Law Commons^™

Reestablishing A Knowledge Mens Rea Requirement For Armed Career Criminal Act "Violent Felonies" Post-Voisine, Jeffrey A. Turner

Vanderbilt Law Review

Until 2016, federal courts unanimously concluded that predicate offenses for the Armed Career Criminal Act ('ACCA") required a knowledge mens rea. Therefore, any state law crimes that could be com- mitted with a reckless mens rea were not "violent felonies" and could not serve as ACCA predicates. In 2016, however, the U.S. Supreme Court's opinion in Voisine v. United States disrupted that lower court consensus. The Court stated that a reckless mens rea was sufficient to violate 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(9), which bars individuals convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence offenses from possessing firearms.

The ACCA's language is similar to § …

Disclosing Prosecutorial Misconduct, Jason Kreag

Vanderbilt Law Review

Prosecutorial misconduct in the form of Brady violations continues to plague the criminal justice system. Brady misconduct represents a fundamental breakdown in the adversarial process, denying defendants a fair trial and undermining the legitimacy of the criminal justice system. Commentators have responded by proposing a range of reforms to increase Brady compliance. Yet these reforms largely ignore the need to remedy the harms from past Brady violations. Furthermore, these proposals focus almost entirely on the harms defendants face from prosecutors'Brady misconduct, ignoring the harms victims, jurors, witnesses, and others endure because of Brady misconduct. This Article proposes a new remedy …

Penile Polygraphy: The Admissibility Of Penile-Plethysmograph Results At Sentencing In Tennessee, Steven Poland

Vanderbilt Law Review

State judges in Tennessee currently consider the results of penile plethysmograph ("PPG") evaluations when sentencing convicted sex offenders. These highly intrusive physical tests purport to identify whether an offender's arousal is considered "deviant" by measuring the change in penis size after viewing various stimuli. Because the results are usually buried in psychosexual evaluations that are part of general presentence assessments of recidivism risk, PPG evaluations suffer from a lack of standardization and little attention under the rules of evidence. Interestingly, PPG testing is similar to polygraphy in a number of ways, although studies have shown that PPG results are more …