Law Commons^™

Hepatitis C In Prisons: Evolving Toward Decency Through Adequate Medical Care And Public Health Reform, Andrew Brunsden

Articles & Chapters

Hepatitis C (HCV) in prisons is a public health crisis tied to current drug policy's emphasis on the mass incarceration of drug users. Prison policy acts as a barrier to HCV care by limiting medical care for the infected, especially drug users, and by inhibiting public health measures addressing the epidemic. This Comment argues that courts mistakenly limit prisoners' Eighth Amendment right to basic medical care when they defer to prisons that apply HCV policies as categorical rules of treatment. Where current standards of care mandate individualized patient evaluation for treatment, prison policies that eschew this principle exhibit deliberate indifference …

Coming Soon To A Court Near You – Convicting The Unrepresented At The Bail Stage: An Autopsy Of A State High Court’S Sua Sponte Rejection Of Indigent Defendants’ Right To Counsel, Douglas L. Colbert

Faculty Scholarship

Recently, the Maryland Court of Appeals became the first state court of last resort to reject Gideon v. Wainwright’s guarantee of counsel at the bail stage. In ruling sua sponte that bail is not a critical stage entitling indigent defendants to invoke their constitutional right to counsel, the Fenner Court held that statements offered by an unrepresented and non-Mirandized indigent defendant were admissible at trial. I contend that the Fenner ruling may transform the pretrial fact-gathering process by providing prosecutors with an additional source of evidence against indigent defendants, namely statements made at a judicial proceeding for the purpose …

The Price Of Pretrial Release: Can We Afford To Keep Our Fourth Amendment Rights?, Melanie D. Wilson

Scholarly Articles

The Fourth Amendment serves an important constitutional function. It protects the privacy of Americans from intrusions on their personal security. Few rights are held more sacred. When a person is arrested and faces the real likelihood of pretrial detention in jail, the person risks not only a reduction in his privacy rights, but also a loss of his liberty. In such circumstances, the arrested person should be able to bargain away some of his Fourth Amendment rights in exchange for the additional freedoms associated with release to home.

Undoubtedly, defendants forced to choose between incarceration and Fourth Amendment rights will …