Criminal Law Commons^™

Closing The Courts To Felonious Plaintiffs Who Are Injured By Their Own Conduct: A Case For Codifying Common Sense, Michael A. L. Balboni

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This article argues that criminals should not be allowed to bring civil tort suits against the victims of their crimes. It analyzes cases that allow and do not allow recovery by criminal for injuries occurring during the commission of a crime. The article closes with a plea for legislative reform to disallow criminal the protections of law while in the act of committing a crime.

Harnessing Payne: Controlling The Admission Of Victim Impact Statements To Safeguard Capital Sentencing Hearings From Passion And Prejudice, Beth E. Sullivan

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This article begins by tracing the historical development of victim impact evidence through Supreme Court jurisprudence and state legislation and analyzes their use in the sentencing of phase capital punishment trials. It argues that the Supreme Court's decision in Payne V Tennessee allowing a jury to consider victim impact evidence in capital punishment sentencing is troublesome in light of a capital punishment defendant's constitutional rights, the history of the death penalty and traditional sentencing procedures. It concludes with a proposal for guidelines to regulates the use of such evidence in capital punishment sentencing,

Standards And Procedures For Determining Whether A Defendant Is Competent To Make The Ultimate Choice - Death; Ohio's New Precedent For Death Row Volunteers, Matthew T. Norman

Journal of Law and Health

Despite the fact that many states will allow a death row defendant to waive his legal appeals in order to hasten his execution date, there are inadequate standards and procedures for determining whether the "volunteer" is first competent to make this ultimate decision of life versus death. To provide background for this issue, this Note will discuss the events initially leading up to the nation's first death row "volunteer", then it will introduce subsequent volunteers of the present day. This Note then will look at what the United States Supreme Court has said about the standards and procedures that are …

Private Bar Monitors Public Defense: Oversight Committee Sets Standards For Indigent Defense Providers, Adele Bernhard

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Does New York's Death Penalty Statute Violate The New York Constitution?, Honorable Stewart F. Hancock Jr., Christopher Quinn, Richard Klein

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Facilitating Accountability: International Guidelines Against Impunity, Madeline Morris

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Welcome To Anytown, U.S.A. - Home Of Beautiful Scenery (And A Convicted Sex Offender): Sex Offender Registration And Notification Laws In E.B. V. Verniero, David S. Dematteo

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

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

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Life Before The Modern Sex Offender Statutes , Deborah W. Denno

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the social and legal developments that fueled the origins and recurring problems of sex offender laws. Part I of this Article discusses the primary precursors of the sexual psychopath statutes that encouraged the public's and politicians' acceptance of the concept of sexual psychopathy: the increasing sexualization of American society, changes in gender roles and relations, the valuation of children and the family unit, and the influx of psychiatry. Part II describes how the diagnosis of sexual psychopathy slowly developed as a result of the criminal justice system's growing tendency to explain criminal behavior in psychoanalytic terms. Part …

Terry, Race, And Judicial Integrity: The Court And Suppression During The War On Drugs, Jack B. Weinstein, Mae Quinn

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Self-Defense And Objectivity: A Reply To Judith Jarvis Thomson, Russell Christopher

Articles, Chapters in Books and Other Contributions to Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Don't I Know You From Somewhere: Why Due Process Should Bar Judges From Presiding Over Cases When They Have Previously Prosectued The Defendant, Peter M. Friedman

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

The Mccleskey Puzzle: Remedying Prosecutorial Discrimination Against Black Victims In Capital Sentencing, Evan Tsen Lee, Ashutosh Bhagwat

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Section 2254(D) Of The New Habeas Statute: An (Opinionated) User's Manual, Evan Tsen Lee

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Beyond Privacy, Beyond Probable Cause, Beyond The Fourth Amendment: New Strategies For Fighting Pretext Arrests, 69 U. Colo. L. Rev. 693 (1998), Timothy P. O'Neill

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Ban On Welfare For Felony Drug Offenders: Giving A New Meaning To 'Life Sentence', Cynthia Godsoe

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Crime In Public Housing: Clarifying Research Issues, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Tamara Dumanovsky, J. Phillip Thompson, Garth Davies

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, crime and public housing have been closely linked in our political and popular cultures. Tragic episodes of violence have reinforced the notion that public housing is a milieu with rates of victimization and offending far greater than other locales. However, these recent developments belie the complex social and political evolution of public housing from its origins in the 1930s, through urban renewal, and into the present.

Stereotypes abound about public housing, its management, residents, and crime rates. In reality, variation is the norm, and it is these variations that affect crime. The study of crime in public …

Modern Mail Fraud: The Restoration Of The Public/Private Distinction, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

Over their long history, the mail and wire fraud statutes have gone through repeated periods of rapid expansion and contraction. The 1970s saw the flowering of the "intangible rights doctrine," an exotic flower that quickly overgrew the legal landscape in the manner of the kudzu vine until by the mid- 1980s few ethical or fiduciary breaches seemed beyond its potential reach. That doctrine was radically pruned by the Supreme Court in 1987 in the McNally decision, which held that the federal mail and wire fraud statutes reached only those schemes that intentionally sought to deprive their victims of money or …

Towards A Model Penal Code, Second (Federal?): The Challenge Of The Special Part, Gerard E. Lynch

Faculty Scholarship

The Model Penal Code is among the most successful academic law reform projects ever attempted. In the first two decades after its completion in 1962, more than two-thirds of the states undertook to enact new codifications of their criminal law, and virtually all of those used the Model Penal Code as a starting point. The Model Penal Code was influential in a variety of different ways. First, the very notion of a systematic codification of criminal law received a dramatic boost from the Model Penal Code. Apart from the degree to which any particular state recodification resembled the Model Penal …

Our Administrative System Of Criminal Justice, Gerard E. Lynch

Faculty Scholarship

Bill Tendy was already a legend among federal prosecutors when I first served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York in the early 1980s. To us youngsters, Bill even then seemed a survivor from another era, when prosecutors really did resemble the tough-talking Hollywood DAs played by actors like Brian Donleavy – while we felt more like insecure young lawyers who should be played by Michael J. Fox or Calista Flockhart.

Partly, of course, this was just a function of age and experience; hard as it was to imagine, there must have been a …

The Amy Jackson Law - A Look At The Constitutionality Of North Carolina's Answer To Megan's Law, Nikki Gfellers, Kimberly S. Lewis

Campbell Law Review

This comment will first explore the complexities of North Carolina's Amy Jackson Law. Second, it will discuss the statutory response to sex offender recidivism by other states as compared to North Carolina, with a focus on New Jersey. This will include an analysis on the constitutionality of these statutes. Finally, the comment will review any expected ramifications, both legal and to the community, of this North Carolina legislation.

Rape By Fraud And Rape By Coercion, Patricia J. Falk

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

For more than a century, courts, legislatures, and legal commentators have struggled with the controversial and highly charged question of whether accomplishing sexual intercourse by means of fraud or coercion is blameworthy and appropriately condemnable as rape. In 1986 Professor Susan Estrich suggested that rape law should "prohibit fraud to secure sex to the same extent we prohibit fraud to secure money, and prohibit extortion to secure sex to the same extent we prohibit extortion to secure money." (Susan Estrich, Rape, 95 Yale L. J. 1087, 1120 (1986)). Such suggestion spawned the latest cycle of discussion about this age-old conundrum …

Crime Is Not The Problem: Reply, Franklin E. Zimring, Gordon Hawkins

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Reactions Of Criminal Justice Professionals To A Law Review Symposium, Kevin R. Reitz, Alice Donnelly Madden

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.

Prosecution And Race: The Power And Privilege Of Discretion, Angela J. Davis

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This article examines prosecutorial discretion and argues it is a major cause of racial inequality in the criminal justice system. It asserts that prosecutorial discretion may instead be used to construct effective solutions to racial injustice. The article maintains that since prosecutors have more power than any other criminal justice officials, with practically no corresponding accountability to the public they serve, they have the responsibility to use their discretion to help eradicate the discriminatory treatment of African Americans in the criminal justice system.

Part I of the Article explains the importance and impact of the prosecution function. Part II discusses …

Law, Language And Lenity, Lawrence Solan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Allocating Resources Among Prisons And Social Programs In The Battle Against Crime, Peter Siegelman, John J. Donohue Iii

Faculty Articles and Papers

This article evaluates the cost and crime-reducing potential of prisons and social spending, setting forth the conditions under which a shift in resources from an expanding prison population into social spending would lead to a reduction in total crime. Preschool enrichment programs coupled with family intervention have generated impressive results in reducing crime in a number of different studies. Targeting of resources toward those children most at risk of criminal behavior is necessary to generate cost-effective crime reduction, but this may be difficult to achieve because of political or constitutional constraints. Given precise targeting, and if a broadly implemented preschool …

Prosecutorial Use Of Expert Testimony In Domestic Violence Cases: From Recantation To Refusal To Testify, Audrey Rogers

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article discusses the use of expert testimony in prosecuting those charged with domestic abuse. Part I provides a background on the need and nature of expert testimony in domestic violence cases and the requirements for the admission of such expert testimony. It traces the development of the role of expert testimony in domestic violence cases from its initial exclusive use as a defense tool to support self-defense claims to its present use by prosecutors to explain a complainant's recantation or other puzzling behavior. Part II discusses the appellate cases that have addressed the admissibility and scope of expert testimony …

A More Principled Approach To Criminalizing Negligence: A Prescription For The Legislature, Leslie Yalof Garfield

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This discussion focuses on those jurisdictions that have used ordinary negligence to find criminal liability when a person uses an inherently dangerous instrument, engages in an inherently dangerous activity, or engages in conduct that poses a threat of widespread public injury. Part IV analyzes the appropriateness of permitting punishment based on ordinary negligence and concludes that it is entirely responsible to adjust criminal sanctions to respond to a fast-paced and technologically reliant culture that consciously trades due care for greater and swifter achievements. Part IV also offers a model for legislatures to follow when evaluating the appropriateness of criminalizing negligent …

Mental Culpability And Prosecutorial Misconduct, Bennett L. Gershman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article argues that a prosecutor's intent is always relevant to the courts' analysis of misconduct, and that the courts should always consider a prosecutor's intent in determining whether a rule was violated and whether the verdict was prejudiced. Part II of this Article examines the use of the objective test to analyze a prosecutor's trial conduct. Part II offers several reasons courts give for avoiding inquiry into a prosecutor's mental culpability, analyzes those reasons, and concludes that although the application of an objective test is sufficient to correct misconduct in some instances, it does not foreclose application of a …