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Articles 1 - 30 of 53
Full-Text Articles in Law
Choosing A Criminal Procedure Casebook: On Lesser Evils And Free Books, Ben L. Trachtenberg
Choosing A Criminal Procedure Casebook: On Lesser Evils And Free Books, Ben L. Trachtenberg
Faculty Publications
Among the more important decisions a law teacher makes when preparing a new course is what materials to assign. Criminal procedure teachers are spoiled for choice, with legal publishers offering several options written by teams of renowned scholars. This Article considers how a teacher might choose from the myriad options available and suggests two potentially overlooked criteria: weight and price.
Notice(Ing) Ex-Offenders: A Case Study Of The Manifest Injustice Of Passively Violating A "Felon-In-Possession" Statute, S. David Mitchell
Notice(Ing) Ex-Offenders: A Case Study Of The Manifest Injustice Of Passively Violating A "Felon-In-Possession" Statute, S. David Mitchell
Faculty Publications
Changing a law and criminalizing formerly legal conduct without providing notice of the change and without providing a reasonable period of time for the offending individual to comply with the change not only violates due process but is also manifestly unjust, especially given the scope and breadth of the collateral consequences that attach upon a felony conviction, such as the loss of the right to vote, to serve on a jury, or to receive certain benefits. With the far-reaching impact of a felony conviction on all areas of an individual's life, the maxim that "ignorance of the law excuses no …
On The Argument That Execution Protocol Reform Is Biomedical Research, Paul J. Litton
On The Argument That Execution Protocol Reform Is Biomedical Research, Paul J. Litton
Faculty Publications
Regardless of whether the Supreme Court rightly upheld Oklahoma’s execution protocol in Glossip, Oklahoma officials had inadequate reason to choose midazolam as the anesthetizing agent in its procedure. Their decision is one example illustrating Seema Shah’s point that death penalty states are engaged in “poorly designed experimentation that is not based on evidence.” Shah argues that “an important factor” causing the high rate of botched executions is that lethal injection reform is a type of human subjects research that is going unregulated. Shah argues that research requirements, such as informed consent and IRB review, are necessary to render the research …
Systemic Barriers To Effective Assistance Of Counsel In Plea Bargaining, Rodney J. Uphoff, Peter A. Joy
Systemic Barriers To Effective Assistance Of Counsel In Plea Bargaining, Rodney J. Uphoff, Peter A. Joy
Faculty Publications
In a trio of recent cases, Padilla v. Kentucky, Missouri v. Frye, and Lafler v. Cooper, the U.S. Supreme Court has focused its attention on defense counsel's pivotal role during the plea bargaining process . At the same time that the Court has signaled its willingness to consider ineffective assistance of counsel claims at the plea stage, prosecutors are increasingly requiring defendants to sign waivers that include waiving all constitutional and procedural errors, even unknown ineffective assistance of counsel claims such as those that proved successful in Padilla and Frye. Had Jose Padilla and Galin Frye been forced to sign …
Testimonial Is As Testimonial Does, Ben L. Trachtenberg
Testimonial Is As Testimonial Does, Ben L. Trachtenberg
Faculty Publications
In December 2012, the Florida Law Review published Ben Trachtenberg’s article “Confronting Coventurers: Coconspirator Hearsay, Sir Walter Raleigh, and the Sixth Amendment Confrontation Clause,” 64 Fla. L. Rev. 1669 (2012). Using the example of hearsay admitted in criminal prosecutions related to the Holy Land Foundation, the article argued that under Crawford v. Washington, courts had begun admitting unreliable hearsay against criminal defendants that previously would have been barred under Ohio v. Roberts, the Confrontation Clause case upended by Crawford.
Richard D. Friedman, the Alene and Allan F. Smith Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, responded in “The Mold …
Symposium Foreword: Bombshell Or Baby Step? The Ramifications Of Miller V. Alabama For Sentencing Law And Juvenile Crime Policy, Paul J. Litton
Symposium Foreword: Bombshell Or Baby Step? The Ramifications Of Miller V. Alabama For Sentencing Law And Juvenile Crime Policy, Paul J. Litton
Faculty Publications
This short essay, which serves as the Symposium Foreword, argues that the rationale of Miller is incoherent insofar as it permits juvenile LWOP sentences and that the Court misidentifies the foundational principle of Roper. First, in banning mandatory juvenile LWOP sentences, the Court invokes Woodson, which bans mandatory death sentences. The Court maintains that Woodson, from its capital jurisprudence, applies because juvenile LWOP is “akin to the death penalty” for juveniles. But if the Court’s capital jurisprudence is binding based on that equivalence, Roper should imply that juvenile LWOP, like the death penalty, is unconstitutional for juveniles. This essay briefly …
Physician Participation In Executions, The Morality Of Capital Punishment, And The Practical Implications Of Their Relationship, Paul J. Litton
Physician Participation In Executions, The Morality Of Capital Punishment, And The Practical Implications Of Their Relationship, Paul J. Litton
Faculty Publications
Evidence that some executed prisoners suffered excruciating pain has reinvigorated the ethical debate about physician participation in lethal injections. In widely publicized litigation, death row inmates argue that the participation of anesthesiologists in their execution is constitutionally required to minimize the risk of unnecessary suffering. For many years, commentators supported the ethical ban on physician participation reflected in codes of professional medical organizations. However, a recent wave of scholarship concurs with inmate advocates, urging the law to require or at least permit physician participation.
Blanket Retroactive Amelioration: A Remedy For Disproportionate Punishments, S. David Mitchell
Blanket Retroactive Amelioration: A Remedy For Disproportionate Punishments, S. David Mitchell
Faculty Publications
While statutes determine the conditions under which an individual is to be held accountable for their actions and identifies the punishment that shall attach to that conduct, they are not engraved in stone. Laws can and are changed. Legislatures will revisit whether a penalty is too harsh (or too lenient), and amend an existing statute to reflect the legislature’s evaluation of what is contemporaneously appropriate. This re-evaluation of a statutory punishment is ongoing assessment to determine whether the punishment is proportional to the conduct. Blanket retroactive amelioration allows society to correct overly harsh, overreactions and to restore the balance between …
Freeing Morgan Freeman: Expanding Back-End Release Authority In American Prisons, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Freeing Morgan Freeman: Expanding Back-End Release Authority In American Prisons, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Faculty Publications
This article, written for a symposium hosted by the Wake Forest Journal of Law & Policy on “Finality in Sentencing,” makes four arguments, three general and one specific. First, the United States incarcerates too many people for too long, and mechanisms for making prison sentences less “final” will allow the U.S. to make those sentences shorter, thus reducing the prison population surplus. Second, even if one is agnostic about the overall size of the American prison population, it is difficult to deny that least some appreciable fraction of current inmates are serving more time than can reasonably be justified on …
Editor's Observations: It's Alive! The Federal Booker-Fix Debate Sirs, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Editor's Observations: It's Alive! The Federal Booker-Fix Debate Sirs, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Faculty Publications
Seven years have passed since Justice Ginsburg do-si-doed from the merits majority to the remedial majority in Booker and transformed the Federal Sentencing Guidelines into an advisory system.' And despite the logical absurdity of the Scalian Sixth Amendment doctrine that produced this outcome,' and despite the expectation of folks like me that this marriage of fish and fowl could not long survive, it survives. What is more, a great many people whose opinion matters now claim to love it-or at least to like it well enough to want to keep it for the foreseeable future. Thus, the outburst of legislative …
Nothing Is Not Enough: Fix The Absurd Post-Booker Federal Sentencing System, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Nothing Is Not Enough: Fix The Absurd Post-Booker Federal Sentencing System, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Faculty Publications
This article is an elaboration of testimony I gave in February 2012 at a U.S. Sentencing Commission hearing considering whether the advisory guidelines system created by the Supreme Court’s 2005 decision in United States v. Booker should be modified or replaced. I argue that it should.
Prolegomenon On The Status Of The Hopey, Changey Thing In American Criminal Justice, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Prolegomenon On The Status Of The Hopey, Changey Thing In American Criminal Justice, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Faculty Publications
This is an introductory essay to Volume 23, Number 2, of the FEDERAL SENTENCING REPORTER, which considers the state of American criminal justice policy in 2010, two years after the "Change" election of 2008. Part I of the essay paints a statistical picture of trends in federal criminal practice and sentencing over the last half-decade or so, with particular emphasis on sentence severity and the degree of regional and inter-judge sentencing disparity. The statistics suggest that the expectation that the 2005 Booker decision would produce a substantial increase in the exercise of judicial sentencing discretion and a progressive abandonment of …
Forward: Symposium On Broke And Broken: Can We Fix Our State Indigent Defense System?, Rodney J. Uphoff
Forward: Symposium On Broke And Broken: Can We Fix Our State Indigent Defense System?, Rodney J. Uphoff
Faculty Publications
The Symposium presenters and commentators, most of whom had worked at some point in their career as a public defender, brought a wealth of experience to the discussion. While the presentations and comments made that day, together with the articles that follow in this Symposium issue, do not provide any quick fix or easy solution, they do offer some important lessons for lawmakers to consider as states struggle to improve the plight of indigent defenders and their clients.
American Buffalo: Vanishing Acquittals And The Gradual Extinction Of The Federal Criminal Trial Lawyer, Frank O. Bowman Iii
American Buffalo: Vanishing Acquittals And The Gradual Extinction Of The Federal Criminal Trial Lawyer, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Faculty Publications
This essay is an invited response to Professor Ronald Wright's impressive study of the fact that the acquittal rate in federal criminal trials is declining even faster than the rate of trials themselves, Trial Distortion and the End of Innocence in Federal Criminal Justice, 154 U. PA. L. REV. 79 (2005). The essay concurs with Professor Wright's conclusion that one significant factor driving down both federal trial and acquittal rates is the government's use of the markedly increased bargaining leverage afforded to prosecutors by the post-1987 federal sentencing system consisting of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines interacting with various statutory mandatory …
The Model Federal Sentencing Guidelines Project: Departures, Model Sentencing Guidelines §5.1, Frank O. Bowman Iii
The Model Federal Sentencing Guidelines Project: Departures, Model Sentencing Guidelines §5.1, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Faculty Publications
This Article is the twelfth of twelve parts of a set of Model Federal Sentencing Guidelines designed to illustrate the feasibility and advantages of a simplified approach to federal sentencing proposed by the Constitution Project Sentencing Initiative. The Model Sentencing Guidelines and the Constitution Project report are all to be published in Volume 18, Number 5 of the Federal Sentencing Reporter. The project is described in an essay titled 'Tis a Gift To Be Simple: A Model Reform of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, available on SSRN at http://ssrn.com/abstract=927929. This segment of the project contains rules governing the imposition of sentences …
'Tis A Gift To Be Simple: A Model Reform Of The Federal Sentencing Guidelines, Frank O. Bowman Iii
'Tis A Gift To Be Simple: A Model Reform Of The Federal Sentencing Guidelines, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Faculty Publications
This essay introducing the June 2006 edition of the Federal Sentencing Reporter (Vol. 18, No. 5) describes two important contributions to the movement for real reform of the federal sentencing system. First, Professor Bowman summarizes the recommendations of the Constitution Project Sentencing Initiative (CPSI) report on federal sentencing. The CPSI report, reproduced in this Issue, cautions against any over-hasty legislative response to the Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Booker, suggests some near-term improvements to the existing federal sentencing system, and then sets out a framework for a reformed and markedly simplified federal sentencing regime. Second, Professor Bowman describes …
The Model Federal Sentencing Guidelines Project: A Simplified Economic Crimes Guideline, Model Sentencing Guidelines §2b1.1, Frank O. Bowman Iii
The Model Federal Sentencing Guidelines Project: A Simplified Economic Crimes Guideline, Model Sentencing Guidelines §2b1.1, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Faculty Publications
This Article is the third of twelve parts of a set of Model Federal Sentencing Guidelines designed to illustrate the feasibility and advantages of a simplified approach to federal sentencing proposed by the Constitution Project Sentencing Initiative. The Model Sentencing Guidelines and the Constitution Project report are all to be published in Volume 18, Number 5 of the Federal Sentencing Reporter. The project is described in an essay titled 'Tis a Gift To Be Simple: A Model Reform of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, available on SSRN at http://ssrn.com/abstract=927929.
The Model Federal Sentencing Guidelines Project: A Simplified Sentencing Grid, Model Sentencing Guidelines §1.1, Frank O. Bowman Iii
The Model Federal Sentencing Guidelines Project: A Simplified Sentencing Grid, Model Sentencing Guidelines §1.1, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Faculty Publications
This Article is the first of twelve parts of a set of Model Federal Sentencing Guidelines designed to illustrate the feasibility and advantages of a simplified approach to federal sentencing proposed by the Constitution Project Sentencing Initiative. The Model Sentencing Guidelines and the Constitution Project report are all to be published in Volume 18, Number 5 of the Federal Sentencing Reporter. The project is described in an essay titled "'Tis a Gift to be Simple: A Model Reform of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines", available on SSRN at http://ssrn.com/abstract=927929.
The Year Of Jubilee Or Maybe Not: Some Preliminary Observations About The Operation Of The Federal Sentencing System After Booker, Frank O. Bowman Iii
The Year Of Jubilee Or Maybe Not: Some Preliminary Observations About The Operation Of The Federal Sentencing System After Booker, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Faculty Publications
This segment of the project contains the offense seriousness portion of the simplified sentencing table employed in the Model Sentencing Guidelines. The Article also contains drafter's commentary explaining the offense seriousness scale of the table, how it interacts with other portions of the Model Guidelines, and the policy choices behind the simplified table.
The Model Federal Sentencing Guidelines Project: Determining The Sentencing Range And The Sentence Within Range, Model Sentencing Guidelines §1.2 - 1.8 , Frank O. Bowman Iii
The Model Federal Sentencing Guidelines Project: Determining The Sentencing Range And The Sentence Within Range, Model Sentencing Guidelines §1.2 - 1.8 , Frank O. Bowman Iii
Faculty Publications
This Article is the second of twelve parts of a set of Model Federal Sentencing Guidelines designed to illustrate the feasibility and advantages of a simplified approach to federal sentencing proposed by the Constitution Project Sentencing Initiative. The Model Sentencing Guidelines and the Constitution Project report are all to be published in Volume 18, Number 5 of the Federal Sentencing Reporter. The project is described in an essay titled 'Tis a Gift To Be Simple: A Model Reform of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, available on SSRN at http://ssrn.com/abstract=927929.
Convicting The Innocent: Aberration Or Systemic Problem?, Rodney J. Uphoff
Convicting The Innocent: Aberration Or Systemic Problem?, Rodney J. Uphoff
Faculty Publications
In practice, the right to adequate defense counsel in the United States is disturbingly unequal. Only some American criminal defendants actually receive the effective assistance of counsel. Although some indigent defendants are afforded zealous, effective representation, many indigent defendants and almost all of the working poor are not. The quality of representation a defendant receives generally is a product of fortuity, of economic status, and of the jurisdiction in which he or she is charged. For many defendants, the assistance of counsel means little more than counsel's help in facilitating a guilty plea. With luck, money, and location primarily determining …
The Model Federal Sentencing Guidelines Project: Sentencing Factors Applicable To All Offense Types, Model Sentencing Guidelines §3.1 - 3.6, Frank O. Bowman Iii
The Model Federal Sentencing Guidelines Project: Sentencing Factors Applicable To All Offense Types, Model Sentencing Guidelines §3.1 - 3.6, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Faculty Publications
This Article is the ninth of twelve parts of a set of Model Federal Sentencing Guidelines designed to illustrate the feasibility and advantages of a simplified approach to federal sentencing proposed by the Constitution Project Sentencing Initiative. The Model Sentencing Guidelines and the Constitution Project report are all to be published in Volume 18, Number 5 of the Federal Sentencing Reporter. The project is described in an essay titled 'Tis a Gift To Be Simple: A Model Reform of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines.
Mr. Madison Meets A Time Machine: The Political Science Of Federal Sentencing Reform, Frank O. Bowman Iii
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), …
Murder, Meth, Mammon & Moral Values: The Political Landscape Of American Sentencing Reform (In Symposium On White Collar Crime), Frank O. Bowman Iii
Murder, Meth, Mammon & Moral Values: The Political Landscape Of American Sentencing Reform (In Symposium On White Collar Crime), Frank O. Bowman Iii
Faculty Publications
This Article examines the ongoing American experiment in mass incarceration and considers the prospects for meaningful sentencing reform.
The Failure Of The Federal Sentencing System: A Structural Analysis, Frank O. Bowman Iii
The Failure Of The Federal Sentencing System: A Structural Analysis, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Faculty Publications
For most of the last decade, I numbered myself among the supporters of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines and wrote extensively in their defense, while chronicling their defects. In the past year, I have reluctantly concluded that the federal sentencing guidelines system has failed. This Article explains the Guidelines' failure. The Sentencing Reform Act was intended to distribute the power to make sentencing policy and rules and to control individual sentencing outcomes among a range of national and local actors - the U.S. Sentencing Commission, Congress, the federal appellate courts, and the Department of Justice at the national level, and district …
Beyond Bandaids: A Proposal For Reconfiguring Federal Sentencing After Booker, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Beyond Bandaids: A Proposal For Reconfiguring Federal Sentencing After Booker, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Faculty Publications
This Article proposes a simplified sentencing table consisting of nine base sentencing ranges, each subdivided into three sub-ranges. The base sentencing range would be determined by combining offense facts found by a jury or admitted in a plea with the defendant's criminal history. A defendant's placement in the sub-ranges would be determined by post-conviction judicial findings of sentencing factors. No upward departures from the base sentencing range would be permissible, but defendants might be sentenced below the low end of the base sentencing range as a result of an acceptance of responsibility credit or due to a downward departure motion. …
Function Over Formalism: A Provisional Theory Of The Constitutional Law Of Crime And Punishment, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Function Over Formalism: A Provisional Theory Of The Constitutional Law Of Crime And Punishment, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Faculty Publications
This Article is, in effect, the second half of the author's argument against the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Sixth Amendment in Blakely v. Washington. The first half appeared in "Train Wreck? Or Can the Federal Sentencing System Be Saved? A Plea for Rapid Reversal of Blakely v. Washington," 41 American Criminal Law Review 217 (2004), and made a pragmatic, consequentialist argument against the Blakely result. This Article takes the next step of providing an alternative constitutional model of criminal sentencing to that offered by Justice Scalia in Blakely. The model emphasizes that a good constitutional model should pay particular …
Drifting Down The Dnieper With Prince Potemkin: Some Skeptical Reflections About The Place Of Compliance Programs In Federal Criminal Sentencing (Symposium), Frank O. Bowman Iii
Drifting Down The Dnieper With Prince Potemkin: Some Skeptical Reflections About The Place Of Compliance Programs In Federal Criminal Sentencing (Symposium), Frank O. Bowman Iii
Faculty Publications
This Article explains how the federal organizational sentencing guidelines work and how they have created incentives for businesses to set up compliance programs. It then considers the paucity of evidence that compliance programs actually prevent the occurrence of corporate crime. It also questions whether investments in compliance programs make sense even for companies caught in a federal criminal investigation. There is little evidence that compliance programs have any significant effect on the likelihood that federal prosecutors will file criminal charges in the first instance. Even more surprisingly, examination of U.S. Sentencing Commission statistics reveals that the compliance program movement seems …
Memorandum Presenting The Case For Rapid Congressional Action In Response To Blakely V. Washington, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Memorandum Presenting The Case For Rapid Congressional Action In Response To Blakely V. Washington, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Faculty Publications
Soon after the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Blakely v. Washington, which invalidated the Washington state sentencing guidelines and cast doubt on the constitutionality of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on "Blakely v. Washington and the Future of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines." Witnesses from the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Sentencing Commission, and the judiciary downplayed the seriousness of the situation and urged caution in any congressional action. Concerned that the situation in the courts was more dire than the institutional witnesses had been willing to admit, Professor Frank Bowman subsequently …
Memorandum Presenting A Proposal For Bringing The Federal Sentencing Guidelines Into Conformity With Blakely V. Washington, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Memorandum Presenting A Proposal For Bringing The Federal Sentencing Guidelines Into Conformity With Blakely V. Washington, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Faculty Publications
On June 24, 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Blakely v. Washington, a case that invalidated the Washington state sentencing guidelines and cast the validity of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines into grave doubt. On June 27, 2004, Professor Frank Bowman sent a memorandum to the United States Sentencing Commission analyzing the probable impact of Blakely on the federal guidelines and proposing a legislative modification of the Guidelines to render them compliant with Blakely. The proposal relies on the rule of McMillan v. Pennsylvania, 477 U.S. 79 (1986), and Harris v. United States, 536 U.S. 545 (2002), that post-conviction judicial findings …