Law Commons^™

The Troubling Influence Of Equality In Constitutional Criminal Procedure: From Brown To Miranda, Furman And Beyond, Scott W. Howe

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article identifies and critiques a view of the criminal-procedure clauses in the Bill of Rights that is revealed in Supreme Court decisions after Brown v. Board of Education. Professor Howe argues that the Court has gone astray in constructing these clauses by focusing on equality. He contends that the criminal-procedure clauses are better understood as discrete protections of individual liberty than as reflecting a unified theory or separate theories about equality. Building on this perspective, the Article proposes a reformulation of doctrine in varied realms of constitutional criminal procedure, including police -interrogation, capital sentencing, and administrative searches and seizures. …

Constitutional Risks To Equal Protection In The Criminal Justice System, Edward K. Cheng

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Note has examined the consequences of a shift in the equal protection context - a move from a traditional particularized harm perspective to a constitutional risk perspective focused on systemic harms. It has also acknowledged the significant remedial difficulties associated with constitutional risk, but by focusing on discretion as the source of most equal protection risks, this Note has proposed a moderate doctrinal change: discretionary safeguards. To be sure, this Note leaves the project substantially incomplete. Constitutional risk's focus on statistical evidence requires careful discussion of the pitfalls judges face in this area and of how they can develop …

The Peculiar Case Of State V. Terry Lynn Nichols: Are Television Cameras Really Banned From Oklahoma Criminal Proceedings?, Robert D. Nelon

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

The truck bomb ripped into A.P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995, at 9:02 a.m. One hundred sixty-eight men, women, and children died. None knew Timothy McVeigh or Terry Lynn Nichols, nor did McVeigh and Nichols know them. In fact, Nichols was not even in Oklahoma City when the bombing occurred. He is now--occupying a special cell in the Oklahoma County Jail, awaiting trial on state charges of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and aiding in placing a bomb near a public building.

Nichols' trip to Oklahoma City was circuitous. Initially, separate federal proceedings against McVeigh and Nichols were …

Specific Crime Vs. Criminal Ways: Criminal Conduct And Responsibility In Rule 3e1.1, Matthew Richardson

Vanderbilt Law Review

The United States Sentencing Commission ("Sentencing Commission") drafted Rule 3E1.1 with an inherent ambiguity, one that concerns both the Rule's purpose and design. Rule 3E1.1 allows for a reduction in sentence if a criminal "accepts responsibility" for his offense.' As result of the Rule's ambiguous language, prior tensions in interpretation of its meaning have spilled over into the current debate over sentence reductions.

The inherent ambiguity results from the Rule's genesis. The Sentencing Commission enacted the Rule with the purpose of increasing predictability in sentencing by reducing judicial discretion. Before the enactment of the Rule, mitigating and aggravating circumstances allowed …