Law Commons^™

Think Again: The Thought Crime Doctrine And The Limits Of Criminal Law, Jordan Wallace-Wolf

Faculty Scholarship

According to the thought crime doctrine, neither beliefs nor intentions may be subject to criminal punishment. The doctrine is widely endorsed, but puzzling in its scope. Beliefs have a free speech credential: they play a straightforward role in the sincere exchange of ideas. Moreover, they are harmless, in the specific sense that they do not aim at action and so not at lawbreaking. But intentions are otherwise. They do not necessarily further the exchange of ideas and they may aim at wrongful, illegal conduct.

So why should the thought crime doctrine categorically protect them in addition to beliefs? Why not …

Ethical And Aggressive Appellate Advocacy: The Decision To Petition For Certiorari In Criminal Cases, J. Thomas Sullivan

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past six decades, United States Supreme Court decisions have dramatically reshaped the criminal justice process to provide significant protections for defendants charged in federal and state proceedings, reflecting a remarkable expansion of due process and specific constitutional guarantees. For criminal defendants seeking relief based on recognition of new rules of constitutional criminal procedure, application of existing rules or precedent to novel factual scenarios, or in some cases, enforcement of existing precedent, obtaining relief requires further action on the Court’s part. In those situations, the Court’s exercise of its certiorari jurisdiction is the exclusive remedy offering an avenue for …

All Eyez On Me': America's War On Drugs And The Prison-Industrial Complex, André Douglas Pond Cummings

Faculty Scholarship

In 1971, President Richard Nixon named drug abuse as “public enemy number one” in the United States. Since that time, an explicit “War on Drugs” has dominated the political imagination of the United States. Since declaring a War on Drugs, domestic incarceration rates have exploded, particularly in the African-American and Latino populations. Politicians such as Nixon, Barry Goldwater, and Nelson Rockefeller each advocated for harsh drug laws and severe criminal sanctions because they argued a strong correlation existed between drug addiction and crime. These claims have dominated legislative enactments since the 1970s, virtually ignoring those who argue that drug addiction …

Outlier: Iran And Its Use Of The Death Penalty, Ahmed Shaheed, Faraz Sanei

Faculty Scholarship

For several years now the right to life has been under heavy assault in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The country has followed a familiar but troubling pattern regarding the use of the death penalty. It has consistently ranked second in the world in the number of executions carried out (behind China), and first in executions per capita. More recently, the upward trend in executions that began in 2010-11 has reached alarming levels not seen in more than two decades. In 2015, alone, human rights organisations tracking the number of executions in Iran documented at least 966 executions, with over …

Reforming Policing, André Douglas Pond Cummings

Faculty Scholarship

Law enforcement killing of unarmed black men and police brutality visited upon minority citizens continues to confound the United States. Despite protests, clarion calls for reform, admitted training shortcomings and deficiencies among U.S. law enforcement officers, conferences, summits, and movements to reform policing, the solution to ending undisciplined police violence and the hostile killings of unarmed minority individuals at the hands of U.S. police seems to elude us. Why should this be? The United States is home to some of the most creative, innovative, pathmarking, and course-changing thinkers the world has ever known. This challenge — police killing of unarmed …

Corporate Criminal Responsibility For Human Rights Violations: Jurisdiction And Reparations, Kenneth S. Gallant

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Private Prisons And The New Marketplace For Crime, André Douglas Pond Cummings, Adam Lamparello

Faculty Scholarship

A saner and safer prison policy in the United States begins by ending the scourge of the private prison corporation and returning crime and punishment to public function. We continue by radically reimagining our sentencing policies and reducing them significantly for non-violent crimes. We end the War on Drugs, once and for all, and completely reconfigure our drug and prison policy by legalizing and regulating marijuana use and providing health services to addicts of harder drugs and using prison for only violent drug kingpins and cartel bosses. We stop the current criminalization of immigration in its tracks and block the …

Furman, After Four Decades, J. Thomas Sullivan

Faculty Scholarship

Problems of racial discrimination in the imposition of capital sentences, disclosure of misconduct by prosecutors and police, inconsistency in the quality of defense afforded capital defendants, exoneration of death row inmates due to newly available DNA testing, and, most recently, controversies surrounding the potential for cruelty in the execution process itself continue to complicate views about the morality, legality, and practicality of reliance on capital punishment to address even the most heinous of homicide offenses. Despite repeated efforts by the Supreme Court to craft a capital sentencing framework that ensures that death sentences be imposed fairly in light of the …

Crapping Out With Crime Statistics, Robert Steinbuch

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Brady, Arkansas Rule 17.1, And Disclosure Of Scientific Evidence And Expert Opinion, J. Thomas Sullivan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Manson And Its Progeny: An Empirical Analysis Of American Eyewitness Law, Nicholas A. Kahn-Fogel

Faculty Scholarship

Since the Supreme Court established the current constitutional framework for determining the admissibility of eyewitness identification evidence in Manson v. Brathwaite in 1977, scientists and scholars who have evaluated the opinion have uniformly criticized it as insufficient to deter police from using flawed identification procedures and inconsistent with scientific evidence of the best ways to assess the reliability of evidence tainted by such procedures. Until now, however, the work of these scientists and scholars has been based primarily on simulation experiments and on a selective assortment of easily criticized judicial decisions applying Manson. This study provides the first systematic analysis …

Lethal Discrimination, J. Thomas Sullivan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Lethal Discrimination 2: Repairing The Remedies For Racial Discrimination In Capital Sentencing, J. Thomas Sullivan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Criminal Defence And The International Legal Personality Of The Individual, Kenneth S. Gallant

Faculty Scholarship

Since the beginning of the Nuremberg trial, the status of the individual in international law has changed. This change is intimately connected with the right of defense in criminal proceedings, especially international criminal proceedings. Today, as a matter of right, the individual may make certain claims in international law, and especially international criminal law and international human rights law related to criminal procedure and substantive criminal law, without relying on a state to make them on his or her behalf. This article explores this development of the international legal personality of individuals. It also considers some of the limits of …

International Criminal Courts And The Making Of Public International Law: New Roles For International Organizations And Individuals, Kenneth S. Gallant

Faculty Scholarship

Judicial decisions of the International Criminal Court and other international criminal tribunals now serve as instances of practice and statements of opinio juris for the formation of customary international criminal law and customary international human rights law related to criminal law and procedure. In these areas of law and others, they are no longer “subsidiary” sources as that word is used in the International Court of Justice Statute, Art. 38. In the same fields of customary international law, other binding acts of international organizations, such as the UN Security Council, are also used as practice, and the statements of these …

Thug Life: Hip Hop’S Curious Relationship With Criminal Justice, André Douglas Pond Cummings

Faculty Scholarship

I argue that hip hop music and culture profoundly influences attitudes toward and perceptions about criminal justice in the United States. At base, hip hop lyrics and their cultural accoutrements turns U.S. punishment philosophy upon its head, effectively defeating the foundational purposes of American crime and punishment. Prison and punishment philosophy in the U.S. is based on clear principles of retribution and incapacitation, where prison time for crime should serve to deter individuals from engaging in criminal behavior. In addition, the stigma that attaches to imprisonment should dissuade criminals from recidivism. Hip hop culture denounces crime and punishment in the …

Developing A State Constitutional Law Strategy In New Mexico Criminal Prosecutions, J. Thomas Sullivan

Faculty Scholarship

This article includes a review of the process by which the New Mexico courts have developed an independent state constitutional jurisprudence reflecting more expansive protections of individual rights than those afforded by the Federal Constitution, as interpreted in the decisions of the United States Supreme Court. It addresses the existing body of state constitutional law and suggests possibilities for further developments, including both the substantive aspects of state constitutional topics and the procedural requirements for asserting state constitutional protections as alternative sources for protection of individual rights. It documents how far New Mexico has come in developing a state constitutional …

Danforth, Retroactivity, And Federalism, J. Thomas Sullivan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Crawford, Retroactivity, And The Importance Of Being Earnest, J. Thomas Sullivan

Faculty Scholarship

In this article Professor Sullivan examines the Supreme Court's evolving Confrontation Clause jurisprudence through its dramatic return to pre-Sixth Amendment appreciation of the role of cross-examination in the criminal trial reflected in its 2004 decision in Crawford v. Washington. He discusses the past quarter century of the Court's confrontation decisions and their impact on his client, Ralph Rodney Earnest, recounting the defendant's conviction and twenty-four-year litigation journey through state and federal courts to his eventual release from prison in the only successful attempt to use Crawford retroactively known to date.

The Clinician As Ethical Role Model In The Criminal Appellate Litigation Clinic, J. Thomas Sullivan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

International Human Rights Standards In International Organizations: The Case Of International Criminal Courts, Kenneth S. Gallant

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Jurisdiction To Adjudicate And Jurisdiction To Prescribe In International Criminal Courts, Kenneth S. Gallant

Faculty Scholarship

Direct jurisdiction over individuals, along with responsibilities to them, are outstanding characteristics of the new International Criminal Court (ICC or Court), as they already are of the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and for Rwanda (ICTR). This Article raises issues of legitimate power to prosecute and to define criminal law and issues of individual human rights which necessarily arise in any criminal system.

This Article is predominantly an analysis of issues of criminal jurisdiction over persons as they are treated in the ICC Statute, as well as in the current ad hoc international criminal tribunals. Part II …

The Role And Powers Of Defense Counsel In The Rome Statute Of The International Criminal Court, Kenneth S. Gallant

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Mandatory Hiv Testing Of Professional Boxers: An Unconstitutional Effort To Regulate A Sport That Needs To Be Regulated, Michael T. Flannery, Raymond C. O'Brien

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Sovereignty, Judicial Assistance And Protection Of Human Rights In International Criminal Tribunals, Kenneth S. Gallant

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Crime Control And Harassment Of The Innocent, Raymond Dacey, Kenneth S. Gallant

Faculty Scholarship

Crime control through law enforcement is generally considered to be a two-part process of appre­hending and incapacitating or rehabilitating the guilty, and deterring the innocent from crime by the threat of punishment. The analysis presented here shows that the protection of the innocent from harass­ment-detention, arrest, punishment, and other intrusions by the criminal justice system-is important in deterring crime. Specifically, the analysis shows that deterrence from crime is weakened and then lost for a rational individual who holds the majority attitude toward risk, if the levels of rightful punishment and wrongful harassment are increased, as in a war on crime, …

Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy: Broadening The Scope Of Child Abuse, Michael T. Flannery

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Norplant: The New Scarlet Letter?, Michael T. Flannery

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Ex Post Facto Judicial Clarification Of A Vague Aggravating Circumstance In A Capital Punishment Statute, Kenneth S. Gallant

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.