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Full-Text Articles in Law

"No Provincial Or Transient Notion": The Need For A Mistake Of Age Defense In Child Rape Prosecutions, Jarrod F. Reich Mar 2004

"No Provincial Or Transient Notion": The Need For A Mistake Of Age Defense In Child Rape Prosecutions, Jarrod F. Reich

Vanderbilt Law Review

Suppose a state legislature enacted a law making any theft a crime punishable by twenty years' imprisonment. Within this law was a provision precluding an accused from introducing evidence that he unwittingly took property to which he was not entitled. Suppose further that after this law was enacted, an elderly woman hung her black coat in a restaurant's lobby and, upon leaving, mistakenly retrieved another's black coat. Under the hypothetical statute, her mistake could neither hinder the prosecution's case against her nor be asserted by her as a defense. By inadvertently taking another's coat from a crowded restaurant, the woman …


Hines 57: The Catchall Case To The Texas Kidnapping Statute., Karen Bartlett Jan 2004

Hines 57: The Catchall Case To The Texas Kidnapping Statute., Karen Bartlett

St. Mary's Law Journal

This Recent Development asserts that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals’ refusal to define “substantial interference” in relation to the kidnapping statute, opens the floodgates for every act of confinement or movement committed in the course of a substantive offense constituting kidnapping. The Court maintains it is up to the jury to define the term. If the Texas Legislature does not narrowly define the kidnapping statute, virtually every assault, robbery, sexual assault, and some murders will constitute both the substantive offense plus kidnapping. Furthermore, such logic would in effect bootstrap murder into capital murder, which happened in Herrin v. State. …