Constitutional Law Commons^™

Holding The Line: Customs And Border Protection's Expansion Of The Border Search Exception And The Ensuing Destruction Of Interior Fourth Amendment Rights, Hannah Robbins

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Corporate Rights And Individual Interests: The Corporate Right To Privacy As A Bulwark Against Warrantless Government Surveillance, Kayla Robinson

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Sixth Amendment; Right Of Confrontation; Unavailalbe Witness; State V. Roberts, Christopher C. Manthey, Carol G. Simonetti

Akron Law Review

"THE SIXTH AMENDMENT to the Constitution states that "[iln all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right . . . to be confronted with the witnesses against him .... ." This seems simple and absolute, but case law has proven it to be neither; almost every phrase has been dissected and interpreted by courts and commentators. In fact, there may be more law review articles on this subject than there are cases.1 Some of the questions that could be asked are: What is meant by "all criminal prosecutions?" Does this require confrontation in preliminary hearings? Does "shall enjoy the …

Death Penalty; Cruel And Unusual Punishment; Individualized Sentencing Determination; Lockett V. Ohio; Bell V. Ohio, James C. Ellerhorst

Akron Law Review

“In Bell v. Ohio and Lockett v. Ohio the United States Supreme Court found the sentencing provisions of the Ohio capital punishment statute to be incompatible with the eighth and fourteenth amendments which prohibit cruel and unusual punishment. These two opinions represent the most recent attempt by the Supreme Court to explain what elements must be included in a constitutionally valid capital punishment statute.”

Newsroom: Waters '98 On Tempest Verdict Reversal, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Edmonson V. Leesville Concrete Company: Pre-Empting Prejudice, Andrea K. Huston

Akron Law Review

In Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Co., the United States Supreme Court decided the issue of whether parties in a civil case may use their peremptory challenges to exclude black venirepersons from the jury.

This Note will discuss the various limitations that courts have placed on the use of peremptory challenges, and the position of the Supreme Court. This Note will also discuss the Court's expansion of the state action doctrine, and the impact Edmonson will have on future cases.

"A Thug In Prison Cannot Shoot Your Sister": Ohio Appears Ready To Resurrect The Habitual Criminal Statute - Will It Withstand An Eighth Amendment Challenge?, Thomas R. Goots

Akron Law Review

The State of Ohio appears ready to pass a habitual offender statute. This Comment will take a closer look at habitual offender statutes in general and Ohio's past attempts at habitual offender statutes. The Comment will focus on the possible Eighth Amendment challenge to the proposed Ohio statute, by examining a hypothetical defendant.

The Shift Of The Balance Of Advantage In Criminal Litigation: The Case Of Mr. Simpson, David Robinson Jr.

Akron Law Review

The intense public interest in the extraordinary trial and acquittal of Mr. O.J. Simpson provides an appropriate occasion to look at the criminal justice system more generally, to note where we have been in the balance of advantage between prosecution and defense, where we are now, and where, perhaps, we should be.

Choice Of Counsel And The Appearance Of Equal Justice Under Law, Wesley M. Oliver

Northwestern University Law Review

Once a federal prosecutor obtains an indictment that seeks a forfeiture, a judge must permit the prosecutor to freeze all the potentially forfeitable assets that would be unavailable at the time of conviction. Obviously, funds used for the defense would fit into that category. Equally obvious is the tension between the government’s interest in assets that may be forfeitable and a defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to choice of counsel. A number of lower courts therefore had permitted defendants to seek release of the assets needed for a defense by challenging the grand jury’s determination that probable cause existed to believe …

Inmates’ E-Mails With Their Attorneys: Off-Limits For The Government?, Amelia H. Barry

Catholic University Law Review

The attorney-client privilege is vital to inmates who otherwise have limited opportunities for private communications in prison. Traditionally, inmates have only been able to communicate with their attorneys via in-person visits, phone calls, and mailed letters. As federal inmates have begun using e-mail to converse with their attorneys, courts have had to determine if these conversations are protected by the attorney-client privilege. This Comment discusses courts’ approaches to this question, many of which have found that inmates’ e-mail communications with their attorneys are not privileged because by using the federal prison e-mail system, which warns users that conversations can be …

Adequacy Of Notice Under Cafra: Resolving Constitutional Due Process Challenges To Administrative Forfeitures, Rebecca Hausner

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Rethinking The Law Of Interrogations And Confessions In Canada, Fariborz Davoudi

PhD Dissertations

This thesis is a discussion about the inadequacy of the Canadian confessions rule in light of what modern forensic psychology reveals about the human mind, and the propensity of legally-sanctioned interrogation tactics to cause suspects to make false confessions. Contemporary forensic psychology research makes it clear that many of the techniques used in police interviewing and interrogation can have the effect of subverting or overbearing an individuals free-choice and can cause them to make a false confession. Yet many of these same techniques are considered acceptable according to the Canadian law of voluntariness.

This thesis examines the confessions rule and …

Beyond The Right To Counsel: Increasing Notice Of Collateral Consequences, Brian M. Murray

University of Richmond Law Review

This article responds to these questions by focusing on the primary roots of this justice issue, namely the prevalence of guiltypleas and the continued efforts of legislatures to increase the life- long price of a conviction. Part I begins with a discussion of these practical realities within the criminal justice system. Part II then examines the law of guilty pleas under the Fifth Amendment, including constitutional standards for valid pleas, and how current jurisprudence fails to account for the collateral consequences mentioned in Part I. Part II also discusses the right to effective assistance of counsel under the Sixth Amendment, …

Confronting Cops In Immigration Court, Mary Holper

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

Part I of the Article outlines the police report problem by discussing the four situations in which police reports are used in immigration court, why police reports are unreliable, and the scope of the problem. Part II discusses criminal law’s treatment of police reports, focusing on the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment, which provides the constitutional justification for excluding police reports in criminal cases. Part III discusses the use of hearsay evidence in immigration cases, where hearsay is allowed due to the characterization of removal proceedings as civil, not criminal. While there has been a trend to reject unreliable …

Following Orders: Campbell V. United States, The Waiver Of Appellate Rights, And The Duty Of Counsel, Jacob Szewczyk

Catholic University Law Review

In the 1984 case of Strickland v. Washington, the Supreme Court announced a two-pronged test to analyze whether a criminal defendant has received ineffective assistance of counsel. Since the rule was announced, the Court has expanded Strickland’s scope to apply to analyze counsel’s review at different stages of the criminal proceeding. This Comment addresses one issue that has remained unanswered by the Supreme Court: whether counsel’s failure to file a notice of appeal, after a defendant has waived his right to appeal through a plea bargain, constitutes ineffective assistance of counsel. This Comment discusses the circuit split that …

Residual Impact: Resentencing Implications Of Johnson's Potential Ruling On Acca's Constitutionality, Leah Litman

Articles

In January 2015, the Supreme Court directed the parties to brief and argue an additional question in Johnson v. United States: “Whether the residual clause in the Armed Career Criminal Act of 1984, 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii), is unconstitutionally vague.” The order represents an unusual move because the defendant had not raised the vagueness issue and the Court issued the order after it had already heard argument on the question raised in the petition for certiorari. Commentators therefore view the order as a signal that the Court will likely invalidate the residual clause. This decision will have been several years …

A Contagion Of Fear: Post-9/11 Alarm Expands Executive Branch Authority And Sanctions Prosecutorial Exploitation Of America's Privacy, Carol M. Bast, Cynthia A. Brown

Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal

No abstract provided.

A Survey Of The History Of The Death Penalty In The United States, Sheherezade C. Malik, D. Paul Holdsworth

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Lethal Injections: States Medicalize Execution, Joel B. Zivot

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Has The "Machinery Of Death" Become A Clunker?, Stephen F. Smith

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Trending@Rwu Law: Professor Emily Sack's Post: More Death Penalty Puzzles Highlighted By New Supreme Court Case, Emily Sack

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

Criminal Innovation And The Warrant Requirement: Reconsidering The Rights-Police Efficiency Trade-Off, Tonja Jacobi, Jonah Kind

William & Mary Law Review

It is routinely assumed that there is a trade-off between police efficiency and the warrant requirement. But existing analysis ignores the interaction between law-enforcement investigative practices and criminal innovation. Narrowing the definition of a search or otherwise limiting the requirement for a warrant gives criminals greater incentive to innovate to avoid detection. With limited resources to develop countermeasures, law enforcement officers will often be just as effective at capturing criminals when facing higher Fourth Amendment hurdles. We provide a game-theoretic model that shows that when law-enforcement investigation and criminal innovation are considered in a dynamic context, the police efficiency rationale …

Letting Innocence Suffer: The Need For Defense Access To The Law Enforcement Dna Database, Jason Kreag

Cardozo Law Review

Law enforcement has gradually amassed a sizable DNA database that holds considerable promise for solving cold cases and identifying suspects. The Supreme Court has blessed this effort, allowing investigators to include profiles of arrestees as well as convicted persons in the database. At present, though, law enforcement has a near monopoly on use of the DNA database, leaving defendants at the whim of the law enforcement officials who control access to this tool. Legal scholars have alternatively praised and decried the database, but none has examined its prospects for proving defendants' innocence post-conviction. This Article fills that void by identifying …

The Intracorporate Conspiracy Trap, J. S. Nelson

Cardozo Law Review

In the recent case of Commonwealth v. Lynn, Pennsylvania prosecuted a Roman Catholic priest who had not abused children himself but who, to protect the archdiocese that employed him, covered up information about priests who had abused children and reassigned the priests to new parishes. This case was the first of its kind to bring criminal charges against an official of the Church solely for how he supervised the careers of priests to protect his employer.

Because the intracorporate conspiracy doctrine prohibits it, the state - as is now typical of both state and federal jurisdictions around the country …

Hijacking Justice: Assessing The Emergency Driven Analysis Of Confrontation Clause Jurisprudence, Steven C. Berlowitz

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Overcriminalizing Speech, Michal Buchhandler-Raphael

Scholarly Articles

Recent years have seen a significant expansion in the criminal justice system’s use of various preemptive measures, aimed to prevent harm before it occurs. This development consists of adopting a myriad of prophylactic statutes, including endangerment crimes, which target behaviors that merely pose a risk of future harm but are not in themselves harmful at the time they are committed.

This Article demonstrates that a significant portion of these endangerment crimes criminalize various forms of speech and expression. Examples include conspiracies, attempts, verbal harassment, instructional speech on how to commit crimes, and possession crimes. The Article argues that in contrast …

Government Retention And Use Of Unlawfully Secured Dna Evidence, Wayne A. Logan

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

An Eighth Amendment Analysis Of Statutes Allowing Or Mandating Transfer Of Juvenile Offenders To Adult Criminal Court In Light Of The Supreme Court's Recent Jurisprudence Recognizing Developmental Neuroscience, Katherine I. Puzone

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Barriers To Entry And Justice Ginsburg’S Criminal Procedure Jurisprudence, Lisa Kern Griffin

Faculty Scholarship

In her twenty plus years on the United States Supreme Court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has issued momentous decisions and significant dissents concerning constitutional guarantees of equality. She is best known for her leadership – as an advocate, scholar, judge, and justice – on issues of gender discrimination. Although one might expect related commitments to civil liberties to shape cases concerning the criminal justice process, Justice Ginsburg’s mark on constitutional criminal procedure appears comparatively faint. Her contributions have been subtle, and her cautious opinions at first seem disconnected from the clear principles established in the discrimination cases.

Confrontation After Ohio V. Clark, Anne R. Traum

Scholarly Works

The Supreme Court’s decision in Ohio v. Clark, provides an occasion to take stock of the Sixth Amendment Right to Confrontation since the court’s landmark 2004 decision in Crawford v. Washington. Crawford strengthened a defendant’s right to confront his accusers face-to-face, underscoring that cross-examination is the constitutionally preferred method for testing the reliability of accusatory statements. Clark could eliminate that right in a wide range of cases where, although the reliability of a declarant’s out-of-court statements is critically important, a defendant has no right to confrontation.