, we have very limited data on criminal investigations and prosecutions in general, so even if we could somehow obtain data on cases …

Juvenile Justice: The Nathaniel Abraham Murder Case, Eugene Arthur Moore

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Once in a while, a case will come along that has such an enormous impact on the law that it is certain to draw attention. One such case was the Nathaniel Abraham murder case----a case involving the sentencing of a young eleven-year-old child in a system designed for older juvenile offenders, which demonstrated some of the novel and important issues facing the juvenile courts today. With the onset of such issues, the Juvenile Justice System has developed into a complex field of vital importance. Investing in the Juvenile Justice System allows us to invest in our future. Although frequently viewed …

Furman'S Mythical Mandate, Scott W. Howe

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article argues for the rescue and reform of Supreme Court doctrine regulating capital sentencing trials under the Eighth Amendment. Many legal commentators, both liberal and conservative, including several members of the Supreme Court, have concluded that the Court's regulation of capital sentencing trials is a disaster. The repeated criticisms rest on a commonly accepted view about a principal goal of capital sentencing regulation. The prevailing account, fueled by the rhetoric of the Justices, stems from the notion that Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 208 (1972), revealed a mandate of consistency in the use of the death penalty that …

Why The County Jail Is Often A Better Choice, Shawn Chapman Holley

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

I have been a criminal defense lawyer in Los Angeles for almost twenty years. I began my career in the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office, representing defendants who were poor and often homeless. For the past twelve years, I have been in private practice, representing defendants who are wealthy and often famous. Having represented criminal defendants coming from such varied economic circumstances, I have witnessed firsthand the criminal justice system’s disparate treatment of those with money and those without. Pay-to-stay jails are yet another example of that disparity. Yet I believe that those without the money to pay for …

Separate And Unequal: Federal Tough-On-Guns Program Targets Minority Communities For Selective Enforcement, Bonita R. Gardner

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article examines the Project Safe Neighborhoods program and considers whether its disproportionate application in urban, majority- African American cities (large and small) violates the guarantee of equal protection under the law. This Article will start with a description of the program and how it operates-the limited application to street-level criminal activity in predominately African American communities. Based on preliminary data showing that Project Safe Neighborhoods disproportionately impacts African Americans, the Article turns to an analysis of the applicable law. Most courts have analyzed Project Safe Neighborhoods' race-based challenges under selective prosecution case law, which requires a showing by the …

Function Over Form: Reviving The Criminal Jury's Historical Role As A Sentencing Body, Chris Kemmitt

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article argues that the Supreme Court, as evinced by its recent spate of criminal jury decisions, has abandoned the criminal jury known to the Founders and, in so doing, has severely eroded the protections intended to inhere in the Sixth Amendment jury trial right. It then proposes one potential solution to this problem.

According to the Supreme Court, this recent line of cases has been motivated by the need to preserve the "ancient guarantee" articulated in the Sixth Amendment under a new set of legal circumstances. Unfortunately, the Court misinterprets the ancient guarantee that it is ostensibly attempting to …

The High Court Remains As Divided As Ever Over The Death Penalty, George H. Kendall

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

More than three decades ago, in Furman v. Georgia, a sharply divided Supreme Court struck down all existing capital punishment schemes be-cause the results they generated were arbitrary, discriminatory, and unreasoned. No member of that Court remains on the Court today, and the Court has grown increasingly conservative ever since. Nevertheless, impor-tant questions concerning the administration of capital punishment continue to wrought deep divisions within the Court, for instance in determining whether racial bias influences the system, in determining the sufficiency of new evidence of innocence to justify review of a defaulted claim in habeas corpus proceedings, in determining a …

Legitimizing Error, Rebecca E. Woodman

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

Since Furman v. Georgia, the Supreme Court has sought to harmonize competing constitutional demands under Eighth Amendment rules regulat-ing the two-step eligibility and selection stages of the capital decision-making process. Furman’s demand for rationality and consistency requires that, at the eligibility stage, the sentencer’s discretion be limited and guided by clear and objective fact-based standards that rationally narrow the class of death-eligible defendants. The selection stage requires a determination of whether a specific death-eligible defendant actually deserves that punish-ment, as distinguished from other death-eligible defendants. Here, fundamental fairness and respect for the uniqueness of the individual are the cornerstones of …

Improving Criminal Jury Decision Making After The Blakely Revolution, J. J. Prescott, Sonja B. Starr

Articles

The shift in sentencing fact-finding responsibility triggered in many states by Blakely v. Washington may dramatically change the complexity and type of questions that juries will be required to answer. Among the most important challenges confronting legislatures now debating the future of their sentencing regimes is whether juries are prepared to handle this new responsibility effectively - and, if not, what can be done about it. Yet neither scholars addressing the impact of Blakely nor advocates of jury reform have seriously explored these questions. Nonetheless, a number of limitations on juror decision making seriously threaten the accuracy of verdicts in …

Stevens's Ratchet: When The Court Should Decide Not To Decide, Joel A. Flaxman

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

Hidden underneath the racy death penalty issues in Kansas v. Marsh lurks a seemingly dull procedural issue addressed only in separate opinions by Justices Stevens and Scalia: whether the Court should have heard the case in the first place. As he did in three cases from the Court’s 2005 term, Justice Stevens argued in Marsh that the Court has no legitimate interest in reviewing state court decisions that overprotect federal constitutional rights. Instead, the Supreme Court should exercise its certiorari power to tip the scales against states and in favor of individuals. Granting certiorari in Marsh, Stevens argued, was not …

The Revolution Enters The Court: The Constitutional Significance Of Wrongful Convictions In Contemporary Constitutional Regulation Of The Death Penalty, Jordan Steiker

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

Over the last decade, the most important events in American death pen-alty law have occurred outside the courts. The discovery of numerous wrongfully convicted death-sentenced inmates in Illinois led to the most substantial reflection on the American death penalty system since the late 1960s and early 1970s. Former Illinois Governor George Ryan, a Republi-can, first declared a moratorium on executions in 2000 and eventually commuted all 167 inmates on Illinois’s death row in 2003. The events in Illinois reverberated nationwide. Almost overnight, state legislative agendas shifted from expanding or maintaining the prevailing reach of the death penalty to studying its …

Putting The Guesswork Back Into Capital Sentencing, Sean D. O'Brien

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

In 1972, in Furman v. Georgia, the Supreme Court deemed it “incon-testable” that a death sentence is cruel and unusual if inflicted “by reason of [the defendant’s] race, religion, wealth, social position, or class, or if it is imposed under a procedure that gives room for the play of such prejudices.” Arbitrary and discriminatory patterns in capital sentencing moved the Court to strike down death penalty statutes that required judges or juries to cast thumbs-up or thumbs-down verdicts against offenders found guilty of capi-tal crimes. The issue of innocence was barely a footnote in Furman; the Court’s concerns focused on …

State Sentencing Policy And New Prison Admissions, Ben Trachtenberg

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

As the academy's focus has turned to sentencing in the wake of Blakely v. Washington and United States v. Booker, most commentators have continued their benign neglect of actual sentencing practices as they occur in state courts, not to mention whether and how such policies are effective in achieving the goals of criminal justice.

This Note examines trends in state sentencing policies and prison populations from the perspective of a would-be state reformer hoping to decrease her state's prison budget. Economic pressures, efficiency arguments, and social justice claims have combined to cause some states to desire lower prison populations, …

Compromising Liberty: A Structural Critique Of The Sentencing Guidelines, Jackie Gardina

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article contends that the federal sentencing guidelines-whether mandatory or discretionary-violate the constitutional separation of powers by impermissibly interfering with a criminal jury's constitutional duty to act as a check against government overreaching. This Article posits that the inclusion of the criminal jury in Article III of the Constitution was intended as an inseparable element of the constitutional system of checks and balances. This Article also submits a proposal for restoring the constitutional balance through the creation of a "guideline jury system" within the current guideline structure. The implementation of a guideline jury system would fill the constitutional void created …

Discrimination In Sentencing On The Basis Of Afrocentric Features, William T. Pizzi, Irene V. Blair, Charles M. Judd

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article does not challenge the prior research on sentencing discrimination between racial categories that found no significant difference in sentences given to similarly-situated African Americans and Whites. In fact, in the jurisdiction investigated- Florida- no discrimination between African Americans and Whites was found in the sentences imposed on defendants, looking only at racial category differences. Rather, the research suggests that in focusing exclusively on discrimination between racial groups, the research has missed a type of discrimination related to race that is taking place within racial categories: namely, discrimination on the basis of a person's Afrocentric features. By Afrocentric features, …

What They Say At The End: Capital Victims' Families And The Press, Samuel R. Gross, Daniel J. Matheson

Articles

Perhaps the most common complaint by American crime victims and their families is that they are ignored-by the police, by the prosecutors, by the courts and by the press. However true that may be for capital cases in general, there is at least one consistent exception: the great majority of newspaper accounts of executions include at least some description of the reactions of the victims' families and of any surviving victims. It seems to have become an item on the checklist, part of the "who, what, where, when, why, and how" of execution stories. When no family members are available, …

Cracking The Code: "De-Coding" Colorblind Slurs During The Congressional Crack Cocaine Debates, Richard Dvorak

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This article proposes "de-coding" as a method for unveiling the racist purpose behind the enactment of race-neutral legislation. Through the use of "code words," defined as “phrases and symbols which refer indirectly to racial themes, but do not directly challenge popular democratic or egalitarian ideals,” legislators can appeal to racist sentiments without appearing racist. More importantly, they can do so without leaving evidence that can be traced back as an intent to discriminate. This article proposes to use "de-coding" as a method to unmask the racist purpose behind the enactment of the 100:1 crack versus powder cocaine ratio for mandatory …

When Balance And Fairness Collide: An Argument For Execution Impact Evidence In Capital Trials, Wayne A. Logan

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

A central precept of death penalty jurisprudence is that only the "death worthy" should be condemned, based on a "reasoned moral response" by the sentencing authority. Over the past decade, however, the Supreme Court has distanced itself from its painstaking efforts in the 1970s to calibrate death decision making in the name of fairness. Compelling proof of this shift is manifest in the Court's decisions to permit victim impact evidence in capital trials, and to allow jurors to be instructed that sympathy for capital defendants is not to influence capital decisions. This Article examines a novel strategy now being employed …

The Offense: Interpreting The Indictment Requirement In 21 U.S.C. § 851, Christopher Serkin

Michigan Law Review

Congress enacted the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 ("the Act") to unify and rationalize its treatment of drug offenses. The Act was an enormous piece of legislation, requiring months of congressional hearings before it was passed. Today, the Act encompasses over 150 sections of title 21 of the U.S. Code and regulates behavior ranging from manufacturing and mislabeling to prescribing controlled substances. Like any piece of complex legislation, the Act has spawned its share of litigation. One controversy has defied satisfactory resolution: the meaning of the innocuous phrase, "the offense," in section 851(a)(2). The statute's structure …

Lost Lives: Miscarriages Of Justice In Capital Cases, Samuel R. Gross

Articles

In case after case, erroneous conviction for capital murder has been proven. I contend that these are not disconnected accidents, but systematic consequences of the nature of homicice prosecution in the general and capital prosecution in particular - that in this respect, as in others, death distorts and undermines the course of the law.

Hard Cases, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

Robert Latimer was born in 1953 on a farm on the prairies of Saskatchewan and grew up to own a 1,280-acre farm. In 1980 he married, and that year Tracy, the first of four children, was born. During her birth, Tracy's brain was terribly damaged by lack of oxygen, and severe cerebral palsy ensued. By 1993 Tracy could laugh, smile, and cry, and she could recognize her parents and her siblings. But she could not understand her own name or even simple words like "yes" and "no." She could not swallow well and would so often vomit her parents kept …

Is Hiv "Extraordinary"?, Jordan B. Hansell

Michigan Law Review

The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 (the "Act") attempts to reduce inconsistencies in the sentences of defendants convicted of comparable crimes. The Act created a Sentencing Commission (the "Commission") and authorized it to promulgate a set of sentencing guidelines to steer judicial decisionmaking. To fulfill this mandate, the Commission drafted the Federal Sentencing Guidelines (the "Guidelines"), which Congress enacted in 1987. Although Congress wanted to eliminate sentencing disparities, it also wanted to allow some degree of individualized sentencing. To achieve the correct balance, the Commission created three categories of characteristics: those a court must consider in sentencing each defendant; those …

A Question Of Intent: Aiding And Abetting Law And The Rule Of Accomplice Liability Under § 924©, Tyler B. Robinson

Michigan Law Review

Firearms are common tools of the violent-crime and drugtrafficking trades. Their prevalence is reflected in the frequency with which federal prosecutors charge, juries apply, and courts review 18 U.S.C. §924(c). That provision imposes heavy penalties for either the use or carrying of a firearm "during and in relation to any crime of violence or drug trafficking crime," in addition to the punishment provided for the underlying violent or drug-related offense. A conviction under section 924(c) carries at the very least a mandatory, consecutive five-year sentence, even when the underlying crime already provides enhanced punishment for use of a dangerous weapon …