Law Commons^™

Juvenile Gangs In Schools: Characteristics, Causes, And Possible Solutions, Gordon A. Crews

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications and Presentations

The purpose of this seminar is to acquaint participants with the ever-changing characteristics, often conflicting issues of causation, and various proposed solutions to the myriad of problems associated with gangs in schools. Special attention is given to the evolving nature of gangs in K-12 educational institutions (e.g., new types of juvenile groups developing and their associated behavior). Traditional subjects such as gang recruitment, initiation, and criminal activity are examined by discussing the many ways they manifest themselves in the school setting. Finally, a conceptual framework is presented by which a school can identify, understand, and begin to address a potential …

Stalking: Cultural, Clinical, And Legal Considerations, Carol E. Jordan, Karen Quinn, Bradley O. Jordan, Celia R. Daileader

Office for Policy Studies on Violence Against Women Publications

Crimes of violence against women are unique in their treatment by our culture and our system of legal justice. Both culturally and statutorily, victims of crimes which have historically been perpetrated against women, such as rape, domestic violence, and stalking have received significant focus. This article highlights cultural considerations and provides a statutory and case law analysis.

Perceived Risk Of Aids Among Prisoners Following Educational Intervention, Angela D. Crews, Randy Martin

Criminal Justice Faculty Research

A pre/post quasi-experimental design was used to assess the impact of one state's AIDS education program on male (N = 75) and female (N= 65) inmates' perceived risk of HIV infection on the street and in prison. Post-test only comparison groups of male and female inmates were evaluated to control for the threat of testing. T-tests for paired samples were used to determine whether any significant changes occurred within groups (male & female), and t-tests for independent samples were used between groups to determine whether males or females experienced the greatest magnitude of change. Multiple regression analyses explored the …

The Inefficiency Of Mens Rea, Claire Oakes Finkelstein

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Apres Apprendi, Nancy J. King, Susan R. Klein

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The Court in Apprendi v. New Jersey, ___ U.S. ___ (2000), held as a matter of due process that any fact, other than a prior conviction, that increases the penalty for an offense beyond the prescribed statutory maximum must be submitted to a jury and proven beyond a reasonable doubt. In a longer forthcoming article, we attempt to answer some of the profound questions raised by the case concerning constitutional oversight of legislative authority to define what is a "crime," questions that will ripen over the years as legislatures look for ways around the rule and litigants test these legislative …

A Broken System: Error Rates In Capital Cases, 1973-1995, James S. Liebman, Jeffrey Fagan, Valerie West

Faculty Scholarship

There is a growing bipartisan consensus that flaws in America's death-penalty system have reached crisis proportions. Many fear that capital trials put people on death row who don't belong there. Others say capital appeals take too long. This report – the first statistical study ever undertaken of modern American capital appeals (4,578 of them in state capital cases between 1973 and 1995) – suggests that both claims are correct.

Capital sentences do spend a long time under judicial review. As this study documents, however, judicial review takes so long precisely because American capital sentences are so persistently and systematically fraught …

When The Rule Swallows The Exception, Claire Oakes Finkelstein

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Death Matters – A Reply To Latzer And Cauthen, James S. Liebman, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Valerie West

Faculty Scholarship

The legal treatment of capital punishment in the United States "rests squarely on the predicate that the penalty of death is qualitatively different from a sentence of imprisonment, however long. Death, in its finality, differs more from life imprisonment than a 100-year prison term differs from one of only a year or two. This predicate is among "the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society" and determine whether a punishment is "cruel and unusual" in violation of the Constitution. Because "'[f]rom the point of view of the defendant, [death] is different in both its severity …

Death Is The Whole Ball Game, Jeffrey A. Fagan, James S. Liebman, Valerie West

Faculty Scholarship

In Capital Appeals Revisited and The Meaning of Capital Appeals, Barry Latzer and James N.G. Cauthen argue that a study of capital appeals should focus only on overturned findings of guilt, and complain that in A Broken System we examine all overturned capital verdicts. But the question they want studied cannot provide an accurate evaluation of a system of capital punishment. By proposing to count only "conviction" error and not "sentence" error, Latzer and Cauthen ignore that if a death sentence is overturned, the case is no longer capital and the system of capital punishment has failed to achieve its …