Law Commons^™

A Miscarriage Of Justice In Massachusetts: Eyewitness Identification Procedures, Unrecorded Admissions, And A Comparison With English Law, Stanley Z. Fisher, Ian K. Mckenzie

Faculty Scholarship

Like many other states, Massachusetts has recently known a number of acknowledged miscarriages of justice. This article examines one of them, the Marvin Mitchell case, in order to ask two questions: "What went wrong?" and "What systemic reforms might have prevented this injustice?" In seeking ideas for reform, we look to English law.

In 1990 Marvin Mitchell was convicted of rape in Massachusetts. Seven years later he became the first Massachusetts prisoner to be exonerated by DNA testing. In this article we describe the two key factors leading to Mitchell's wrongful conviction: faulty eyewitness identification procedures, and inadequate safeguards surrounding …

Puppy Love: Bioterrorism, Civil Rights, And Public Health, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

Florida has been the state humorists most like to make fun of since the 2000 presidential election, especially when it comes to politics. And humorists are almost the only commentators who can be counted on to tell us the truth about the state of American politics today. When Californians decided to recall their Governor, for example, Conan O'Brien observed: "Yesterday Arnold Schwarzenegger announced he would run for governor of California. The announcement was good news for Florida residents, who now live in the second-flakiest state in the country."' And when more than 200 people filed to run for Governor, Jay …

Towards A Legal History Of American Criminal Theory: Culture And Doctrine From Blackstone To The Model Penal Code, Gerald F. Leonard

Faculty Scholarship

Many writers in recent decades have objected to the utilitarian aspects of substantive criminal law that cannot be squared with modern, retributivist versions of criminal justice. One particular target of the retributivists has been the use of strict liability, especially as it is applied in statutory rape cases. This article is an effort, not to take sides between utilitarians and retributivists, but to historicize the ideas and assumptions on all sides of the debates in criminal law, including the debate about strict liability in statutory rape.

Discovering very little historical work on the subject, I offer the first general intellectual …

Unpatriotic Acts: An Introduction, Sadiq Reza

Faculty Scholarship

John Walker Lindh. Zacarias Moussaoui. Jose Padilla. Richard Reid. Who reading these lines does not instantly recognize the names of these men? Or at least their assigned noms de guerre: American Taliban, 20th hijacker, dirty bomber, shoe bomber. For two and a half years these names and others have flitted through our daily copies of The New York Times like shadow characters in a play, along with black-and-white photographs underneath which black-and-white text tells us of their alleged (and sometimes proven) wrongdoing and the latest developments in their tribulations (and sometimes trials) with our government. But the men themselves are …