Criminal Law Commons^™

Transforming The Culture Of Youth Justice In The Wake Of Youth Prison Closures, Jessica K. Heldman

Lewis & Clark Law Review

In 2019, the Governor of California vowed to fundamentally transform the state’s youth justice system. The legislature endorsed this commitment by enacting SB 823, which began a phased closure of state-run youth prisons in 2021. California is not the first state—nor will it be the last—to close facilities in light of decreased youth crime and greater awareness of the harms associated with incarceration. Although a welcomed development, the closure of youth prisons should not be viewed as the culmination of reform; rather, it is only the beginning. To achieve far more impactful change, state and local jurisdictions must confront the …

“I Was Just A Kid”: Addressing The Collateral Consequences Of A Juvenile Record On Employment, Lauren Wray

Touro Law Review

There is a common myth that juvenile records are confidential, when in fact only nine states fully prohibit public access to juvenile records. Landlords, employers, and educators in a majority of states may ask questions about a juvenile’s record. Studies have shown that employers are less likely to hire an applicant who has a juvenile delinquency, and that many employers may not be able to differentiate between a juvenile and adult record. This Note reviews the intersectional flaws of the New York juvenile justice system and the New York labor laws. Specifically, it evaluates policies New York has implemented with …

One Step Further For Protection: Why Oregon Should Adopt Additional Requirements For The Appointment Of Counsel To Youths Accused Of Crime, Ivy-Rose Kramer

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Current procedures for interrogating and investigating youths accused of crime do not provide sufficient protection for youths and their rights. Oregon should follow the example of other states that have adopted greater protections for youths—beyond what the Constitution currently requires. Specifically, Oregon should enact legislation that would provide counsel to youths who are (1) detained and being investigated based on probable cause of criminal activity; (2) undergoing custodial interrogation; and (3) in possession of property law enforcement wishes to search. This consultation with counsel should not be waivable. Such a law would counteract the harmful effects of disparate treatment and …

Set Up To Fail: Youth Probation Conditions As A Driver Of Incarceration, Jyoti Nanda

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Youth probation is the most common form of punishment for youth in the United States criminal legal system, with nearly a quarter of a million youth currently under supervision. Yet the role youth probation conditions play in the incarceration of youth has not been the focus of legal scholarship. Youth probation is a court-imposed intervention where young people remain at home under the supervision of a youth probation officer and are required to adhere to probation conditions, rules, and court-ordered conditions. The orders rely on standardized terms on youth probation condition forms. This is the first scholarly Article to excavate …

Mich. Ruling Widens Sentencing Protections For Young Adults, Kimberly A. Thomas

Other Publications

On July 28, the Michigan Supreme Court held that the mandatory imposition of a life-without-parole sentence on an 18-year-old violated the state constitution.

This decision expands the protections provided for young defendants by the U.S. Supreme Court in Miller v. Alabama and builds on a nascent trend that provides additional constitutional and statutory protections for young people over 17 years old who are charged with serious offenses.

The Haunting Of Her House: How Virginia Law Punishes Women Who Become Mothers Through Rape, Jordan S. Miceli

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

If a rape victim becomes pregnant following the attack, she has three options: abort the pregnancy, place the child for adoption, or keep and raise the child. However, by requiring proof of conviction of rape to terminate the parental rights of the man who fathered that child through his rape, the Commonwealth of Virginia imposes a substantial burden on a victim weighing those options. To obtain a conviction under the current scheme, a victim, through her local prosecutor, has to prove to a jury that the accused committed the rape beyond a reasonable doubt. The Commonwealth requires proof of conviction …

Capital Punishment Of Young Adults In Light Of Evolving Standards Of Science And Decency: Why Ohio Should Raise The Minimum Age For Death Penalty Eligibility To Twenty-Five (25), Talia Stewart

Cleveland State Law Review

Up until the Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling in Roper v. Simmons, juveniles could constitutionally be executed for qualifying criminal offenses. The Roper Court raised the minimum age for execution to eighteen, citing both a national consensus against executing minors, as well as recent research (at the time) showing that juveniles are more vulnerable to negative influences and outside pressures. Since Roper, the Supreme Court has remained silent regarding the requisite minimum age for execution and has left the decision up to individual states. While a slim majority of states have now abolished the death penalty in its entirety, …

Overcoming Obstacles To Reentry Panel, Mackenzie Hobbs

Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Rose Lecture, Mackenzie Hobbs

Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Front Matter, Mackenzie Hobbs

Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Roper’S Unfinished Business: A New Approach To Young Offender Death Penalty Eligibility, Nichole M. Austin

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Transfer Of Child Offenders To Adult Criminal Courts In The Usa: An Unnecessary Exercise, Unconstitutional Practice, International Law Violation, Or All Of The Above?, Roger-Claude Liwanga, Patrick Ibe

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

There is an ongoing debate over the legality and effectiveness of the use of judicial waiver as a tool to fight violent crimes, including those committed by children in the United States. Judicial waiver or transfer of juveniles is a process by which child offenders are transferred from the juvenile court to adult criminal courts to be tried and sentenced as adult offenders. Despite the implicit recognition of the constitutionality of this practice by the United States Supreme Court, this paper contends that the transfer of child offenders to adult criminal courts violates key provisions of the Convention on the …

Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind: Analyzing Inhumane Practices In Mississippi’S Correctional Institutions Due To Overcrowding, Understaffing, And Diminished Funding, Ariel A. Williams

Honors Theses

The purpose of this research is to examine the political, social, and economic factors which have led to inhumane conditions in Mississippi’s correctional facilities. Several methods were employed, including a comparison of the historical and current methods of funding, staffing, and rehabilitating prisoners based on literature reviews. State-sponsored reports from various departments and the legislature were analyzed to provide insight into budgetary restrictions and political will to allocate funds. Statistical surveys and data were reviewed to determine how overcrowding and understaffing negatively affect administrative capacity and prisoners’ mental and physical well-being. Ultimately, it may be concluded that Mississippi has high …

Chimerism And Mosaicism: The Fallibility Of Dna Evidence, Robert Ellis-Liang

Child and Family Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The “Innocence Penalty”: Is It More Pronounced For Juveniles?, Nilam A. Sanghvi, Elizabeth A. Delosa

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Despite the presumption of innocence, we know that individuals accused of crimes are punished for maintaining their innocence in ways both tangible and intangible as they make their way through our criminal justice system. For example, even if instructed not to, jurors may infer guilt from a defendant’s failure to testify; defendants who exercise their right to go to trial receive lengthier sentences if convicted than those who plead guilty; and, once convicted, defendants who maintain their innocence are often denied opportunities for parole or clemency. This article explores whether these “innocence penalties” are even greater for children who are …

Young, Black, And Wrongfully Charged: A Cumulative Disadvantage Framework, Emily Haney-Caron, Erika Fountain

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

The term wrongful conviction typically refers to the conviction or adjudication of individuals who are factually innocent. Decades of research has rightfully focused on uncovering contributing factors of convictions of factually innocent people to inform policy and practice. However, in this paper we expand our conceptualization of wrongful conviction. Specifically, we propose a redefinition that includes other miscarriages of justice: A wrongful conviction is a conviction or adjudication for someone who never should have been involved in the juvenile or criminal legal system in the first place. Although there are various miscarriages of justice that might appropriately be categorized under …

The Miller Trilogy And The Persistence Of Extreme Juvenile Sentences, Cara H. Drinan

Scholarly Articles

In a series of Eighth Amendment cases referred to as the Miller trilogy, the Supreme Court significantly limited the extent to which minors may be exposed to extreme sentences. Specifically, in this line of cases the Court abolished capital punishment for minors and narrowed the instances when minors may be sentenced to life without parole. Only minors convicted of homicide who are found to be “in-corrigible” may now be subject to a death-in-custody sentence. In limiting extreme sentences for youth in these ways, the Supreme Court relied upon the social and medical science that demonstrates youth are simultaneously less culpable …

School “Safety” Measures Jump Constitutional Guardrails, Maryam Ahranjani

Seattle University Law Review

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder and efforts to achieve racial justice through systemic reform, this Article argues that widespread “security” measures in public schools, including embedded law enforcement officers, jump constitutional guardrails. These measures must be rethought in light of their negative impact on all children and in favor of more effective—and constitutionally compliant—alternatives to promote school safety. The Black Lives Matter, #DefundthePolice, #abolishthepolice, and #DefundSchoolPolice movements shine a timely and bright spotlight on how the prisonization of public schools leads to the mistreatment of children, particularly children with disabilities, boys, Black and brown children, and low-income children. …

A Fresh Start: The Evolving Use Of Juvenile Records In College Admissions, Eve Rips

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Questions about criminal and juvenile records in the college application process are common and frequently fail to account for the unique characteristics of juvenile justice systems. The ways in which colleges and universities ask about juvenile records often encourage applicants to disclose information in spite of statutory protections. These questions fly in the face of the public policy underlying a range of legal safeguards that are intended to help individuals with records from juvenile systems in moving forward and receiving a second chance.

In recent years, a series of legislative and institutional changes have begun to restrict how colleges and …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

2021: How Gender And Race Affect Justice Now - Final Report, Justice Sheryl Gordon Mccloud, Dana Raigrodski, Sierra Rotakhina, Kelley Amburgey-Richardson

Books

In 1989, the Washington Supreme Court’s Task Force on Gender and Justice in the Courts produced a groundbreaking report on the impact of gender on selected areas of the law. It concluded that gender did affect the availability of justice. We – the Washington State Supreme Court Gender and Justice Commission – are a product of that report and its recommendations. Now, in 2021, we have completed our follow-up study.

Our legal and social science research, our data collection, and our independent pilot projects all led us to the same frustrating conclusion about the effect of gender in Washington State …

Beyond "Children Are Different": The Revolution In Juvenile Intake And Sentencing, Joshua Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Scholarship

For more than 120 years, juvenile justice law has not substantively defined the core questions in most delinquency cases — when should the state prosecute children rather than divert them from the court system (the intake decision), and what should the state do with children once they are convicted (the sentencing decision)? Instead, the law has granted certain legal actors wide discretion over these decisions, namely prosecutors at intake and judges at sentencing. This Article identifies and analyzes an essential reform trend changing that reality: legislation, enacted in at least eight states in the 2010s, to limit when children can …

Irreparably Corrupt And Permanently Incorrigible: Georgia’S Procedures For Sentencing Children To Die In Prison, Rachel Ness-Maddox

Mercer Law Review

Right now, two teenagers live in Georgia prisons, knowing they will be incarcerated for the rest of their lives.Countless adults are serving sentences of life without the possibility of parole (LWOP) for crimes they, too, committed when they were teenagers. It is difficult to find in officially‑reported data adults serving sentences they received for crimes they committed while children. This is because, once the two teenagers specifically noted in the Georgia Department of Corrections’ Inmate Statistical Profileturn twenty, they will move to the next data bracket for imprisoned people between the ages of twenty and twenty‑nine, just as all the …

Invisible Article Iii Delinquency: History, Mystery, And Concerns About “Federal Juvenile Courts”, Mae C. Quinn, Levi T. Bradford

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

This essay is the second in a two-part series focused on our nation’s invisible juvenile justice system—one that operates under the legal radar as part of the U.S. Constitution’s Article III federal district court system. The first publication, Article III Adultification of Kids: History, Mystery, and Troubling Implications of Federal Youth Transfers, examined the little-known practice of prosecuting children as adults in federal courts. This paper will look at the related phenomenon of juvenile delinquency matters that are filed and pursued in our nation’s federal court system.

To date, most scholarship evaluating youth prosecution has focused on our country’s juvenile …

No Path To Redemption: Evaluating Texas’S Practice Of Sentencing Kids To De Facto Life Without Parole In Adult Prison, Lindsey Linder, Justin Martinez

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Caregivers’ Expectations, Reflected Appraisals, And Arrests Among Adolescents Who Experienced Parental Incarceration, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Melissa Noel

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

This research sought to identify a potential process by which intergenerational crime occurs, focusing on the effect of parental incarceration on adolescents’ subsequent arrests. We drew from Matsueda’s work on reflected appraisals as an explanatory mechanism for this effect. Thus, the present research examined whether caregivers’ and adolescents’ expectations for adolescents’ future incarceration sequentially mediated the effect of parental incarceration on adolescents’ actual arrest outcomes. Propensity score matching was used to examine this effect in a sample of 1,735 15- to 16-year-olds using NLSY97 data. Parental incarceration was positively related to caregivers’ expectations of adolescents’ future arrest. Moreover, caregivers’ expectations …

Child Abuse And Cannabis Use: How A Prima Facie Standard Mischaracterizes Parental Cannabis Consumption As Child Neglect, Jasmine Harris

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Jones V. Mississippi: Brief Of Erwin Chemerinsky, Eric M. Freedman, Craig Futterman, Martin Guggenheim, Bernard E. Harcourt, Shani M. King, Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier, Issa Kohler-Hausmann, Leah Litman, Christopher Seeds, Alison Siegler, Carol Steiker, David A. Strauss, Carlos Manuel Vazquez, Gideon Yaffe, Steven Zeidman As Amici Curiae In Support Of Petitioner, Leah Litman

Appellate Briefs

Amici are scholars of federal courts and/or criminal law, studying the operation and purposes of federal jurisdiction and criminal law. Although they have divergent legal and political outlooks, amici share a keen interest in the federal courts and criminal law, having published extensively on these topics and collected decades of experience examining issues implicated in this case.

Amici share a concern that the lower court’s judgment threatens the rule of law this Court announced in Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012) 4 and affirmed in Montgomery v. Louisiana, 136 S. Ct. 718 (2016) that life without the …

Providing A Meaningful Opportunity For Release: A Proposal For Improving Washington's Miller-Fix, Maya L. Ramakrishnan

Washington Law Review

Miller v. Alabama1 set forth new constitutional requirements that necessitated changes in Washington State’s sentencing law for children. In response, the Washington legislature passed RCW 9.94A.730: a parole statute that presumptively releases children who committed crimes after they have served twenty years. Unless the parole board finds they are more likely than not to commit a future crime if released, the Miller-fix statute requires that eligible petitioners are released. The parole board has wide discretion in determining whether someone is more likely than not to commit a future crime because the statute provides no guidance about how to make this …