Law Commons^™

Trial Monitoring Of People V. Miti Et Al. (Zambia 2018), Human Rights Institute, Beth Van Schaack

Human Rights Institute

Between September and December 2018, TrialWatch monitored the trial of six
activists in Zambia, who were arrested and charged under the Public Order Act in
connection with an anti-corruption protest they organized in 2017. On December 21, 2018, the judge dismissed the charges and acquitted all six defendants.

Although the trial itself was generally fair, and Judge Mwaka Chigali Mikalile is to be commended in this regard, the proceedings were infected with prosecutorial misconduct in pursuing spurious charges based upon patently insufficient evidence.

Trial Monitoring Of People V. Cansu Pişkin (Turkey 2019), Human Rights Institute, Stephen J. Rapp

Human Rights Institute

Between March and May 2019, TrialWatch monitors under the supervision of the
Columbia Law School Human Rights Clinic monitored the trial of Cansu Pişkin, a
journalist for the Turkish daily paper, Evrensel, in Istanbul, Turkey. Pişkin was charged with “making a public servant into a target for terrorist organizations” in violation of Section 6(1) of Law No. 3713, otherwise known as the Anti-Terror Law, for publishing the prosecutor’s name in her April 5, 2018 article, “Special Prosecutor for the Bosphorus Students.” On May 7, 2019, the Court convicted Pişkin and sentenced her to 10 months’ imprisonment (with the sentence pronouncement …

Democratic Policing Before The Due Process Revolution, Sarah Seo

Faculty Scholarship

According to prevailing interpretations of the Warren Court’s Due Process Revolution, the Supreme Court constitutionalized criminal procedure to constrain the discretion of individual officers. These narratives, however, fail to account for the Court’s decisions during that revolutionary period that enabled discretionary policing. Instead of beginning with the Warren Court, this Essay looks to the legal culture before the Due Process Revolution to provide a more coherent synthesis of the Court’s criminal procedure decisions. It reconstructs that culture by analyzing the prominent criminal law scholar Jerome Hall’s public lectures, Police and Law in a Democratic Society, which he delivered in 1952 …

The End Of Intuition-Based High-Crime Areas, Ben Grunwald, Jeffrey A. Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

In 2000, the Supreme Court held in Illinois v. Wardlow that a suspect’s presence in a “high-crime area” is relevant in determining whether an officer has reasonable suspicion to conduct an investigative stop. Despite the importance of the decision, the Court provided no guidance about what that standard means, and over fifteen years later, we still have no idea how police officers understand and apply it in practice. This Article conducts the first empirical analysis of Wardlow by examining data on over two million investigative stops conducted by the New York Police Department from 2007 to 2012.

Our results suggest …

The Present Crisis In American Bail, Kellen R. Funk

Faculty Scholarship

More than fifty years after a predicted coming federal courts crisis in bail, district courts have begun granting major systemic injunctions against money bail systems. This Essay surveys the constitutional theories and circuit splits that are forming through these litigations. The major point of controversy is the level of federal court scrutiny triggered by allegedly unconstitutional bail regimes, an inquiry complicated by ambiguous Supreme Court precedents on (1) post-conviction fines, (2) preventive detention at the federal level, and (3) the adequacy of probable cause hearings. The Essay argues that the application of strict scrutiny makes the best sense of these …

Investigating Potentially Unlawful Death Under International Law: The 2016 Minnesota Protocol, Christof Heyns, Stuart Casey-Maslen, Toby Fisher, Sarah Knuckey, Thomas Probert, Morris Tidball-Binz

Faculty Scholarship

Across every region of the world, states are daily alleged to have committed or to have failed to prevent unlawful killings. From police shootings of members of ethnic minorities, to the use of lethal force against protestors during peacetime, to indiscriminate air strikes and targeted attacks on civilians during armed conflict, one of the most pressing concerns is ensuring that an effective investigation of the killing is conducted. Without an investigation, accountability is typically impossible, and families and communities must endure the pain of loss without knowing the truth, much less seeing justice. Investigations are an essential component of the …