Law Commons^™

“A False Idea Of Economy”: Costs, Counties, And The Origins Of The California Correctional System, W. David Ball

Faculty Publications

Realignment in California comes at a time when the state’s prison system is expensive and overcrowded; the response has been to reevaluate and reconfigure the way counties use state prisons. Based on an original historical analysis of state archival records from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as a well as a review of secondary historical accounts of California’s prison system, I show that similar problems and policies were present at the state’s founding: issues of expense, overcrowding, and the county-state relationship help to explain the origins, size, and shape of the California prison system. California’s lack of money …

Normative Elements Of Parole Risk, W. David Ball

Faculty Publications

Parole boards evaluate the public safety risk posed by parole-eligible prisoners to determine whether they should be released. In this Essay, I argue that this process, at least as it operates in California, is fundamentally flawed because it asks the wrong question. Rather than ask whether an inmate poses any public safety risk, parole board officials should instead ask whether this risk is worth taking.

One way to answer this question would be to make our calculations more inclusive of all the costs and benefits of release and comparing them with the costs and benefits of retention. Elementary as this …

Criminal Justice Information Sharing: A Legal Primer For Criminal Practitioners In California, W. David Ball, Robert Weisberg

Faculty Publications

California criminal justice agencies need access to data in order to provide security, health care treatment, and appropriate programming, as well as to coordinate these activities with other agencies. By the same token, outside agencies—whether criminal, social service, or non-governmental—could often do their jobs more effectively with access to information generated or retained within particular criminal justice agencies. Criminal justice realignment under AB 109 has only heightened the need for inter-agency data sharing and cooperation, yet there continue to be misunderstandings about the legal framework surrounding information exchange.

This Article aims to provide a basic, practical background on the legal …

Heinous, Atrocious, And Cruel: Apprendi, Indeterminate Sentencing, And The Meaning Of Punishment, W. David Ball

Faculty Publications

Under Apprendi v. New Jersey, any fact that increases an offender's maximum punishment must be found by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. The Apprendi literature has focused on the allocation of power between judge and jury, ignoring entirely the role of the parole board in indeterminate sentences-that is, sentences which terminate in discretionary parole release. In an indeterminate sentence, a judge makes a pronouncement about the length of the prescriptive sentence to be imposed, but the parole board decides the actual sentence that is, in fact, imposed.

In this Article, I explore the Apprendi ramifications of indeterminate sentencing. In …

Death Penalty Appeals And Habeas Proceedings: The California Experience, Gerald F. Uelmen

Faculty Publications

Despite spending more than any other state on its implementation and administration, California today is saddled with a death penalty law that can be described only as completely dysfunctional. We have the longest death row in America, with approximately 670 inmates awaiting execution. Typically, the lapse of time between sentence and execution is twenty-five years, twice the national average, and is growing wider each year. One hundred nineteen inmates have spent more than twenty years on California's death row. Most of them will certainly die before they are ever executed. Since restoration of the death penalty in 1978, the leading …

But Can It Be Fixed? A Look At Constitutional Challenges To Lethal Injection Executions, Ellen Kreitzberg, David Richter

Faculty Publications

This article argues that California's Procedure 770 as currently implemented is unconstitutional. Judge Fogel, after an exhaustive review of evidence from all parties,agrees. Although Judge Fogel believes that the lethal injection system, while broken "can be fixed," we argue that lethal injection, as a method of execution, is always unconstitutional because the procedures employed in its administration can never ensure against unnecessary risk of pain to the inmate. We also argue that the California legislature must step in to publicly review lethal injection executions and to investigate the conduct of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) in the …

California Death Penalty Laws And The California Supreme Court: A Ten Year Perspective, Gerald F. Uelmen

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Nature Of The California Grand Jury: An Evaluation, Mary Emery, Aidan Gough

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Institute Of Contemporary Law: The California Superior Court System, Mary Emery, Nicholas Livak, Leon Panetta

Faculty Publications

The Institute of Contemporary Law, having recently completed an investigation and analysis of the California grand jury, now turns its efforts to the area of the superior court system in California. Hoping to correlate the work of students, lawyers and judges in this area, the following article attempts a broad review of the function and operation of the superior court in California. The history of the court, its rules and operation, its jurisdiction and its various departments are the topics covered by the discussion below. The presentation here offered is mainly expository and informational, and, it is hoped, will provide …