Law Commons^™

Brief Of The National Association For Public Defense As Amici Curiae Supporting Petitioner, Christensen V. United States Of America (U.S. November 7, 2016) (No. 16-461)., Janet Moore

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

The jury is essential to our structure of government, available to criminal defendants as the final arbiter of guilt. As this Court has recognized time and again, the jury serves an important role both structurally within the balance of powers and as a check on governmental power, adding a layer of protection for individual defendants.

The rule applied by the Ninth Circuit and some other courts, allowing dismissal of a holdout juror if a judge sees no reasonable possibility that his view is connected to the merits of the case, threatens the fundamental role of the jury. In contrast to …

Brief Of The National Association For Public Defense As Amici Curiae Supporting Petitioner, Bridgeman V. District Attorney For Suffolk District, 476 Mass. 298 (2016) (No. Sjc-12157)., Janet Moore

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

As the highest courts in Florida, Missouri, Michigan, New York, and Pennsylvania have demonstrated, systemic relief is necessary and appropriate to cure systemic failures that deny access to courts by imposing overwhelming demands on struggling public defense systems. Government misconduct created exactly that type of constitutional crisis by flooding the Commonwealth’s criminal legal system with 24,000 Dookhan cases. New revelations of even more corruption in the Commonwealth’s forensic sciences system are now anticipated to exacerbate that crisis by adding another 18,000 Farak wrongful-conviction cases. At the same time, the District Attorneys have undermined progress on fair, reliable case-by-case resolution of …

Choosing A Criminal Procedure Casebook: On Lesser Evils And Free Books, Ben L. Trachtenberg

Faculty Publications

Among the more important decisions a law teacher makes when preparing a new course is what materials to assign. Criminal procedure teachers are spoiled for choice, with legal publishers offering several options written by teams of renowned scholars. This Article considers how a teacher might choose from the myriad options available and suggests two potentially overlooked criteria: weight and price.

Shakin' And Bakin': The Supreme Court's Remarkable Criminal Law Rulings Of The 1999 Term, William E. Hellerstein

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Much Ado About Some Things: Fourth Amendment Rulings Dominate The Supreme Court’S Criminal Law Decisions In The 2000 Term, William E. Hellerstein

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Skilling: More Blind Monks Examining The Elephant, Julie Rose O'Sullivan

Fordham Urban Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The War Against Ourselves: Heien V. North Carolina, The War On Drugs, And Police Militarization, Mallory Meads

University of Miami Law Review

Approximately fifty years ago, America declared a war against itself—the “War on Drugs.” Since then, our local and state police, armed with military weapons and federal funding, have fought tirelessly against “public enemy number one”—drugs. Not surprisingly, this war has created an atmosphere where it is now common to see police officers equipped with a mentality and armor that had previously only been seen in the dark-trenches of an international war zone. Worse yet, this battlefield mentality has leaked into almost every area of police-civilian encounters.

As a “loyal foot solider” in the Executive’s War on Drugs, however, the Supreme …

The Supreme Court's Love-Hate Relationship With Miranda, Kit Kinports

Kit Kinports

In recent years, the Supreme Court has enjoyed a love-hate relationship with its landmark decision in Miranda v. Arizona. While the Court has not hesitated to narrow Miranda’s reach, it has also been wary of deliberate efforts to circumvent it. This pragmatic approach to Miranda can be doctrinally unsatisfying and even incoherent at times, but it basically maintains the core structure of Miranda as the police have come to know and adapt to it. Last Term provided the first glimpse of the Roberts Court’s views on Miranda, as the Court considered three Miranda cases: Maryland v. Shatzer, Florida v. Powell, …

The Death Knell For The Death Penalty: Judge Carney's Order To Kill Capital Punishment Rings Loud Enough To Reach The Supreme Court, Alyssa Hughes

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

No abstract provided.

Prosecutorial Ventriloquism: People V. Tom And The Substantive Use Of Post-Arrest, Pre-Miranda Silence To Infer Consciousness Of Guilt, Joshua Bornstein

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Antidemocratic Sixth Amendment, Janet Moore

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Criminal procedure experts often claim that poor people have no Sixth Amendment right to choose their criminal defense lawyers. These experts insist that the Supreme Court has reserved the Sixth Amendment right to choose for the small minority of defendants who can afford to hire counsel. This Article upends that conventional wisdom with new doctrinal, theoretical, and practical arguments supporting a Sixth Amendment right to choose for all defendants, including the overwhelming majority who are indigent. The Article’s fresh case analysis shows the Supreme Court’s “no-choice” statements are dicta, which the Court’s own reasoning and rulings refute. The Article’s new …

Policing In The Era Of Permissiveness: Mitigating Misconduct Through Third-Party Standing, Julian A. Cook

Scholarly Works

On April 4, 2015, Walter L. Scott was driving his vehicle when he was stopped by Officer Michael T. Slager of the North Charleston, South Carolina, police department for a broken taillight. A dash cam video from the officer’s vehicle showed the two men engaged in what appeared to be a rather routine verbal exchange. Sometime after Slager returned to his vehicle, Scott exited his car and ran away from Slager, prompting the officer to pursue him on foot. After he caught up with Scott in a grassy field near a muffler establishment, a scuffle between the men ensued, purportedly …

When The Police Get The Law Wrong: How Heien V. North Carolina Further Erodes The Fourth Amendment, Vivan M. Rivera

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

No abstract provided.