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Selected Works

2016

Criminal law

Articles 1 - 20 of 20

Full-Text Articles in Law

Take Our Quiz About Constitutional Law, Judith L. Ritter Sep 2016

Take Our Quiz About Constitutional Law, Judith L. Ritter

Judith L Ritter

No abstract provided.

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Gender, Race, And Intersectionality On The Federal Appellate Bench., Todd Collins, Laura Moyer Sep 2016

Gender, Race, And Intersectionality On The Federal Appellate Bench., Todd Collins, Laura Moyer

Laura Moyer

While theoretical justifications predict that a judge’s gender and race may influence judicial decisions, empirical support for these arguments has been mixed. However, recent increases in judicial diversity necessitate a reexamination of these earlier studies. Rather than examining individual judges on a single characteristic, such as gender or race alone, this research note argues that the intersection of individual characteristics may provide an alternative approach for evaluating the effects of diversity on the federal appellate bench. The results of cohort models examining the joint effects of race and gender suggest that minority female judges are more likely to support criminal …

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Neuroimaging And The "Complexity" Of Capital Punishment, O. Carter Snead Aug 2016

Neuroimaging And The "Complexity" Of Capital Punishment, O. Carter Snead

O. Carter Snead

The growing use of brain imaging technology to explore the causes of morally, socially, and legally relevant behavior is the subject of much discussion and controversy in both scholarly and popular circles. From the efforts of cognitive neuroscientists in the courtroom and the public square, the contours of a project to transform capital sentencing both in principle and in practice have emerged. In the short term, these scientists seek to play a role in the process of capital sentencing by serving as mitigation experts for defendants, invoking neuroimaging research on the roots of criminal violence to support their arguments. Over …

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Silencing Gideon's Trumpet: The Plight Of The Indigent Prisoner, Allison I. Connelly Jul 2016

Silencing Gideon's Trumpet: The Plight Of The Indigent Prisoner, Allison I. Connelly

Allison Connelly

In this newsletter article, Professor Connelly discusses the difficulties faced by indigent prisoners in gaining access to the justice system.

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Campus Sexual Misconduct As Sexual Harassment: A Defense Of The Doe, Katharine K. Baker May 2016

Campus Sexual Misconduct As Sexual Harassment: A Defense Of The Doe, Katharine K. Baker

Katharine K. Baker

This article explains and defends the Department of Education’s campaign against sexual misconduct on college campuses. It does so because DOE has inexplicably failed to make clear that their goal is to protect women from the intimidating and hostile environment that results when men routinely use women sexually, without regard to whether women consent to the sexual activity. That basic point, that schools are policing harassing and intimidating behavior, not necessarily rape, has been lost on both courts and commentators. Boorish, entitled, sexual behavior that stops well short of rape, if pervasive enough, has been actionable as sexual harassment for …

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Prosecuting Rape Victims While Rapists Run Free: The Consequences Of Police Failure To Investigate Sex Crimes In Britain And The United States, Lisa Avalos May 2016

Prosecuting Rape Victims While Rapists Run Free: The Consequences Of Police Failure To Investigate Sex Crimes In Britain And The United States, Lisa Avalos

Lisa Avalos

    Imagine that a close friend is raped, and you encourage her to report it to the police. At first, she thinks that the police are taking her report seriously, but the investigation does not seem to move forward.  The next thing she knows, they accuse her of lying and ultimately file charges against her.  You and your friend are in shock; this outcome never entered your minds. This nightmare may seem inconceivable, but it has in fact occurred repeatedly in both the United States and Britain – countries that are typically lauded for their high levels of gender equality. …

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Gun Control, Mental Illness, And Black Trans And Lesbian Survival, Gabriel Arkles May 2016

Gun Control, Mental Illness, And Black Trans And Lesbian Survival, Gabriel Arkles

Gabriel Arkles

Those concerned with racial, gender, sexual, economic, or disability justice should be concerned about the direction and focus of national conversations in the wake of Newtown. Controversies over gun control and mental health treatment have a profound impact on those marginalized based on race, gender, sexuality, class, and disability. Gun control laws endanger trans people of color and queer women of color, as well as those labeled mentally ill, by failing to reduce interpersonal violence while increasing the violence of the criminal legal system. Instead of increasing incarceration of people in marginalized communities who choose to carry guns, we should …

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Gun Control, Mental Illness, And Black Trans And Lesbian Survival, Gabriel Arkles May 2016

Gun Control, Mental Illness, And Black Trans And Lesbian Survival, Gabriel Arkles

Gabriel Arkles

Those concerned with racial, gender, sexual, economic, or disability justice should be concerned about the direction and focus of national conversations in the wake of Newtown. Controversies over gun control and mental health treatment have a profound impact on those marginalized based on race, gender, sexuality, class, and disability. Gun control laws endanger trans people of color and queer women of color, as well as those labeled mentally ill, by failing to reduce interpersonal violence while increasing the violence of the criminal legal system. Instead of increasing incarceration of people in marginalized communities who choose to carry guns, we should …

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Ultracrepidarianism In Forensic Science: The Hair Evidence Debacle, David H. Kaye Mar 2016

Ultracrepidarianism In Forensic Science: The Hair Evidence Debacle, David H. Kaye

David Kaye

For over 130 years, scientific sleuths have been inspecting hairs under microscopes. Late in 2012, the FBI, the Innocence Project, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers joined forces to review thousands of microscopic hair comparisons performed by FBI examiners over several of those decades. The results have been astounding. Based on the first few hundred cases in which hairs were said to match, it appears that examiners “exceeded the limits of science” in over 90% of their reports or testimony. The disclosure of this statistic has led to charges that the FBI “faked an entire field of forensic …

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Teaching The Art Of Defending A White Collar Criminal Case, Katrice Copeland Feb 2016

Teaching The Art Of Defending A White Collar Criminal Case, Katrice Copeland

Katrice Bridges Copeland

This Article discusses the author's experience with effectively teaching a white collar crime course.

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Justice Blackmun's Mark On Criminal Law And Procedure, Kit Kinports Jan 2016

Justice Blackmun's Mark On Criminal Law And Procedure, Kit Kinports

Kit Kinports

When Justice Blackmun was nominated to the Court in 1970, Americans were consumed with the idea of crime control. In the 1968 presidential campaign, Richard Nixon had called the Supreme Court "soft on crime" and had promised to "put 'law and order' judges on the Court." While sitting on the Eighth Circuit, the Justice had "seldom struck down searches, seizures, arrests or confessions," and most of his opinions in criminal cases had "affirmed guilty verdicts and sentences." Thus, according to one commentator, Justice Blackmun seemed to be "exactly what Nixon was looking for: a judge who believed in judicial restraint, …

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Habeas Corpus, Qualified Immunity, And Crystal Balls: Predicting The Course Of Constitutional Law, Kit Kinports Jan 2016

Habeas Corpus, Qualified Immunity, And Crystal Balls: Predicting The Course Of Constitutional Law, Kit Kinports

Kit Kinports

After describing the basic legal and policy issues surrounding the qualified immunity defense and the use of novelty to explain procedural defaults in habeas cases, Part I of this article advocates a standard for both types of cases that asks whether a person exercising reasonable diligence in the same circumstances would have been aware of the relevant constitutional principles. With this standard in mind, Part II examines the qualified immunity defense in detail, concluding that in many cases public officials are given immunity even though they unreasonably failed to recognize the constitutional implications of their conduct. Part III compares the …

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The Corporate Shell Game, J.S. Nelson Dec 2015

The Corporate Shell Game, J.S. Nelson

J.S. Nelson

This Article identifies for the first time the hardening of the corporate shell. It provides compelling evidence that shell-hardening pushes and disguises the way that corporations and agents commit large-scale wrongdoing, and it traces the contributing legal streams that protect the agents who engage in this behavior. The only way to combat widespread frauds that inflict damage on the public is for the corporate shell to be-come less opaque.

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Conspiracy As Contract, Laurent Sacharoff Dec 2015

Conspiracy As Contract, Laurent Sacharoff

Laurent Sacharoff

This article considers the central concept of criminal conspiracy — the agreement. It shows how both courts and scholars have almost entirely failed to define it. Even more surprisingly, neither discusses how “agreement” in criminal conspiracy compares with the agreement in contract law. Instead, courts have diluted the agreement requirement by substituting “mutual understanding” or “slight connection,” leading to uncertainty, unfairness, and a profusion of conspiracy convictions for mere presence or association.

This article argues courts should define agreement, and do so as an exchange of promises between the conspirators to commit a crime. An exchange of promises meets the …

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When Numbers Lie: The Under-Reporting Of Police Justifiable Homicides, Tiffany R. Murphy Dec 2015

When Numbers Lie: The Under-Reporting Of Police Justifiable Homicides, Tiffany R. Murphy

Tiffany R Murphy

The Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) is tasked with tracking the number of police-involved homicides in a given year. Over a ten-year period, the BJS published the average number of police-involved homicides at 400 annually. However, the BJS’s ability to provide accurate information in this area is woefully lacking because of systemic failures in its data collection from law enforcement agencies. These deficiencies result in hundreds of police-involved homicides being unreported. What results is an incomplete picture for local, state, and federal agencies to make assessments as to how the over 18,000 law enforcement agencies are performing …

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Evidence Of The Military's Sexual Assault Blind Spot.Pdf, Eric Carpenter Dec 2015

Evidence Of The Military's Sexual Assault Blind Spot.Pdf, Eric Carpenter

Eric R. Carpenter

In response to the American military's perceived inability to handle sexual assault cases, many members of Congress have lost confidence in those who run the military justice system. Critics say that those who run the military justice system are sexist and perceive sexual assault cases differently than the public does.

This article is the first to empirically test that assertion. Further, this is the first study to focus on the military population that matters – those who actually run the military justice system.

This study finds that this narrow military population endorses two constructs that are associated with the acceptance …

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Evidence Of The Military's Sexual Assault Blind Spot.Pdf, Eric Carpenter Dec 2015

Evidence Of The Military's Sexual Assault Blind Spot.Pdf, Eric Carpenter

Eric R. Carpenter

In response to the American military's perceived inability to handle sexual assault cases, many members of Congress have lost confidence in those who run the military justice system. Critics say that those who run the military justice system are sexist and perceive sexual assault cases differently than the public does.

This article is the first to empirically test that assertion. Further, this is the first study to focus on the military population that matters – those who actually run the military justice system.

This study finds that this narrow military population endorses two constructs that are associated with the acceptance …

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Teaching Criminal Procedure: Why Socrates Would Use Youtube, Stephen E. Henderson, Joseph Thai Dec 2015

Teaching Criminal Procedure: Why Socrates Would Use Youtube, Stephen E. Henderson, Joseph Thai

Stephen E Henderson

In this invited contribution to the Law Journal's annual Teaching Issue, we pay some homage to the great philosopher whose spirit allegedly guides our classrooms, in service of two concrete goals. One, we employ dialogue to describe the “nuts and bolts” of teaching Criminal Procedure, most of which are equally relevant to any doctrinal law school course (including course description, office hours, seating charts and attendance, class decorum and recording, student participation, laptops, textbooks, class preparation and presentation, and exams). Two, we explain the benefits of using multimedia in the classroom, including a few of the many modules found on …

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"Immigrants Are Not Criminals": Respectability, Immigration Reform, And Hyperincarceration, Rebecca Sharpless Dec 2015

"Immigrants Are Not Criminals": Respectability, Immigration Reform, And Hyperincarceration, Rebecca Sharpless

Rebecca Sharpless

Scholars and law reformers advocate for better treatment of immigrants by invoking a contrast with people convicted of a crime. This Article details the harms and limitations of a conceptual framework that relies on a contrast with people—citizens and noncitizens—who have been convicted of a criminal offense and proposes an alternate approach that better aligns with the racial critique of our criminal justice system. Noncitizens with a criminal record are overwhelmingly low-income people of color. While some have been in the United States for a short period of time, many have resided in the United States for much longer. Many …

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Mandatory Immigration Detention For U.S. Crimes: The Noncitizen Presumption Of Dangerousness, Mark Noferi Dec 2015

Mandatory Immigration Detention For U.S. Crimes: The Noncitizen Presumption Of Dangerousness, Mark Noferi

Mark L Noferi

Today in the United States, mandatory immigration detention imposes extraordinary deprivations of liberty following ordinary crimes—if the person convicted is not a U.S. citizen. Here, I explore that disparate treatment, in the first detailed examination of mandatory detention during deportation proceedings for U.S. crimes. I argue that mandatory immigration detention functionally operates on a “noncitizen presumption” of dangerousness. Mandatory detention incarcerates noncitizens despite technological advances that nearly negate the risk of flight, with that risk increasingly seen as little different regarding noncitizens, at least those treated with dignity. Moreover, this “noncitizen presumption” of danger contravenes empirical evidence, and diverges from …

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