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Articles 1 - 13 of 13
Full-Text Articles in Law
Double Jeopardy, The Federal Sentencing Guidelines, And The Subsequent-Prosecution Dilemma, Elizabeth T. Lear
Double Jeopardy, The Federal Sentencing Guidelines, And The Subsequent-Prosecution Dilemma, Elizabeth T. Lear
Elizabeth T Lear
The choice to embrace a real-offense regime probably constitutes the single most controversial decision made by the Federal Sentencing Commission in drafting the Federal Sentencing Guidelines ("Guidelines"). Real-offense sentencing bases punishment on a defendant's actual conduct as opposed to the offense of conviction. The Guidelines sweep a variety of factors into the sentencing inquiry, including criminal offenses for which no conviction has been obtained. Under the Guidelines, therefore, prosecutorial charging decisions and even verdicts of acquittal after jury trial may have little impact at sentencing.
Long before the adoption of the Guidelines, courts bent on rationalizing the real-offense regime devised …
Is Conviction Irrelevant?, Elizabeth T. Lear
Is Conviction Irrelevant?, Elizabeth T. Lear
Elizabeth T Lear
Since 1986, the country has been witness to a revolution in federal sentencing practice: indeterminate sentencing, dominated by discretion and focused on the rehabilitative prospects of the offender, has been replaced by guidelines infused with offense-based considerations. As sweeping as the change in sentencing procedure has been, the system retains troubling aspects of the former regime. The most controversial among these is the Guidelines' reliance on unadjudicated conduct to determine proper punishment levels. This approach is a variation on “real offense” sentencing, which severs the punishment inquiry from the offense of conviction, focusing instead on an offender's "actual" conduct. Under …
Brief Of Amici Curiae -- Heien V. State Of North Carolina, Charles E. Maclean, Adam Lamparello
Brief Of Amici Curiae -- Heien V. State Of North Carolina, Charles E. Maclean, Adam Lamparello
Adam Lamparello
Reasonable suspicion of unlawful activity cannot be predicated on conduct that does not violate the law. Put differently, if reasonableness — or reasonable suspicion — is to mean anything, it means that apparent violations of the law must be based on actual violations of the law. The North Carolina Supreme Court’s decision sends a message to drivers throughout the country that they cannot be wrong about what the law requires, even where law enforcement is wrong — dead wrong — about what the law proscribes.
Neurotechnologies At The Intersection Of Criminal Procedure And Constitutional Law, Amanda C. Pustilnik
Neurotechnologies At The Intersection Of Criminal Procedure And Constitutional Law, Amanda C. Pustilnik
Amanda C Pustilnik
The rapid development of neurotechnologies poses novel constitutional issues for criminal law and criminal procedure. These technologies can identify directly from brain waves whether a person is familiar with a stimulus like a face or a weapon, can model blood flow in the brain to indicate whether a person is lying, and can even interfere with brain processes themselves via high-powered magnets to cause a person to be less likely to lie to an investigator. These technologies implicate the constitutional privilege against compelled, self-incriminating speech under the Fifth Amendment and the right to be free of unreasonable search and seizure …
Criminal Innovation And The Warrant Requirement: Reconsidering The Rights-Police Efficiency Trade-Off, Tonja Jacobi, Jonah Kind
Criminal Innovation And The Warrant Requirement: Reconsidering The Rights-Police Efficiency Trade-Off, Tonja Jacobi, Jonah Kind
Tonja Jacobi
It is routinely assumed that there is a trade-off between police efficiency and the warrant requirement. But existing analysis ignores the interaction between police investigative practices and criminal innovation. Narrowing the definition of a search or otherwise limiting the requirement for a warrant gives criminals greater incentive to innovate to avoid detection. With limited police resources to develop countermeasures, police will often be just as effective at capturing criminals when facing higher Fourth Amendment hurdles. We provide a game theoretic model that shows that when police investigation and criminal innovation are considered in a dynamic context, the police efficiency rationale …
A Provocative Defense, Aya Gruber
A Provocative Defense, Aya Gruber
Aya Gruber
It is common wisdom that the provocation defense is, quite simply, sexist. For decades, there has been a trenchant feminist critique that the doctrine reflects and reinforces masculine norms of violence and shelters brutal domestic killers. The critique is so prominent that it appears alongside the doctrine itself in leading criminal law casebooks. The feminist critique of provocation embodies several claims about provocation's problematically gendered nature, including that the defense is steeped in chauvinist history, treats culpable sexist killers too leniently, discriminates against women, and expresses bad messages. This article offers a (likely provocative) defense of the provocation doctrine. While …
Amicus Brief -- Freddie Lee Hall V. State Of Florida, Adam Lamparello, Charles Maclean
Amicus Brief -- Freddie Lee Hall V. State Of Florida, Adam Lamparello, Charles Maclean
Adam Lamparello
IQ cutoffs violate the Constitution. In Atkins v. Virginia, the United States Supreme Court recognized three distinct components to intellectual disability: (1) an intelligence quotient; (2) deficits in adaptive functioning; and (3) onset prior to eighteen. The Florida Supreme Court interpreted Fla. Stat. § 921.137(1) to bar evidence of adaptive disability and early onset if a defendant scored above a 70 on an IQ test. As Justice Perry recognized in his partial dissent, that interpretation will lead to the execution of a retarded man. The Amicus brief argues that the Florida Supreme Court's decision should be reversed because it prohibits …
American Hustle: Abscam, Entrapment And The Senate Expulsion Trial Of Harrison Williams, Henry P. Biggs Phd
American Hustle: Abscam, Entrapment And The Senate Expulsion Trial Of Harrison Williams, Henry P. Biggs Phd
Henry P Biggs PhD
American Hustle: Abscam, Entrapment and The Senate Expulsion Trial of Harrison Williams
The recent success of the film American Hustle has renewed curiosity in the events surrounding the Abscam scandal and its subsequent trials. This article begins by detailing the Abscam proposition as well as its players, moving on to address the contours of the defense of entrapment those accused frequently invoked. The article then focuses on the analyses of specific Abscam cases that claimed this defense. Finally, the article considers the specific case of Harrison Williams, a senator from New Jersey and the highest official ensnared in Abscam, documenting …
Brady Reconstructed: An Overdue Expansion Of Rights And Remedies, Leonard Sosnov
Brady Reconstructed: An Overdue Expansion Of Rights And Remedies, Leonard Sosnov
Leonard N Sosnov
Over fifty years ago, the Supreme Court held in Brady v Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), that the Due Process Clause requires prosecutors to disclose materially favorable evidence to the defense. The Brady Court emphasized the need to treat all defendants fairly and to provide each accused with a meaningful opportunity to present a defense. While Brady held great promise for defendants to receive fundamentally fair access to evidence, the subsequent decisions of the Court have fallen short of meeting this promise.
Since Brady, the Court has limited the disclosure obligation by failing to separately determine rights and remedies. Additionally, …
Crossing The Fault Line In Corporate Criminal Law, Amy Sepinwall
Crossing The Fault Line In Corporate Criminal Law, Amy Sepinwall
Amy J. Sepinwall
Why is it that so few bankers have been prosecuted and punished in the wake of the financial meltdown? Pundits are quick to point to inadequate funding for addressing financial crime or, more cynically, the revolving door between government regulatory agencies and Wall Street. But the ultimate answer may be at once more banal and more dispiriting, lying as it does at the very foundations of our criminal law.
The conception of responsibility underpinning much of our criminal law contemplates the individual in isolation from others. As a result, our criminal law has tremendous difficulty tracking culpability in organizational contexts. …
Kidnapping Incorporated: The Unregulated Youth-Transportation Industry And The Potential For Abuse, Ira P. Robbins
Kidnapping Incorporated: The Unregulated Youth-Transportation Industry And The Potential For Abuse, Ira P. Robbins
Ira P. Robbins
Last Words: A Survey And Analysis Of Federal Judges' Views On Allocution In Sentencing, Ira P. Robbins
Last Words: A Survey And Analysis Of Federal Judges' Views On Allocution In Sentencing, Ira P. Robbins
Ira P. Robbins
The Price Is Wrong: Reimbursement Of Expenses For Acquitted Criminal Defendants, Ira P. Robbins
The Price Is Wrong: Reimbursement Of Expenses For Acquitted Criminal Defendants, Ira P. Robbins
Ira P. Robbins