Criminal Law Commons^™

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 …

Facing Ethics In Criminal Justice Through A Christian Worldview, Jordan K. Kopko

Senior Honors Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to express the need for young men and women in law enforcement to endure ethical dilemmas through a Christian worldview. Ethical dilemmas and moral struggles in the criminal justice field are described in detail throughout the thesis. In the decision-making process during an ethical dilemma, an officer with a Christian worldview should make better decisions with the added guidance from the Holy Spirit. This thesis delves into the different aspects of ethics including reasons why some police officers make immoral decisions. The ethical issues in criminal justice have been a problem in law enforcement …

Urgent Reform 'In The Name Of Our Children': Revamping The Role Of Disproportionate Minority Contact In Federal Juvenile Justice Legislation, Atasi Satpathy

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Disproportionate minority contact ("DMC") has plagued the United States juvenile justice system for decades, but federal legislation has lacked the clarity and guidance to battle this affliction. A strong partnership must exist between state and federal entities in order to directly target DMC and thereby decrease the appallingly disproportionate number of minority children who come into contact with the juvenile justice system. This Note discusses the problem of DMC, identifies state and private efforts to combat the crisis, and indicates deficiencies in the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act as well as its reauthorization bill, S. 678. The Note urges …

Home Is Where The Crime Is, I. Bennett Capers

Michigan Law Review

Think of home. Go on. Maybe not your parents' home, which for this reviewer would be enough to induce heavy breathing and general anxiety. Rather, think about the concept of home. Think about the idea of home. Think about Home with a capital letter. Think of home as in The Wizard of Oz and Dorothy's famous "There's no place like home." Think "home sweet home." Or "home is where the heart is." Go on. Of course, there may be other associations that come to mind when one thinks of home. There's security. Safety. Control. Home rule. After all, in the …

Gangs, Violence, And Victims In El Salvador, Guatemala, And Honduras, Juan J. Fogelbach

San Diego International Law Journal

Country conditions in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras will require U.S. courts to address complex protection law issues involving current and former gang members, as well as their victims. For example, just three months after the Seventh Circuit's decision, the Sixth Circuit also held that former gang members were a particular social group. In order to ensure proper handling of these cases, advocates, adjudicators, government attorneys, and judges must acquire a high level of understanding of gangs and violence in the affected countries. To facilitate this process, this paper will synthesize and analyze publicly available information on gangs and violence …

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

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Evolving International Judiciary, Karen J. Alter

Faculty Working Papers

This article explains the rapid proliferation in international courts first in the post WWII and then the post Cold War era. It examines the larger international judicial complex, showing how developments in one region and domain affect developments in similar and distant regimes. Situating individual developments into their larger context, and showing how change occurs incrementally and slowly over time, allows one to see developments in economic, human rights and war crimes systems as part of a longer term evolutionary process of the creation of international judicial authority. Evolution is not the same as teleology; we see that some international …

Perpetuating The Marginalization Of Latinos: A Collateral Consequence Of The Incorporation Of Immigration Law Into The Criminal Justice System, Yolanda Vazquez

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Latinos currently represent the largest minority in the United States. In 2009, we witnessed the first Latina appointment to the United States Supreme Court. Despite these events, Latinos continue to endure racial discrimination and social marginalization in the United States. The inability of Latinos to gain political acceptance and legitimacy in the United States can be attributed to the social construct of Latinos as threats to national security and the cause of criminal activity.

Exploiting this pretense, American government, society and nationalists are able to legitimize the subordination and social marginalization of Latinos, specifically Mexicans and Central Americans, much to …

Controlling Sexually Violent Predators: Continued Incarceration At What Cost?, Tamara Rice Lave

Articles

Sexually violent predator (SVP) laws are inherently suspicious because they continue to incarcerate people not because of what they have done, but because of what they might do. I focus on three major criticisms of the laws. First, I use recent recidivism data to challenge the core motivation for the SVP laws-that sex offenders are monsters who cannot control themselves. Second, I situate the laws theoretically as examples of what Feeley and Simon call the "new penology." I argue that the SVP laws show the limited promise of the new penology—that we can use science to predict risk accurately--because the …

Hyper-Incarceration As A Multidimensional Attack: Replying To Angela Harris Through The Wire, Frank Rudy Cooper

Scholarly Works

In this article, Professor Frank Rudy Cooper responds to a symposium article by Angela Harris, arguing "mass incarceration" should be understood as "hyper-incarceration" because it is targeted based on multiple dimensions of identities. He extends Harris's analysis of the multidimensionality of identities by means of a case study of how class operates during the drug war era, as depicted in the critically acclaimed HBO drama The Wire.

Those Who Ignore The Successes Of The Past Suffer Recurrent, Intensifying Crises, William K. Black

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

In Re Steven J. Lever, Stephanie A. Ackerman

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Rise And Fall Of The Miranda Warnings In Popular Culture, Ronald Steiner, Rebecca Bauer, Rohit Talwar

Cleveland State Law Review

While Dickerson's rationale is certainly correct in presuming that those over thirty have already learned about the Miranda warning from decades of television, younger generations only have today's Miranda-less programming on which to form their assumptions about law enforcement. Miranda can still be found on television, but its presence has severely diminished over the years. If this trend continues, how will America's current youth internalize the Miranda warning in the way older generations have? Near-universal awareness of Miranda is an artifact of a shared popular culture in which the repetition of the warnings was pervasive and inescapable. But how can …

Are 'Voices For Justice' Heard: A Star-Studded Rally On Behalf Of The West Memphis Three Prompts The Delicate Question, Mara Leveritt

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Association Of Adult Businesses With Secondary Effects: Legal Doctrine Social Theory, And Empirical Evidence, Alan C. Weinstein, Richard Mccleary

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Class Matters, Erica J. Hashimoto

Scholarly Works

Poor people constitute one of the most overrepresented categories of people in the criminal justice system. Why is that so? Unfortunately, we simply do not know, in large part because we have virtually no information that could provide an answer. As a result of that informational vacuum, policymakers either have ignored issues related to socioeconomic class, instead focusing on issues like drug addiction and mental illness as to which there are more data, or have developed fragmented policy that touches on socioeconomic class issues only tangentially. The bottom line is that without better data on the profile of poor defendants, …

Throwing Away The Key: Has The Adam Walsh Act Lowered The Threshold For Sexually Violent Predator Commitments Too Far?, Tamara Rice Lave

Articles

No abstract provided.

Punishing Without Free Will, Luis E. Chiesa

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article will argue that there are good moral reasons to conclude that the scientific plausibility of determinism ought to lead us to abandon the notion of free will. Contra P. F. Strawson and Moore, this Article suggests that rejecting free will does not undermine the human experience, and doing so is plausible and attractive because it would likely lead to more humane and efficient institutions of blaming and punishing.

Child Pornography And Community Notification: How An Attempt To Reduce Crime Can Achieve The Opposite, J. J. Prescott

Articles

Community notification laws, designed to reduce the frequency of sex offenses by alerting potential victims to nearby threats and by encouraging citizen monitoring of potential recidivists, may make sense in the context of traditional sex offenses and sex offenders. But child pornography crimes and the individuals who commit them are different, and they differ from archetypal sex crimes and criminals in ways that may unintentionally cause community notification laws to facilitate crime rather than inhibit it. Child porn offenses typically involve money or trade, and their commission hinges on successfully conspiring with others. Markets and information are necessary building blocks …

Do Sex Offender Registration And Notification Laws Affect Criminal Behavior?, J. J. Prescott, Jonah E. Rockoff

Articles

Sex offenders have become the targets of some of the most far-reaching and novel crime legislation in the U.S. Two key innovations in recent decades have been registration and notification laws which, respectively, require that convicted sex offenders provide valid contact information to law enforcement authorities, and that information about sex offenders be made public. Using the evolution of state law during the 1990s and 2000s, we study how registration and notification affect the frequency of reported sex offenses and the incidence of such offenses across victims. We find evidence that registration reduces the frequency of sex offenses by providing …

Using Gender Equality Analysis To Improve The Wellbeing Of Prostitutes, Barbara Havelkova

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article presents a framework for analyzing prostitution through the lens of gender equality, aiming to improve the wellbeing of prostitutes by offering regulators and judges a tool for evaluation. It challenges the asymmetric legal treatment of prostitutes and clients, arguing that such treatment violates gender equality principles. The framework proposes symmetric treatment or measures benefiting prostitutes to address structural inequalities rooted in gender, class, race, and socioeconomic status. The analysis draws on European and common law jurisdictions, emphasizing the need for gender-conscious policies to ensure fairness and proportionality.

Is The "Post" In Post-Racial The "Blind" In Colorblind?, Ian F. Haney López

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Competing Theories Of Blackmail: An Empirical Research Critique Of Criminal Law Theory, Michael T. Cahill, Paul H. Robinson, Daniel M. Bartels

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Transitioning To Free Speech: A Case Study On Legal Transfers In Jordanian Jurisprudence, Sarah Joy Gregory

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Costs Of Abusing Probationary Sentences: Overincarceration And The Erosion Of Due Process, Andrew Horwitz

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Free Will Ideology: Experiments, Evolution And Virtue Ethics, John A. Humbach

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The concept of free will is a problematic basis for assessing legal accountability.

First of all, free will could never have evolved in a world of ordinary biological pressures. There is, moreover, substantial experimental evidence against it. This evidentiary situation is a serious moral concern because free will ideology plays a key role in justifying punishment in criminal law. People draw a sharp distinction between the suffering of innocents and suffering that is deserved. As a basis for criminal punishment, the very concept of just deserts usually presupposes that wrongdoers have a choice in what they do.

The essay proceeds …

Doubting Free Will: Three Experiments, John A. Humbach

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This paper describes three experiments that cast doubt on the existence free will. All deal with the phenomenon that, for a variety of reasons, people do not consciously experience events (including their own “choices”) at the exact instant they occur. The existence of these delays is sufficient to cast serious doubt on the possibility of conscious free will, i.e., free will as we usually understand it.

While these experiments do not definitely exclude the possibility of free will, they do provide affirmative evidence that our brains do not consciously make decisions in quite the way that introspection tells us. As …

Modeling The Effects Of Peremptory Challenges On Jury Selection And Jury Verdicts, Roger Allen Ford

Law Faculty Scholarship

Although proponents argue that peremptory challenges make juries more impartial by eliminating “extreme” jurors, studies testing this theory are rare and inconclusive. For this article, two formal models of jury selection are constructed, and various selection procedures are tested, assuming that attorneys act rationally rather than discriminate based on animus. The models demonstrate that even when used rationally, peremptory challenges can distort jury decision making and undermine verdict reliability. Peremptory challenges systematically shift jurors toward the majority view of the population by favoring median jurors over extreme jurors. If the population of potential jurors is skewed in favor of conviction …

Diminishing The Legal Impact Of Negative Social Attitudes Toward Acquaintance Rape Victims, Michelle J. Anderson

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Contradiction: Animal Abuse - Alive And Well, 44 J. Marshall L. Rev. 209 (2010), Katie Galanes

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.