Criminal Law Commons^™

Tracking Hate Speech Acts As Incitement To Genocide In International Criminal Law, Shannon Fyfe

Scholarly Articles

In this article, I argue that we need a better understanding of the theoretical underpinnings of the current debates in international law surrounding hate speech and inchoate crimes. I construct a theoretical basis for speech acts as incitement to genocide, distinguishing these speech acts from speech as genocide and speech denying genocide by integrating international law with concepts drawn from speech act theory and moral philosophy. I use the case drawn on by many commentators in this area of international criminal law, the trial of media executives for the roles they played in the Rwandan genocide through public speech acts …

Recasting Vagueness: The Case Of Teen Sex Statutes, Cynthia Godsoe

Washington and Lee Law Review

When two minors below the age of consent have sex, who is the victim and who is the offender? Statutory rape law makes consensual sex among minors illegal in almost every state. Where half of high school students have had intercourse, the law’s immense scope and inevitable underenforcement allow prosecutors to virtually define the crime by the tiny percentage of cases they choose. Through the lens of peer statutory rape, this Article introduces and critiques “vaguenets”—broad, under-defined laws that punish widespread and largely harmless conduct, and invite selective enforcement. Like problematic police dragnet searches, the immense sweep of these statutes …

Examining Rule 11(B)(1)(N) Error: Guilty Pleas, Appellate Waiver, And Dominguez Benitez, Leanna C. Minix

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Book Review, When Police Kill By Franklin E. Zimring (2017), Andrew J. Christensen

Library Scholarship

When Police Kill is a must-have for any academic law library collection and a strong candidate for the shelves of government and court libraries. The book is a compelling example of the value of the growing empirical and current-event-analysis trends in legal scholarship, relying on open source statistics, news accounts, and crowdsourced efforts both to inform potentially fraught dialogue and advance new public policy approaches. Research librarians, who may increasingly find themselves tapped to assist with or manage such projects, should look to When Police Kill for information, as well as inspiration, about how a diverse and data-driven study can …

Virginia Prosecutors’ Response To Two Models Of Pre-Plea Discovery In Criminal Cases: An Empirical Comparison, Michael R. Doucette

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

No abstract provided.

Some Skepticism About Criminal Discovery Empiricism, Miriam H. Baer

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

This Response addresses Jenia Turner and Alison Redlich’s comparative analysis of criminal discovery practices in two neighboring states, Virginia and North Carolina. Whereas Virginia adheres to the traditional, category-driven approach, North Carolina requires its prosecutors to disclose the contents of their “file,” with some notable exceptions.

Open-file discovery has quickly become a fertile source of debate among scholars and practitioners. Turner and Redlich have devised a valuable survey to test theoretical claims commonly asserted by open-file discovery’s opponents and supporters. Unsurprisingly, the authors find that disclosure is generally broader in North Carolina (an open-file state) than in Virginia. More notable …

The United States And The International Criminal Court: A Complicated, Uneasy, Yet At Times Engaging Relationship, Leila Nadya Sadat, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

The United States is not a party to the International Criminal Court and this Article demonstrates that it has a complicated relationship to questions of complementarity in the Rome Statute. Federal and (to a small degree) state criminal law in the United States codifies some of the crimes that, conceptually, relate to conduct proscribed in the Rome Statute, but coverage is incomplete and jurisdiction may often be lacking. Thus, the United States is able to prosecute a limited number of ICC crimes in federal courts as such, particularly genocide, torture, and some war crimes including the recruitment or use of …

Chaining Kids To The Ever Turning Wheel: Other Contemporary Costs Of Juvenile Court Involvement, Candace Johnson, Mae C. Quinn

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

In this essay, Candace Johnson and Mae Quinn respond to Tamar Birckhead’s important article The New Peonage, based, in part, on their work and experience representing youth in St. Louis, Missouri. They concur with Professor Birckhead’s conclusions about the unfortunate state of affairs in 21st century America— that we use fines, fees, and other prosecution practices to continue to unjustly punish poverty and oppressively regulate racial minorities. Such contemporary processes are far too reminiscent of historic convict leasing and Jim Crow era efforts intended to perpetuate second-class citizenship for persons of color. Johnson and Quinn add to Professor Birckhead’s …

Implementing Change In Sentencing And Corrections: The Need For Broad-Based Research, Nora V. Demleitner

Scholarly Articles

None available

How To Change The Philosophy And Practice Of Probation And Supervised Release: Data Analytics, Cost Control, Focus On Reentry, And A Clear Mission, Nora V. Demleitner

Scholarly Articles

None available.

Birchfield V. North Dakota:Why The United States Supreme Court Should Rely On Riley V. California To Hold That Criminalizing A Suspect’S Refusal To Consent To A Warrantless Blood Test Violates The Fourth Amendment, Adam Lamparello, Cynthia Swann

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Voluntary Disclosure Fostering Overenforcement And Overcriminalization Of The Fcpa, Karen E. Woody

Scholarly Articles

Professor Peter Reilly’s article, Incentivizing Corporate America to Eradicate Transnational Bribery Worldwide: Federal Transparency and Voluntary Disclosure Under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, 67 Fla. L. Rev. 1683 (2015), challenges the notion that voluntary disclosure of potential Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) violations to the government is always the best course of action for a company. In a world where whistleblowers can receive a bounty for information provided to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC),2 self-reporting is a critical, high-pressure decision that each company must undertake when faced with potential FCPA liability.

This Article takes a broader look at …

Extracurricular International Criminal Law, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

This article unpacks the jurisprudential footprints of international criminal courts and tribunals in domestic civil litigation in the United States conducted under the Alien Tort Statute (ats). The ats allows victims of human rights abuses to file tort-based lawsuits for violations of the laws of nations. While diverse, citations to international cases and materials in ats adjudication cluster around three areas: (1) aiding and abetting as a mode of liability; (2) substantive legal elements of genocide and crimes against humanity; and (3) the availability of corporate liability. The limited capacity of international criminal courts and tribunals portends that domestic tort …

Victims Who Victimise, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

How to speak of the agency of the oppressed to harm others in times of atrocity? This article juxtaposes Holocaust literature (Levi, Frankl, Kertesz, Ka-Tzetnik) with Holocaust judging (the Kapo collaborator trials in Israel). It does so didactically to interrogate international criminal law’s interaction with former child soldier Dominic Ongwen, currently awaiting trial at the International Criminal Court.

Judicial Challenges To The Collateral Impact Of Criminal Convictions: Is True Change In The Offing?, Nora V. Demleitner

Scholarly Articles

Judicial opposition to disproportionate sentences and the long-term impact of criminal records is growing, at least in the Eastern District of New York. With the proliferation and harshness of collateral consequences and the hurdles in overcoming a criminal record, judges have asked for greater proportionality and improved chances for past offenders to get a fresh start. The combined impact of punitiveness and a criminal record is not only debilitating to the individual but also to their families and communities. A criminal case against a non-citizen who will be subject to deportation and a decade-long ban on reentry and three different …

Criminal Adjudication, Error Correction, And Hindsight Blind Spots, Lisa Kern Griffin

Washington and Lee Law Review

Concerns about hindsight in the law typically arise with regard to the bias that outcome knowledge can produce. But a more difficult problem than the clear view that hindsight appears to provide is the blind spot that it actually has. Because of the conventional wisdom about error review, there is a missed opportunity to ensure meaningful scrutiny. Beyond the confirmation biases that make convictions seem inevitable lies the question whether courts can see what they are meant to assess when they do look closely for error. Standards that require a retrospective showing of materiality, prejudice, or harm turn on what …

Two Models Of Pre-Plea Discovery In Criminal Cases: An Empirical Comparison, Jenia I. Turner, Allison D. Redlich George Mason University

Washington and Lee Law Review

Our criminal justice system resolves most of its cases through plea bargains. Yet the U.S. Supreme Court has not required that any evidence, even exculpatory or impeachment evidence, be provided to the defense before a guilty plea. As a result, state rules on pre-plea discovery differ widely. While some jurisdictions follow an “open-file” model, imposing relatively broad discovery obligations on prosecutors early in the criminal process, others follow a more restrictive, “closed-file” model and allow the prosecution to avoid production of critical evidence either entirely or until very near the time of trial. Though the advantages and disadvantages of both …

Alternative Visions For The Federal Criminal Justice And Corrections System: Is True Change Possible?, Nora V. Demleitner

Scholarly Articles

None available.

Representation By Counsel Or Access To Defense Resources: Utah’S Single Source Approach To Indigent Defense, John P. Gross

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

The State of Utah has a unique way of providing representation in criminal cases to defendants who are too poor to hire an attorney. In Utah, there is no statewide funding or supervision of indigent defense. Each county, city, or town is responsible for creating and funding their own indigent defense delivery system. Utah is one of only two states in the United States—Pennsylvania is the other—that fails to provide state funding or oversight of indigent defense. But what makes Utah truly unique is the way in which counties and municipalities are required to structure their indigent defense delivery systems. …

Centralized Prosecution: Cross-Designated Prosecutors And An Unconstitutional Concentration Of Power, Haley White

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

The Admissibility Of Trueallele: A Computerized Dna Interpretation System, Katherine L. Moss

Washington and Lee 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 …

Stepping Beyond Nuremberg’S Halo: The Legacy Of The Supreme National Tribunal Of Poland, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

The Supreme National Tribunal of Poland (Najwyzszy Trybunal Narodowy (Tribunal)) operated from 1946 to 1948. It implemented the 1943 Moscow Declaration in the case of suspected Nazi war criminals. This article unpacks two of the Tribunal’s trials, that of Rudolph Hoess (Kommandant of Auschwitz (Oswiecim) and Amon Goeth (commander of the Krakow-Plaszow labour camp). Following an introduction, the article proceeds in four sections. Section 2 sets out the Tribunal’s provenance and background, offering a flavour of the politics and pressures that contoured (and co-opted) its activities so as to recover its place within the imagined spaces of international criminal accountability. …

The Prior Convictions Exception: Examining The Continuing Viability Of Almendarez-Torres Under Alleyne, Meg E. Sawyer

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Taking Pedophilia Seriously, Margo Kaplan

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Article pushes lawmakers, courts, and scholars to reexamine the concept of pedophilia in favor of a more thoughtful and coherent approach. Legal scholarship lacks a thorough and reasoned analysis of pedophilia. Its failure to carefully consider how the law should conceptualize sexual attraction to children undermines efforts to address the myriad of criminal, public health, and other legal concerns pedophilia raises. The result is an inconsistent mix of laws and policies based on dubious presumptions. These laws also increase risk of sexual abuse by isolating people living with pedophilia from treatment.

The Article makes two central arguments: (1) although …

Comment On The Prior Convictions Exception: Examining The Continuing Viability Of Almendarez-Torres Under Alleyne, Kevin Flynn

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Proceedings Of The Ninth International Humanitarian Law Dialogs, International Criminal Law: Year In Review 2014–2015, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

This publication is based on Professor Drumbl's remarks on September 1, 2015, at the Ninth International Humanitarian Law Dialogs held in Chautauqua, New York.

What I do not want to do is review and repeat what has already been said about the international arena. I thought what I would do is boil it down to a couple observations that I have about the activities at the international institutions over the past year, and discuss four elements that have emerged.

One is transition. What I mean by this is that the work of a number of the international institutions is winding …

The Irrelevance Of Prisoner Fault For Excessively Delayed Executions, Russell L. Christopher

Washington and Lee Law Review

Are decades-long delays between sentencing and execution immune from Eighth Amendment violation because they are self-inflicted by prisoners, or is such prisoner fault for delays simply irrelevant to whether a state-imposed punishment is cruel and unusual? Typically finding delay to be the state’s responsibility, Justices Breyer and Stevens argue that execution following upwards of forty years of death row incarceration is unconstitutional. Nearly every lower court disagrees, reasoning that prisoners have the choice of pursuing appellate and collateral review (with the delay that entails) or crafting the perfect remedy to any delay by submitting, as Justice Thomas has invited complaining …

The Prior Convictions Exception—A Comment, Matthew Engle

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

United States V. Erwin And The Folly Of Intertwined Cooperation And Plea Agreements, Kevin Bennardo

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

Cooperation agreements and plea agreements are separate and independent promises by criminal defendants to: (1) assist the Government in the prosecution of another person and (2) plead guilty. A defendant’s breach of one should not affect the Government’s obligation to perform under the other. All too often, however, these agreements are inappropriately intertwined so that a minor breach of the plea agreement relieves the Government of its obligation to move for a downward sentencing departure in recognition of the defendant’s substantial assistance. This intertwining undermines sentencing policy as set forth in the federal sentencing statute. Thus, a district court should …