Law Commons^™

“Progressive” Prosecutors And “Proper” Punishments, Benjamin Levin

Scholarship@WashULaw

After decades of relative inattention to prosecutorial elections, academics and activists recently have focused on “progressive prosecutors” as a promising avenue for criminal justice reform. That said, the growing literature on progressive prosecutors reflects little clarity about what makes a prosecutor “progressive.” Recent campaigns suggest disparate visions of how to operationalize “progressive prosecution.” In this chapter, I describe four ideal types of progressive prosecutor: (1) the progressive who prosecutes, (2) the proceduralist prosecutor, (3) the prosecutorial progressive, and (4) the anti-carceral prosecutor. Looking to sentencing policy as a case study, I examine how these different ideal types illustrate different visions …

Prosecuting The Crisis, Benjamin Levin

Scholarship@WashULaw

Over the past decade, activists and academics have celebrated the rise of the so-called “progressive prosecutor” movement. District attorney candidates—often former public defenders or civil rights lawyers—have promised to use prosecutorial discretion to address the injustices of the criminal system. A proliferation of such campaigns, and the electoral successes of some of these candidates have raised questions about progressive prosecution: what does it actually mean to be a progressive prosecutor? Does progressive prosecution work? Do progressive candidates follow through on campaign promises? And, how enthusiastic should defense attorneys, reformers, and critics of the carceral state be about progressive prosecution? The …

Combating Recidivism, Shaylin Daley

Senior Honors Projects

SHAYLIN DALEY (Psychology) Combating Recidivism Sponsor: Lisa Holley (Political Science) Many people believe that criminals cannot be helped. It is evident that at least some of society shuns people who break laws and have negative views about the amount of money spent on detaining inmates. Thousands of individuals are released from United States prisons a day. Many of these individuals have no plan in place for their return home and are sent into the streets with nothing except for a jail ID. Most of these people will end up returning to prison. A good sum of these people face problems …

Criminal Acts And Basic Moral Equality, John A. Humbach

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Modern criminal justice presupposes that persons are not morally equal. On the contrary, those who do wrong are viewed by the law as less worthy of respect, concern and decent treatment: Offenders, it is said, “deserve” to suffer for their misdeeds. Yet, there is scant logical or empirical basis for the law's supposition that offenders are morally inferior. The usual reasoning is that persons who intentionally or knowingly do wrong are the authors and initiators of their acts and, as such, are morally responsible for them. But this reasoning rests on the assumption that a person's mental states, such as …

Criminal Justice Secrets, Meghan J. Ryan

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The American criminal justice system is cloaked in secrecy. The government employs covert surveillance operations. Grand-jury proceedings are hidden from public view. Prosecutors engage in closed-door plea-bargaining and bury exculpatory evidence. Juries convict defendants on secret evidence. Jury deliberations are a black box. And jails and prisons implement clandestine punishment practices. Although there are some justifications for this secrecy, the ubiquitous nature of it is contrary to this nation’s Founders’ steadfast belief in the transparency of criminal justice proceedings. Further, the pervasiveness of secrecy within today’s criminal justice system raises serious constitutional concerns. The accumulation of secrecy and the aggregation …

Victims’ Rights Revisited, Benjamin Levin

Scholarship@WashULaw

This Essay responds to Bennett Capers's article, "Against Prosecutors." I offer four critiques of Capers’s proposal to bring back private prosecutions: (A) that shifting power to victims still involves shifting power to the carceral state and away from defendants; (B) that defining the class of victims will pose numerous problems; C) that privatizing prosecution reinforces a troubling impulse to treat social problems at the individual level; and (D) broadly, that these critiques suggest that Capers has traded the pathologies of “public” law for the pathologies of “private” law. Further, I argue that the article reflects a new, left-leaning vision of …

Letter And Introduction: An Introduction By Angela J. Davis, Angela J. Davis

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

The Defender General, Daniel Epps, William Ortman

Scholarship@WashULaw

The United States needs a Defender General—a public official charged with representing the collective interests of criminal defendants before the Supreme Court of the United States. The Supreme Court is effectively our nation’s chief regulator of criminal justice. But in the battle to influence the Court’s rulemaking, government interests have substantial structural advantages. As compared to counsel for defendants, government lawyers—and particularly those from the U.S. Solicitor General’s office—tend to be more experienced advocates who have more credibility with the Court. Most importantly, government lawyers can act strategically to play for bigger long-term victories, while defense lawyers must zealously advocate …

Criminal Law In Crisis, Benjamin Levin

Scholarship@WashULaw

In this Essay, I offer a brief account of how the COVID-19 pandemic lays bare the realities and structural flaws of the carceral state. I provide two primary examples or illustrations, but they are not meant to serve as an exhaustive list. Rather, by highlighting these issues, problems, or (perhaps) features, I mean to suggest that this moment of crisis should serve not just as an opportunity to marshal resources to address the pandemic, but also as a chance to address the harsh realities of the U.S. criminal system. Further, my claim isn’t that criminal law is in some way …

Lawful Searches Incident To Unlawful Arrests: A Reform Proposal, Mark A. Summers

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Assessing Risk And Cash Bail In Massachusetts, Brittany M. Gammett

Honors Program Theses and Projects

The use of risk assessments to determine the outcome of bail hearings has the potential to eliminate inequality in bail decisions and establish an impartial uniformity for the use of bail in jurisdictions across Massachusetts – but only when the assessments are based on empirical evidence and combined with judicial discretion. In April of 2018, Massachusetts passed a criminal justice reform bill. Under the new reform, a judge must take into account a defendant’s ability to pay bail when a bail amount is set. I measured the success of the bill through an ethnographic study, by sitting in on bail …

Public Perceptions Of Police Interactions With Juveniles, Jillian Orr

Honors Program Theses and Projects

While previous research shows how different people respond differently to situations regarding police use of force on juveniles (Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, etc) this paper delves into what aspect each person has that influences the way they feel the police officer should respond to a juvenile suspect. I surveyed a group of about 300 people and asked them to give their responses to a vignette in which they were the acting police officer. Then, I analyzed the public opinion results through the lens of authoritarianism and compared them to the variables of age, gender, employment, and education.

Tradeoffs Between Wrongful Convictions And Wrongful Acquittals: Understanding And Avoiding The Risks, Paul Cassell

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

This article focuses on trade-offs that inhere in the criminal justice system, tradeoffs neatly encapsulated in Blackstone’s famous ten-to-one ratio of guilty persons who should be allowed escape justice rather than an innocent suffer. Blackstone’s aphorism reminds us not only of the importance of ensuring that innocent persons are not convicted, but also that unbounded protections might unduly interfere with convicting the guilty. In my contribution to a symposium in honor of Professor Michael Risinger, I respond to thoughtful articles written by both Professors Laudan and Zalman and make two main points. First, in Part I, I turn to Professor …

The History Of Misdemeanor Bail, Shima Baughman

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Bail is one of the most consequential decisions in criminal justice. The ability to secure bail often makes the difference between guilt and innocence, retaining employment and family obligations, and keeping a place to live. These implications affect those charged with felonies and this has been the focus for many years, but it affects even more so those charged with misdemeanors. A misdemeanor is theoretically a less serious crime with less serious consequences, but the effects on a defendant’s life are just as serious in the short term. There is a growing body of important empirical work that demonstrates the …

The Bail Book: A Comprehensive Look At Bail In America's Criminal Justice System - Introduction, Shima Baughman

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Mass incarceration is one of the greatest social problems facing the United States today. America incarcerates a greater percentage of its population than any other country and is one of only two countries that requires arrested individuals to pay bail to be released from jail while awaiting trial. After arrest, the bail decision is the single most important cause of mass incarceration, yet this decision is often neglected since it is made in less than two minutes. Shima Baradaran Baughman draws on constitutional rights and new empirical research to show how we can reform bail in America. Tracing the history …

Revisiting Our Administrative System Of Criminal Justice, Benjamin E. Rosenberg

Res Gestae

Nineteen years after Judge Lynch’s piece, "Our Administrative System of Criminal Justice," this Article considers recent developments in the criminal justice system and whether Judge Lynch’s observations have withstood the test of time. It suggests that Judge Lynch’s observation—that our criminal justice system has strayed far from the model of the adversarial system—remains as true today as it was when he made it in 1998. It further explains that developments in the nineteen years since the publication of “Our Administrative System of Criminal Justice” have caused the criminal justice system to stray even further from the adversarial model and in …

The Miranda App: Metaphor And Machine, Andrew Ferguson, Richard Leo

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

For fifty years, the core problem that gave rise to Miranda – namely, the coercive pressure of custodial interrogation – has remained largely unchanged. This article proposes bringing Miranda into the twenty-first century by developing a “Miranda App” to replace the existing, human Miranda warnings and waiver process with a digital, scripted computer program of videos, text, and comprehension assessments. The Miranda App would provide constitutionally adequate warnings, clarifying answers, contextual information, and age-appropriate instruction to suspects before interrogation. Designed by legal scholars, validated by social science experts, and tested by police, the Miranda App would address several decades of …

Crimmigration: The Missing Piece Of Criminal Justice Reform, Yolanda Vazquez

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Over the last decade, a new push for criminal justice reform has taken hold. While the moral and fiscal costs have been exorbitant over the last forty years, failing state budgets and bipartisan recognition of the “broken” system have finally caused legislatures, politicians, and advocates to reassess the costs and benefits of the criminal justice system. Breaking the “tough on crime/soft on crime” binary, the “smart on crime” motto has become a helpful tool in reform efforts aimed at reducing the number of individuals incarcerated and ensuring its fairness, regardless of race and socioeconomic status. Little attention, however, has been …

Instrumentalizing The Expressive: Transplanting Sentencing Circles Into The Canadian Criminal Trial, Toby S. Goldbach

All Faculty Publications

This Article examines reforms to criminal sentencing procedures in Canada, focusing on Aboriginal healing circles, which were incorporated as “sentencing circles” into the criminal trial. Using the lens of comparative law and legal transplants, this Article recounts the period of sentencing reform in Canada in the 1990s, when scholars, practitioners, and activists inquired into Aboriginal confrontation with the criminal justice system by comparing Euro-Canadian and Aboriginal justice values and principles. As a way to bridge the gap between vastly differing worldviews and approaches to justice, judges and Aboriginal justice advocates transplanted sentencing circles into the sentencing phase of the criminal …

Risk As A Proxy For Race: The Dangers Of Risk Assessment, Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

Actuarial risk assessment in the implementation and administration of criminal sentencing has a long history in this country – a long and fraught history. Today, many progressive advocates promote the use of actuarial risk assessment instruments as part of a strategy to reduce the problem of "mass incarceration." Former Attorney General Eric Holder has called on the U.S. Sentencing Commission to hold hearings to further consider the matter of risk assessment and prediction tools in sentencing and parole.

The objective – to reduce our massive over-incarceration in this country – is critical and noble. But risk assessment tools are simply …

Gideon V. Wainwright--From A 1963 Perspective, Jerold H. Israel

Articles

Gideon v. Wainwright is more than a “landmark” Supreme Court ruling in the field of constitutional criminal procedure. As evidenced by the range of celebrators of Gideon’s Fiftieth Anniversary (extending far beyond the legal academy) and Gideon’s inclusion in the basic coverage of high school government courses, Gideon today is an icon of the American justice system. I have no quarrel with that iconic status, but I certainly did not see any such potential in Gideon when I analyzed the Court’s ruling shortly after it was announced in March of 1963. I had previously agreed to write an article for …

Kidnapping Incorporated: The Unregulated Youth-Transportation Industry And The Potential For Abuse, Ira Robbins

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Strangers come into a child's room in the middle of the night, drag her kicking and screaming into a van, apply handcuffs, and drive her to a behavior modification facility at a distant location. What sounds like a clear-cut case of kidnapping is complicated by the fact that the child's parents not only authorized this intervention, but also paid for it. This scarcely publicized practice-known as the youth-transportation industry-operates on the fringes of existing law. The law generally presumes that parents have almost unlimited authority over their children, but the youth-transportation industry has never been closely examined regarding exactly what …

Last Words: A Survey And Analysis Of Federal Judges' Views On Allocution In Sentencing, Ira Robbins

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Allocution-the penultimate stage of a criminal proceeding at which the judge affords defendants an opportunity to speak their last words before sentencing-is a centuries-old right in criminal cases, and academics have theorized about the various purposes it serves. But what do sitting federal judges think about allocution? Do they actually use it to raise or lower sentences? Do they think it serves purposes above and beyond sentencing? Are there certain factors that judges like or dislike in allocutions? These questions-and many others-are answered directly in this first-ever study of judges' views and practices regarding allocution. The authors surveyed all federal …

Criminal Justice In The Supreme Court: A Review Of United States Supreme Court Criminal And Habeas Corpus Decisions (October 4, 1999 - October 1, 2000), Andrea Lyon

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Book Review: A Theory Of Criminal Justice By Jan Corecki. New York: Columbia University Press. 1979. Pp. Xv, 185. $15.00., Ira Robbins

Book Reviews

Review of A Theory of Criminal Justice by Jan Corecki. New York: Columbia University Press. 1979. Pp. xv, 185. $15.00.