Law Commons^™

The Assassination Attempt, Yale Kamisar

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From the moment the would-be assassin opened fire until many days after he was found not guilty by reaaon of insanity, the press was fascinated by the case. The very same day that it reported the assassination attempt "in the open street, and in the broad face of day," the Times considered but quickly dismissed the possibility of insanity: "The defndant's purpose was carried out with the most cold-blooded determination. . . . His demeanor throughout was cool and collected, nor did there appear any evidence of insanity." When, several days later, it became plain that the defendant was indeed …

How We Got The Fourth Amendment Exclusionary Rule And Why We Need It, Yale Kamisar

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Why the continuing storm of controversy over the exclusionary rule? Why the deep and widespread hostility to it? I think a recent law office search case, because it arose in a setting so unlike the typical search and seizure case, furnishes a clue. In O'Connor v. Johnson, St. Paul police obtained a warrant to search an attorney's office for business records of a client suspected of making false written statements in applying for a liquor license. The attorney happened to be present when the police arrived. Holding on to his work product file, which contained some of the records sought, …

Testimonial Immunity And The Privilege Against Self-Incrimination: A Study In Isomorphism, Peter Lushing

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This Article accepts and will develop the Court's isomorphic theory of immunity and privilege, and will show why Portash is nonetheless correct in result. A case for a broadened view of the privilege, partially because of the availability of testimonial immunity, will be made. Apftlbaum will be shown to be incorrect in result. This Article will also analyze the problem of immunized testimony and perjury by inconsistent statement, a problem faced once by the Court but left unresolved. Finally, this Article will discuss the constitutional requirements of an immunity statute, and consider an immunity case presently pending before the Supreme …

Faces Without Features: The Surface Validity Of Criminal Inferences, Peter Lushing

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This article will offer nonempirical grounds to show that instructed inferences operate as the dissenters believe, at least when the instruction does not explicitly refer to the evidence at trial, but to occurrences in general.

Government Appeals In Criminal Cases: The 1978 Decisions, Edward H. Cooper

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The statute allowing the government to appeal from some forms of trial court defeat in criminal cases, 18 U.S.C.A. § 3731, has a long and tangled history. In its 1970 opinion in United States v. Sisson 9ui the Supreme Court wrestled mightily with a difficult problem under the statute as it then stood, and invited Congress to amend "this awkward and ancient Act." Soon afterward the act was amended. It now provides in part that the government may appeal in a criminal case

from a decision, judgment, or order of a district court dismissing an indictment or information as to …

Juvenile Obscenity Statutes: A Proposal And Analysis, Jerold H. Israel, Rita Ann Burns

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The article that follows is based largely upon a Study Report on juvenile obscenity statutes prepared for the Michigan Law Revision Commission. The objectives of the Report were (1) to analyze the various issues presented in drafting a juvenile obscenity provision, (2) to survey the treatment of those issues in statutes adopted by various states and statutes proposed by several distinguished commissions, and (3) to propose a comprehensive model statute that offers a choice of alternative provisions on key areas of controversy. Certain limitations placed upon the scope of the Report (and this article) should be noted. First, we were …

Some Non-Religious Views Against Proposed 'Mercy-Killing' Legislation Part I, Yale Kamisar

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In essence, Williams' specific proposal is that death be authorized for a person in the above situation "by giving the medical practitioner a wide discretion and trusting to his good sense." This, I submit, raises too great a risk of abuse and mistake to warrant a change in the existing law. That a proposal entails risk of mistake is hardly a conclusive reason against it. But neither is it irrelevant. Under any euthanasia program the consequences of mistake, of course, are always fatal. As I shall endeavor to show, the incidence of mistake of one kind or another is likely …

Some Non-Religious Views Against Proposed 'Mercy-Killing' Legislation Part Ii, Yale Kamisar

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There have been and there will continue to be compelling circumstances when a doctor or relative or friend will violate The Law On The Books and, more often than not, receive protection from The Law In Action. But this is not to deny that there are other occasions when The Law On The Books operates to stay the hand of all concerned, among them situations where the patient is in fact ( 1 ) presently incurable, ( 2) beyond the aid of any respite which may come along in his life expectancy, suffering ( 3 ) intolerable and ( 4) …

The Jury And The English Law Of Homicide, 1200-1600, Thomas A. Green

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The early English jury was self-informing and composed of persons supposed to have first-hand knowledge of the events and persons in question. The judge instructed the jury on the law, but was himself almost entirely dependent upon the jury for his knowledge of the case. By stating the evidence in a way that made the result it wanted a necessary conclusion, the medieval jury was able to alter the impact of formal rules of law to conform with prevailing social attitudes.

The Fourth Amendment As A Way Of Talking About People: A Study Of Robinson And Matlock, James Boyd White

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One way to regard what the Supreme Court has done in the cases it has decided under the Fourth Amendment is to say that it has created a specialized discourse of adjudication, a language in which it can talk about and dispose of the repeated conflicts that arise between an officer engaged in the process of crime control and a citizen upon whose freedom or security he intrudes. The events which bring these two figures together are bewildering in their variety and complexity, and the claims on each side are deeply felt and strenuously made. It has not been easy …

The Reincarnation Of The Death Penalty: Is It Possible?, Yale Kamisar

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Fifty years ago Clarence Darrow, probably the greatest criminal defense lawyer in American history and a leading opponent of capital punishment, observed: The question of capital punishment has been the subject of endless discussion and will probably never be settled so long as men believe in punishment. Some states have abolished and then reinstated it; some have enjoyed capital punishment for long periods of time and finally prohibited the use of it. The reasons why it cannot be settled are plain. There is first of all no agreement as to the objects of punishment. Next there is no way to …

Political Surveillance And The Fourth Amendment, Alan Meisel

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The United States District Court case has left the scope of the warrant protection of the fourth amendment considerably clearer and broader. The door left ajar in Katz has been firmly fastened shut by the Court leaving only the traditional exceptions to the warrant requirement, which are based upon practical necessity, and the still unconfronted question of the power of the executive to conduct warrantless surveillances of foreign agents in national security cases." It is also clear that courts are no less competent to evaluate the appropriateness of a search and seizure in an internal security case than in a …

Societal Concepts Of Criminal Liability For Homicide In Medieval England, Thomas A. Green

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THE early history of English criminal law lies hidden behind the laconic formulas of the rolls and law books. The rules of the law, as expounded by the judges, have been the subject of many studies; but their practical application in the courts, where the jury of the community was the final and unbridled arbiter, remains a mystery: in short, we know little of the social mores regarding crime and crimi- nals. This study represents an attempt to delineate one major aspect of these societal attitudes. Its thesis is that from late Anglo-Saxon times to the end of the middle …

How To Use, Abuse—And Fight Back With—Crime Statistics, Yale Kamisar

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Statistics have an almost magical appeal in a "fact"-minded culture such as ours, among a people conditioned and accustomed to watch for-and attach great significance to-even the smallest fluctuations in say, the unemployment rate. Hence, as Darrell Huff graphically demonstrated in his famous little book, How to Lie with Statistics (1954), they can be-and have been-manipulated to terrorize or calm, inflate or depreciate, and above all, to sensationalize and over simplify. As Harvard criminologist Lloyd Ohlin noted recently, statistics are especially potent when "they give a sense of solid reality (usually false) to something people vaguely apprehend and when they …

The Process Of Penal Law Reform—A Look At The Proposed Michigan Revised Criminal Code, Jerold H. Israel

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T HE subject of this symposium, the proposed Michigan Revised Criminal Code (Proposed Code),' is the product of a three-year study by a Joint Committee of the State Bar. The study was undertaken pursuant to a 1964 resolution of the State Bar Commissioners calling for a "complete revision of the criminal code to redefine crimes and penalties."'2 The Joint Committee is an extraordinarily large group, being composed of members of both the standing Criminal Jurisprudence Committee and the Special Code Revision Committee.' Its membership reflects great diversity in viewpoint and professional interests, including not only prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges, …

The 'Hot Trail' Into Mexico And Extradition Analogies, Edwin D. Dickinson

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The recent decision of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in Dominguez v. State, 234 S. W. 79, has given us an important precedent and also a valuable example of the solution of novel problems by means of analogies. A detachment of the military forces of the United States had been authorized by the War Department to enter Mexico on the "hot trail" in pursuit of bandits. While following a "hot trail" this detachment arrested Dominguez, a native citizen and resident of Mexico, and returned with him to the United States. It developed later that he was not one of …

Joy Riding, Simple And Compound, Edgar N. Durfee

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The wrongful use of another's automobile, even though accompanied by a trespassory taking, cannot, if followed by a return to the owner or an abandonment, be easily brought within the definition of larceny at common law or under the ordinary larceny statutes, because of the requirement of intent to deprive the owner permanently of his property. Smith v. State, 146 S. W. 547; State v. Boggs (Iowa, 1917), 164 N. W. 759; McClain, Criminal Law, § 566. Of course, such intent, at the time of taking, might be found in spite of return or abandonment, though it is doubtful whether …

The Way Of The Tansgressor Is Easy, John R. Rood

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The Way of the Transgressor is Easy, if he is shrewd enough to take an immunity bath, or avail himself of any of a dozen other provisions of the law made with good intentions and left lying about loose enough to be misappropriated. One rule that has served him many a good turn, is that there is no contribution between tort-feasors. Another way of stating it is that the courts are not open to help rogues out of the predicaments into which their dishonest dealings placed them, and the counterpart of the doctrine in equity is that he who comes …

Statutory Abolition Of Defense Of Insanity In Criminal Cases, John R. Rood

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The great lengths to which the defense of insanity has been carried in homicide cases has induced numerous legislative attempts to abolish the evil; and the fate which such legislation has met and deserves at the hands of the courts is a matter of considerable interest.

The Courts Of Judea, Jerome C. Knowlton

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The study of Jewish jurisprudence has become interesting during the past ten years through the efforts of some painstaking scholars, who have not been burdened with any particular dogma, but have been actuated by a true Christian spirit. They have been close students of those portions of the Talmud which throw light on the jurisprudence of the Jews.

A Suggestion Concerning The Law Of Inter-State Extradition, Edwin F. Conely

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While yet the nation was forming-indeed as early as 1643-the impolicy of the colonies' suffering themselves to become asylums for criminal refugees was seen and appreciated by the public men of the time. But, though continued efforts were made in the right direction and much was accomplished, the rendition of fugitives from justice remained, either legally or practically, a matter of comity for nearly a century and a half, or until the adoption of the Constitution of the United States. Then, made mandatory by the organic law of the Nation, inter-state extradition ceased to be subject to State control or …

The Element Of Locality In The Law Of Criminal Jurisdiction, Henry W. Rogers

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THE Federal Courts have no common law criminal jurisdiction. The question was raised in the United States Circuit Court for the District of Pennsylvania, in 1798, in United States v. Worrall, 2 Dallas, 384, and the Court was equally divided in opinion. Iii 1818, Mr. Justice STORY, in United States v. Coolidge, 1 Gallison, 488, decided that there were common law offences against the United States. But this, as we shall see, was overruled by the Supreme Court. As early as 1807, Chief Justice MARSHALL, in Ex parte .Bollman, 4 Cranch, 75, had said, "This Court disclaims all jurisdiction not …

International Extradition, Henry W. Rogers

Articles

It is a well-established principle of law that criminal prosecutions are local and not transitory. A wrong-doer whose wrong consists in a civil injury, or arises out of a breach of contract, can ordinarily be required to answer for the wrong done wherever he may be found. But a different principle is applied to the case of one who has committed a crime. As one nation does not enforce the penal laws of another, and as the process of the courts of a state can confer no authority beyond its own territorial limits, punishment can be avoided by escaping from …

Coyle V. The Commonwealth, Henry W. Rogers

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"Homicidal mania must be proved, not assumed, nor confounded with reckless frenzy; To instruct, however, that it must be proved by 'clearly preponderating evidence' is error. All the authorities require is that the evidence proving it should 'fairly' preponderate.

"An attempt at suicide is not of itself evidence of insanity, and raises no legal presumption thereof....

"It was clearly proved that Coyle killed Emily Myers. That fact is admitted. The only defence set up is that he was insane at the time."

The Surrender Of Fugitives From Justice, Thomas M. Cooley

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The Constitution of the United States provides that "a person charged in any State with treason, felony, or other crime, who shall flee from justice and be found in another State, shall, on demand of the executive authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having jurisdiction of the crime." The act of Congress of 1793 imposed the duty of surrender upon the executive of the State in which the fugitive should be found, and provided the manner in which the charge of crime should be authenticated for his action. It …

Extradition, Thomas M. Cooley

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The policy of returning for trial and punishment the criminal of one country who has escaped to another, is not less manifest than its justice. It would seem, therefore, that there ought to be no great difficulty in agreeing upon the proper international regulations for the purpose. This, ho:wever, has until recently been practically an impossibility. While the leading nations of Christendom were engaged for a very large proportion of the time in inflicting upon each other all the mischief possible, it was not to be expected that they would be solicitous to assist in the enforcement of their respective …