Law Commons^™

Faithfully Negligent: Religious Implications For Criminal Negligence Cases, Supreet Kaur Bath

Master of Laws Research Papers Repository

Do the actions of parents in withholding medical treatment from their children due to religious influence show wanton or reckless disregard for the safety and lives of their children? This project investigates the morally and legally complicated issue of the influence of religious beliefs in criminal negligence cases. My MRP is animated by the idea that similar cases in the past have been treated with leniency and ought to be given stricter punishments.

I focus in particular on cases in which parents opt for alternative remedies or faith healing for ill children in ignorance or defiance of available medical treatments. …

Due Process People V. Scott (Decided June 5, 1996)

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Innocent Villain: Involuntary Manslaughter By Text, Charles Adside Iii

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Michelle Carter’s texts instructing her mentally ill online boyfriend to commit suicide offended the social moral code. But the law does not categorize all morally reprehensible behavior as criminal. Commonwealth v. Carter is unprecedented in manslaughter law because Carter was convicted on the theory that she was virtually present as opposed to physically present—at the crime scene. The court’s reasoning is expansive, as the framework it employs is excessively vague and does not provide fair notice to the public of which actions constitute involuntary manslaughter. Disturbingly, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court affirmed the trial court’s logic. This Article concludes that …

A General Mitigation For Disturbance-Driven Crimes?: Psychic State, Personal Choice, And Normative Inquiries, Paul H. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

It is argued here that the narrow provoked “heat of passion” mitigation available under current law ought to be significantly expanded to include not just murder but all felonies and not just “heat of passion” but potentially all mental or emotional disturbances, whenever the offender’s situation and capacities meaningfully reduce the offender’s blameworthiness for the violation. In determining eligibility for mitigation, the jury should take into account (a) the extent to which the offender was acting under the influence of mental or emotional disturbance (the psychic state inquiry), (b) given the offender’s situation and capacities, the extent to which one …

Fear-Based Provocation, Michal Buchhandler-Raphael

Scholarly Articles

This Article offers three major contributions to challenge existing view of provocation: first, it considers psychological research that found that fear, similarly to anger, may also significantly interfere with individuals’ decision making processes by disturbing rational judgment, therefore sometimes leading to lethal aggression. Second, drawing on this research, this Article argues that provocation doctrine should be reconstructed to also include a fear-based prong. Third, recognizing fear-based provocation calls for rejecting the loss of control paradigm that currently dominates judges’ and jurors’ perception of the defense. In its place, this Article advocates focusing on the fearful defendant’s fear of violence threatened …

Is Felony Murder The New Depraved Heart Murder: Considering The Appropriate Punishment For Drunken Drivers Who Kill, Dora W. Klein

Faculty Articles

In recognition of the increasing use of felony-murder statutes to prosecute drunken drivers who kill, this Article considers various criticisms and defenses of the felony-murder rule as they apply specifically to felony DWI cases. Part II of this Article discusses several recent precedent setting cases in which drunken drivers who killed were prosecuted under felony murder statutes. Part III explores whether such prosecutions are proper, given the existence of special narrower vehicular manslaughter provisions that a legislature might have intended to be the sole means of prosecuting drunk drivers who kill. Part IV discusses three particular limiting doctrines-merger, inherent dangerousness, …

Supreme Court, Bronx County, People V. Paul, Adam D'Antonio

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Criminal Law And Procedure, Aaron J. Campbell

University of Richmond Law Review

This article aims to provide a succinct review of noteworthy cases in the areas of criminal law and procedure that the Supreme Court of Virginia and the Court of Appeals of Virginia decided this past year. Instead of covering every ruling or procedural point in a particular case, this article focuses on the "take- away" of the holdings with the most precedential value. This article also summarizes significant changes to criminal law and procedure enacted by the 2014 Virginia General Assembly.

"Cain Rose Up Against His Brother Abel And Killed Him": Murder Or Manslaughter?, Irene Merker Rosenberg, Yale L. Rosenberg

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Allocating The Costs Of Parental Free Exercise: Striking A New Balance Between Sincere Religious Belief And A Child's Right To Medical Treatment , Paul A. Monopoli

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Provocation Manslaughter As Partial Justification And Partial Excuse, Mitchell N. Berman, Ian P. Farrell

William & Mary Law Review

The partial defense of provocation provides that a person who kills in the heat of passion brought on by legally adequate provocation is guilty of manslaughter rather than murder. The defense traces back to the twelfth century and exists today, in some form, in almost every U.S. state and other common law jurisdictions. But long history and wide application have not produced agreement on the rationale for the doctrine. To the contrary, the search for a coherent and satisfying rationale remains among the main occupations of criminal law
theorists.

The dominant scholarly view holds that provocation is best explained and …

Domestic Violence And State Intervention In The American West And Australia, 1860-1930, Carolyn B. Ramsey

Publications

This Article calls into question stereotypical assumptions about the presumed lack of state intervention in the family and the patriarchal violence of Anglo-American frontier societies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By analyzing previously unexamined cases of domestic assault and homicide in the American West and Australia, Professor Ramsey reveals a sustained (but largely ineffectual) effort to civilize men by punishing violence against women. Husbands in both the American West and Australia were routinely arrested or summoned to court for beating their wives in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Judges, police officers, journalists, and others expressed dismay …

Criminal Law And Procedure, Virginia B. Theisen, Stephen R. Mccullough

University of Richmond Law Review

The authors have endeavored to select from the many cases and bills those that have the most significant practical impact on the daily practice of criminal law in the Commonwealth. Due to space constraints, the authors have stayed away from discussing settled principles, with a focus on the "take away" for a particular case.

Provoking Change: Comparative Insights On Feminist Homicide Law Reform, Carolyn B. Ramsey

Publications

The provocation defense, which mitigates murder to manslaughter for killings perpetrated in the heat of passion, is one of the most controversial doctrines in the criminal law because of its perceived gender bias; yet most American scholars and lawmakers have not recommended that it be abolished. This Article analyzes trendsetting feminist homicide law reforms, including the abolition of the provocation defense in three Australian jurisdictions, places these reforms in historical context, and assesses their applicability to the United States. It ultimately advocates reintroducing the concept of justified emotion, grounded in modern equality principles and social values, as a requirement for …

Criminal Law And Procedure, Michael T. Judge, Stephen R. Mccullough

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

An Attack On Self-Defense, Reid G. Fontaine

Reid G. Fontaine

Debate about the distinction between justification and excuse in criminal law theory has been lively during the last thirty years. Questions as to the nature and structure of various affirmative defenses continue to be raised, and the doctrine of self-defense has been at the center of much discussion. Three main articulations have been advanced: a purely objective theory, a purely subjective theory, and an objective/subjective hybrid. In the present Article, I support a hybrid model and propose a three-requirement framework that delineates the criteria that must be met to satisfy self-defense as a legitimate justification. Because this three-requirement framework raises …

Adequate (Non)Provocation And Heat Of Passion As Excuse Not Justification, Reid Griffith Fontaine, Jd, Phd

Reid G. Fontaine

For a number of reasons, including the complicated psychological nature of reactive homicide, the heat of passion defense has remained subject to various points of confusion. One persistent issue of disagreement has been whether the defense is a partial justification or excuse. In this Article, I highlight and categorize a series of varied American homicide cases in which the applicability of heat of passion was supported although adequate provocation (or significant provocation by the victim) was absent. The cases are organized to illustrate that even in circumstances in which there is no actual provocation, or the provocation is not sourced …

Homicide On Holiday: Prosecutorial Discretion, Popular Culture, And The Boundaries Of The Criminal Law, Carolyn B. Ramsey

Publications

This article discusses prosecutors' discretion to press criminal charges against individuals who cause death during recreational activities. Based on newspaper sources, published opinions, and unpublished materials from cases that resulted in plea bargains, Homicide on Holiday continues the author's exploration of the relationship between the American public, criminal prosecutors, and the nature of the prosecutors' public role. It shows that, despite popular culture's glorification of risk and a nationwide trend in tort law toward sheltering sports co-participants from civil negligence liability, an exhilarating trip down a ski slope is increasingly likely to land a skier in jail if he collides …

Justification By Faith, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

In June 1997 a sixteen-year-old girl named Shannon Nixon began to feel ill. Her parents belonged to the Faith Tabernacle Church, one of a number of American sects which believe that illness should be treated spiritually rather than medically. Accordingly, the Nixons prayed for Shannon and took her to be anointed at their church. Shannon reported that she felt better and that the spiritual treatment had gained her her victory-her recovery. Before long, however, Shannon again felt ill. She became weaker and weaker and then fell into a coma. A few hours later she died. An autopsy revealed that she …

Passion's Progress: Modern Law Reform And The Provocation Defense, Victoria Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Based on a systematic study of fifteen years of passion murder cases, this article concludes that reform challenges our conventional ideas of a "crime of passion" and, in the process, leads to a murder law that is both illiberal and often perverse. If life tells us that crimes of passion are the stuff of sordid affairs and bedside confrontations, reform tells us that the law's passion may be something quite different. A significant number of the reform cases the author has studied involve no sexual infidelity whatsoever, but only the desire of the killer's victim to leave a miserable relationship. …

Criminal Law—Manslaughter—A Fetus Is Not A Person As The Term Is Used In The Manslaughter Statute, John T. Shannon

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

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

Articles

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 …

A Study In The Treatment Of Crime And Law Enforcement In The United States As Compared To The European Countries., George E. Glos

St. Mary's Law Journal

The United States holds a comparably higher crime rate than European countries in the area of homicide, aggravated assault, robbery, burglary, and incitation of riots. This article explores the differences existing in the treatment of serious crimes in the leading systems of criminal law and law enforcement. This study examines how the United States, compared with European countries, define subcategories of major crimes and establish the penalties, defenses, and the access to relief attached to each crime. Contrasted with the provisions of the various states of the United States, the European provisions are simpler and carry stiffer penalties. The object …

A Re-Examination Of The Law Of Homicide In 1971: The Model Penal Code, Roy Mitchell Moreland

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Criminal Law Revision In Kentucky: Part I—Homicide And Assault, Robert G. Lawson

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

At the present time the Kentucky Commission on Law Enforcement and Crime Prevention and the Legislative Research Commission are jointly engaged in a project designed to revise the state's substantive criminal law. This effort is justifiable only if the existing law is defective and the "revision will result in significant improvement in [criminal law] administration." A cursory examination of the criminal statutes, with no reference to case law, leaves not the slightest doubt as to the need for revision. Until now no major attempt at revision has ever been undertaken in this state. As a consequence, the statutes are devoid …

Criminal Law--Homicide--Murder--Manslaughter--Retrial For Manslaughter On Evidence Of Murder, Alan Lips

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

People V. Haeussler [Dissent], Jesse W. Carter

Jesse Carter Opinions

At trial on charges of manslaughter and driving a vehicle under the influence of intoxicating liquor, admission of testimony concerning the results of a blood test taken without defendant's consent did not deprive her of due process of law.

Criminal Law-Negligent Homicide Statute-Motor Vehicle Operator Suffering From Disease Producing Unconsciousness, Bernard A. Petrie S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

Defendant suffered a single, sudden attack of dizziness or unconsciousness. He was warned by a physician, diagnosing his condition as Meniere's Syndrome, that he might at any time, without warning, suffer another such attack. Defendant worked for a year and three months without a recurrence. Then defendant ''blacked out" while driving alone and his automobile crashed into another, causing the death of its driver. The trial judge convicted for statutory negligent homicide. On appeal, held, affirmed. Defendant's driving on a through state highway with knowledge that he might become disabled without warning met the statutory criterion of driving "carelessly …

Negligent Homicide In The Operation Of An Automobile: Kentucky's 1952 Statute, Robert C. Moffit

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Misdemeanor-Manslaughter Doctrine In Kentucky, William Rice

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.