Law Commons^™

Toward A Better Criminal Legal System: Improving Prisons, Prosecution, And Criminal Defense, David A. Harris, Created And Presented Jointly By Students From State Correctional Institution - Greene, Waynesburg, Pa, And University Of Pittsburgh School Of Law, Chief Editor: David A. Harris

Articles

During the Fall 2023 semester, 15 law (Outside) students from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and 13 incarcerated (Inside) students from the State Correctional Institution – Greene, in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, took a full semester class together called Issues in Criminal Justice and Law. The class, occurring each week at the prison, utilized the Inside-Out Prison Exchange pedagogy, and was facilitated by Professor David Harris. Subjects include the purposes of prison, addressing crime, the criminal legal system and race, and issues surrounding victims and survivors of crime. The course culminated in a Group Project; under the heading “improving the …

Rwu's New 'Rising Tide' Of Educational Opportunity 9-8-2016, Roger Williams University

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Designing Plea Bargaining From The Ground Up: Accuracy And Fairness Without Trials As Backstops, Stephanos Bibas

All Faculty Scholarship

American criminal procedure developed on the assumption that grand juries and petit jury trials were the ultimate safeguards of fair procedures and accurate outcomes. But now that plea bargaining has all but supplanted juries, we need to think through what safeguards our plea-bargaining system should be built around. This Symposium Article sketches out principles for redesigning our plea-bargaining system from the ground up around safeguards. Part I explores the causes of factual, moral, and legal inaccuracies in guilty pleas. To prevent and remedy these inaccuracies, it proposes a combination of quasi-inquisitorial safeguards, more vigorous criminal defense, and better normative evaluation …

Defending Those People, Abbe Smith

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Many practitioners and scholars have written perceptively about the motivations of criminal defenders. Some have written eloquently. I have my own body of work on this and related questions.

This essay is about why the author has devoted her professional career--her life--to defending people most of society would just as soon banish and forget. After nearly thirty years of criminal law practice, her reasons are such a part of her that they are nearly inarticulable. The author is a criminal defender in her soul. She also has been teaching and writing about criminal defense for almost as long as she …

Guilty Pleas Or Trials: Which Does The Barrister Prefer?, Peter W. Tague

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Barristers in England and attorneys in the United States have been upbraided for pursuing their interests to their clients' detriment in recommending guilty pleas over trials. While this accusation against American attorneys could be true since their incentives are sometimes skewed to favor guilty pleas, it is not accurate with respect to barristers in England. This is because the latter’s selfish incentives--to maximize income and avoid sanction--incline them to prefer trials over guilty pleas. In Melbourne and Sydney, barristers have never been similarly accused. Indeed, the topic has not been studied. Based on interviews with legal professionals in those cities, …

Racial Fairness In The Criminal Justice System: The Role Of The Prosecutor, Angela J. Davis

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

In this article, Davis analyzes discusses efforts to involve prosecutors in the elimination of racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Part II explains how prosecutors unintentionally contribute to disparities through the arbitrary, unsystematic exercise of discretion. Part III argues that the U.S. Supreme Court has failed to provide an effective legal remedy for victims of race-based selective prosecution. Finally, in Part IV, Davis endorses the use of racial impact studies and task forces and discusses a model reform effort spearheaded by the Vera Institute of Justice.

Guilty Pleas And Barristers' Incentives: Lessons From England, Peter W. Tague

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

When considering the defendant's plea, barristers, like lawyers, have two overriding, selfish interests: maximizing remuneration and avoiding sanction. The tension between defendant and defender is most acute when the defendant is indigent and the defender has been chosen to represent him. It is their relationship that is addressed in this article.

The goal is to align the defender's selfish interests with the defendant's need for thoughtful advice over how to plead, so that, behind the guise of apparently disinterested advice, the advocate is not pursuing his interests at the defendant's expense. By contrast to most American practice, the method of …

Preface, Symposium: Criminal Defense In The Age Of Terrorism, Tanina Rostain, Donald Zeigler

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Religion And The Public Defender, Sadiq Reza

Articles & Chapters

It takes a special breed to have the understanding, compassion

and dedication to do what criminal defense lawyers do .... As

for public defenders - they are doing God's work. If Christ had

been a lawyer, he would have been a public defender.

Virtually all public defenders fight a daily battle against burnout

and the creeping erosion of confidence that inevitably accompany

defending acts we cannot condone and protecting those who are

the source of so much harm and grief. . . . Whether the process

unfolds subtly or suddenly, all defenders must confront the disturbing

consequences of their zealous …

United States V. Mcveigh: Defending The Most Hated Man In America, Stephen Jones, Jennifer Gideon

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Ethics Of Criminal Defense, William H. Simon

Michigan Law Review

A large literature has emerged in recent years challenging the standard conception of adversary advocacy that justifies the lawyer in doing anything arguably legal to advance the client's ends. This literature has proposed variations on an ethic that would increase the lawyer's responsibilities to third parties, the public, and substantive ideals of legal merit and justice.

With striking consistency, this literature exempts criminal defense from its critique and concedes that the standard adversary ethic may be viable there. This paper criticizes that concession. I argue that the reasons most commonly given to distinguish the criminal from the civil do not …

Are Criminal Defenders Different?, David Luban

Michigan Law Review

No one has done more to expose the jurisprudential incoherence of this view of legal practice than William Simon. In his 1978 article, The Ideology of Advocacy, Simon demonstrated a series of internal contradictions in the most promising attempts to justify the ideology of advocacy. Subsequently, in Ethical Discretion in Lawyering, Simon elaborated an alternative view according to which lawyers must exercise independent judgment in both their choice of clients and their choice of means in pursuing client ends.

In Simon's view, those who carve out the criminal defense exception have been taken in by what he calls …

Reply: Further Reflections On Libertarian Criminal Defense, William H. Simon

Michigan Law Review

Since David Luban's is the work on legal ethics that I admire and agree with most, there is an element of perversity in my vehement critique of his arguments on criminal defense. I am therefore especially thankful for his gracious and thoughtful response. Nevertheless, I remain convinced that Luban is mistaken in excepting criminal defense from much of the responsibility to substantive justice that we both think appropriate in every other sphere of lawyering.

"How Can You Defend Those People?" The Making Of A Criminal Lawyer, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of "How Can You Defend Those People?" The Making of a Criminal Lawyer by James S. Kunen

Book Review, Mark J. Loewenstein

Publications

No abstract provided.

Defending The Guilty, Barbara Allen Babcock

Cleveland State Law Review

How can you defend a person you know is guilty? I have answered that question hundreds of times, never to my inquirer's satisfaction, and therefore never to my own. In recent years, I have more or less given up, abandoning the high-flown explanations of my youth, and resorting to a rather peevish: "Well, it's not for everybody. Criminal defense work takes a peculiar mind-set, heart-set, soul-set." While I still believe this, the mind-set might at least be more accessible through a better effort at explanation. First we will examine the nature of the question, then the possible answers. We must …

Do Defendants Have An Attorney When They Have A Public Defender, James Eisenstein

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Counsel for the Poor: Criminal Defense in Urban America by Robert Hermann, Eric Single, and John Boston

The Attempt To Improve Criminal Defense Representation, Peter W. Tague

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Improvement of criminal defense representation is one of the most critical problems that faces the criminal justice system. The problem is extensive; some attorneys are frequently ineffective and probably all attorneys are occasionally inadequate because of error, overwork, personal problems or ethical conflicts.

The defendant's only remedy against his attorney's ineffectiveness is through direct appeal or collateral post-conviction attack. This article discusses the reasons why courts cannot improve defense representation through these avenues of review. Deep disagreement among judges about the purpose of post-conviction review has crippled any attempt at improvement. The key unresolved question is whether the standard for …

Split Loyalty: An Ethical Problem For The Criminal Defense Lawyer, Gerald S. Gold

Cleveland State Law Review

Nowhere in law do ethical considerations play a greater part or come into greater conflict than in the defense of those accused of crime. The lawyer defending an accused owes a duty to his client, a duty to society, and a duty to the court. The duties to each are not completely clear and when the various loyalties conflict, fair, safe, and moral resolutions are most difficult.

Modern Mettle: The Misconstrued Morality, William B. Martin

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.