Law Commons^™

The Common Prosecutor, Melanie D. Wilson

Loyola University Chicago Law Journal

This symposium piece stems from the Loyola University of Chicago Law Journal's Criminal Justice Symposium and my engagement with a panel of experts discussing wrongful convictions, pleas, and sentencing. The essay focuses on the role of prosecutors and contends that the system will improve only when more law school graduates of every race, religion, gender identity, background, ideology, ability, sexual orientation, and other characteristics serve as prosecutors. We have witnessed the rise of the “progressive prosecutor.” Now, we need to add more “common prosecutors.”

The homogeneity of prosecutors is well known and well documented. For example, as of October 2020, …

The Real Mccoy: Defining The Defendant’S Right To Autonomy In The Wake Of Mccoy V. Louisiana, Colin Miller

Loyola University Chicago Law Journal

Defense counsel, and not the defendant, has the power to make most decisions in a criminal case. Until recently, there were only four decisions reserved for the defendant: whether to (1) plead guilty, (2) waive the right to a jury trial, (3) testify, and (4) forgo an appeal. In McCoy v. Louisiana, the United States Supreme Court recently added a fifth decision reserved for the client: the right to autonomy, i.e., the right to decide on the objective of her defense. Under this right, a defendant can prevent her attorney from admitting her legal guilt at trial by preemptively objecting …

The Inequity Of Third-Party Bail Practices, Judge Patrick Carroll

Loyola University Chicago Law Journal

For many criminal defendants, a common source of bail funds is their own family or friends. Such individuals typically assist in the expectation that if the defendant complies with court orders and satisfies all court appearances, their money will be returned to them. In revenue-motivated court systems, however, bail funds--even when owned by a third party--are often applied to the defendant's fines and court costs, resulting in the effective forfeiture of the friend or relative's money. This Article reviews the processes of third-party bonds, the risk that a third-party bond will be incorrectly identified as the defendant's asset, and the …

Teaching About Justice By Teaching With Justice: Global Perspectives On Clinical Legal Education And Rebellious Lawyering, Olinda Moyd, Catherine F. Klein, Richard Roe, Mizanur Rahman, Dipika Jain, Abhayraj Naik, Natalia Martinuzzi Castilho, Taysa Schiocchet, Sunday Kenechukwu Agwu, Bianca Sukrow, Christoph Konig

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The inspiration for this Article was the 2021 Conference of the Global Alliance for Justice Education (GAJE), a biannual gathering since 1999 of law educators and others interested in justice education from around the world. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the conference was conducted virtually. During the three-day conference, over 450 participants from 45 countries gathered to participate in the sharing of workshops and presentations, ranging from discussions of papers to five-minute "lightning talks." In addition, there were virtual spaces for social meetings with new and old friends. The authors attended as many of the sessions as possible in …

Senseless Sentencing: The Uneven Application Of The Career Offender Guidelines, Christopher Ethan Watts

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

Federal appellate courts are currently split on the definition of “controlled substance” in the career offender guideline, with one side using federal law to define the phrase, and the other side allowing standalone state law offenses to trigger the guideline. Allowing state law to define the phrase allows countless substances Congress never intended to penalize to be able to trigger one of the most severe penalties in the Sentencing Guidelines. This Note assesses the landscape of the circuit split and analyzes the arguments for and against federally defining “controlled substance offense.” This Note then proposes a novel way to resolve …

As Fires Blaze Through California, Could They Blaze A New Path For Incarcerated Individuals: A Model For Back-End Abolition, Jacquelyn Kelsey Arnold

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

This Note provides a critique on the current system of prison labor through the lens of the California wildfires and the lack of inmate labor due to early release in the wake of COVID-19. This Note provides an overview of the relevant history of the Thirteenth Amendment, contextualizes mass incarceration as a product of the “War on Drugs” in the United States, and consequently, discusses the significant and dramatic expansion of the prison industrial complex and the use of prison labor as a growing source of production labor. It concludes with a recommendation for a provisional back-end abolition model that …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Keynote Address, Justin Hansford

Seattle University Law Review

Keynote Address by Justin Hansford

Hernández V. Mesa: A Case For A More Meaningful Partnership With The Inter-American Commission On Human Rights, Peyton Jacobsen

Seattle University Law Review

Through an in-depth examination of Hernández, the Inter-American Human Rights System, and the success of Mexico’s partnership with said system, this Note will make a case for embracing human rights bodies— specifically, the Inter-American System on Human Rights—as an appropriate and necessary check on the structures that form the United States government. Part I will look closely at the reasoning and judicially created doctrine that guided the decision in Hernández, with the goal of providing a better understanding of the complicated path through the courts that led to a seemingly straightforward yet unsatisfying result. Part II will illustrate the scope …

Race And Washington’S Criminal Justice System 2021: Report To The Washington Supreme Court, Task Force 2.0 Research Working Group

Seattle University Law Review

This report is an update on the 2011 Preliminary Report on Race and Washington’s Criminal Justice System. This update does not include as context the history of race discrimination in Washington, and readers are encouraged to view the 2011 report for its brief historical overview.14 The 2011 report began with that historical overview because the criminal justice system does not exist in a vacuum. Instead, it exists as part of a legal system that for decades actively managed and controlled where people could live, work, recreate, and even be buried.

Members of communities impacted by race disproportionality in Washington’s criminal …

Race In Washington’S Juvenile Legal System: 2021 Report To The Washington Supreme Court, Task Force 2.0 Juvenile Justice Subcommittee

Seattle University Law Review

Part I of this report provides the core work of the subcommittee and is intended to function as a stand-alone document, expressed in youth- friendly language, that sets forth: (1) the youth-articulated goals for systemic change to the juvenile legal system; (2) a narrative of how the system currently works and the harms caused; and (3) the change needed to bring about the youth-articulated goals for systemic change. This document is intended to be a youth-centered blueprint for change—a tool for community advocates, a framework for policy makers, and a call-in to the many institutional actors to center the leadership …

The Prosecutor In The Mirror: Conviction Integrity Units And Brady Claims, Lissa Griffin, Daisy Mason

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In Brady v. Maryland, the Supreme Court held that a prosecutor has a due process obligation to disclose exculpatory evidence that is material to guilt or punishment. The failure to fulfill this duty is particularly insidious because it bears directly on both whether an innocent defendant may have been convicted as well as on whether the adjudicatory process was fair. The failure to disclose exculpatory evidence has been characterized as “epidemic” and has been documented to have made a major, outsized contribution in cases that resulted in exonerations. It is not surprising, then, that conviction integrity units in prosecutor’s offices …

Aedpa Repeal, Brandon L. Garrett, Kaitlin Phillips

Faculty Scholarship

The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (“AEDPA”) dramatically altered the scope of federal habeas corpus. Enacted in response to a domestic terrorism attack, followed by a capital prosecution, and after decades of proposals seeking to limit post conviction review of death sentences, and Supreme Court rulings severely limiting federal habeas remedies, AEDPA was ratified with little discussion or deliberation. The law and politics of death penalty litigation, which had been particularly active since the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated all death penalty schemes in its 1972 ruling in Furman v. Georgia, culminated in restrictions for all federal habeas …

Miranda In Taiwan: Why It Failed And Why We Should Care, Shih-Chun Steven Chien

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

In 1997, the Taiwanese legislature amended the Code of Criminal Procedure to incorporate the core of the American Miranda rule into the legal system. The Miranda rule requires police officers and prosecutors to notify criminal suspects subject to custodial interrogation of their right to remain silent and their right to retain legal counsel. In subsequent amendments, the legislature enacted a series of laws to further reform interrogation practices in the same vein.

What happened next is a study in unintended consequences and the interdependence of law and culture. Using ethnographic methods and data sources collected over the past four years …

How Experts Have Dominated The Neuroscience Narrative In Criminal Cases For Twelve Decades: A Warning For The Future, Deborah W. Denno

Faculty Scholarship

Phineas Gage, the man who survived impalement by a rod through his head in 1848, is considered “one of the great medical curiosities of all time.” While expert accounts of Gage's post-accident personality changes are often wildly damning and distorted, recent research shows that Gage mostly thrived, despite his trauma. Studying past cases such as Gage’s helps us imagine—and prepare for—a future of law and neuroscience in which scientific debates over the brain’s functions remain fiery, and experts divisively control how we characterize brain-injured defendants.

This Article examines how experts have long dominated the neuroscience narrative in U.S. criminal cases, …

The Use And Abuse Of Domestic National Security Detention, Nicole Hallett

Seattle University Law Review

Are people convicted of terrorism-related offenses so dangerous that we must bend the Constitution to keep the public safe? Or should we treat them like people who commit other crimes—by prosecuting, convicting, sentencing, and then releasing them after they have served their criminal sentences? Can we trust the government to use the power to detain people without criminal charge without abusing it? The case of Adham Amin Hassoun raises these questions. Prosecuted after 9/11 for providing support to Muslims abroad in the 1990s, and sentenced under the United States’ expansive material support laws, Hassoun avoided a life sentence only to …

Considering "Machine Testimony": The Impact Of Facial Recognition Software On Eyewitness Identifications, Valena Beety

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Article uses a wrongful conviction lens to compare identifications by machines, notably facial recognition software, with identifications by humans. The Article advocates for greater reliability checks on both before use against a criminal defendant. The Article examines the cascading influence of facial recognition software on eyewitness identifications themselves and the related potential for greater errors. As a solution, the Article advocates the inclusion of eyewitness identification in the Organization of Scientific Area Committees' ("OSAC") review of facial recognition software for a more robust examination and consideration of software and its usage. The Article also encourages police departments to adopt …

Restraints Of The Body Or Of The Mind: Conflicting Interpretations Of The Physical Restraint Sentencing Enhancement, Heather Crabill

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Hb 478: Amendments To Rules Of Evidence Regarding Expert Testimony In Criminal Cases, Bentley Spain, Ronnie Thompson

Georgia State University Law Review

The Act revises the Georgia Evidence Code to enhance the evidentiary standard for admitting expert testimony in criminal cases. Like in civil cases, expert testimony in criminal cases now must satisfy the Daubert standard for admission of scientific, technical, and other specialized evidence.

Admissibility Of Hearsay Gathered Under Mlat: A Tempest In Canada, Robert Currie

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

One of the most pervasive and longstanding problems in the practice of mutual legal assistance in criminal matters between states has been ‘form of evidence’–specifically, can the requested state provide evidence in such form as will be useful and admissible under the criminal evidence laws of the requesting state?It tends to be common law states that have difficulties with admissibility of MLAT-sourced evidence, and these often develop ‘work-arounds’ in their laws which attempt to relax admissibility standards. Canada is one such state, but a series of recent prosecutions has revealed judicial resistance to the tools employed. This note examines these …

Editors' Note, Robert Currie, Neil Boister, Masha Fedorova, Sabine Gless, Cecily Rose, Sara Wharton

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

No abstract provided.

State Responsibility For International Bail-Jumping, Robert Currie, Elizabeth Matheson

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Over the last decade, there has been a spate of incidents in Canada and the United States involving Saudi Arabian nationals who, while out on bail for predominantly sexual crimes, were able to abscond from the countries despite having surrendered their passports. Investigation has revealed evidence supporting a reasonable inference that the government of Saudi Arabia has, in fact, assisted its nationals to escape on these occasions. This article makes the case that this kind of conduct amounts not just to unfriendly acts but also to infringements upon the territorial sovereignty of both states and serious breaches of the international …

Deterrence And The Death Penalty: A Study Of The Effects Of Capital Punishment On Homicide, Jacob Stump

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The death penalty receives an abundance of criticism within the United States, as critics argue it to be cruel and an unjust form of punishment. As the debate carries on and more states illegalize the death penalty, the largest point of contention centers on the question: to what extent does the death penalty deter homicides from occurring? This analysis is critical to the implementation of the death penalty, as many legal scholars cite its ability to deter to be its strongest argument for persisting. Ultimately, any argument that undermines this theory provides a greater incentive for abolition, as the death …

The Runaway Jury Of Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán; Or Dishonesty Only Our Justice System Could Ratify, Sean Roman Strockyj

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Regulating Police Chokeholds, Trevor George Gardner, Esam Al-Shareffi

Scholarship@WashULaw

This Article presents findings from an analysis of police chokehold policies enacted at the federal, state, and municipal levels of government. In addition to identifying the jurisdictions that restricted police chokeholds in the wake of George Floyd’s death on May 25, 2020, the Article conveys (via analysis of an original dataset) the considerable variance in the quality of police chokehold regulation. While many jurisdictions regulate the police chokehold, the strength of such regulations should not be taken for granted. Police chokehold policies vary by the type of chokehold barred (“air choke” and/or carotid choke), the degree of the chokehold restriction, …

Monasky’S Totality Of Circumstances Is Vague – The Child’S Perspective Should Be The Main Test, Sabrina Salvi

Touro Law Review

After decades of confusion, the Supreme Court ruled on child custody in an international setting in Monasky v. Taglieri, by attempting to establish the definition of a child’s “habitual residence.” The Court held that a child’s “residence in a particular country can be deemed ‘habitual, however, only when her residence there is more than transitory.’” Further, the Court stated that, ‘“[h]abitual’ implies customary, usual, of the nature of a habit.”’ However, the Supreme Court’s ruling remains unclear. The 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction (“HCCAICA” or “The Hague Convention”), which is adopted in ninety-eight …

Theft, Extortion, And The Constitution: Land Use Practice Needs An Ethical Infusion, Michael M. Berger

Touro Law Review

There are many ways in which property owners/developers interact with regulators. To the extent that texts and articles deal with the ethical duties of the regulators, they tend to focus on things like conflicts of interest. But there is more. This article will examine numerous other ways in which regulators may run afoul of ethical practice in dealing with those whom they regulate

This Is Your Captain Speaking, Please Remain Physically Restrained While The Robbery Is In Progress, Conner J. Purcell

Touro Law Review

This note analyzes the current circuit split over the application of the “Physical Restraint” sentence enhancement as applied to the crime of robbery. In the first camp, the circuit courts apply a broad or constructive meaning of physical restraint: allowing words or demands with the use of a firearm to trigger the enhancement. In many cases, the courts focus on the victim’s reaction to the perpetrator rather than the perpetrator’s actual conduct, suggesting psychological restraint rather than physical restraint. In the second camp, the circuit courts apply a plain meaning interpretation of physical restraint. These cases routinely find that the …

Getting To Death: Race And The Paths Of Capital Cases After Furman, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Garth Davies, Ray Paternoster

Faculty Scholarship

Decades of research on the administration of the death penalty have recognized the persistent arbitrariness in its implementation and the racial inequality in the selection of defendants and cases for capital punishment. This Article provides new insights into the combined effects of these two constitutional challenges. We show how these features of post-Furman capital punishment operate at each stage of adjudication, from charging death-eligible cases to plea negotiations to the selection of eligible cases for execution and ultimately to the execution itself, and how their effects combine to sustain the constitutional violations first identified 50 years ago in Furman …

Ending The Discriminatory Pretrial Incarceration Of People With Disabilities: Liability Under The Americans With Disabilities Act And The Rehabilitation Act, Margo Schlanger, Elizabeth Jordan, Roxana Moussavian

Articles

Our federal, state, and local governments lock up hundreds of thousands of people at a time—millions over the course of a year—to ensure their appearance at a pending criminal or immigration proceeding. This type of pretrial incarceration—a term we use to cover both pretrial criminal detention and immigration detention prior to finalization of a removal order—can be very harmful. It disrupts the work and family lives of those detained, harms their health, interferes with their defense, and imposes pressure on them to forego their trial rights and accede to the government’s charges in an effort to abbreviate time behind bars. …