Criminal Law Commons^™

Keynote: The Crisis And Criminal Justice, Bernard Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

There has been a lot of recent debate over whether the economic crisis presents an opportunity to reduce prison populations and improve the state of criminal justice in this country. Some commentators suggest that the financial crisis has already triggered a move towards reducing the incarcerated population. Some claim that there is a new climate of bipartisanship on punishment. Kara Gotsch of the Sentencing Project, for example, suggests that we are now in a unique political climate embodied by the passage of the Second Chance Act under President George W. Bush – a climate that is substantially different than the …

Intentional Discrimination In Farrakhan V. Gregoire: The Ninth Circuit's Voting Rights Act Standard "Results In" The New Jim Crow, Jonathan Sgro

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

David Baldus And The Legacy Of Mccleskey V. Kemp, Samuel R. Gross

Articles

The first major empirical challenge to racial discrimination in the use of the death penalty in the United States was presented in federal court in the case of William L. Maxwell, who was sentenced to death in Arkansas in 1962 for the crime of rape.1 It was based on a landmark study by Marvin Wolfgang, a distinguished criminologist who had collected data on some 3000 rape convictions from 1945 through 1965 in selected counties across eleven southern states.2 He found that black men who were convicted of rape were seven times more likely to be sentenced to death than white …

Confine Is Fine: Have The Non-Dangerous Mentally Ill Lost Their Right To Liberty? An Empirical Study To Unravel The Psychiatrist’S Crystal Ball, Donald H. Stone

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article will examine the reverse trend in civil commitment laws in the wake of recent tragedies and discuss the effect of broader civil commitment standards on the care and treatment of the mentally ill. The 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, the 2011 shooting of Congresswoman Giffords, and the 2012 Aurora movie theatre shooting have spurred fierce debates about the dangerousness of mentally ill and serve as cautionary tale about what happens when warning signs go unnoticed and opportunities for early intervention missed. This piece will explore the misconception about the role medication and inpatient civil commitments should play in prevention …

Inside-Out As Law School Pedagogy, Giovanna Shay

Faculty Scholarship

In the fall of 2010, and again in spring 2012, the Author taught a course entitled Gender & Criminal Law inside the Western Massachusetts Correctional Alcohol Center in Springfield. Participants in the course included roughly equal numbers of law students from the Author's home academic institution, Western New England University School of Law, and residents of the facility. For fourteen weeks, the class met weekly at the institution to discuss issues including domestic violence law reform, the role of family ties in sentencing, and gender issues in prisoner reentry. The Author taught this course in a modified form of the …

The Prisoners' Property Dilemma: The Proper Approach To Determine Prisoners' Protected Property Interests After Sandin And Castle Rock, Corbin R. Kennelly

Georgia Law Review

The Proper approach to determine when prisoners have
property interests protected by the Due Process Clause is
currently uncertain. The Supreme Court addressed
prisoners' liberty interests in Sandin v. Conner, but lower
courts have split over whether to apply the Sandin test to
prisoners' property interests. Further complicating
matters, the Supreme Court recently addressed property
interests generally in Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales.
There, the Court seemed to add additional hurdles to the
finding of protected property interests: A statute must
clearly indicate that it gives rise to an entitlement; the
entitlement must have an ascertainable monetary value;
and, …

Educating Prosecutors And Supreme Court Justices About Brady V. Maryland, Bennett L. Gershman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The author reviews the Supreme Court decision in Connick v. Thompson and provides a course outline, including problems, for training prosecutors on their duty to disclose materially favorable evidence to the defendant under Brady v. Maryland.

A Brave New World Of Stop And Frisk, Ronald J. Bacigal

Law Faculty Publications

In this article, the author Ron Bacigal discusses the editorials, The Shame of New York by Bob Herbert and Fighting Crime Where the Criminals Are by Heather MacDonald. These editorials were prompted by the New York City Police Department's release of figures regarding "stop and frisk" incidents within New York City.' MacDonald and Herbert reacted to the same statistical report by putting two very different spins on the raw data. While it's always helpful to compile empirical evidence, Bacigal suggests that we also need to look beyond the mere numbers. If you put aside anecdotal versions of encounters between minorities …

"No New Babies?" Gender Inequality And Reproductive Control In The Criminal Justice And Prisons System, Rachel Roth

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Introduction, Hon. Steven C. Gonzàlez

Seattle University Law Review

At Seattle University School of Law’s Symposium on Racial Bias and the Criminal Justice System, students, faculty, judges, scholars, lawyers, and community members gathered to address racial disparity in the criminal justice system and to explore ways to keep the promise of our democracy that we all are equal before the law. Race, ethnicity, skin color, and national origin profoundly influence our legal structure and our liberty. The way that race influences perceptions and actions is critically important in the context of our criminal justice system—a system that changes lives, disrupts and protects communities, and represents a key part of …

“Like Wolves In Sheep’S Clothing”: Combating Racial Bias In Washington State’S Criminal Justice System, Krista L. Nelson, Jacob J. Stender

Seattle University Law Review

Despite their differences, both the majority and concurring opinions in Monday present new ways to address prosecutorial misconduct, deter the injection of racial bias into courtroom proceedings, and create substantively similar outcomes. Part II of this Note discusses the traditional prosecutorial misconduct test in Washington State, as well as the rules articulated by the Monday majority and concurrence. Part III discusses the implications of both the majority and concurring opinions, the primary differences in their approaches to deterrence, the degree of racial bias they require to warrant reversal of a conviction, and the discretion they afford the judiciary. Part III …

Methodological Issues In Biased Policing Research With Applications To The Washington State Patrol, Clayton Mosher, J. Mitchell Pickerill

Seattle University Law Review

Racial profiling violates the United States Constitution’s premise that all people are equal under the law, as well as the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee that people should be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. Racial profiling has been found to result from individual officer racism or stereotyping, from institutionalized biases, and from the organizational culture of law enforcement agencies. We begin this Article by discussing the history of racial profiling before proceeding to consider various studies from a select number of American jurisdictions. We then examine important methodological and theoretical issues in conducting research on racial profiling and racially biased policing, …

Analyzing Stops, Citations, And Searches In Washington And Beyond, Mario L. Barnes, Robert S. Chang

Seattle University Law Review

Racial disproportionality in the criminal justice system is a fact. But the fact of racial disproportionality is the beginning and not the end of the conversation. The fact that blacks are overrepresented in stop, arrest, charge, pretrial detention, conviction, and incarceration statistics demonstrates only correlation and not causation. A number of commentators caution that disproportionality and the overrepresentation of blacks, Native-Americans, and Hispanics in Washington State’s prisons do not prove racial discrimination. Further, the fact of disproportionality at each stage of criminal justice processing does not prove that racial discrimination occurs at each particular stage. For example, the observed disproportionality …

Actual Versus Perceived Performance Of Judges, Theodore Eisenberg, Talia Fisher, Issi Rosen-Zvi

Seattle University Law Review

Perceptions of judges ought to be based on their performance. Yet, few studies of the relation between perceived and actual judicial performance exist. Those claiming judicial bias should be especially sensitive to the relation between perception and performance. Judges perceived by the public or by the legal community as disfavoring a group may be regarded as biased, but that perception is unfair if the judges’ votes in cases do not disfavor the group. For example, it may be unfair to accuse an appellate judge of pro-state bias in criminal cases if the judge votes for defendants at a higher rate …

O.P.P.: How "Occupy's" Race-Based Privilege May Improve Fourth Amendment Jurisprudence For All, Lenese C. Herbert

Seattle University Law Review

This Article submits that Occupy’s race problem could, ironically, prove to be a solution if protesters grow more serious about exposing the injury of political subordination and systems of privilege that adhere to the criminal justice system. Privilege is a “systemic conferral of benefit and advantage [as a result of] affiliation, conscious or not and chosen or not, to the dominant side of a power system.” Accordingly, now that police mistreatment affects them personally, Occupy may finally help kill a fictitious Fourth Amendment jurisprudence that ignores oppression through improper policing based on racial stigma. Occupy may also help usher in …

The Impact Of Implicit Racial Bias On The Exercise Of Prosecutorial Discretion, Robert J. Smith, Justin D. Levinson

Seattle University Law Review

The Article is organized as follows: Part II provides an introduction to implicit bias research, orienting readers to the important aspects of implicit bias most relevant to prosecutorial discretion. Part III begins the examination of implicit bias in the daily decisions of prosecutors. The Part presents key prosecutorial discretion points and specifically connects each of them to implicit bias. Part IV recognizes that, despite compelling proof of implicit bias in a range of domains, there is no direct empirical proof of implicit bias in prosecutorial decision-making. It thus calls for an implicit bias research agenda designed to further examine how …

“If Justice Is Not Equal For All, It Is Not Justice”: Racial Bias, Prosecutorial Misconduct, And The Right To A Fair Trial In State V. Monday, Michael Callahan

Seattle University Law Review

This Note argues that of the three opinions from Monday, Washington state courts should follow Chief Justice Madsen’s concurring opinion. The Monday decision also raises three questions that none of the opinions adequately answer: who does Monday apply to, what conduct does Monday forbid, and what is the legal source of the rules from Monday? The court will have to answer these questions in the future to determine the scope of its new rules. Part II of this Note discusses how Washington courts previously addressed the issue of prosecutorial misconduct and appeals to racial bias in trials. Part …

Slavery Revisited In Penal Plantation Labor, Andrea C. Armstrong

Seattle University Law Review

This Article argues that society must critically examine the types of labor we require our inmates to perform and prohibit the imposition of slavery, even when the enslaved is an inmate. Part II focuses on the text and history of Section 1 of the Thirteenth Amendment11 and argues that the Amendment’s exception allowing forced inmate labor is not as broad as it first appears. Part III examines the Eighth Amendment and how the imposition of slave status on inmates should be considered cruel and unusual punishment. Lastly, Part IV applies these concepts to the history and operation of one such …

Preliminary Report On Race And Washington's Criminal Justice System, Task Force On Race And The Criminal Justice System

Seattle University Law Review

For this Report, the Research Working Group reviewed evidence on disproportionality in Washington’s criminal justice system and considered whether crime commission rates accounted for this disproportionality. We found that crime commission rates by race and ethnicity are largely unknown and perhaps unknowable, but that some researchers simply take arrest rates as good proxies for underlying commission rates for all crimes.We found that use of arrest rates likely overstates black crime commission rates for several reasons.68 But even if arrest rates are used as a proxy for underlying crime commission rates, the extent of racial disproportionality is not explained by commission …

Just A Little Bit Of History Repeating: The California Model Of Marijuana Legalization And How It Might Affect Racial And Ethnic Minorities, Thomas J. Moran

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

And Death Shall Have No Dominion: How To Achieve The Categorical Exemption Of Mentally Retarded Defendants From Execution, J. Amy Dillard

All Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the Court’s categorical exclusion of mentally retarded defendants from execution and explores how trial courts should employ procedures to accomplish heightened reliability in the mental retardation determination; it maintains that if a mentally retarded defendant is subjected to a death sentence then the Atkins directive has been ignored. To satisfy the Atkins Court’s objective of protecting mentally retarded defendants from the “special risk of wrongful execution,” the article explores whether trial courts should engage in a unified, pre-trial competency assessment in all capital cases where the defendant asserts mental retardation as a bar to execution and how …

Illinois V. Wardlow

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Reaching Batson's Challenge Twenty-Five Years Later: Eliminating The Peremptory Challenge And Loosening The Challenge For Cause Standard, Matt Haven

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Causes, Consequences And Cures Of Racial And Ethnic Disproportionality In Conviction And Incarceration Rates: An Introduction, Janet Moore

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This piece introduces Prosecution and Racial Justice, a panel discussion with Wayne McKenzie of the Vera Institute for Justice, by outlining the legal-historical context for reform strategies that detect and correct effects of racial bias in prosecutorial decision-making.

Judicial Interference With Effective Assistance Of Counsel, Bennett L. Gershman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

A lawyer’s ineffective representation of a client may be attributable to a lawyer’s own personal failings. However, impairment of the right to effective assistance of counsel may also come from a trial judge’s conduct, and can takes many forms, and occur in varying circumstances. It is therefore difficult to formulate clear principles to cover all of the various situations in which a judge can undermine effective representation. The Borukhova and Mallayev case is only the most recent illustration of the way a ruling of a judge – forcing the lawyer to sum up his case without giving the lawyer adequate …

People V. Guardino: Examined On Appeal In People V. Hecker, Luna Droubi

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

¡Silencio! Undocumented Immigrant Witnesses And The Right To Silence, Violeta R. Chapin

Publications

At a time referred to as "an unprecedented era of immigration enforcement," undocumented immigrants who have the misfortune to witness a crime in this country face a terrible decision. Calling the police to report that crime will likely lead to questions that reveal a witness's immigration status, resulting in detention and deportation for the undocumented immigrant witness. Programs like Secure Communities and 287(g) partnerships evidence an increase in local immigration enforcement, and this Article argues that undocumented witnesses' only logical response to these programs is silence. Silence, in the form of a complete refusal to call the police to report …

Introduction To The Symposium: Access To Justice: Mass Incarceration And Masculinity Through A Black Feminist Lens, Adrienne D. Davis, Annette R. Appell

Scholarship@WashULaw

This Introduction to the Symposium, Race to Justice: Mass Incarceration and Masculinity through a Black Feminist Lens, rehearses the animating forces that led to a colloquium and a series of papers that explore the question of mass incarceration and the negative state engagement surrounding it through gendered and feminist lenses. The Introduction explains how an analysis of mass incarceration through the lens of gender complicates what is often conceived as a story about race. Instead mass incarceration can be more deeply understood through its gendered effects on men and the women and children connected to those men. These connections include …

Making Willing Bodies: Manufacturing Consent Among Prisoners And Soldiers, Creating Human Subjects, Patriots, And Everyday Citizens, Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

In March 1944, doctors at the University of Chicago began infecting volunteer convicts at Stateville Prison with a virulent strand of malaria to test the effectiveness and side-effects of potent anti-malarial drugs. According to Dr. Alf Alving, the principal investigator, malaria "was the number-one medical problem of the war in the Pacific" and "we were losing far more men to malaria than to enemy bullets." This refrain would rehearse one of the most productive ways of speaking about prisoner experimentation. The Stateville prisoners became human once again and regained their citizenship and political voice by sacrificing their bodies to the …

Sex Work By Law: Bedford's Impact On The Municipal Regulation Of Sex Work, Elaine Craig

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The recent Ontario trial decision in Bedford suggests three interrelated principles that municipal law makers should consider when formulating bylaws aimed at regulating sex work. These principles, if upheld on appeal, will inform the constitutionality of both current and prospective bylaws regulating sex work in Canadian cities.

In Bedford, Justice Himel concluded that the constitutionality of laws regulating the sex trade must be determined in a legal context which recognizes the violence faced by sex workers. She confirmed that laws that indirectly make sex work more dangerous and harmful must be consistent with those principles that our legal system, through …