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Full-Text Articles in Law
Criminal Justice And The Mattering Of Lives, Deborah Tuerkheimer
Criminal Justice And The Mattering Of Lives, Deborah Tuerkheimer
Michigan Law Review
A review of James Forman Jr., Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America.
Legal Aid's Once And Future Role For Impacting The Criminalization Of Poverty And The War On The Poor, Aneel L. Chablani
Legal Aid's Once And Future Role For Impacting The Criminalization Of Poverty And The War On The Poor, Aneel L. Chablani
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
Recent media coverage and advocacy efforts on behalf of individuals subjected to criminal sanctions as a result of their poverty status has resulted in increased attention on this nation’s troubled history of oppression and control of the poor and people of color. At the federal, state, and local levels, a growing number of policies create criminal sanctions for poverty-related circumstances. These, in turn, result in collateral consequences that unfairly affect those who lack the means to afford their criminal justice experience (i.e., processing costs, fees, and fines), or affect their ability to access employment, housing, or other basic services. These …
Mens Rea, Criminal Responsibility, And The Death Of Freddie Gray, Michael Serota
Mens Rea, Criminal Responsibility, And The Death Of Freddie Gray, Michael Serota
Michigan Law Review First Impressions
Who (if anyone) is criminally responsible for the death of Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old African-American man who died from injuries suffered while in the custody of Baltimore police? This question has been at the forefront of the extensive coverage of Gray’s death, which has inspired a national discussion about law enforcement’s relationship with black communities. But it is also a question that may never be fairly resolved for reasons wholly unrelated to the topic of community policing, with which Gray’s death has become synonymous. What may ultimately hamper the administration of justice in the prosecution of the police officers involved …
Every High Has A Low: A Pragmatic Approach To The War On Drugs, Mark Garibyan
Every High Has A Low: A Pragmatic Approach To The War On Drugs, Mark Garibyan
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat
One of the lasting vestiges of Richard Nixon’s presidency is the infamous “War on Drugs,” a forty-year-old effort aimed at curtailing “illicit drug consumption and transactions in America.” Although the goal behind the policy—a reduction in the rate of substance abuse—may be altruistic, the War on Drugs has dismally failed to achieve its goals and has exacerbated existing problems. Specifically, laws dealing with crack cocaine result in a “heavily disproportionate impact on black defendants;” in 2008 “blacks comprised 79.8 percent of those convicted for crack cocaine-related offenses,” whereas “whites comprised only 10.4 percent.” More generally, these laws illustrate a fundamental …
Separate And Unequal: Federal Tough-On-Guns Program Targets Minority Communities For Selective Enforcement, Bonita R. Gardner
Separate And Unequal: Federal Tough-On-Guns Program Targets Minority Communities For Selective Enforcement, Bonita R. Gardner
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
This Article examines the Project Safe Neighborhoods program and considers whether its disproportionate application in urban, majority- African American cities (large and small) violates the guarantee of equal protection under the law. This Article will start with a description of the program and how it operates-the limited application to street-level criminal activity in predominately African American communities. Based on preliminary data showing that Project Safe Neighborhoods disproportionately impacts African Americans, the Article turns to an analysis of the applicable law. Most courts have analyzed Project Safe Neighborhoods' race-based challenges under selective prosecution case law, which requires a showing by the …
Appellate Review Of Racist Summations: Redeeming The Promise Of Searching Analysis, Ryan Patrick Alford
Appellate Review Of Racist Summations: Redeeming The Promise Of Searching Analysis, Ryan Patrick Alford
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
This Article addresses the question of the appropriate response of appellate counsel for Black defendants tarred at trial by the indirect deployment of powerful racial stereotypes. The crux of the problem is that even now, the courts only take exception to blatant racist appeals, even though indirectly racist summations can have a determinative impact at trial. In laying out the contours of the problem, we must draw upon the discipline of rhetoric, or persuasion through oration, to describe various techniques of intentional indirectness that prosecutors use to obviate the possibility of appellate review under the stringent standards of the Fourteenth …
Ghosts Of Alabama: The Prosecution Of Bobby Frank Cherry For The Bombing Of The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Donald Q. Cochran
Ghosts Of Alabama: The Prosecution Of Bobby Frank Cherry For The Bombing Of The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Donald Q. Cochran
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
Perhaps no other crime in American history has shocked the conscience of America like the 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. In May of 2002- almost thirty-nine years after the bombing- Bobby Frank Cherry was brought to trial for the murders of Addie, Carole, Cynthia, and Denise. He was the last person to be tried for the bombing. As an Assistant United States Attorney in Birmingham, Alabama it was my privilege to be a part of the prosecution team that brought Cherry to justice. This Article tells the story of that prosecution and explores the …
Discrimination In Sentencing On The Basis Of Afrocentric Features, William T. Pizzi, Irene V. Blair, Charles M. Judd
Discrimination In Sentencing On The Basis Of Afrocentric Features, William T. Pizzi, Irene V. Blair, Charles M. Judd
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
This Article does not challenge the prior research on sentencing discrimination between racial categories that found no significant difference in sentences given to similarly-situated African Americans and Whites. In fact, in the jurisdiction investigated- Florida- no discrimination between African Americans and Whites was found in the sentences imposed on defendants, looking only at racial category differences. Rather, the research suggests that in focusing exclusively on discrimination between racial groups, the research has missed a type of discrimination related to race that is taking place within racial categories: namely, discrimination on the basis of a person's Afrocentric features. By Afrocentric features, …
The Color Line Of Punishment, Jerome H. Skolnick
The Color Line Of Punishment, Jerome H. Skolnick
Michigan Law Review
If "the color line," (in W.E.B. Du Bois's 1903 phrase and prophecy) was to be the twentieth century's greatest challenge for the domestic life and public policy of the United States, the law has had much to do with drawing its shape. No surprise, this. By now, legal theorists accept that law does not advance in preordained fashion, immune from the sway of political interest, belief systems and social structure. Still, it is hard to exaggerate how powerfully the law has shaped the life chances of Americans of African heritage, for good or ill, and in ways that we scarcely …
True Lies: The Role Of Pretext Evidence Under Batson V. Kentucky In The Wake Of St. Mary's Honor Center V. Hicks, David A. Sutphen
True Lies: The Role Of Pretext Evidence Under Batson V. Kentucky In The Wake Of St. Mary's Honor Center V. Hicks, David A. Sutphen
Michigan Law Review
In the process of determining whether a peremptory strike is valid, lower courts rely on the TI.tie VII burden-shifting framework originally laid out by the Supreme Court in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green As a result, the order and presentation of proof in Batson cases deliberately parallels the order and presentation of proof in TI.tie VII intentional discrimination suits. In light of this similarity, the Supreme Court's recent TI.tie VII ruling in St. Mary's Honor Center v. Hicks - that proof of pretext under the McDonnell Douglas framework is not the legal equivalent to proof of intentional discrimination - raises …
Prostitution: Where Racism & Sexism Intersect, Vednita Nelson
Prostitution: Where Racism & Sexism Intersect, Vednita Nelson
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
Black women find themselves in a unique and extremely difficult position in our society. They are forced to deal with the oppression that arises from being Black in a white-supremacist culture and the oppression that arises from being female in a male-supremacist culture. In order to examine the experience of being Black and female, this paper attempts to describe that very difficult, tight space where Black women attempt to survive-that space where racism and sexism intersect.
Black Innocence And The White Jury, Sheri Lynn Johnson
Black Innocence And The White Jury, Sheri Lynn Johnson
Michigan Law Review
Racial prejudice has come under increasingly close scrutiny during the past thirty years, yet its influence on the decisionmaking of criminal juries remains largely hidden from judicial and critical examination. In this Article, Professor Johnson takes a close look at this neglected area. She first sets forth a large body of social science research that reveals a widespread tendency among whites to convict black defendants in instances in which white defendants would be acquitted. Next, she argues that none of the existing techniques for eliminating the influence of racial bias on criminal trials adequately protects minority-race defendants. She contends that …