Criminal Law Commons^™

Outrageous Fortune And The Criminalization Of Mass Torts, Richard A. Nagareda

Michigan Law Review

The case of the blameworthy-but-fortunate defendant has emerged as one of the most perplexing scenarios in mass tort litigation today. One need look no further than the front page of the newspaper to find examples of mass tort defendants said to have engaged in irresponsible conduct - even conduct that one might regard as morally outrageous in character - but that nonetheless advance eminently plausible contentions that they have not caused harm to others. This issue is not merely a matter for abstract speculation. A now-familiar mass tort scenario involves a defendant that markets a product without informing consumers about …

Is Hiv "Extraordinary"?, Jordan B. Hansell

Michigan Law Review

The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 (the "Act") attempts to reduce inconsistencies in the sentences of defendants convicted of comparable crimes. The Act created a Sentencing Commission (the "Commission") and authorized it to promulgate a set of sentencing guidelines to steer judicial decisionmaking. To fulfill this mandate, the Commission drafted the Federal Sentencing Guidelines (the "Guidelines"), which Congress enacted in 1987. Although Congress wanted to eliminate sentencing disparities, it also wanted to allow some degree of individualized sentencing. To achieve the correct balance, the Commission created three categories of characteristics: those a court must consider in sentencing each defendant; those …

A Question Of Intent: Aiding And Abetting Law And The Rule Of Accomplice Liability Under § 924©, Tyler B. Robinson

Michigan Law Review

Firearms are common tools of the violent-crime and drugtrafficking trades. Their prevalence is reflected in the frequency with which federal prosecutors charge, juries apply, and courts review 18 U.S.C. §924(c). That provision imposes heavy penalties for either the use or carrying of a firearm "during and in relation to any crime of violence or drug trafficking crime," in addition to the punishment provided for the underlying violent or drug-related offense. A conviction under section 924(c) carries at the very least a mandatory, consecutive five-year sentence, even when the underlying crime already provides enhanced punishment for use of a dangerous weapon …

Ignorance Of Law Is An Excuse - But Only For The Virtuous, Dan M. Kahan

Michigan Law Review

It's axiomatic that "ignorance of the law is no excuse." My aim in this essay is to examine what the "mistake of law doctrine" reveals about the relationship between criminal law and morality in general and about the law's understanding of moral responsibility in particular. The conventional understanding of the mistake of law doctrine rests on two premises, which are encapsulated in the Holmesian epigrams with which I've started this essay. The first is liberal positivism. As a descriptive claim, liberal positivism holds that the content of the law can be identified without reference to morality: one needn't be a …

Response: Between Economics And Sociology: The New Path Of Deterrence, Dan M. Kahan

Michigan Law Review

The explosive collision of economics and sociology has long illuminated the landscape of deterrence theory. It is a debate as hopeless as it is spectacular. Economics is practical but thin. Starting from the simple premise that individuals rationally maximize their utility, economics generates a robust schedule of prescriptions - from the appropriate size of criminal penalties,1 to the optimal form of criminal punishments, to the most efficient mix of private and public investments in deterrence. Yet it is the very economy of economics that ultimately subverts it: its account of human motivations is too simplistic to be believable, and it …

Deterrence's Difficulty, Neal Kumar Katyal

Michigan Law Review

We all crave simple elegance. Physicists since Einstein have been searching for a grand unified theory that will tie everything together in a simple model. Law professors have their own grand theories - law and economics's Coase Theorem and constitutional law's Originalism immediately spring to mind. Criminal law is no different, for the analogue is our faith in deterrence - the belief that increasing the penalty on an activity will mean that fewer people will perform it. This theory has much to commend it. After all, economists and shoppers have known for ages that a price increase in a good …

The "Solely Criminal Purpose" Defense To The Enforcement Of Irs Summonses, Darius J. Mehraban

Michigan Law Review

Recent years have witnessed a gradual erosion of the practical distinctions between the civil and criminal investigations performed by federal administrative agencies. This trend arose naturally from a growing number of federal statutes and regulations that carry both civil and criminal penalties for their violation. Administrative agencies today wield investigative summons power almost as expansive as the grand jury subpoena power and can use that power to investigate without first deciding whether criminal or civil liability ultimately will be sought. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has participated to some extent in this intermingling of civil and criminal inquiry - with …

Unshackling Black Motherhood, Dorothy E. Roberts

Michigan Law Review

When stories about the prosecutions of women for using drugs during pregnancy first appeared in newspapers in 1989, I immediately suspected that most of the defendants were Black women. Charging someone with a crime for giving birth to a baby seemed to fit into the legacy of devaluing Black mothers. I was so sure of this intuition that I embarked on my first major law review article based on the premise that the prosecutions perpetuated Black women's subordination. My hunch turned out to be right: a memorandum prepared by the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project documented cases brought against pregnant women …

Lynching Ethics: Toward A Theory Of Racialized Defenses, Anthony V. Alfieri

Michigan Law Review

So much depends upon a rope in Mobile, Alabama. To hang Michael Donald, Henry Hays and James "Tiger" Knowles tied up "a piece of nylon rope about twenty feet long, yellow nylon." They borrowed the rope from Frank Cox, Hays's brother-in-law. Cox "went out in the back" of his mother's "boatshed, or something like that, maybe it was in the lodge." He "got a rope," climbed into the front seat of Hays's Buick Wildcat, and handed it to Knowles sitting in the back seat. So much depends upon a noose. Knowles "made a hangman's noose out of the rope," thirteen …

The Limits Of Legal Language: Decisionmaking In Capital Cases, Jordan M. Steiker

Michigan Law Review

To make the case for the proposed changes, I will first describe briefly in Parts I and II the structure of pre- and post-Furman capital decisiorurtaking and the weaknesses of those approaches. I then will set forth in Part III the specific rationales for each proposed reform.

The scheme I propose raises a significant constitutional question. Can the death penalty be retained as a punishment if we abandon the pretense of providing meaningful guidance through detailed sentencing instructions? Would the reestablishment of relatively unstructured penalty phase deliberations similar to, but also importantly different from, those characteristic of pre-Furman …

Juror Delinquency In Criminal Trials In America, 1796-1996, Nancy J. King

Michigan Law Review

This article examines two aspects of the jury system that have attracted far less attention from scholars than from the popular press: avoidance of jury duty by some citizens, and misconduct while serving by others. Contemporary reports of juror shortages and jury dodging portray a system in crisis. Coverage of recent high-profile cases suggests that misconduct by jurors who do serve is common. In the trial of Damian Williams and Henry Watson for the beating of Reginald Denny, a juror was kicked off for failing to deliberate; Exxon, Charles Keating, and the man accused of murdering Michael Jordan's father all …

When Discretion Leads To Distortion: Recognizing Pre-Arrest Sentence-Manipulation Claims Under The Federal Sentencing Guidelines, Jeffrey L. Fisher

Michigan Law Review

This Note argues that sentence manipulation should be a legally viable partial defense - a defense that does not warrant complete exoneration, but does warrant a reduced sentence when the government's investigative techniques place a quantity of drugs before the court that overrepresents the defendant's culpability, or individual blameworthiness. Part I describes the policies and objectives that underlie the Guidelines, but then demonstrates how the rigid application of quantity-based sentencing provisions can lead to sentence manipulation that thwarts these goals, particularly the goal of sentencing according to culpability. Part II describes how courts have responded to sentence manipulation claims. It …

Revenge For The Condemned, Sara Sun Beale, Paul H. Haagen

Michigan Law Review

A Review of V.A.C. Gatrell, The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People 1770-1868

Whose Justice? Which Victims?, Lynne Henderson

Michigan Law Review

A Review of George Fletcher, With Justice for Some: Victim's Rights in Criminal Trials

One Bite At The Apple: Reversals Of Convictions Tainted By Prosecutorial Misconduct And The Ban On Double Jeopardy, Rick A. Bierschbach

Michigan Law Review

This Note argues that the Double Jeopardy Clause bars retrial after reversals of convictions tainted by prosecutorial misconduct in the submission of evidence when two conditions are met: (1) the prosecutor intentionally introduced tainted evidence, and (2) excluding the tainted evidence would have left insufficient evidence at trial to support the defendant's conviction. This Note contends that this limited extension of double jeopardy protection is both mandated by the policies underlying the Double Jeopardy Clause and consistent with existing double jeopardy jurisprudence.

Are Threats Always "Violent" Crimes?, Jeremy D. Feinstein

Michigan Law Review

This Note argues that because the generally accepted legal meaning of violence is the use - or the risk of the use - of physical force so as to injure, damage, or abuse, threats only should be considered violent if they involve a risk of the use of physical force. Part I examines the substantive law of threats to determine if they inherently involve a risk of the use of physical force, and concludes that they do not. Part II studies the meaning of the term violence, and argues that both courts and dictionaries understand the term to mean the …

Petty Offenses, Serious Consequences: Multiple Petty Offenses And The Sixth Amendment Right To Jury Trial, Jeff E. Butler

Michigan Law Review

In Blanton v. City of North Las Vegas, the Supreme Court set forth the definitive standard for distinguishing petty offenses from serious crimes.7 The benchmark used by the Court is the maximum prison term assigned to each offense by the legislature. Where the penalty exceeds six months' imprisonment, the offense is serious enough to trigger the right to jury trial. Where the penalty is six months' imprisonment or less, there is a strong presumption that the offense is petty; therefore, a defendant accused of that offense has no Sixth Amendment right to jury trial.

This Note argues that a criminal …

True Lies: The Role Of Pretext Evidence Under Batson V. Kentucky In The Wake Of St. Mary's Honor Center V. Hicks, David A. Sutphen

Michigan Law Review

In the process of determining whether a peremptory strike is valid, lower courts rely on the TI.tie VII burden-shifting framework originally laid out by the Supreme Court in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green As a result, the order and presentation of proof in Batson cases deliberately parallels the order and presentation of proof in TI.tie VII intentional discrimination suits. In light of this similarity, the Supreme Court's recent TI.tie VII ruling in St. Mary's Honor Center v. Hicks - that proof of pretext under the McDonnell Douglas framework is not the legal equivalent to proof of intentional discrimination - raises …

Putting Women First, Mary Coombs

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Gender, Crime, and Punishment by Kathleen Daly

Should Courts Impose Rico's Pretrial Restraint Measures On Substitute Assets?, James M. Rosenthal

Michigan Law Review

This Note argues that courts should not apply RICO's pretrial restraint measures to substitute assets. Part I examines the text of RICO's forfeiture provisions in light of recent rulings by the Supreme Court providing guidance in interpreting the statute. Part I concludes that the statute's plain meaning limits pretrial restraint measures to tainted assets. Part II examines language in the legislative history of an earlier attempt to add a substitute asset provision to RICO and in the 1984 change from broad to specific language in the pretrial restraint provision. From this language, Part II concludes that Congress did not intend …

The Punishment Of Hate: Toward A Normative Theory Of Bias-Motivated Crimes, Frederick M. Lawrence

Michigan Law Review

This article explores how bias crimes differ from parallel crimes and why this distinction makes a crucial difference in our criminal law. Bias crimes differ from parallel crimes as a matter of both the resulting harm and the mental state of the offender. The nature of the injury sustained by the immediate victim of a bias crime exceeds the harm caused by a parallel crime. Moreover, bias crimes inflict a palpable harm on the broader target community of the crime as well as on society at large, while parallel crimes do not generally cause such widespread injury.

The distinction between …

Strings Attached--Violin Fraud And Other Deceptions, Carla J. Shapreau

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Violin Fraud: Deception, Forgery, Theft, and the Law by Brian W. Harvey

Postconviction Review Of Jury Discrimination: Measuring The Effects Of Juror Race On Jury Decisions, Nancy J. King

Michigan Law Review

In Part I, I review the empirical evidence concerning the effect of jury discrimination on jury decisions. Using the work of social and cognitive psychologists, I argue that the influence of jury discrimination on jury decisions is real and can be measured by judges in certain circumstances. The empirical studies suggest criteria that courts could use to identify the cases in which jury discrimination is most likely to affect the verdict. I also refute the argument that white judges can never predict the behavior of jurors of racial backgrounds different than their own and conclude that judicial estimates of the …

Continuing Criminal Enterprise, Conspiracy, And The Multiple Punishment Doctrine, Kenneth G. Schuler

Michigan Law Review

This Note argues that the Multiple Punishment Doctrine prohibits the imposition of concurrent convictions and sentences upon criminal defendants found guilty of engaging in a CCE and conspiring to violate narcotics laws. Part I surveys the values underlying the Multiple Punishment Doctrine and traces the evolution of the Supreme Court's application of the doctrine to modern criminal law. Part II examines the various methods employed by the circuit courts of appeals to deal with simultaneous convictions and sentences for CCE and conspiracy. Part III reviews the test, identified in Part I, that the Supreme Court has implicitly utilized to analyze …

Are Criminal Defenders Different?, David Luban

Michigan Law Review

No one has done more to expose the jurisprudential incoherence of this view of legal practice than William Simon. In his 1978 article, The Ideology of Advocacy, Simon demonstrated a series of internal contradictions in the most promising attempts to justify the ideology of advocacy. Subsequently, in Ethical Discretion in Lawyering, Simon elaborated an alternative view according to which lawyers must exercise independent judgment in both their choice of clients and their choice of means in pursuing client ends.

In Simon's view, those who carve out the criminal defense exception have been taken in by what he calls …

The Ethics Of Criminal Defense, William H. Simon

Michigan Law Review

A large literature has emerged in recent years challenging the standard conception of adversary advocacy that justifies the lawyer in doing anything arguably legal to advance the client's ends. This literature has proposed variations on an ethic that would increase the lawyer's responsibilities to third parties, the public, and substantive ideals of legal merit and justice.

With striking consistency, this literature exempts criminal defense from its critique and concedes that the standard adversary ethic may be viable there. This paper criticizes that concession. I argue that the reasons most commonly given to distinguish the criminal from the civil do not …

Reply: Further Reflections On Libertarian Criminal Defense, William H. Simon

Michigan Law Review

Since David Luban's is the work on legal ethics that I admire and agree with most, there is an element of perversity in my vehement critique of his arguments on criminal defense. I am therefore especially thankful for his gracious and thoughtful response. Nevertheless, I remain convinced that Luban is mistaken in excepting criminal defense from much of the responsibility to substantive justice that we both think appropriate in every other sphere of lawyering.

Capital Punishment's Future, Welsh S. White

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Capital Punishment in America by Raymond Paternoster

Rape Discourse In Press Coverage Of Sex Crimes, Peggy Reeves Sanday

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Virgin or Vamp: How the Press Covers Sex Crimes

The Sexual Innocence Inference Theory As A Basis For The Admissibility Of A Child Molestation Victim's Prior Sexual Conduct, Christopher B. Reid

Michigan Law Review

The sexual innocence inference refers to the thought process a jury follows when it hears a young child testify about sexual acts and matters that reveal an understanding of such acts beyond the capacity likely at his or her age. A jury is likely to assume that because the child is so young, he or she must be innocent of sexual matters. Shocked by the child's display on the witness stand, the jury may then infer that the child could have acquired such knowledge only if the charged offense of child molestation is true. To rebut this inference, a defendant …