Criminal Law Commons^™

New Approaches To Disarming Domestic Abusers, Natalie Nanasi

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Individualizing Criminial Law's Justice Judgments: Shortcomings In The Doctrines Of Culpability, Mitigation, And Excuse, Paul H. Robinson, Lindsay Holcomb

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

The Doctor Will See You Now: The Fourth Circuit Revives The Juvenile Detainee's Right To Treatment By Adopting The Professional Judgment Standard In Doe 4, Matthew Skolnick

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

The Burden Of Time: Government Negligence In Pandemic Planning As A Catalyst For Reinvigorating The Sixth Amendment Speedy Trial Right, Sara Hildebrand, Ashley Cordero

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Against Criminal Law Localism, Brenner M. Fissell

Faculty Publications

Scholars have long called for greater localism in criminal justice as a response to the crises of racialized mass incarceration and over-policing. A downward shift of power to smaller local governments is thought to maximize an array of values, including liberty, equality, and efficient experimentation, and also to allow for criminal justice to better reflect societal viewpoints. In making these claims, localists have at times either explicitly included control over substantive criminal law in their devolutionary project, or have overlooked that more general calls for localism would presumably include this power.

This Article critiques substantive criminal law localism, arguing that …

So Sue Me: How The Justice Department Can Protect Children By Suing Indigent Defenders, Joshua Perry

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Like, Comment, Or Subscribe—Unless You Are A Prisoner: How Prisoners’ First Amendment Rights Are Thwarted For Penological Interests, Jerome Shaen

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Trust In Science: The Crisis Of Expertise As An Ideological, And Not Only A Scientific Controversy, David S. Caudill

Faculty Publications

Within the so-called "culture wars" dividing our nation politically, there is a law-related division over the trustworthiness of consensus science-the so-called "crisis of expertise." When the science concerning climate change, mask-wearing, or vaccinations becomes politicized, it loses its mooring in scientific evidence and impacts the effectiveness of regulatory law. Perhaps counter-intuitively, however, the solution is likely not to wear "Because Science" t-shirts while insisting on "cold, hard facts" and diagnosing as stupid those who believe the scientific theories of marginalized, minority-view scientists. Indeed, a certain level of modesty-regarding the uncertainties and tentativeness of even the best science-is necessary for the …

Johnson V. Superintendent Fayette Sci: Severing Ties With Pronoun Substitutions In Bruton Cases, Aubrey Link

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

United States V. Garner: From Speeding Ticket To Drug Bust- Highlighting The Necessity Of An Alternative Approach To Analyzing Traffic Stop Extensions, Rocco Beltrami

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

A Dose Of Dignity : Equitable Vaccination Policies For Incarcerated People And Correctional Staff During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Itay Ravid, Jordan M. Hyatt, Steven L. Chanenson

Faculty Publications

Since its emergence in early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has altered the lives of millions of Americans. As it so often is during times of crisis, our most vulnerable communities have disproportionately suffered and were overlooked. Among these myriad communities, incarcerated people became a particularly potent symbol of our failure to handle the spread of the virus. In December 2020, a beacon of hope emerged with the introduction of new cutting-edge vaccines which promised to bring the world back to where it was just a year-and-a-half ago. Here again, however, policy and politics have led states to adopt different distribution …

Getting Away With Murder: How California State Law Determined Recovery In First Roundup Cancer Case Johnson V. Monsato Co., Eliza L. Quattlebaum

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Considering Environmental Impact Under Uncommon Personal Circumstances Carey V. Commonwealth And The Storage Tank Act, Catherine M. Hillin

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Unmuted: Solutions To Safeguard Constitutional Rights In Virtual Courtrooms And How Technology Can Expand Access To Quality Counsel And Transparency In The Criminal Justice System, Matthew Bender

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Go Phish: Circuit Split In Policy Interpretation For Social Engineering Fraud Losses Creates Ambiguity For Insurers And Insureds, Gabriella Scott

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Judging By The Cover: On The Relationship Between Media Coverage On Crime And Harshness In Sentencing, Itay Ravid

Faculty Publications

Does the mass media affect judicial decisionmaking? This first of its kind empirical study delves into this long-lasting question, and investigates the relationship between media coverage of crime and criminal sentencing. To do so, I construct a novel data set of media reports on crime, which I link to administrative state court sentencing records. The data span five years and more than forty-three thousand sentencing decisions across three jurisdictions that differ in their judicial selection models: Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. I find that crime coverage increases sentencing harshness. I also find evidence to suggest that this effect is mitigated through …

Local Offenses, Brenner M. Fissell

Faculty Publications

Criminal law is generally thought to exist within two jurisdictional levels: federal and state. Neglected in the legal mind, and in legal scholarship, is the vast body of criminal law promulgated by local governments. While one should ask “what” is being criminalized by cities, towns, and villages, one should also ask “how” these offenses are written. The offense-drafting practices reflected in state criminal law have been extensively studied, but this has never been attempted for local offenses. This Article undertakes that task. After surveying a large number of local criminal codes, this Article concludes that local offenses routinely fail to …

Determining The Perspective Of A Reasonable Police Officer: An Evidence-Based Proposal, Mitch Zamoff

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

When Agencies Make Criminal Law, Brenner M. Fissell

Faculty Publications

The nondelegation doctrine prohibits a legislature from delegating its power to an administrative agency, yet it is famously underenforced—even when the delegation results in the creation of criminal offenses (so-called “administrative crimes”). While this practice appears to scandalize the hornbook presumption that legislatures alone define criminal offenses, it has long been ratified by the Supreme Court and has received little scholarly attention. The few commentators who have addressed administrative crimes highlight the intuition that criminal sanctions are uniquely severe and thus deserving of a more rigorous nondelegation analysis, but they stop there. They do not precisely link the severe aspects …

A Political Interpretation Of Vagueness Doctrine, Brenner M. Fissell, Guyora Binder

Faculty Publications

The “void-for-vagueness” doctrine requires the specific definition of criminal offenses. In this Article, though, we claim it does more: it largely restricts criminalization decisions to legislatures, which are unlikely to criminalize conduct they see as both harmless and widespread. Thus, rather than constitutionalizing the harm principle and thereby assuming a judicial obligation to define harm, the Supreme Court has used the vagueness doctrine to constrain majorities to make their own assessments of harmfulness. While American law has no explicit requirements that criminal liability be created by legislation or conditioned on harm, the vagueness doctrine achieves those ends indirectly

Is Reasonable Doubt Self-Defining?, Lawrence T. White, Michael D. Cicchini

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Pinkerton Short-Circuits The Model Penal Code, Andrew Ingram

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Unusual: The Death Penalty For Inadvertent Killing, Brenner M. Fissell, Guyora Binder, Robert Weisberg

Faculty Publications

Can a burglar who frightens the occupant of a house, causing a fatal heart attack, be executed? More generally, does the Eighth Amendment permit capital punishment of one who causes death inadvertently? This scenario is possible in the significant minority of American jurisdictions that permit capital punishment for felony murder without requiring a mental state of intent to kill or reckless indifference to human life. Thus far, Eighth Amendment death penalty jurisprudence has required a culpable mental state of recklessness for execution of accomplices in a fatal felony, but has not yet addressed the culpability required for execution of the …

Federalism And Constitutional Criminal Law, Brenner M. Fissell

Faculty Publications

A vast body of constitutional law regulates the way that police investigate crimes and the way that criminal cases are handled at trial. The Supreme Court has imposed far fewer rules regarding what can be a crime in the first place, how it must be defined, and how much it can be punished. What explains this one-sided favoring of “procedure” over “substance?” This Article aims to unearth and assess the justification that the Court itself most often uses when it refuses to place constitutional limits on substantive criminal law: federalism. While the Court often invokes the concept to rationalize its …

No Restoration, No Rehabilitation: Shadow Detention Of Mentally Incompetent Noncitizens, Sarah Sherman-Stokes

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

A Theory Of Differential Punishment, Jack Boeglin, Zachary Shapiro

Faculty Publications

A puzzle has long pervaded the criminal law: why are two offenders who commit the same criminal act punished differently when one of them, due to circumstances beyond her control, causes more harm than the other? This tradition of result-based differential punishment the practice of varying offenders' punishment based on whether or not they cause specific "statutory harms"-has long stood as an intractable problem for scholars and jurists alike.

This Article proposes a solution to this long-standing conceptual problem. We begin by introducing a dichotomy between two broad and exhaustive categories of ideological justifications for punishing criminal offenders. The first …

Expungement, Defamation And False Light: Is What Happened Before What Really Happened Or Is There A Chance For A Second Act In America?, Doris Deltosto Brogan

Working Paper Series

Should an individual whose criminal record has been expunged have a cause of action for invasion of privacy, defamation or false light when a media outlet refuses to “unpublish” or correct the original report of her criminal charge? Outside of George Orwell’s world, can a fact that once existed be willed away by a court order, making the once-accurate report false, or “constructively false” and so give rise to a cause of action?

The impact of being swept into the vortex of the criminal justice system, even if as the result of only a minor charge, and even if that …

Criminal Prosecution For Environmental Lawbreakers: A Statute With No Bite, Christiana M. Russo

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

A Puncher's Chance: Assessing The Classification Of Martial Artists' Hands As Deadly Weapons, Michael R. Romeo

Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal (1994 - )

No abstract provided.

Capital Punishment Of Unintentional Felony Murder, Brenner M. Fissell, Guyora Binder, Robert Weisberg

Faculty Publications

Under the prevailing interpretation of the Eighth Amendment in the lower courts, a defendant who causes a death inadvertently in the course of a felony is eligible for capital punishment. This unfortunate interpretation rests on an unduly mechanical reading of the Supreme Court’s decisions in Enmund v. Florida and Tison v. Arizona, which require culpability for capital punishment of co-felons who do not kill. The lower courts have drawn the unwarranted inference that these cases permit execution of those who cause death without any culpability towards death. This Article shows that this mechanical reading of precedent is mistaken, because the …