Criminal Law Commons^™

Criminal Law And Criminology: Survey Of Recent Books, Juliet Casper Smith

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Without Narrative: Child Sexual Abuse, Lynne N. Henderson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Violence Against Aboriginal Women In Australia: Possibilities For Redress Within The International Human Rights Framework, Penelope Andrews

Articles & Chapters

This Article addresses the issue of violence against Aboriginal women. Part I concerns the historical violenceagainst Aboriginal people generally, and Part II concerns violence against Aboriginal women in particular. Part III considers how the priorities and perspectives of Aboriginal women and non-Aboriginal women differ insignificant ways despite their congruence in others. In particular, the Article evaluates the awkward relationship between Aboriginal women and the largely white feminist movement in Australia as a consequence of these different priorities and perspectives, and suggests how political victories for white or non-Aboriginal women could be translated into gains for Aboriginal women. The fourth part …

Undead Laws: The Use Of Historically Unenforced Criminal Statutes In Non-Criminal Litigation, Hillary Greene

Faculty Articles and Papers

Long after criminal laws have lost their vigor in the context for which they were drafted, they may rise again elsewhere. The American legal system has yet to develop a coherent policy delineating when or if historically unenforced penal statutes can be invoked in non-penal contexts. This issue is particularly evident in cases where the relevant laws are caught between shifting moral sentiments. Fornication, for example, remains illegal in many states,' but it is rarely prosecuted. Should one of the participants in this criminal act contract a sexually transmitted disease and sue her partner in tort, however, these disused statutes …

Old Chief V. United States: Stipulating Away Prosecutorial Accountability?, Daniel Richman

Faculty Scholarship

Earlier this year, in Old Chief v. United States, the Supreme Court finally resolved a circuit split on a nagging evidentiary issue: When a defendant charged with being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm offers to satisfy one of the statute's elements by stipulating to the existence of a prior felony conviction, may the government decline the stipulation and prove the existence and the nature of that prior felony?

The question of evidence law resolved in Old Chief is not particularly earth-shattering. Indeed, while the Court divided five to four on the issue, neither Justice Souter's opinion …

Disparate Effects In The Criminal Justice System: A Response To Randall Kennedy's Comment And Its Legacy, Janai S. Nelson

Faculty Publications

For many African Americans, the criminal justice system symbolizes an oppressive force, and yet, is a necessary institution in an increasingly lawless society. African Americans are at the same time its victims and beneficiaries, although various sentiments exist regarding the extent to which they are either. It is precisely this paradox, coupled with the promulgation of certain criminal legislation and legal precedent which directly and, potentially, adversely affect the African-American community that inspired the author to address the issues and arguments raised in Randall Kennedy's The State, Criminal Law, and Racial Discrimination: A Comment, 107 Harv. L. Rev. 1255 (1994), …

Images Of Women And Capital Sentencing Among Female Offenders: Exploring The Outer Limits Of The Eighth Amendment And Articulated Theories Of Justice, Jenny E. Carroll

Faculty Scholarship

This Note explores the effect on women of this process of demarcating boundaries of unacceptable behavior within the context of a capital punishment system. Additionally, this Note explores the Eighth Amendment implications of these boundaries within capital jurisprudence. Part I examines the two most prominent theories put forth by feminist scholars to explain sentencing patterns among female capital offenders-the "chivalry theory" and the "evil woman" theory. These theories attempt to account for both the limited use of the death penalty for women and the presence of certain women on death row. In Part II, this Note considers the limited empirical …

Annual Survey Of Virginia Law: Criminal Law And Procedure, Betty Layne Desportes, Steven D. Benjamin

University of Richmond Law Review

This article discusses holdings and trends in the published cases of the Virginia Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court of Virginia from August 1996 to July 1997. Although the form of this article generally follows the same form used by prior authors, several subject headings have been renamed to reflect the current focus of the courts. For example, during this period the court of appeals grappled with the "community caretaker" doctrine, bifurcated sentencing proceedings in felony cases, jury selection, and various hearsay exceptions. The supreme court addressed an indigent defendant's right to expert assistance, administrative license suspensions, and speedy …

Protecting Child Sex-Crime Victims: How Public Opinion And Political Expediency Threaten Civil Liberties, Michelle Johnson

Seattle University Law Review

This Article looks at the enactment and subsequent nullification of a 1992 Washington law that state legislators intended to protect the privacy of child sex-crime victims. The Article uses this statute to illustrate that through the enactment of such statutes, politicians may sacrifice constitutional rights, such as freedom of the press and access to government proceedings, in order to achieve short-term political gains. Therefore, because it is somewhat less affected by elections and the political process, the judiciary is often the only branch of government responsible for protecting civil liberties. In the case of Washington's law on access to child …

Defiling The Dead: Necrophilia And The Law, Tyler T. Ochoa, Christine Jones

Faculty Publications

This article will examine the issue of criminal liability for necrophilia. Part II will address necrophilia in general and will discuss briefly why society finds such acts reprehensible. Part III will discuss existing criminal prohibitions against necrophilia in California and other states. Part IV will discuss the evidentiary use of necrophilia in proving other crimes. Finally, Part V will evaluate proposed legislation outlawing necrophilia.

The Character Evidence Defense: Acquittal Based On Good Character, Thomas J. Reed

Cleveland State Law Review

This article centers on the case of United States v. Martinez, the only recent case in which an accused was acquitted on the ground of good moral character. Martinez illustrates the powerful effect of a good character evidence defense that showed the accused led a blameless life before being inveigled into drug courier service by an intimidating DEA informer. This article begins with a brief review of United States v. Martinez. Following a presentation of this case, the article shifts focus to examine what our sister discipline of psychology can tell us about human personality and the cross-situational stability of …

Florida's Community Notification Of Sex Offenders On The Internet: The Disregard Of Constitutional Protections For Sex Offenders, Andrea L. Fischer

Cleveland State Law Review

One of the toughest challenges for the courts is determining how to balance society's need for protection against an individual's constitutional rights. This Note provides an analysis of the controversy concerning community notification of sex offenders who victimize children, with the discussion directed to the constitutionality of community notification over the Internet, and suggests other possible ways to help prevent repeat sex offenses against children. Part II begins by focusing on which members of our communities are sex offenders that victimize children and looks at the reasons why they choose children as their victims. In Part III, this Note traces …

Crime Control And Harassment Of The Innocent, Raymond Dacey, Kenneth S. Gallant

Law Faculty Scholarship

Crime control through law enforcement is generally considered to be a two-part process of appre­hending and incapacitating or rehabilitating the guilty, and deterring the innocent from crime by the threat of punishment. The analysis presented here shows that the protection of the innocent from harass­ment-detention, arrest, punishment, and other intrusions by the criminal justice system-is important in deterring crime. Specifically, the analysis shows that deterrence from crime is weakened and then lost for a rational individual who holds the majority attitude toward risk, if the levels of rightful punishment and wrongful harassment are increased, as in a war on crime, …

Sovereignty, Judicial Assistance And Protection Of Human Rights In International Criminal Tribunals, Kenneth S. Gallant

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Criminal Enforcement Of Environmental Laws: A Corporate Guide To Avoiding Liability, Sean J. Bellew, Daniel T. Surtz

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Using International Human Rights Law And Machinery In Defending Borderless Crime Cases, Richard J. Wilson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This Essay focuses on four areas of international human rights law. The first area, the protection of attorneys’ fees from forfeiture, is an issue of great concern in the United States, given the state of the law there. The next area, the application of the death penalty in international law, will also include arguments about the “death row phenomenon.” The third area addressed is the use of international human rights law to overcome the rule of non-inquiry in extradition matters, a rule by which the judicial authority reviewing the propriety of extradition is barred from inquiry into the fairness of …

Limiting Liability Through Education: Do School Districts Have A Responsibility To Teach Students About Peer Sexual Harassment?, Diane M. Welsh

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Crushing Equality: Gender Equal Sentencing In America, Christopher M. Alexander

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Sexual Harassment Proscriptive Polices Of The European Community, Ireland, And New Zealand, John C. Penn

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Sex Discrimination And Sexual Harassment In Agricultural Labor, Maria M. Dominguez

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

The Evolution Of Adolescence: A Developmental Perspective On Juvenile Justice Reform, Elizabeth S. Scott, Thomas Grisso

Faculty Scholarship

The legal response to juvenile crime is undergoing revolutionary change, and its ultimate shape is uncertain. The traditional juvenile court, grounded in optimism about the potential for rehabilitation of young offenders, has long been the target of criticism, and even its defenders have been forced to acknowledge that it has failed to meet its objectives. Beginning in the late 1960s, when the Supreme Court introduced procedural regularity to delinquency proceedings in In re Gault, courts and legislatures began to slowly chip away at the foundations of the juvenile justice system. Recent developments have accelerated and intensified that process, as …

Waiting For The Verdict On Spain's New Jury System, Stephen C. Thaman

All Faculty Scholarship

This article discusses Spain’s history of trial by jury, focusing on the reinstatement of trial by jury in Spain by the 1995 jury legislation implementing Article 125 of the post-Franco Spanish Constitution. It discusses key provisions of the new Spanish jury law with illustrations from the cases of Otegi and others. It also predicts as to whether the classic jury will acquit itself as a catalyst for criminal justice reform in a Civil Law system such as that of Spain.

The Jury As Catalyst For The Reform Of Criminal Evidentiary Procedure In Continental Europe: The Cases Of Russia And Spain, Stephen C. Thaman

All Faculty Scholarship

This paper focuses on the dialectic between the search for truth, adversarial procedure, and lay participation in the preparation, presentation, and evaluation of evidence in criminal trials. Its primary focus is on the reintroduction of trial by jury in two classic inquisitorial criminal justice systems, Russia (1993) and Spain (1995), as a catalyst in those countries’ move to adversary procedure. It focuses on the effect of the jury system on preparing evidence for trial, the presentation of evidence at trial, and the evaluation of evidence.

Swapping Amnesty For Peace And The Duty To Prosecute Human Rights Crimes, Diane Orentlicher

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

International Criminal Law And The Cambodian Killing Fields, Diane Orentlicher

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Race, Cops, And Traffic Stops, Angela J. Davis

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This article discusses the Supreme Court's failure to provide a clear and effective remedy for discriminatory pretextual traffic stops. The first part explores the discretionary nature of pretextual stops and their discriminatory effect on African-Americans and Latinos. Then, the article examines Whren v. United States, a Supreme Court case in which the petitioners claimed that these “pretextual stops” violate the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution and are racially discriminatory. The Supreme Court rejected the claim, upholding the constitutionality of pretextual stops based on probable cause and noting that claims of racial discrimination must be challenged under the Equal Protection Clause. …

Dangerous Games And The Criminal Law, Daniel B. Yeager

Faculty Scholarship

This essay means to correct the ways in which the law of homicide deals with lucky winners or survivors of dangerous games that end in the deaths of unlucky (dead) "losers" or even unluckier non-participants. Drag racing and Russian roulette are my focus, not only because they are so frequently litigated, but also because most other (unlawful) excessive risk-taking ventures are not, grammatically, what we mean when we say "game." It is not so much my intention to evaluate the role that "moral luck" plays generally in the world or specifically in the criminal law. It is my position that …

Crime, Community Penalty And Integration With Legal Formalism In The South Pacific, Mark Findlay

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The influence of introduced legality on prevailing culture, and vice versa, are common concerns for analysis when considering the existence and development of customary law. Much of the limited writing on law and custom prefers to speculate on the impact of introduced law on already present modes of regulation. While recognising these structuralist contexts of influence, often oversimplified as they are represented, this paper prefers to explore the adaptation of legal formalism in contexts of resilient and resonant custom.Further, the paper examines instances where despite the fact that custom has modified institutional legality, the latter claims predominance over culture or …

Does Public Choice Theory Justify Judicial Activism After All?, Thomas W. Merrill

Faculty Scholarship

Some legal scholars have argued that public choice theory justifies certain kinds of judicial activism. Others have said it does not. Given the present state of the debate, it would appear that those finding no necessary support for judicial activism have the stronger argument. I will suggest, however, that if we tweak the analysis a little further, it may turn out that public choice theory provides limited support for judicial activism after all.

The X Files: Joint Trials, Redacted Confessions And Thirty Years Of Sidestepping Bruton, Judith L. Ritter

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.