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Full-Text Articles in Law
Memory And Punishment, O. Carter Snead
Memory And Punishment, O. Carter Snead
Vanderbilt Law Review
Developments in cognitive neuroscience-the science of how the brain enables the mind--continue to prompt profound scholarly debate and reflection on the practice and theory of criminal law. Advances in the field have raised vexing questions relating to lie detection, interrogation methods, the Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination, competency to stand trial, defenses to guilt (such as diminished capacity and insanity), sentencing, and the relationship between moral responsibility and punishment. Similarly, for the past decade, philosophers, scientists, clinicians, and legal scholars have been engaged in a major debate about the cognitive neuroscience of memory and new capacities to modify it …
Giving It Another Shot: A Reexamination Of The "Second Or Subsequent Conviction" Language Of The Firearm Possession Sentencing Statute, Rachel E. Moore
Giving It Another Shot: A Reexamination Of The "Second Or Subsequent Conviction" Language Of The Firearm Possession Sentencing Statute, Rachel E. Moore
Vanderbilt Law Review
The effects of the current interpretation of the federal firearm possession sentencing statute are severe, often mandating the imposition of de facto life sentences for first-time offenders. For example, suppose a twenty-three-year-old first-time offender was found guilty in a federal district court of robbing $500 from two financial institutions in two days and carrying a single firearm during the robbery spree. Under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, this first-time offender would be subject to a sentence ranging between forty-one and fifty-one months for each robbery. Thus, for the substantive offenses, the sentence would total eighty-two to 102 months, or six years …
The Limited Diagnosticity Of Criminal Trials, Dan Simon
The Limited Diagnosticity Of Criminal Trials, Dan Simon
Vanderbilt Law Review
Few political institutions play as palpable, ubiquitous, and solemn a role in the U.S. public life as the criminal justice system. The task of determining the defendant's criminal liability with a high degree of certitude is performed through the ritualized and highly proceduralized adjudicative process, with the trial at its core. The United States Supreme Court has portrayed the criminal trial as a "decisive and portentous" and "paramount" event. Trials are considered "the central institution of law as we know it," the "crown jewel" of the legal system. Amidst its multiple purposes, an essential objective of the criminal trial is …