Criminal Law Commons^™

Qualified Immunity: Ignorance Excused, Barbara E. Armacost

Vanderbilt Law Review

Public officials receive qualified immunity from damages liability for constitutional violations if they reasonably could have believed their actions were constitutional under clearly established law. In this regard qualified immunity is quite unusual. In most other legal contexts, failure to know the law is virtually never excused. The only other context where notice or knowledge of illegality plays any role is in criminal law, but even mistakes of penal law are rarely excused.

In this Article, Professor Armacost uses fair notice in criminal law as a paradigm for analyzing the role of notice in constitutional damages actions. She argues that …

Cyberlaundering: The Risks, The Responses, Sarah N. Welling, Andy G. Rickman

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This Article discusses the potential use of electronic cash for money laundering and possible government responses to the problem. Parts I and II provide an overview of electronic cash. Part III explores the effects that electronic cash can have on money laundering. Part IV explains through a series of hypotheticals how "cyberlaundering" can occur. Part V analyzes the federal government's response to the threat of money laundering with electronic cash. Part VI concludes the Article with suggestions.

Romantic And Electronic Stalking In A College Context, Rebecca K. Lee

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

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

Articles & Chapters

The oversight committee drafted standards and guidelines with the primary goal of creating a yardstick for defense services organizations against which to measure performance and the hope that a practical set of standards serve multiple purposes, including: educating a skeptical public about what it takes to provide quality defense services; promoting an understanding of why adequate funding is necessary (to engender public support for more spending); and providing notice to the organizations themselves of what is expected of a publicly funded defense office.

Silencing Nullification Advocacy Inside The Jury Room And Outside The Courtroom, Nancy J. King

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Jurors in criminal cases occasionally "nullify" the law by acquitting defendants who they believe are guilty according to the instructions given to them in court. American juries have exercised this unreviewable nullification power to acquit defendants who face sentences that jurors view as too harsh, who have been subjected to what jurors consider to be unconscionable governmental action, who have engaged in conduct that jurors do not believe is culpable, or who have harmed victims whom jurors consider unworthy of protection. Recent reports suggest jurors today are balking in trials in which a conviction could trigger a "three strikes" or …

Coping With "Loss": A Re-Examination Of Sentencing Federal Economic Crimes Under The Guidelines, Frank O. Bowman, Iii

Vanderbilt Law Review

The primary determinant of sentence length for federal economic criminals is the amount of "loss" resulting from an offender's conduct.' The idea of basing sentences for economic crimes primarily on "loss" has become the source of ongoing, complex, and proliferating disputes about what the term "loss" really means and how it should be interpreted in particular cases. The "loss" calculation is one of the most frequently litigated issues in federal sentencing law. There are at present splits of opinion between the federal circuits on at least eleven analytically distinct issues concerning the meaning and application of the "loss" concept. Even …

The New Normativity: The Abuse Excuse And The Resurgence Of Judgment In The Criminal Law, Victoria Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article reviews Moral Judgment: Does the Abuse Excuse Threaten Our Legal System? by James Q. Wilson (1997).

There is growing interest within the academy in reviving the "normative" in criminal law scholarship. Enter a recent book, Moral Judgment, by the distinguished criminologist James Q. Wilson. Professor Wilson's work prompts the question: What is meant by the term ''judgment"? Considering three different models--judgment as community, judgment as character, and judgment as critique--this review argues that Professor Wilson's idea of judgment both departs from the "new normativity" in existing scholarship and shows how easily ''judgment" may stand in for partial …

Criminal Discovery: What Truth Do We Seek?, Milton C. Lee Jr.

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Maintaining An Accusatorial System Of Justice: The States' Refusal To Follow The Supreme Court's Sanctioning Of Official Police Deception In Moran V. Burbine, John F. Terzano

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

Ours is the accusatorial as opposed to the inquisitorial system. Such has been the characteristic of Anglo-American criminal justice since it freed itself from practices borrowed by the Star Chamber from the Continent whereby an accused was interrogated in secret for hours on end. Under our system society carries the burden of proving its charge against the accused not out of his own mouth. It must establish its case, not by interrogation of the accused even under judicial safeguards, but by evidence independently secured through skillful investigation.... Protracted, systematic and uncontrolled subjection of an accused to interrogation by the police …

The District Of Columbia Revitalization Act And Criminal Justice: The Federal Government's Assault On Local Authority, Jonathan M. Smith

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

The District of Columbia ("the District") enjoys a unique relationship with the federal government. As a matter of Constitutional pronouncement, citizens of the District are deprived of the right to ultimate control over the content of local laws. The Constitution provides that, "[t]he Congress shall have the power ... to exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States."2 Since the District's establishment in 1791, 3 Congress has not hesitated to exercise …

Process, The Constitution, And Substantive Criminal Law, Louis D. Bilionis

Michigan Law Review

Criminal law scholars have pined for a substantive constitutional criminal law ever since Henry Hart and Herbert Packer first embraced the notion in the late 1950s and early 1960s. To this day, scholars continue to search for a theory fhat giv:es content to, in Hart's words, "the unmistakable indications that the Constitution means something definite and spμiething serious when it speaks of 'crime.'" To their dismay, the Supreme Court has - with two exceptions - seemingly resisted the notion. The two exceptions are familiar. First came the 1957 case of Lambert v. California, in which the Court came as close …

Capital Punishment And The Courts-Martial: Questions Surface Following Loving V. United States, Christine Daniels

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Interpreting The Constitution From Inside The Jury Box: Affecting Interstate Commerce As An Element Of The Crime, Richard W. Smith

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Plain Meaning, Practical Reason, And Cuplability: Toward A Theory Of Jury Interpretation Of Criminal Statutes, Darryl K. Brown

Michigan Law Review

In one of the few existing recordings of American juries deliberating in an actual criminal case, Wisconsin v. Reed, we observe jurors struggling with how they should apply a statute in a case in which the facts are not in real dispute. The defendant is charged with felon in possession of a gun, and all agree that he has a felony record and owned a pistol until he turned it over to the police upon their request. The statute contains three elements. The defendant must (a) have a felony conviction, (b) have possessed a gun, and (c) have known that …

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 …

Hard Cases, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

Robert Latimer was born in 1953 on a farm on the prairies of Saskatchewan and grew up to own a 1,280-acre farm. In 1980 he married, and that year Tracy, the first of four children, was born. During her birth, Tracy's brain was terribly damaged by lack of oxygen, and severe cerebral palsy ensued. By 1993 Tracy could laugh, smile, and cry, and she could recognize her parents and her siblings. But she could not understand her own name or even simple words like "yes" and "no." She could not swallow well and would so often vomit her parents kept …

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 …

Mothers Who Kill Their Children, Stuart S. Gordan

Circles: Buffalo Women's Journal of Law and Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Mandatory Hiv Testing For Convicted Or Accused Sex Offenders: Toward A Model Scheme, Kimberly Smith

Circles: Buffalo Women's Journal of Law and Social Policy

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of Inadequate Mental Health Resources On The Operation Of The Mental Disorder Provisions, Giuseppa Bentivegna

LLM Theses

In this thesis, I focus on whether adequate mental health resources exist and are available to a category of persons in the forensic mental health system--those found not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder of an offence under the mental disorder provisions, Part XX.1, of the 'Criminal Code '. I argue that adequate mental health services which address the needs of accused persons are necessary for the proper functioning of the mental disorder provisions of the 'Code'. I argue that these provisions were designed to foster the release and re-integration into society of persons within this system as quickly …

Witness Protection In Criminal Cases: Anonymity, Disguise Or Other Options, Nora V. Demleitner

Scholarly Articles

Not available.

Cclhp: Data As Microsoft Access File, Newton Key, Chris Waldrep, Michael Kroll, Mark Voss-Hubbard

Coles County Legal History

Table Cases Fields:

Case_Number

Incident_Date

File_Date

Settlement_Date

Location

Case_Type

Dollar_Amount

Issue

Outcome

Ancillary_Catters

Memo

Transcribed

Additional_Info

Marked

Last_Modified

Table Parties

Record_Number

Case_Number

L_Name

F_Name

Sex

Occupation

Literate

Location

Additional_Info

Marked

Modified_Date

Queries

Cchlp: Original Public Interface, Eastern Illinois University Department Of History

Coles County Legal History

The Coles County Legal History Project (CCLHP) was began as a grant-supported project in 1999. The database covers civil and criminal cases from 1830 to 1906. The records were originally in a postgres database with a two tables. The public interface was written in Perl. The interface and data were served by Solaris hardware. The Cases table contains 1602 records, the Parties table contains 4487 records. The Solaris system was retired in 2009 and the database was transferred to Booth Library.

Cclhp: Parties As Csv, Newton Key, Mark Voss-Hubbard, Michael Kroll, Chris Waldrep

Coles County Legal History

Fields included: Record Number case_number Actor (P D W or J) Last Name First Name Sex Occupation Literate Location Additional Information Marked Last Modified

Individual Liability For Conduct By Criminal Organizations In The United States, Peter J. Henning

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Florida's 1997 Chemical Castration Law: A Return To The Dark Ages, Larry Helm Spalding

Florida State University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Justice And Public Safety In The Twenty-First Century, Janet Reno

McGeorge Law Review

No abstract provided.

Legislation: A New Design For Justice Integration, Paul F. Kendall, Anne E. Gardner

McGeorge Law Review

No abstract provided.

Slamming The Prison Doors On Media Interviews: California's New Regulations Demonstrate The Need For A First Amendment Right To Access To Inmates, Daniel Bernstein

McGeorge Law Review

No abstract provided.

Off Broadway: The Supreme Court's Criminal Law Decisions In The 1996 Term Take Second Stage In An Historic Term, William E. Hellerstein

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.