Criminal Law Commons^™

Lead Us Not Into Temptation: A Response To Barbara Fedders’S “Opioid Policing”, Anna Roberts

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In “Opioid Policing,” Barbara Fedders contributes to the law review literature the first joint scholarly analysis of two drug policing innovations: Seattle’s Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program and the Angel Initiative, which originated in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Even while welcoming the innovation and inspiration of these programs, she remains clear-eyed about the need to scrutinize their potential downsides. Her work is crucially timed. While still just a few years old, LEAD has been replicated many times and appears likely to be replicated still further—and to be written about much more. Inspired by Fedders’s call for a balanced take, this …

Two Models For Amending The 'Fleeing Felon' Rule, Cynthia V. Ward

Faculty Publications

The so-called “fleeing felon” rule instructs courts and law-enforcement personnel about whether, and when, police may use deadly force to stop a suspect who is attempting to escape arrest. At common law, police were allowed to use deadly force when necessary to prevent the escape of a fleeing felon, even if the escapee did not present an imminent threat of violence to the officers or others. By contrast, the right of private citizens to use deadly force against another person is generally restricted to situations involving self-defense—where an innocent person reasonably believes she is facing an imminent threat of death …

The Right To Counsel In Criminal Cases: Still A National Crisis?, Mary Sue Backus, Paul Marcus

Faculty Publications

In 1963, Gideon v. Wainwright dramatically changed the landscape of criminal justice with its mandate that poor criminal defendants be entitled to legal representation funded by the government. As scholars and practitioners have noted repeatedly over more than fifty years, states have generally failed to provide the equal access Gideon promised. This Article revisits the questions raised by the authors over a decade ago when they asserted that a genuine national crisis exists regarding the right to counsel in criminal cases for poor people. Sadly, despite a few isolated instances where litigation has sparked some progress, the issues remain the …

Prosecutorial Dismissals As Teachable Moments (And Databases) For The Police, Adam M. Gershowitz

Faculty Publications

The criminal justice process typically begins when the police make a warrantless arrest. Although police usually do a good job of bringing in the “right” cases, they do make mistakes. Officers sometimes arrest suspects even though there is no evidence to prove an essential element of the crime. Police also conduct unlawful searches and interrogations. And officers make arrests in marginal cases—schoolyard fights are a good example—in which prosecutors do not think a criminal conviction is appropriate. Accordingly, prosecutors regularly dismiss cases after police have made warrantless arrests and suspects have sat in jail for days, or even weeks. In …

Too Ill To Be Killed: Mental And Physical Competency To Be Executed Pursuant To The Death Penalty, Linda A. Malone

Faculty Publications

Mentally ill individuals are being housed in prisons and jails throughout the country. Due to decreased funding and overpopulation of correctional facilities, individuals with pre-existing illnesses, as well as others who develop illnesses, are in severe need of mental health services and punished for their ailments through the use of solitary confinement, long prison sentences, and lack of care. The stress created by such conditions is amplified for mentally ill prisoners who are awaiting execution or the dismissal of their death row sentences. These individuals must show that they are competent to stand trial, exhibit the mental state required for …

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 …

Reassessing Prosecutorial Power Through The Lens Of Mass Incarceration, Jeffrey Bellin

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Crime, Punishment, And Causation: The Effect Of Etiological Information On The Perception Of Moral Agency, Paul J. Litton, Philip Robbins

Faculty Publications

Moral judgments about a situation are profoundly shaped by the perception of individuals in that situation as either moral agents or moral patients (Gray & Wegner, 2009; Gray, Young, & Waytz, 2012), Specifically, the more we see someone as a moral agent, the less we see them as a moral patient, and vice versa. As a result, casting the perpetrator of a transgression as a victim tends to have the effect of making them seem less blameworthy (Gray & Wegner, 201 1). Based on this theoretical framework, we predicted that criminal offenders with a mental disorder that predisposes them to …

Bias, Corruption & Obstruction, Oh My: The Due Process "Shocks The Conscience" Limit On Investigative & Prosecutorial Conduct, Elizabeth Price Foley

Faculty Publications

Due process guarantees the government will not exercise its power in a manner falling below the standard of civilized decency. Under Supreme Court precedent, behavior by government officials, including prosecutors and investigators, that objectively may be characterized as outrageous, arbitrary, capricious, biased, vindictive, or conscience shocking violates due process. Whether officials’ behavior crosses the constitutional threshold requires an assessment of the totality of the circumstances and is, accordingly, a factually sensitive inquiry. Facts disinterred thus far suggest that the “collusion” narrative—alleging that Russia and Donald Trump’s campaign colluded to throw the 2016 presidential election—may have a corrupt or politically biased …

Environmens Rea, Anthony Moffa

Faculty Publications

Many policymakers remain blind to the moral implications of environmental harm caused by government action (or inaction) and have not adequately considered how criminal law deals with similar immoral behavior in other contexts. Building from Lisa Heinzerling’s thought-provoking essay Knowing Killing and Environmental Law, this article considers the possibility of criminal culpability for environmental policy decisions and the implications of that potential culpability for decision-making and communication. It builds from the premise that morality and law universally condemn the knowing killing of other human beings. It matters not that the identities of the dead are unknown. What matters from the …

Capitalizing On Criminal Justice, Eisha Jain

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Proportionality And Other Misdemeanor Myths, Eisha Jain

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Expansion Of Child Pornography Law, Carissa Byrne Hessick

Faculty Publications

This Symposium essay identifies two dramatic expansions of child pornography law: prosecutions for possessing images of children who are clothed and not engaged in any sexual activity, and prosecutions for possessing smaller portions of artistic and non-pornographic images. These prosecutions have expanded the definition of the term ‘‘child pornography’’ well beyond its initial meaning. What is more, they signal that child pornography laws are being used to punish people not necessarily because of the nature of the picture they possess, but rather because of the conclusion that those individuals are sexually attracted to children. If law enforcement concludes that a …

Punishing Criminals For Their Conduct: A Return To Reason For The Armed Career Criminal Act, Sheldon Evans

Faculty Publications

For over twenty-five years, the Armed Career Criminal Act has produced inconsistent results and has taxed judicial economy perhaps more than any other federal sentencing mechanism. This recidivist sentencing enhancement is meant to punish habitual criminals based on their numerous past crimes, but the Supreme Court’s application of the Act too often allows habitual criminals to escape the intended enhancement on a legal technicality. This comes as a result of the Court’s categorical approach, which punishes habitual criminal offenders based on the statutory elements of their past crimes rather than the conduct of their past crimes.

In an effort to …

Deconstructing The Epistemic Challenges To Mass Atrocity Prosecutions, Nancy Amoury Combs

Faculty Publications

Mass atrocity prosecutions are credited with advancing a host of praiseworthy objectives. They are believed to impose much-needed retribution, deter future atrocities, and affirm the rule of law in previously lawless societies. However, mass atrocity prosecutions will accomplish none of these laudable ends unless they are able to find accurate facts. Convicting the appropriate individuals of the appropriate crimes is a necessary and foundational condition for the success of mass atrocity prosecutions. But it is a condition that is frequently difficult to meet, as mass atrocity prosecutions are often bedeviled by pervasive and invidious obstacles to accurate fact-finding. This Article …

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 …

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 …

Terry V. Ohio And The (Un)Forgettable Frisk, Seth W. Stoughton

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Miranda Custody Requirement And Juveniles, Paul Marcus

Faculty Publications

Concerns about the interrogation process and the ability of minors to navigate the criminal justice system often intersect. The impact of the age of juveniles can be seen in a variety of judicial decisions, most markedly those dealing with punishment. But judicial concern for juveniles goes well beyond sentencing. The interrogation process raises especially grave fears.

Since the Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling in Miranda v. Arizona disallowing compelled inculpatory statements by criminal suspects and defendants, there has been concern as to whether juveniles fully understand and appreciate their rights as articulated in Miranda and based in the Fifth …

We Need To Talk About Police Disciplinary Records, Kate Levine

Faculty Publications

In March 2017, an employee of New York’s Civilian Complaint Review Board leaked the disciplinary record of Daniel Pantaleo to the media. Pantaleo, the police officer who choked Eric Garner to death in the video that went public and horrified many citizens, is under federal investigation after a Staten Island grand jury refused to indict him for Garner’s death. Legal Aid Society attorneys had unsuccessfully sought the release of his records in the courts for years. The leak of his records is the public face of an important but rarely discussed issue facing police, legislators, judges, lawyers, and scholars who …

Outside But Within: The Normative Dimension Of The Underworld In The Television Series “Breaking Bad” And “Better Call Saul”, Manuel A. Gomez

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Patriarchy, Not Hierarchy: Rethinking The Effect Of Cultural Attitudes In Acquaintance Rape Cases, Eric R. Carpenter

Faculty Publications

Do certain people view acquaintance rape cases in ways that favor the man? The answer to that question is important. If certain people do, and those people form a disproportionately large percentage of the people in the institutions that process these cases, then those institutions may process these cases in ways that favor the man. In 2010, Dan Kahan published Culture, Cognition, and Consent, a study on how people evaluate a dorm room rape scenario. He found that those who endorsed a stratified, hierarchical social order were more likely to find that the man should not be found guilty of …

The Abiding Problem Of Witness Statements In International Criminal Trials, Megan A. Fairlie

Faculty Publications

Recent amendments to the Rules of Procedure and Evidence for the International Criminal Court (“ICC”) give Trial Chambers the discretion to admit unexamined, party-generated witness statements in lieu of live testimony. The use of this evidence—which undermines the right of confrontation and prevents the judges from independently assessing witness credibility—is now a hotly contested issue in each of the Court’s ongoing trials. As ICC judges grapple with the thorny question of how to implement these new provisions without undermining the right to a fair trial, this Article, which is the first to examine the rule amendments and their early implementation, …

The School To Prison Pipeline's Legal Architecture: Lessons From The Spring Valley Incident And Its Aftermath, Josh Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Publications

This Article examines the 2015 Spring Valley High School incident – the high-profile arrest of a Columbia, South Carolina high school student for “disturbing schools” in which a school resource officer threw her out of her desk – to identify and illustrate the core elements of the school-to-prison pipeline’s legal architecture, and to evaluate legal reforms in response to growing concern over the pipeline.

The Spring Valley incident illustrates, first, how broad criminal laws transform school discipline incidents into law enforcement matters. Second, it illustrates how legal instruments that should limit the role of police officers assigned to schools (school …

Measuring The Creative Plea Bargain, Thea B. Johnson

Faculty Publications

A great deal of criminal law scholarship and practice turns on whether a defendant gets a good deal through plea bargaining. But what is a good deal? And how do defense attorneys secure such deals? Much scholarship measures plea bargains by one metric: how many years the defendant receives at sentencing. In the era of collateral consequences, however, this is no longer an adequate metric as it misses a world of bargaining that happens outside of the sentence. Through empirical research, this Article examines the measure of a good plea and the work that goes into negotiating such a plea. …

Nearsighted And Colorblind: The Perspective Problems Of Police Deadly Force Cases, Jelani Jefferson Exum

Faculty Publications

In dealing with the recently publicized instances of police officers' use of deadly force, some reform efforts have been focused on the entities that are central to the successful prosecutions of police–the prosecutor and the grand jury. Some have suggested special, independent prosecutors for these cases so that the process of deciding whether to seek charges against police officers remains untainted by the necessary cooperative relationship between the police department and the prosecutor's office. Others have urged more transparency in the grand jury process so that the public can scrutinize a prosecutor's efforts in presenting evidence for an indictment. Still …

Should Death Be So Different?: Sentencing Purposes And Capital Jury Decisions In An Era Of Smart On Crime Sentencing Reform, Jelani Jefferson Exum

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

We are in an era of “Smart on Crime” sentencing reform. Several states and the federal government have made major changes to their sentencing policies—from reducing the incarceration of low-level, nonviolent drug offenders to the use of evidence-based sentencing to focus the most severe punishments on those who are at the greatest risk of recidivism. Often, today’s reform efforts are spoken about in terms of being fiscally responsible while still controlling crime. Though such reform efforts do not explicitly acknowledge purposes of punishment—such as retribution, incapacitation, rehabilitation, or deterrence—an undercurrent running through all of these reforms is an effort …

Giving Guidance To The Guidelines, Jelani Jefferson Exum

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Throughout the country, we are seeing sentencing reform efforts reshape the way resources are being used to control crime and punish offenders. Fueled mostly by the practical challenges of overcrowded prisons and mounting costs, lawmakers have been willing to amend existing law in order to reduce incarceration for low-level, nonviolent offenders. This same effort at being "smart on crime" has been embraced by the federal government as well. While most of these changes are in the form of changes to mandatory minimum laws, the use of evidence-based sentencing practices, and a focus on diversion and re-entry programs, the role …

Dismissals As Justice, Anna Roberts

Faculty Publications

More than a third of our states have given judges a little-known power to dismiss prosecutions, not because of legal or factual insufficiency, but for the sake of justice. Whether phrased as dismissals “in furtherance of justice” or dismissals of de minimis prosecutions, these exercises of judicial power teach two important lessons.

First, judges exercising these dismissals are rebutting the common notion that in the face of over-criminalization and over-incarceration they are powerless to do more than rubber-stamp prosecutorial decision making. In individual cases, they push back against some of the most problematic aspects of our criminal justice system: its …

Civilizing Criminal Settlements, Russell M. Gold, Carissa Byrne Hessick, F. Andrew Hessick

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.