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- Jimmy Gurule (2)
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Articles 1 - 30 of 31
Full-Text Articles in Law
Barber V. State, 131 Nev. Adv, Op. 103 (December 31, 2015), Ronni N. Boscovich
Barber V. State, 131 Nev. Adv, Op. 103 (December 31, 2015), Ronni N. Boscovich
Nevada Supreme Court Summaries
The Court considered an appeal from a district court conviction. The Court reversed the Eighth Judicial District Court’s judgment of conviction, pursuant to a jury verdict of burglary and grand larceny. The juvenile court retains jurisdiction over Barber because the legislation did not include language regarding jurisdiction stripping or dismissal requirements. However, the Court reversed the judgment because the prosecution presented insufficient evidence to support Barber’s conviction.
Crawford's Last Stand? What Melendez-Diaz V. Massachusetts Means For The Confrontation Clause And For Criminal Trials, Elizabeth Stevens
Crawford's Last Stand? What Melendez-Diaz V. Massachusetts Means For The Confrontation Clause And For Criminal Trials, Elizabeth Stevens
ConLawNOW
The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts heralds a dramatic change for Confrontation Clause jurisprudence and for most criminal trials. Crawford v. Washington held that “testimonial” statements were admissible only if the accused had a prior opportunity to cross-examine the witness. Melendez-Diaz applied this rule to forensic evidence, holding that certificates of analysis – used in a drug trail to prove the nature and weight of the proscribed substances, and sworn to and signed by the analysts who performed the tests – are testimonial.
This article analyzes Melendez-Diaz’s implications for the Court’s Confrontation Clause jurisprudence and for the …
An Overlooked Key To Reversing Mass Incarceration: Reforming The Law To Reduce Prosecutorial Power In Plea Bargaining, Cynthia Alkon
An Overlooked Key To Reversing Mass Incarceration: Reforming The Law To Reduce Prosecutorial Power In Plea Bargaining, Cynthia Alkon
Faculty Scholarship
The need to “do something” about mass incarceration is now widely recognized. When President Obama announced plans to reform federal criminal legislation, he focused on the need to change how we handle non-violent drug offenders and parole violators. Previously, former Attorney General Eric Holder announced policies to make federal prosecutors “smart on crime.” These changes reflect, as President Obama noted, the increasing bipartisan consensus on the need for reform and the need to reduce our incarceration rates. However, proposals about what to reform, such as President Obama’s, tend to focus on some parts of criminal sentencing and on prosecutorial behavior …
Cassinelli V. State Of Nevada, 131 Nev. Adv. Op. 62 131(Aug. 27, 2015), Mackenzie Warren
Cassinelli V. State Of Nevada, 131 Nev. Adv. Op. 62 131(Aug. 27, 2015), Mackenzie Warren
Nevada Supreme Court Summaries
The Court of Appeals determined that (1) the district court erred by ruling that Cassinelli was not eligible for alcohol treatment under NRS § 458.300(1)(d); (2) the district court did not abuse its discretion by denying Cassinelli’s request for assignment to a program of treatment; (3) the plea agreement was not breached and the prosecutor did not engage in misconduct at sentencing; (4) the district court did not err by refusing Cassinelli an opportunity to cross-examine the victim during her impact statement at sentencing; (5) Cassinelli’s sentence was illegal.
Constitutional Rights Of Youthful Offenders; In The Matter Of Gault, Robert M. Kunczt
Constitutional Rights Of Youthful Offenders; In The Matter Of Gault, Robert M. Kunczt
Akron Law Review
After the decisions in Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U. S. 335 (1963), Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966), and Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U. S. 478 (1964), which revealed the Supreme Court's solicitude of the constitutional rights of adults, it seemed improbable that the lower courts would long be permitted to continue ignoring the constitutional rights of juveniles. Thus the decision in the principal case, which represents a breakthrough in the assurance of a fair hearing to minors, comes as no surprise. The case holds that under the Fourteenth Amendment a juvenile has a right to notice of …
Summary Of Barral V. State, 131 Nev. Adv. Op. 52 (July 23, 2015), Aleem Dhalla
Summary Of Barral V. State, 131 Nev. Adv. Op. 52 (July 23, 2015), Aleem Dhalla
Nevada Supreme Court Summaries
Defendant Dustin James Barral was convicted of two counts of sexual assault with a minor under 14 years of age by a jury. The Supreme Court of Nevada held that the trial court committed a structural error by failing to administer an oath or affrimation to the jury panel prior to commencing voir dire. This error required reversal and a new trial.
Neo-Federalism, Popular Sovereignity, And The Criminal Law, Terrance M. Messonnier
Neo-Federalism, Popular Sovereignity, And The Criminal Law, Terrance M. Messonnier
Akron Law Review
The first area is the substantive criminal law, especially at the federal level. In the following pages, this Article will discuss, from a Neo-Federalist perspective, the wide variety of laws found mostly in Title 18 of the United States Code that form our federal criminal law. This Article will suggest that there are both constitutional and pragmatic needs to reexamine what behavior should be punished on a federal level.
The second area is the law regarding criminal procedures. This Article will suggest, from the perspective of Popular Sovereignty, that the current trend to jealously guard jurisdictional prerogatives is not constitutionally …
When Are The People Ready? The Interplay Between Facial Sufficiency And Readiness Under Cpl Section 30.30, John H. Wilson
When Are The People Ready? The Interplay Between Facial Sufficiency And Readiness Under Cpl Section 30.30, John H. Wilson
Pace Law Review
In this article, we will explore the intersecting concepts of conversion, facial sufficiency, and readiness. As we shall see, readiness for trial does not necessarily follow from the conversion of a complaint and dismissal on CPL section 30.30 grounds does not necessarily follow from a finding of facial insufficiency.
Criminal Trial Advocacy, James Seckinger
United States V. Peters Case File, James Seckinger, Kenneth Broun.
United States V. Peters Case File, James Seckinger, Kenneth Broun.
James H. Seckinger
No abstract provided.
International Criminal Law: Cases And Materials, Jimmy Gurule, Jordan Paust, Bruce Zagaris, Leila Sadat, Michael Scharf, M. Cherif Bassiouni
International Criminal Law: Cases And Materials, Jimmy Gurule, Jordan Paust, Bruce Zagaris, Leila Sadat, Michael Scharf, M. Cherif Bassiouni
Jimmy Gurule
The fourth edition has been significantly updated, especially to reflect case trends in the International Criminal Court and the International Criminal Tribunals for Former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda (encompassing, among other matters, individual responsibility, defenses, war crimes, genocide, and other crimes against humanity). Some of the chapters have new sub-subtitles and relevant domestic cases have been added or noted in various chapters. There are also additions to the Documents Supplement.
When Theory Met Practice: Distributional Analysis In Critical Criminal Law Theorizing, Aya Gruber
When Theory Met Practice: Distributional Analysis In Critical Criminal Law Theorizing, Aya Gruber
Fordham Law Review
Focusing on criminal law and procedure in particular, this Article seeks to expose various tensions in critical race theorizing and progressive theorizing more broadly, offer some suggestions for a unifying methodology of critical criminal law analysis, and discuss where empirical study might fit into this new program. Progressive (critical race and feminist) theorizing on criminal law is not only subject to the competing frames of critique and formalism, it also exists within an overarching American criminal law culture that can eclipse both concerns over rights violations and structural injustice. The U.S. penal system has become a “peculiar institution” and a …
United States V. William Lloyd, Jimmy Gurule
Should The American Grand Jury Survive Ferguson, Roger Fairfax
Should The American Grand Jury Survive Ferguson, Roger Fairfax
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
The grand jurors deliberated in secret, as the masses demanded the indictment of the would-be defendants. Ultimately, the grand jury would refuse to indict, enraging the many who believed justice had been denied
Collateral Damage: A Guide To Criminal Appellate, Postconviction, And Habeas Corpus Litigation In Wisconsin, Matthew M. Fernholz
Collateral Damage: A Guide To Criminal Appellate, Postconviction, And Habeas Corpus Litigation In Wisconsin, Matthew M. Fernholz
Marquette Law Review
none
Centralized Prosecution: Cross-Designated Prosecutors And An Unconstitutional Concentration Of Power, Haley White
Centralized Prosecution: Cross-Designated Prosecutors And An Unconstitutional Concentration Of Power, Haley White
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
No abstract provided.
What's Law Got To Do With It? Plea Bargaining Reform After Lafler And Frye, Cynthia Alkon
What's Law Got To Do With It? Plea Bargaining Reform After Lafler And Frye, Cynthia Alkon
Faculty Scholarship
This symposium article responds to the question, what's left of the law in the wake of ADR? The article addresses this question in the context of the criminal justice system in the United States. As with civil cases, few criminal cases go to trial. Negotiated agreements through plea bargaining have been the predominate form of case resolution since at least the mid-twentieth century. Plea bargaining, as with other forms of alternative dispute resolution, is an informal process that operates largely outside the formal legal system. Plea bargains are rarely negotiated on the record in open court. Instead, they are usually …
The Admissibility Of Trueallele: A Computerized Dna Interpretation System, Katherine L. Moss
The Admissibility Of Trueallele: A Computerized Dna Interpretation System, Katherine L. Moss
Washington and Lee Law Review
No abstract provided.
Jones, Lackey, And Teague, Richard Broughton
Jones, Lackey, And Teague, Richard Broughton
Richard Broughton
In a recent, high-profile ruling, a federal court finally recognized that a substantial delay in executing a death row inmate violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishments. Courts have repeatedly rejected these so-called “Lackey claims,” making the federal court’s decision in Jones v. Chappell all the more important. And yet it was deeply flawed. This paper focuses on one of the major flaws in the Jones decision that largely escaped attention: the application of the non-retroactivity rule from Teague v. Lane. By comprehensively addressing the merits of the Teague bar as applied to Lackey claims, and making …
Mirandizing Terrorism Suspects? The Public Safety Exception, The Rescue Doctrine, And Implicit Analogies To Self-Defense, Defense Of Others, And Battered Woman Syndrome, Bruce Ching
Journal Articles
This article argues that in creating the public safety exception to the Miranda requirements, the Supreme Court implicitly analogized to the criminal law doctrines of self-defense and defense of others. Thus, examining the justifications of self-defense and defense of others can be useful in determining the contours of the public safety exception and the related "rescue doctrine" exception. In particular, the battered woman syndrome -- which is recognized in a majority of the states and has been successfully invoked by defendants in some self-defense cases -- could provide a conceptual analogue for arguments about whether law enforcement officers were faced …
Government Retention And Use Of Unlawfully Secured Dna Evidence, Wayne A. Logan
Government Retention And Use Of Unlawfully Secured Dna Evidence, Wayne A. Logan
Scholarly Publications
No abstract provided.
Big Data And Predictive Reasonable Suspicion, Andrew Ferguson
Big Data And Predictive Reasonable Suspicion, Andrew Ferguson
Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals
The Fourth Amendment requires “reasonable suspicion” to seize a suspect. As a general matter, the suspicion derives from information a police officer observes or knows. It is individualized to a particular person at a particular place. Most reasonable suspicion cases involve police confronting unknown suspects engaged in observable suspicious activities. Essentially, the reasonable suspicion doctrine is based on “small data” – discrete facts involving limited information and little knowledge about the suspect.But what if this small data is replaced by “big data”? What if police can “know” about the suspect through new networked information sources? Or, what if predictive analytics …
Sentencing Rules And Standards: How We Decide Criminal Punishment, Jacob Schuman
Sentencing Rules And Standards: How We Decide Criminal Punishment, Jacob Schuman
Journal Articles
Over the course of the past 300 years, American sentencing policy has alternated between “determinate” and “indeterminate” systems of deciding punishment. Debates over sentence determinacy have so far focused on three main questions: Who should decide punishment? What makes punishment fair? And why should we punish wrongdoers at all?
In this Article, I ask a new, fourth, question: How should we decide punishment? I show that determinate sentencing uses rules to determine sentences, while indeterminate sentencing relies on standards. Applying this insight to federal sentencing practice, I demonstrate that district court judges “depart” or “vary” from the United States Sentencing …
Probability And Punishment: How To Improve Sentencing By Taking Account Of Probability, Jacob Schuman
Probability And Punishment: How To Improve Sentencing By Taking Account Of Probability, Jacob Schuman
Journal Articles
The United States Sentencing Guidelines place little emphasis on probability. Instead, the Guidelines recommend a sentence in each case based only on whether certain facts about the offender’s crime exceed a “threshold” level of likelihood. Guidelines sentences therefore fail to reflect the precise odds of each defendant’s wrongdoing, which makes them both inefficient and unfair. This model of decision-making is particularly problematic in drug sentencing, where judges often impose lengthy sentences based on drug quantity calculations that carry a high risk of error. To address these problems, district courts should exercise their discretion and policymakers should implement reforms that incorporate …
The Irrelevance Of Prisoner Fault For Excessively Delayed Executions, Russell L. Christopher
The Irrelevance Of Prisoner Fault For Excessively Delayed Executions, Russell L. Christopher
Washington and Lee Law Review
Are decades-long delays between sentencing and execution immune from Eighth Amendment violation because they are self-inflicted by prisoners, or is such prisoner fault for delays simply irrelevant to whether a state-imposed punishment is cruel and unusual? Typically finding delay to be the state’s responsibility, Justices Breyer and Stevens argue that execution following upwards of forty years of death row incarceration is unconstitutional. Nearly every lower court disagrees, reasoning that prisoners have the choice of pursuing appellate and collateral review (with the delay that entails) or crafting the perfect remedy to any delay by submitting, as Justice Thomas has invited complaining …
When Theory Met Practice: Distributional Analysis In Critical Criminal Law Theorizing, Aya Gruber
When Theory Met Practice: Distributional Analysis In Critical Criminal Law Theorizing, Aya Gruber
Publications
Progressive (critical race and feminist) theorizing on criminal law exists within an overarching American criminal law culture in which the U.S penal system has become a "peculiar institution" and a defining governance structure. Much of criminal law discourse is subject to a type of ideological capture in which it is natural to assume that criminalization is a valid, if not preferred, solution to social dysfunction. Accordingly, progressives’ primary concerns about harms to minority victims takes place in a political-legal context in which criminalization is the technique of addressing harm. In turn, progressive criminal law theorizing manifests some deep internal tensions. …
The Prior Convictions Exception: Examining The Continuing Viability Of Almendarez-Torres Under Alleyne, Meg E. Sawyer
The Prior Convictions Exception: Examining The Continuing Viability Of Almendarez-Torres Under Alleyne, Meg E. Sawyer
Washington and Lee Law Review
No abstract provided.
Comment On The Prior Convictions Exception: Examining The Continuing Viability Of Almendarez-Torres Under Alleyne, Kevin Flynn
Comment On The Prior Convictions Exception: Examining The Continuing Viability Of Almendarez-Torres Under Alleyne, Kevin Flynn
Washington and Lee Law Review
No abstract provided.
The Prior Convictions Exception—A Comment, Matthew Engle
The Prior Convictions Exception—A Comment, Matthew Engle
Washington and Lee Law Review
No abstract provided.
Believe It Or Not: Mitigating The Negative Effects Personal Belief And Bias Have On The Criminal Justice System, Sarah Mourer
Believe It Or Not: Mitigating The Negative Effects Personal Belief And Bias Have On The Criminal Justice System, Sarah Mourer
Sarah Mourer
This article examines the prosecutor’s and defense attorney’s personal pre-trial beliefs regarding the accused’s guilt or innocence. This analysis suggests that when an attorney does hold pretrial beliefs, such beliefs lead to avoidable bias and errors. These biases may alter the findings throughout all stages of the case. The procedure asking that the prosecution seek justice while having nothing more than probable cause results in the prosecutor’s need to have a belief in guilt before proceeding to trial. While this belief is intended to foster integrity and fairness in the criminal justice system, to the contrary, it actually contributes to …