Law Commons^™

Summary Of Williams V. State, 121 Nev. Adv. Op. 90, Jacqueline A. Gilbert

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

A jury, selected from the third venire, convicted Gary Jerome Williams of battery with use of a deadly weapon causing substantial bodily harm on Robin Swope. On June 22, 2003, Williams and the victim (Robin Swope) engaged in an altercation after Swope saw Williams speaking to Swope’s thirteen-year-old daughter. At trial, most details of the altercation were highly disputed including, who was the initial aggressor, who produced a knife, and whether Swope used highly inflammatory language. In 1985, when he was seventeen, the State of Arkansas convicted Williams of aggravated battery, sentencing him to fifteen years confinement. The Nevada pre-sentencing …

Summary Of Bolden V. State, 121 Nev. Adv. Op. 86, Kelly Dove

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

No abstract provided.

Expert Testimony In Capital Sentencing: Juror Responses, John H. Montgomery, J. Richard Ciccone, Stephen P. Garvey, Theodore Eisenberg

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The U.S. Supreme Court, in Furman v. Georgia (1972), held that the death penalty is constitutional only when applied on an individualized basis. The resultant changes in the laws in death penalty states fostered the involvement of psychiatric and psychologic expert witnesses at the sentencing phase of the trial, to testify on two major issues: (1) the mitigating factor of a defendant’s abnormal mental state and (2) the aggravating factor of a defendant’s potential for future violence. This study was an exploration of the responses of capital jurors to psychiatric/psychologic expert testimony during capital sentencing. The Capital Jury Project is …

Summary Of Sampson V. State, 121 Nev. Adv. Op. 80, Denise S. Balboni

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

Admission of expert testimony is within the sole discretion of the trial judge. Abuse of discretion does not exist where defense counsel waited until the eighth day of trial to seek to call a newly-named expert witness without sufficient justification for the delay. The Nevada Supreme Court adopts the rule against admission of witness and prosecution comments regarding a defendant’s invocation of Fourth Amendment rights when such evidence is used to support an inference of guilt. When the district court admits such evidence, this Court will determine the existence of reversible error by application of the same test used for …

Prison Rape Elimination Act (Prea) Summary Of Responses From Juvenile Focus Group On Staff Sexual Misconduct And Youth On Youth Sexual Assault (Focus Group: Juvenile Justice Agencies - Addressing Rape Of Youth In Correctional Custody, Overview Of Current Efforts, Close Out And Reactions (Delivery Strategies, Products)), Brenda V. Smith, Andie Moss

Presentations

Responses to thirteen questions regarding curriculum related to staff sexual misconduct with youth and youth on youth sexual assault are provided. "The objectives of the focus groups included: (1) to gather data that will inform NIC [National Institute of Corrections] in how to best develop a juvenile oriented curriculum on staff sexual misconduct; (2) to gather data that will guide NIC in identifying the major staff sexual misconduct related issues in juvenile corrections, including what stakeholders should be consulted, and what strategies should be utilized in naming the issues and building knowledge about the PREA [Prison Rape Elimination Act]; and …

Proportionality As A Principle Of Limited Government, Alice Ristroph

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Confronting Death: Sixth Amendment Rights At Capital Sentencing, John G. Douglass

Law Faculty Publications

The Court's fragmentary approach has taken pieces of the Sixth Amendment and applied them to pieces of the capital sentencing process. The author contends that the whole of the Sixth Amendment applies to the whole of a capital case, whether the issue is guilt, death eligibility, or the final selection of who lives and who dies. In capital cases, there is one Sixth Amendment world, not two. In this Article, he argues for a unified theory of Sixth Amendment rights to govern the whole of a capital case. Because both Williams and the Apprendi-Ring-Booker line of cases purport to rest …

Symposium On Sentencing Rhetoric: Competing Narratives In The Post-Booker Era, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Summary Of Bennett V. Dist. Ct., 121 Nev. Adv. Op. 78, Collin Webster

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

No abstract provided.

Summary Of Blake V. State, 121 Nev. Adv. Op. 77, Anna Arroyo

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

No abstract provided.

Mr. Madison Meets A Time Machine: The Political Science Of Federal Sentencing Reform, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

This is the third in a series of articles analyzing the current turmoil in federal criminal sentencing and offering suggestions for improvements in the federal sentencing system. The first article, "The Failure of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines: A Structural Analysis," 105 COLUMBIA L. REV. 1315 (2005), analyzed the structural failures of the complex federal sentencing guidelines system, particularly those arising from imbalances among the primary institutional sentencing actors - Congress, the judiciary, the Justice Department, and the U.S. Sentencing Commission. The second, "Beyond BandAids: A Proposal for Reconfiguring Federal Sentencing After Booker," 2005 U. OF CHICAGO LEGAL FORUM 149 (2005), …

Post-Crawford: Time To Liberalize The Substantive Admissibility Of A Testifying Witness's Prior Consistent Statements, Lynn Mclain

All Faculty Scholarship

The United States Supreme Court's 1995 decision in Tome v. United States has read Federal Rule of Evidence 801(d)(1)(B) to prevent the prosecution's offering a child abuse victim's prior consistent statements as substantive evidence. As a result of that decision, the statements will also be inadmissible even for the limited purpose of helping to evaluate the credibility of a child, if there is a serious risk that the out-of-court statements would be used on the issue of guilt or innocence.

Moreover, after the Court's March 2004 decision in Crawford v. Washington, which redesigned the landscape of Confrontation Clause analysis, other …

Section 7: Criminal Procedure, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

Summary Of Gaxiola V. State, 121 Nev. Adv. Op. 64, Debra L. Pieruschka

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

An appeal from a judgment of conviction, entered after jury verdict, on five counts of sexual assault of a minor under the age of fourteen years and two counts of lewdness with a child under the age of fourteen years.

Summary Of Sandstrom V. Second Judicial District Court Of Nevada, 121 Nev. Adv. Op. 65, Jarrod Rickard

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

Original petition for a writ of certiorari or in the alternative a writ of mandamus challenging the district court's order reversing and remanding a justice court order granting petitioner's motion to dismiss a misdemeanor criminal complaint.

Summary Of State V. Weber, 121 Nev. Adv. Op. 57, Danielle Oakley

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

An appeal from a judgment of conviction and sentence of death, pursuant to a jury trial.

Summary Of Phillips V. State, 121 Nev. Adv. Op. 58, Patrick Murch

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

Defendant/Appellant Donald E. Phillips ("Phillips") appealed from a jury conviction of one count each of aggravated stalking and preventing or dissuading a witness from testifying, and twelve counts of extortion.

A Law And Economics Perspective On Terrorism, Nuno M. Garoupa , Jonathan Klick, Francesco Parisi

George Mason University School of Law Working Papers Series

This paper reviews the existing law and economics literature on crime, noting where various models might apply to the terror context. Specifically, it focuses on two strands of the literature, deterrence and incapacitation. Challenging the conventional application of the basic rational agent model of crime in the context of terrorism, it considers anti-terror measures enacted by different countries, highlighting how the details of the laws correspond to the insights from economic models of crime. In conclusion, the paper proposes an efficient sorting mechanism in which individuals will be provided with adequate incentives to reveal their type to law enforcement authorities.

Guidance From Above And Beyond, Steven L. Chanenson

Working Paper Series

Criminal sentencing does not just happen in the courtroom. Some key sentencing decisions happen long before court convenes, while other critical sentencing decisions take place long after court adjourns. Although the public focuses primarily on the black-robed figure wielding the gavel, sentencing reflects decisions by a veritable parade of actors, including legislators, sentencing commissioners, police officers, prosecutors, juries, trial judges, appellate judges, and executive branch officials. All of these people guide and constrain the sentencing process. Through their official actions, they inform each other about what is happening in their corners of the sentencing drama, and prod their counterparts to …

Calling A Truce In The Culture Wars: From Enron To The Cia, Craig S. Lerner

George Mason University School of Law Working Papers Series

This Article compares and evaluates recent Congressional efforts to improve institutional “cultures” in the private and public sectors. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 was designed to upgrade corporate culture by patching up the “walls” that separate corporate management from boards of directors, accountants, lawyers, and financial analysts. The Intelligence Reform Act of 2005 took a different tack, hammering away at walls that supposedly segmented the intelligence community. The logic was that the market failed because people did not observe sufficient formalities in their dealings with one another, while the intelligence community failed precisely because people kept their distance from one …

Summary Of Anderson V. State, 121 Nev. Adv. Op. 51, Bryce C. Loveland

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

No abstract provided.

Life V. Death: Or Why The Death Penalty Should Marginally Deter, Charles N. W. Keckler

George Mason University School of Law Working Papers Series

Econometric measures of the effect of capital punishment have increasingly provided evidence that it deters homicides. However, most researchers on both sides of the death penalty debate continue to rely on rather simple assumptions about criminal behavior. I attempt to provide a more nuanced and predictive rational choice model of the incentives and disincentives to kill, with the aim of assessing to what extent the statistical findings of deterrence are in line with theoretical expectations. In particular, I examine whether it is plausible to suppose there is a marginal increase in deterrence created by increasing the penalty from life imprisonment …

Reasonable Suspicion And Mere Hunches, Craig S. Lerner

George Mason University School of Law Working Papers Series

In Terry v. Ohio, Earl Warren held that police officers could temporarily detain a suspect, provided that they could articulate the “reasonable inferences” for their suspicion, and not merely allude to a “hunch.” Since Terry, the American legal system has discounted the “mere” hunches of police officers, requiring them to articulate “specific” and “objective” observations of fact to support their decision to conduct a stop and frisk. The officer’s intuitions, gut feelings and sixth sense about a situation are all disallowed.

This dichotomy between facts and intuitions is built on sand. Emotions and intuitions can be reasonable, and reasons are …

The Reasonableness Of Probable Cause, Craig S. Lerner

George Mason University School of Law Working Papers Series

Probable cause is generally cast in judicial opinions and the scholarly literature as a fixed probability of criminal activity. In the weeks before the September 11 attacks, FBI headquarters, applying such an unbending standard, rejected a warrant application to search Zacarias Moussaoui’s laptop computer. This article, which begins with an analysis of the Moussaoui episode, argues that the probable cause standard should be calibrated to the gravity of the investigated offense and the intrusiveness of a proposed search. Tracing the evolution of probable cause from the common law through its American development, the article argues that the Supreme Court’s current …

Summary Of Hosier V. State, 121 Nev. Adv. Op. 41, Robert Henriksen

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

This case is an original proper person petition for extraordinary relief, challenging the validity of Hosier’s 1990 judgment for conviction citing to Article 6, Section 4 of the Nevada Constitution.

Negotiating Sex, Michelle J. Anderson

Working Paper Series

“Negotiating Sex” is a response to the two major proposals for rape law reform in legal scholarship today, as well as a proposal for a third way. Susan Estrich and Donald Dripps argue that sexual penetration should be legal unless the victim expresses her non-consent, a proposal I call the “No Model.” Stephen Schulhofer argues that sexual penetration should be illegal unless the defendant obtains affirmative consent for penetration through the victim’s words or conduct, a proposal I call the “Yes Model.” Under this model, according to Schulhofer, if a woman does not say “no,” and “her silence is combined …

Summary Of Bellon V. State, 121 Nev. Adv. Op. 45, 117 P.3d 176, Wayne Klomp

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

No abstract provided.

Summary Of Gordon V. State, 121 Nev. Adv. Op. 51, Bryce C. Loveland

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

In this case, the Court considered two issues related to DUI charges against appellant. First, whether a jury may return a general guilty verdict based upon several legally sufficient theories of driving under the influence if at least one theory had sufficient evidentiary support. Second, whether the appellant was prejudiced by the State’s failure to gather evidence during its investigation. After a review of the evidence presented at trial, the Court concluded that a jury may return a general guilty verdict even when only one of several theories had sufficient support, and that the appellant here was not prejudiced by …

Partial Ban On Plea Bargains, Oren Gazal

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

The influence of the plea bargaining system on innocent defendants is fiercely debated. Many scholars call for a ban on plea bargaining, arguing that the practice coerces innocent defendants to plead guilty. Proponents of plea bargaining respond that even an innocent defendant is better off when he choose to plea bargain in order to assure a lenient result, if he concludes that the risk of wrongful trial conviction is too high. They claim that since plea bargaining is only an option, it cannot harm the defendant whether he is guilty or innocent. This paper argues that the both supporters and …

Mental Disorders And The Law, Richard Redding

Working Paper Series

This chapter provides an introduction to the major classes of mental disorder and the ways in which they are salient to selected aspects of American criminal and civil law, focusing particularly on criminal law issues.