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Full-Text Articles in Law

_Not That Bad_: Lessons Women Learn In A Rape Culture, Sydney J. Selman Jul 2022

_Not That Bad_: Lessons Women Learn In A Rape Culture, Sydney J. Selman

Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee

In 2018, Roxane Gay assembled an anthology that addresses the severity of rape, rejecting the common belief that some sexually violent acts, compared to others, are not that bad. This collection, titled Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture, compiles pieces from thirty different authors and sheds light on how the notion of not that bad contributes to a broader structural social problem involving sexual violence. This social problem, known as rape culture, is commonly defined as a culture that normalizes sexual violence and blames victims of sexual assault (“What is Rape Culture?”). In other words, rape culture …


Defining Insanity: How An Individual's View Can Impact A Trial, Jayme L. Ayres May 2020

Defining Insanity: How An Individual's View Can Impact A Trial, Jayme L. Ayres

Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee

The insanity plea has always been a controversial topic among anyone. No one sees eye to eye on the matter. This can present a problem within professional fields. When insanity cases are brought into courtrooms, legal and psychology professionals need to be able to agree to some extent. However, these professionals have no true control on how jurors define insanity. Jurors tend to determine guilty or not guilty in insanity cases, based on their own personal views. The current study is a replication of Doctor John Geiger’s 2003 and 2008 study of how legal professionals and undergraduate psychology students view …


Pleading Guilty: Indigent Defendant Perceptions Of The Plea Process, Jeanette Hussemann, Jonah Siegel Feb 2019

Pleading Guilty: Indigent Defendant Perceptions Of The Plea Process, Jeanette Hussemann, Jonah Siegel

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

Public defenders and other court actors most often engage in behind-the-scene plea negotiating to manage overwhelming workloads and to dispose of cases as quickly and efficiently as possible. In prior work, scholars have documented an increased reliance on plea bargaining and the deleterious impact of the practice on the legal process and the rights of individuals accused of a crime; however, this research has not systematically analyzed the decisions made, and the perspectives of justice of society’s most disadvantaged and arguably most important actors of the court, the defendants. Relying on data collected in a Midwestern public defense system, this …


Tennessee's Death Penalty Lottery, Bradley A. Maclean, H. E. Miller Jr. Nov 2018

Tennessee's Death Penalty Lottery, Bradley A. Maclean, H. E. Miller Jr.

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

Over the past 40 years, Tennessee has imposed sustained death sentences on 86 of the more than 2,500 defendants found guilty of first degree murder; and the State has executed only six of those defendants. How are those few selected? Is Tennessee consistently and reliably sentencing to death only the “worst of the bad”? To answer these questions, we surveyed all of Tennessee’s first degree murder cases since 1977, when Tennessee enacted its current capital punishment system. Tennessee’s scheme was designed in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Furman v. Georgia, which held that a capital punishment …


Tennessee Rule Of Criminal Procedure 36.1'S New Clothes: How The Tennessee Supreme Court's Opinion In State V. Brown Limited The Inherent Authority Of Trial Courts To Correct Illegal Sentences By Overlooking The Plain Language Of 36.1 And The "Jurisprudential Context" From Which Rule 36.1 Developed Aug 2017

Tennessee Rule Of Criminal Procedure 36.1'S New Clothes: How The Tennessee Supreme Court's Opinion In State V. Brown Limited The Inherent Authority Of Trial Courts To Correct Illegal Sentences By Overlooking The Plain Language Of 36.1 And The "Jurisprudential Context" From Which Rule 36.1 Developed

Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.


Judicial Influence And The United States Federal District Courts: A Case Study, Justin R. Hickerson May 2014

Judicial Influence And The United States Federal District Courts: A Case Study, Justin R. Hickerson

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.


Juvenile Competence To Stand Trial: An Examination Of The Effects Of Cognitive Ability, Psychiatric Symptomatology, And Psychosocial Maturity, Aaron John Kivisto Aug 2011

Juvenile Competence To Stand Trial: An Examination Of The Effects Of Cognitive Ability, Psychiatric Symptomatology, And Psychosocial Maturity, Aaron John Kivisto

Doctoral Dissertations

As the courts have evolved over the past 30 years towards increasingly punitive sanctions for youthful offenders, the fundamental protections afforded to adult defendants have become increasingly relevant for youthful offenders. Among these protections, the right of juveniles to be competent to stand trial has gained nearly universal recognition throughout this country’s courts. Congruent with theory and previous research, we hypothesized that age, intellectual ability, psychiatric symptomatology, and maturity would all be directly related to adolescents’ competence. It was also anticipated that adolescents in the detention sample would evidence lower maturity and competency-related abilities compared to the community sample. Expanding …


The Tennessee Death Penalty: Prosecutors, Juries And The Impact Of Race, Kristin Amber Wagers May 2010

The Tennessee Death Penalty: Prosecutors, Juries And The Impact Of Race, Kristin Amber Wagers

Doctoral Dissertations

The impact of race within the American criminal justice system has seen long-term debate and has been studied by numerous social scientists. This dissertation examines the criminal justice system by analyzing data created by the Tennessee courts to determine whether race impacts the administration of Tennessee’s death penalty. This dissertation examines whether race impacts the overall administration of Tennessee’s death penalty, a Tennessee prosecutor’s decision to seek death, and a Tennessee jury’s decision to impose death. The impact of race at each stage is analyzed by logistic regression to isolate the defendant’s race, the victim’s race, and the racial interaction …