Law Commons^™

Newsroom: Horwitz On The Trump Effect 12-1-2016, Amanda Milkovits, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

What Lurks Below Beckles, Leah Litman, Shakeer Rahman

Articles

This Essay argues that if the Supreme Court grants habeas relief in Beckles v. United States, then it should spell out certain details about where a Beckles claim comes from and who such a claim benefits. Those details are not essential to the main question raised in the case, but the federal habeas statute takes away the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction to hear just about any case that would raise those questions. For that reason, this Essay concludes that failing to address those questions now could arbitrarily condemn hundreds of prisoners to illegal sentences and lead to a situation where the …

Innocent Suffering: The Unavailability Of Post-Conviction Relief In Virginia Courts, Kaitlyn Potter

Law Student Publications

This comment examines actual innocence in Virginia: the progress it has made, the problems it still faces, and the possibilities for reform. Part I addresses past reform to the system, spurred by the shocking tales of Thomas Haynesworth and others. Part II identifies three of the most prevalent systemic challenges marring Virginia‘s justice system: (1) flawed scientific evidence; (2) the premature destruction of evidence; and (3) false confessions and guilty pleas. Part III suggests ways in which Virginia can, and should, address these challenges to ensure that the justice system is actually serving justice.

Trending @ Rwu Law: Dean Yelnosky's Post: "Getting Proximate": October 22, 2016, Michael Yelnosky

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

Consolidating Local Criminal Justice: Should Prosecutors Control The Jails?, Adam M. Gershowitz

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Otterbein Environmental Health & Safety Update, Tara Chinn

Otterbein Police Department

No abstract provided.

Justice Scalia’S Originalism And Formalism: The Rule Of Criminal Law As A Law Of Rules, Stephanos Bibas

All Faculty Scholarship

Far too many reporters and pundits collapse law into politics, assuming that the left–right divide between Democratic and Republican appointees neatly explains politically liberal versus politically conservative outcomes at the Supreme Court. The late Justice Antonin Scalia defied such caricatures. His consistent judicial philosophy made him the leading exponent of originalism, textualism, and formalism in American law, and over the course of his three decades on the Court, he changed the terms of judicial debate. Now, as a result, supporters and critics alike start with the plain meaning of the statutory or constitutional text rather than loose appeals to legislative …

Campus Safety Advisory: Share The Road, Larry Banaszak

Otterbein Police Department

The Otterbein University CAMPUS SAFETY BULLETIN is intended to provide safety and security information to students, faculty and staff in order to help the campus community be aware of security concerns and assist in maintaining a safe and secure campus environment.

Shadow Vigilante Officials Manipulate And Distort To Force Justice From An Apparently Reluctant System, Paul H. Robinson, Sarah M. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

The real danger of the vigilante impulse is not of hordes of citizens, frustrated by the system’s doctrines of disillusionment, rising up to take the law into their own hands. Frustration can spark a vigilante impulse but such classic aggressive vigilantism is not the typical response. More common is the expression of disillusionment in less brazen ways, by a more surreptitious undermining and distortion of the operation of the criminal justice system.

Shadow vigilantes, as they might be called, can affect the operation of the system in a host of important ways. For example, when people act as classic vigilantes …

Technology Doesn't Change The Need For Legal Protection, Kami N. Chavis

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

How We Move Beyond Dallas, Spencer Overton, Kami Chavis

Popular Media

Calls for healing and reconciliation in the wake of recent racial violence overlook the substantive, concrete steps that experts say would help forestall the next police tragedy.

Hate Crime Laws To Protect Police Are Misguided, Kami Chavis

Popular Media

JURIST Guest Columnist Kami N. Chavis of Wake Forest University School of Law discusses the recent proposals to add police officers to hate crime statutes.

Trending @ Rwu Law: Dean Yelnosky's Post: America's Cycle Of Violence 7-8-16, Michael Yelnosky

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

Newsroom: Goldstein On Drug Databases 6-27-2016, Sheri Qualters, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Foreword: A New Frontier In Criminal Justice Reform, Kami Chavis

Faculty Publications

Each author featured in this issue of the Wake Forest Journal of Law & Policy explores different aspects of the criminal justice system in the United States, and they come to the same conclusion that there is widespread consensus that in order for our system to fully embody the ideals of our nation and our great Constitution, critical reforms must occur at every stage within the criminal justice process.

There is currently strong momentum and bipartisan support to encourage changes that will impact not only those currently imprisoned, but also those in the pipeline to prison, and recent policy shifts …

Rescued From The Grave And Then Covered With Mud: Justice Scalia And The Unfinished Restoration Of The Confrontation Right, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

Some years before his death, when asked which was his favorite among his opinions, Antonin Scalia named Crawford v. Washington. It was a good choice. Justice Scalia's opinion in Crawford reclaimed the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution and restored it to its rightful place as one of the central protections of our criminal justice system. He must have found it particularly satisfying that the opinion achieved this result by focusing on the historical meaning of the text, and that it gained the concurrence of all but two members of the Court, from all ideological positions.

Identifying Criminals’ Risk Preferences, Murat C. Mungan, Jonathan Klick

Faculty Scholarship

There is a 250-year-old presumption in the criminology and law enforcement literature that people are deterred more by increases in the certainty rather than increases in the severity of legal sanctions. We call this presumption the Certainty Aversion Presumption (CAP). Simple criminal decision-making models suggest that criminals must be risk seeking if they behave consistently with CAP. This implication leads to disturbing interpretations, such as criminals being categorically different from law-abiding people, who often display risk-averse behavior while making financial decisions. Moreover, policy discussions that incorrectly rely on criminals’ risk attitudes implied by CAP are ill informed, and may therefore …

Lockdown In Manchester Is A Slippery Slope, Risa Evans

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] "Liberty. Security. Both are essential to a good life. But of course, neither is absolute, and at times circumstances demand that a society trade some measure of liberty for security. The tricky part is deciding when and how to draw the line."

The Identification And Exploitation Of Terrorist Financing, Jacob S. Gordon

Senior Honors Theses

Terrorism and the threat of terrorist attacks have forced the United States to place a high priority on developing a comprehensive counterterrorism strategy. A crucial component of this overarching strategy focuses on targeting the finances of a terrorist organization, hoping to eliminate or stifle their sources of funding in an effort to render the organization incapable of launching successful operations due to an absence of funding. By analyzing the most common financing options that terrorist groups use, the United States can hone its ability to disrupt the funding operations for terrorist groups. Likewise, developing a method for tracking the laundering …

How The Ada Regulates And Restricts Solitary Confinement For People With Mental Disabilities, Margo Schlanger

Other Publications

In a landmark decision two decades ago, United States District Judge Thelton Henderson emphasized the toxic effects of solitary confinement for inmates with mental illness. In Madrid v. Gomez, a case about California’s Pelican Bay prison, Judge Henderson wrote that isolated conditions in the Special Housing Unit, or SHU, while not amounting to cruel and unusual punishment for all prisoners, were unconstitutional for those “at a particularly high risk for suffering very serious or severe injury to their mental health . . . .” Vulnerable prisoners included those with pre-existing mental illness, intellectual disabilities, and brain damage. Henderson concluded that …

Early Warning/Intervention Systems (Presentation Slides From Nacole Symposium 2016 Held At John Jay College), Jennifer Helsby, Samuel Carton, Kenneth Joseph, Ayesha Mahmud, Youngsoo Park, Joe Walsh, Lauren Haynes

Publications and Research

Adverse interactions between police and the public harm police legitimacy and produce high costs due to harms to both officers and the public as well as litigation. Early intervention systems (EIS) that flag officers considered most likely to be involved in one of these adverse situations are an important tool for police supervision and for targeting of interventions such as counseling or training. However, the EIS that exist are often not data-driven and are based on supervior intuition. We have developed a prototype data-driven EIS that uses a diverse set of data sources from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department and machine …

Less Lethal Weapons: An Effectiveness Analysis, Timothy R. Kjellman

Senior Honors Theses

Less-lethal weapons have been effective at saving lives by providing police an option for defense or apprehension that does not involve a firearm. However, not all less-lethal weapons are created equal, and careful planning with a solid base of research must be done to insure that officers are prepared for every circumstance. The purpose of this study is to analyze the current information about less-lethal weapons and create a comprehensive breakdown of their strengths and weaknesses. This will include current statistics on the most common less-lethal weapons, as well as insight from scholarly sources. The strengths and weaknesses of a …

Exploits Of A Helicopter Tv Journalist, Jerry Foster

ERAU Prescott Aviation History Program

Jerry Foster was the first TV helicopter pilot/reporter in the country; the first to go live over the scene of a breaking story. High speed police chases; devastating floods and daring rescues now splashed all over cable TV, started in the early 1970s in Phoenix. Hear this fascinating story from a remarkable aviator who won the Harmon Trophy for his flying exploits. What he pioneered would later be copied by medical and law enforcement agencies throughout the country leading to the saving of countless lives.

Ocasio V. United States: Why The Hobbs Act Punishes Co-Conspirator Extortion, Joshua T. Carback

Maryland Law Review Online

No abstract provided.

Reply Brief Of Petitioners. Knight V. Thompson, 136 S.Ct. 2534 (2016) (No. 15-999), 2016 U.S. S. Ct. Briefs Lexis 1645, 2016 Wl 1555013+A12, Eric Schnapper, Mark Sabel, Peter Fruin, Randall C. Marshall, Roy S. Haber

Court Briefs

QUESTION PRESENTED Section 3 of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 ("RLUIPA") prohibits state and local governments from imposing "a substantial burden on the religious exercise of a person residing in or confined to an institution . . . unless the government demonstrates that imposition of the burden on that person": (1) "is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest," and (2) "is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest."42 U.S.C. § 2000cc-l(a). The Question Presented is: Whether RLUIPA requires that prison officials actually consider and demonstrate a sufficient basis for rejecting widely …

How To Change The Philosophy And Practice Of Probation And Supervised Release: Data Analytics, Cost Control, Focus On Reentry, And A Clear Mission, Nora V. Demleitner

Scholarly Articles

None available.

An Evaluation Of The Federal Legal Services Program: Evidence From Crime Rates And Property Values, Jamein P. Cunningham

Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper uses the city level roll-out of legal service grants to evaluate their effects on crime. Using Uniform Crime Reports from 1960 to 1985, the results show that there is a short run increase of 7 percent in crimes reported and also a 13 percent increase in crimes cleared by arrest. Results show an increase in the staffing of police officers in cities that received legal services. These cities are also associated with having higher median property values 10 years later. This supports the narrative that legal services changed police behavior through litigation or threats of litigation.

Conviction Review Units: A National Perspective, John Hollway

All Faculty Scholarship

Over the past 25 years, Americans have become increasingly aware of a vast array of mistakes in the administration of justice, including wrongful convictions, situations where innocent individuals have been convicted and incarcerated for crimes they did not commit. The most prevalent institutional response by prosecutors to address post-conviction fact-based claims of actual innocence is the Conviction Review Unit (CRU), sometimes called the Conviction Integrity Unit. Since the creation of the first CRU in the mid-2000s, more than 25 such units have been announced across the country; more than half of these have been created in the past 24 months. …

The Pracademic And Academic In Criminal Justice Education: A Qualitative Analysis, James E. Mccabe, Stephen A. Morreale, John R. Tahiliani

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Over the past several years, a few hundred colleagues involved in criminal justice education have participated in panel discussions and roundtables to discuss the trials and issues that have been observed by practitioners turned academics, or “pracademics.” Some complained of having difficulty breaking into academia. A debate has occurred in a number of colleges and universities over the benefit of having faculty with traditional academic credentials versus hiring non-traditional scholars with a blend of educational and practical experience. Similarly, there have been lively discussions over the appropriateness of a J.D. or professional doctorate as opposed to a Ph.D. in criminal …

Reconceptualizing The Eighth Amendment: Slaves, Prisoners, And Cruel And Unusual Punishment, Alexander A. Reinert

Articles

The meaning of the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause has long been hotly contested. For scholars and jurists who look to original meaning or intent, there is little direct contemporaneous evidence on which to rest any conclusion. For those who adopt a dynamic interpretive framework, the Supreme Court’s “evolving standards of decency” paradigm has surface appeal, but deep conflicts have arisen in application. This Article offers a contextual account of the Eighth Amendment’s meaning that addresses both of these interpretive frames by situating the Amendment in eighteenth and nineteenth-century legal standards governing relationships of subordination.

In particular, I …