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Full-Text Articles in Law

Newsroom: Waters '98 On Tempest Verdict Reversal, Roger Williams University School Of Law Jul 2015

Newsroom: Waters '98 On Tempest Verdict Reversal, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.


Lost In A Legal Thicket, Paul H. Robinson Jul 2015

Lost In A Legal Thicket, Paul H. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

This op-ed piece argues that criminal law recodification is badly needed in the states and the federal system, but that prosecutors stand out as the group who appear to regularly oppose it.


Quiet Rebellion Ii: An Empirical Analysis Of Declining Federal Drug Sentences Including Data From The District Level With Michael Heise, Frank O. Bowman Iii, Michael Heise Feb 2015

Quiet Rebellion Ii: An Empirical Analysis Of Declining Federal Drug Sentences Including Data From The District Level With Michael Heise, Frank O. Bowman Iii, Michael Heise

Michael Heise

This is the second of two articles in which we seek an explanation for the hitherto unexamined fact that the average length of prison sentences imposed in federal court for narcotics violations declined by more than 15% between 1991-92 and 2000.


Increasing Police Accountability: Restoring Trust And Legitimacy Through The Appointment Of Independent Prosecutors, Kami Chavis Simmons Jan 2015

Increasing Police Accountability: Restoring Trust And Legitimacy Through The Appointment Of Independent Prosecutors, Kami Chavis Simmons

Faculty Publications

Criminal prosecution of police officers raises a myriad of issues that this Article will begin to explore. First, while there has been a paradigmatic shift in police accountability in recent decades from remedies focusing on individual officers to those focusing on broad organizational reform, this Article will explore the important role that the deterrence rationale of criminal prosecution might play as one tool to address police misconduct. Second, other than deterrence, criminal prosecutions serve numerous goals, including retribution for the harms imposed upon the victims and society for the crimes. Historically, many racial minorities, when compared with their white counterparts, …


Blinding Prosecutors To Defendants' Race: A Policy Proposal To Reduce Unconscious Bias In The Criminal Justice System, Shima Baughman, Sunita Sah, Christopher T. Robertson Jan 2015

Blinding Prosecutors To Defendants' Race: A Policy Proposal To Reduce Unconscious Bias In The Criminal Justice System, Shima Baughman, Sunita Sah, Christopher T. Robertson

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Racial minorities are disproportionately imprisoned in the United States. This disparity is unlikely to be due solely to differences in criminal behavior. Behavioral science research has documented that prosecutors harbor unconscious racial biases. These unconscious biases play a role whenever prosecutors exercise their broad discretion, such as in choosing what crimes to charge and when negotiating plea bargains. To reduce this risk of unconscious racial bias, we propose a policy change: Prosecutors should be blinded to the race of criminal defendants wherever feasible. This could be accomplished by removing information identifying or suggesting the defendant’s race from police dossiers shared …