Criminal Law Commons^™

Transnational Networks And International Criminal Justice, Jenia I. Turner

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The theory of trans-governmental networks describes how elements within the governments of various nations make and affect policy by coordinating with each other informally, without official or formal legal sanction. Anne-Marie Slaughter and others have argued that this sort of coordination is useful in many different areas of cross-border regulation, including banking, antitrust, environmental protection, and securities law.

One area to which the theory has not yet been applied is international criminal law. By its nature, international criminal law transcends national boundaries. But at least until recently, it had not generated the kinds of informal trans-governmental networks that have emerged …

Criminal Law's Mediating Rules: Balancing, Harmonization, Or Accident, Michael T. Cahill

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Prosecuting Corporations: The Kpmg Case And The Rise And Fallof The Justice Department’S 10-Year War On Corporate Fraud, Joshua G. Berman, Machalagh Proffit-Higgins

American University Criminal Law Brief

No abstract provided.

Supreme Court Watch: Recent Decisions And Upcoming Criminalcases For The 2006-2007 Docket, Andrew Myerberg

American University Criminal Law Brief

No abstract provided.

Fencing In The Frontier: A Look Into The Limits Of Mail Fraud, Kristen Kate Orr

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Institutional Competence And Organizational Prosecutions, Daniel C. Richman

Faculty Scholarship

The business pages regularly provide graphic stories about corporate deferred prosecution agreements (“DPAs”). And commentators regularly fulminate about this alleged abuse of government power, quite confident (or w illfully blind to the fact) that the removal of this non-nuclear option from the prosecutorial arsenal would substantially lessen the ability of prosecutors to obtain cooperation from firms and their employees. Yet this emerging practice has received all too little scholarly attention, and Professor Brandon Garrett has made an important contribution by carefully examining the available facts and creatively drawing on the structure reform literature to highlight questions it raises about legitimacy …

Judging Untried Cases, Daniel C. Richman

Faculty Scholarship

That federal criminal trials are an endangered species is clear. During fiscal year 2004, only 4% (3346) of the 83,391 federal defendants in terminated cases went to trial. And, trends that Professor Ronald Wright highlights in his insightful article have continued past the end point of his data. In 1994, 4639 defendants obtained verdicts from juries and 1050 from judges; in 2003, just 2909 and 615, respectively, did so. Every time one thinks that the system has hit an equilibrium at some “natural” distribution, the trial rate goes down a bit more.

Separate And Unequal: Federal Tough-On-Guns Program Targets Minority Communities For Selective Enforcement, Bonita R. Gardner

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article examines the Project Safe Neighborhoods program and considers whether its disproportionate application in urban, majority- African American cities (large and small) violates the guarantee of equal protection under the law. This Article will start with a description of the program and how it operates-the limited application to street-level criminal activity in predominately African American communities. Based on preliminary data showing that Project Safe Neighborhoods disproportionately impacts African Americans, the Article turns to an analysis of the applicable law. Most courts have analyzed Project Safe Neighborhoods' race-based challenges under selective prosecution case law, which requires a showing by the …

The Law Of War And Its Pathologies, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

War is with us more than ever. This is true despite the efforts of the United Nations Charter to ban the concept of war from the vocabulary of its member states. The preferred term is armed conflict. True, the Charter does refer to the Second World War, but apart from this concession to historically entrenched labels, the W word appears only once-when the Charter refers to ridding the world of the scourge of war. The Geneva Conventions, adopted a few years later, follow the same pattern. George Orwell could not be more amused. We change the vocabulary and think we …

Why Not A Miranda For Searches?, Gerard E. Lynch

Faculty Scholarship

I am delighted to be here today.

I am delighted to be at The Ohio State University, which has not only built a truly extraordinary criminal law and procedure faculty, including Professor Joshua Dressler, Alan Michaels, Sharon Davies, and Douglas Berman, but has also accumulated a large number of alumni of my home institution, Columbia Law School, including my former students, Professor Edward Foley and the aforesaid Professors Davies and Michaels, as well as Professor Deborah Jones Merritt, who is quite literally a daughter of Columbia, where her father is a distinguished emeritus member of the faculty, my esteemed senior …

New Frameworks For Racial Equality In The Criminal Law, Jeffery Fagan, Mukul Bakhshi

Faculty Scholarship

This Symposium, " Pursuing Racial Fairness in the Administration of Justice: Twenty Years After McClesky v. Kemp," was conceived and inspired by Theodore Shaw, Director-Counsel and President of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. Ted Shaw and his staff worked with Columbia Law School Professor Jeffrey Fagan to recruit an outstanding group of scholars and activists who met on March 2-3, 2007 to hear and comment on the articles appearing in this Symposium. In addition to the authors whose work appears in this issue, many others made important contributions to the Symposium through their commentaries and presentations. These …

An Agument For Original Intent: Restoring Rule 801 (D) (1) (A) To Protect Domestic Violence Victims In A Post-Crawford World., Andrew King-Ries

Faculty Law Review Articles

Prosecution of domestic violence is extremely difficult, largely due to the fact that defendants are successfully pressuring victims to refuse to testify or to recant their testimony at trial. With its decision in Crawford, the Supreme Court eliminated the ability of prosecutors to use hearsay exceptions to place the domestic violence victim's statements before the jury for their substantive consideration. The Supreme Court also closed this avenue to combat defendants' efforts to avoid liability through coercive pressure on victims. Therefore, the Court's change in the Confrontation Clause law limits the prosecution's arsenal for combating witness intimidation and, at the same …

Taking Victims Seriously: A Dworkinian Theory Of Punishment, Luis E. Chiesa

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Normative Gaps In The Criminal Law: A Reasons Theory Of Wrongdoing, Luis E. Chiesa

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In this article it is argued that in two controversial homicide cases--severing conjoined twins and downing a hijacked commercial plane headed toward a heavily populated area--it is permissible to kill innocent human beings without having to establish the existence of a claim of justifcation such as self-defense or choice of evils. Even though criminal law scholars consider that unjustified conduct is always wrong, the position defended in the article is that there is a normative gap between an absence of justification and a finding of wrongdoing. This "normative gap defense," which negates wrongdoing without justifying the conduct, is the best …

The Act Requirement As A Basic Concept Of Criminal Law, Luis E. Chiesa

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Criminal Conspiracy Law In Japan, Chris Coulson

Michigan Journal of International Law

Part II of this Note describes CATOC's group criminality requirement. Part III outlines the provisions of several versions of Japan's conspiracy bill and compares these provisions to common-law conspiracy. Part IV analyzes Japan's conspiracy law by examining both substantive and procedural laws in Japan related to criminal conspiracy, as well as criticism within Japan of the conspiracy bills.

A Suspicionless Search And Seizure Quagmire: The Supreme Court Revives The Pretext Doctrine And Creates Another Fine Fourth Amendment Mess, Edwin J. Butterfoss

Faculty Scholarship

This Article contends the Supreme Court's use of a primary purpose test to regulate suspicionless searches and seizures by the government is misguided and will provide little or no protection against the evils that apparently led the Court to strike down recent schemes by government officials. The evil of the government schemes is less the purpose of the schemes than their expansion into areas and activities in which citizens should be protected from government intrusion in the absence of any suspicion of wrongdoing. Rather than facing this head on and carefully assessing whether the government schemes infringe on such areas …

The Yukos Money Laundering Case: A Never-Ending Story, Dmitry Gololobov

Michigan Journal of International Law

The Yukos case has unveiled the possible dangers of money laundering legislation in the hands of governments with transitional economies and weak democratic traditions. Even if the anti-money laundering laws of the country comply with international pronouncements to the letter, there are still a number of ways the laws could be used for the sole purpose of persecuting political opponents. In the Yukos case, the money laundering charges were interrelated with the charges of corporate tax evasion, which, taken separately, in Russia, represent a rather weak tool for suppressing the political opponents, but taken together they are perfect for the …

Attempt, Reckless Homicide, And The Design Of Criminal Law, Michael T. Cahill

University of Colorado Law Review

Most American criminal codes create an offense for recklessly killing another person, and nearly all contain a general provision covering any attempt to commit an offense. This article explores the relation between reckless homicide and attempt, which proves more complex than it appears and also turns out to provide a useful starting point for examination of several broader issues in attempt law and criminal law generally. The idea of "attempted reckless homicide" ("ARH") is largely disfavored by legal scholars and almost, but not quite, universally rejected in American law. Part I of the article questions that hostility. The theoretical arguments …

Discovering Discovery: Non-Party Access To Pretrial Information In The Federal Courts, 1938-2006, Seymour Moskowitz

University of Colorado Law Review

In the modern era, the pretrial process is critical to the disposition of almost all litigation. The vast majority of cases never go to trial. Those which are contested at trial and upon appeal are often decided upon the results of the information gather before trial. This is true in both private litigation and in public interest cases where "private attorneys general" may only function effectively with courtenforced discovery. Despite the significance of the Article III courts to our society, transparency in their processes for resolving civil disputes has been severely compromised. Threats to openness emanate from multiple sources. This …

The Revitalization Of Ake: A Capital Defendant's Right To Expert Assistance, Cara H. Drinan

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Retributive Justice In The Real World, Michael T. Cahill

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Pain Detection And The Privacy Of Subjective Experience, Adam Kolber

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Death Penalty And Right To Counsel Decisions In The October 2005 Term, Richard Klein

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Is Silence Sacred? The Vulnerability Of Griffin V. California In A Terrorist World, Lissa Griffin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Part I of this Article traces the shared history of the right against self-incrimination from twelfth-century England to the mid-twentieth century. Part II examines the modern history of the privilege in the United States, from the Supreme Court's 1965 decision in Griffin to its 1999 decision in Mitchell. Part III examines the United Kingdom's modern approach to the privilege, including its re-shaping of the privilege in response to domestic terrorism. Part IV examines why the U.S. and U.K. systems, with a common history and shared values, have moved in such dramatically different directions with respect to the privilege. Part V …

Justice Without Politics: Prosecutorial Discretion And The International Criminal Court, Alexander K.A. Greenawalt

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The ICC Prosecutor's own charging policies should be prepared to give way to the judgments of legitimate political actors in times of political transition when actual arrests are more likely and competing justice proposals pose a more troubling challenge to the ICC's authority. In that scenario, I argue that the Prosecutor should encourage legitimate political actors to reach policy decisions that will command deference by the ICC. Such deference could take one or both of the following forms: (1) explicit deference to political actors, principally the U.N. Security Council acting under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, and (2) implied …

Capital Defense Representation, Norman Lefstein

Indiana Law Journal

Symposium: Toward A Model Death Penalty Code: The Massachusetts Governor's Council Report.

Punishing Women: The Promise And Perils Of Contextualized Sentencing For Aboriginal Women In Canada, Toni Williams

Cleveland State Law Review

This article examines the failure of Canadian sentencing reforms to remedy the over-incarceration of Aboriginal woman through exploration of a sentencing methodology that judges may employ to give effect to the reforms: the social contextualization of women's lawbreaking. Social context analysis developed as a critique of how the state controls and punishes women and as a way to expose failures of justice. More recently, commentators have suggested that the insertion of social context analysis into the sentencing process might allow courts to find new and more robust justifications for lowering the penalties they impose on women lawbreakers from marginalized communities. …

"Acoustic Segregation" And The Hispanic Small Business Owner, Patricia S. Abril

Articles

No abstract provided.

First Amendment Freedom Of Speech And Expression: Ninth Circuit Holds That California Penal Code Section 148.6 Violates The First Amendment In Chaker V. Crogan, Harvey Gee

Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal

The Ninth Circuit Court ruled that California Penal Code section 148.6, which criminalized knowingly filing false allegations of misconduct against peace officers, violated the First Amendment. The court determined that the law impermissibly targeted criticism of police officers, constituting a content-based restriction on speech, and thus was unconstitutional.