Law Commons^™

Casual Ostracism: Jury Exclusion On The Basis Of Criminal Convictions, Anna Roberts

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Illusory Eighth Amendment, John F. Stinneford

UF Law Faculty Publications

Although there is no obvious doctrinal connection between the Supreme Court’s Miranda jurisprudence and its Eighth Amendment excessive punishments jurisprudence, the two are deeply connected at the level of methodology. In both areas, the Supreme Court has been criticized for creating “prophylactic” rules that invalidate government actions because they create a mere risk of constitutional violation. In reality, however, both sets of rules deny constitutional protection to a far greater number of individuals with plausible claims of unconstitutional treatment than they protect.

This dysfunctional combination of over- and underprotection arises from the Supreme Court’s use of implementation rules as a …

Constitutionally Tailoring Punishment, Richard A. Bierschbach, Stephanos Bibas

All Faculty Scholarship

Since the turn of the century, the Supreme Court has begun to regulate non-capital sentencing under the Sixth Amendment in the Apprendi line of cases (requiring jury findings of fact to justify sentence enhancements) as well as under the Eighth Amendment in the Miller and Graham line of cases (forbidding mandatory life imprisonment for juvenile defendants). Though both lines of authority sound in individual rights, in fact they are fundamentally about the structures of criminal justice. These two seemingly disparate lines of doctrine respond to structural imbalances in non-capital sentencing by promoting morally appropriate punishment judgments that are based on …

Summary Of Clancy V. State, 129 Nev. Adv. Op. 89, Jim Hoffman

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

A three-judge panel of the Court considered three questions: (1) whether NRS 484E.010-030 require actual knowledge that an accident has occurred, or whether constructive knowledge is sufficient; (2) whether the definition of “involved in an accident” in the same statute is unconstitutionally vague or ambiguous; and (3) whether the evidence in this case was sufficient to support the guilty verdict handed down in the lower court.

Summary Of Clay V. Eighth Jud. Dist. Ct., 129 Nev. Adv. Op. 91, Joseph Peacock

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court determined one issue: whether NRS 62H.170(2)(c) or NRS 62H.170(3) permits the State to inspect a defendant’s sealed juvenile record to obtain information for use against that defendant in a subsequent criminal prosecution.

Summary Of Watters V. State, 129 Nev. Adv. Op. 94, Brian Vasek

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court determined whether the prosecution’s use of a PowerPoint slide during opening statement with the defendant’s booking photo and the word “guilty” superimposed across the photo was improper advocacy and undermined the defendant’s presumption of innocence.

Presumed Guilty, Terrence Cain

Faculty Scholarship

It would probably surprise the average American to learn that prosecutors need only prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt sometimes. Although the Due Process Clauses of the Constitution require that the government prove each element of an alleged criminal offense beyond a reasonable doubt, the use of statutory presumptions has relieved the government of this responsibility, and in some cases, has even shifted the burden to the defendant to disprove the presumption. Likewise, the Sixth Amendment grants a criminal defendant the right to have the jury and the jury alone determine whether the government has met its burden and ultimately …

Taking A Second Look At Arrestee Dna In California, Mark Wilson

GGU Law Review Blog

No abstract provided.

Summary Of State V. Lloyd, 129 Nev. Adv. Op. 79, Jim Hoffman

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court considers an appeal from a district court order granting the defendant’s motion to suppress evidence based on a warrantless automobile search. The Court considers one issue: whether Article I, Section 18 of the Nevada Constitution imposes an exigency requirement on officers conducting warrantless vehicle searches, or whether officers need only have probable cause.

Summary Of In Re Steven Daniel P., 129 Nev. Adv. Op. 73, Geordan G. Logan

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court determined two issues: (1) whether the juvenile court has authority under NRS 62C.230(1)(a) to dismiss a delinquency petition and refer a juvenile for informal supervision pursuant to NRS 62C.200 without the written approval of the district attorney; and (2) whether the juvenile court's discretion in overseeing a juvenile matter is limited by the authority granted under the Nevada Revised Statutes.

Summary Of Paley V. Second Judicial District Court, 129 Nev. Adv. Op. 74, Alexandria K. Mendonca

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court determined whether it should consider petitioner’s writ of mandamus against a direct contempt order under an exception to the mootness doctrine.

Symposium Foreword: Bombshell Or Baby Step? The Ramifications Of Miller V. Alabama For Sentencing Law And Juvenile Crime Policy, Paul J. Litton

Faculty Publications

This short essay, which serves as the Symposium Foreword, argues that the rationale of Miller is incoherent insofar as it permits juvenile LWOP sentences and that the Court misidentifies the foundational principle of Roper. First, in banning mandatory juvenile LWOP sentences, the Court invokes Woodson, which bans mandatory death sentences. The Court maintains that Woodson, from its capital jurisprudence, applies because juvenile LWOP is “akin to the death penalty” for juveniles. But if the Court’s capital jurisprudence is binding based on that equivalence, Roper should imply that juvenile LWOP, like the death penalty, is unconstitutional for juveniles. This essay briefly …

An Ounce Of Pretrial Prevention Is Worth More Than A Pound Of Post-Conviction Cure: Untethering Federal Pretrial Criminal Procedure From Due Process Standards Of Review, Jordan Gross

Faculty Law Review Articles

Some Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure cover purely technical matters. Some Rules, however, cover procedures with constitutional dimensions. When a federal court is interpreting a Rule that has a companion constitutional doctrine, an issue arises as to whether the Rule’s requirements are co-extensive with the constitutional protections defined by federal case law, or whether the Rule provides federal defendants a higher level of pretrial procedural protection than a post-conviction due process standard. Federal courts have been inconsistent in identifying and resolving this question of constitutional equivalency. In interpreting some pretrial Criminal Rules, federal courts make a clear distinction between the …

The Dog Days Of Fourth Amendment Jurisprudence, Kit Kinports

NULR Online

No abstract provided.

Teaching 'The Wire': Fiction As Pedagogical Tool, Roger Fairfax

Presentations

No abstract provided.

Grave Injustice: Unearthing Wrongful Executions, Mary Kelly Tate

Law Faculty Publications

This book review discusses Richard A. Stack's book, Grave Injustice, which illustrates the flaws in America's use of capital punishment. "Simply put, the death penalty is shown to be a massive policy failure diminishing the legitimacy of the criminal justice system in the world's leading democracy. Stack uses his reportorial skills to distill the complex subject of the American death penalty into a digestible form, yet he never cuts corners with the human dimension. This dimension is always at the center of crime and punishment and, most hauntingly, at the center of the American death penalty and its tragic …

Altering Attention In Adjudication, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Andrew J. Wistrich, Chris Guthrie

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Judges decide complex cases in rapid succession but are limited by cognitive constraints. Consequently judges cannot allocate equal attention to every aspect of a case. Case outcomes might thus depend on which aspects of a case are particularly salient to the judge. Put simply, a judge focusing on one aspect of a case might reach a different outcome than a judge focusing on another. In this Article, we report the results of a series of studies exploring various ways in which directing judicial attention can shape judicial outcomes. In the first study, we show that judges impose shorter sentences when …

Summary Of State V. Greene, 129 Nev. Adv. Op. No. 58, Brittnie Watkins

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court considered an appeal from a district court order granting respondent’s post-conviction petition for a writ of habeas corpus.

Summary Of Armenta-Carpio V. State, 129 Nev. Adv. Op. No. 54, Drew Wheaton

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court considered whether a concession-of-guilt strategy is equivalent to a guilty plea, thus requiring the district court to canvass a defendant to determine whether he knowingly and voluntarily consented to the concession of guilt.

Summary Of Brass V. State, 129 Nev. Adv. Op. 53, Katelyn J. Cantu

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court considered whether an attorney may file a substantive motion on a deceased client's behalf in a criminal case when a personal representative has not been substituted as a party to the appeal.

Summary Of State V. Robles-Nieves, 129 Nev. Adv. Op. No. 55, Sean Africk

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court considered the appropriate factors for evaluating a motion for the stay of a criminal proceeding pending the resolution of an interlocutory appeal from an order granting a motion to suppress evidence.

Summary Of Clay V. Eighth Judicial District Court, 129 Nev. Adv. Op. 48, Katelyn Franklin

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court considered a petition for a writ of mandamus challenging an order from the district court denying a pretrial petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The question before the Court was whether a district attorney violates NRS 172.095(2) when he or she seeks an indictment for child abuse or neglect under NRS 200.508(1),2 based on nonaccidental physical injury, but fails to inform the grand jurors of the definition of “physical injury.”

Summary Of State V. Beckman, 129 Nev. Adv. Op. 51, Daniel Nubel

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

Appeal from a district court order granting a motion to suppress evidence. The Court clarified the government’s ability to subject citizens to drug sniffing dogs in the absence of reasonable suspicion.

Contrition In The Courtroom: Do Apologies Affect Adjudication?, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Chris Guthrie, Andrew J. Wistrich

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Apologies usually help to repair social relationships and appease aggrieved parties. Previous research has demonstrated that in legal settings, apologies influence how litigants and juries evaluate both civil and criminal defendants. Judges, however, routinely encounter apologies offered for instrumental reasons, such as to reduce a civil damage award or fine, or to shorten a criminal sentence. Frequent exposure to insincere apologies might make judges suspicious of or impervious to apologies. In a series of experimental studies with judges as research participants, we find that in some criminal settings, apologies can induce judges to be more lenient, but overall, apologizing to …

Order, Technology And The Constitutional Meanings Of Criminal Procedure, Thomas P. Crocker

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Death Penalty Drugs: A Prescription That's Getting Harder To Fill, Corinna Barrett Lain

Law Faculty Publications

Six states have abolished the death penalty in the past six years—Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland, and New Mexico. We haven’t seen mass moves like that since the 1960s. What gives?

Part of the answer is that those states weren’t executing anyway. More people in those states were dying on death row waiting to be executed than were actually being executed, and the death penalty is breathtakingly expensive to maintain (a point to which I’ll return in a moment).

So why weren’t the states executing? We tend to hear about innocence claims, trench warfare litigation, official moratoriums, study …

Putting The Trial Penalty On Trial, David S. Abrams

All Faculty Scholarship

The "trial penalty" is a concept widely accepted by all the major actors in the criminal justice system: defendants, prosecutors, defense attorneys, court employees, and judges. The notion is that defendants receive longer sentences at trial than they would have through plea bargain, often substantially longer. The concept is intuitive: longer sentences are necessary in order to induce settlements and without a high settlement rate it would be impossible for courts as currently structured to sustain their immense caseload. While intuitively appealing, this view of the trial penalty is completely at odds with economic prediction. Since both prosecutors and defendants …

The Duties Of Non-Judicial Actors In Ensuring Competent Negotiation, Stephanos Bibas

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay, written for a symposium at Duquesne Law School entitled Plea Bargaining After Lafler and Frye, offers thoughts on how lawyers could learn from doctors’ experience in catching and preventing medical errors and aviation experts’ learning from airplane crashes and near misses. It also expresses skepticism about the efficacy of judges’ ex post review of ineffective assistance of counsel, but holds out more hope that public-defender organizations, bar associations, probation officers, sentencing judges, sentencing commissions, and line and supervisory prosecutors can do much more to prevent misunderstanding and remedy ineffective bargaining advice in the first place.

Searching For Solutions To The Indigent Defense Crisis In The Broader Criminal Justice Reform Agenda, Roger Fairfax

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

As we mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Gideon v. Wainwright decision, the nearly universal assessment is that our indigent defense system remains too under-resourced and overwhelmed to fulfill the promise of the landmark decision, and needs to be reformed. At the same time, fiscal necessity and moral outrage have prompted a historic reexamination of outdated policies that have led to an overreliance on incarceration and inefficiencies in the administration of criminal justice. This Essay argues that there are synergies between the indigent defense reform agenda and the broader criminal justice reform agenda, which places a premium on cost-effective, evidence-based, …

Safe To Drive? Police Powers Of Search And Seizure In The Vehicular Context, Mark Rucci

Honors College

Since their creation, automobiles have become a central facet of the American culture and psyche. As status symbols and modes of transportation their importance cannot be overstated. Americans love their cars, and the average citizen believes that he or she has legitimate privacy interests in his or her vehicle. But is this the case? For decades, The Court has struggled to balance 4th Amendment privacy rights with effective police procedure, and has thus handed down dozens of rulings on the topic, many of which often seem disparate and contradictory. In the face of such confusion, the Court’s answer has almost …