Criminal Law Commons^™

The Criminalization Of Mental Illness: How Theoretical Failures Create Real Problems In The Criminal Justice System, Georgia L. Sims

Vanderbilt Law Review

When Andrea Yates drowned her five children, she believed she was preventing Satan from infiltrating their souls. Rusty Yates blamed both the mental health system and the criminal justice system for his wife's actions and also for her initial conviction. Andrea Yates suffered from post-partum depression and psychosis; had attempted suicide twice; had been hospitalized on several occasions for psychiatric treatment; and was found not guilty by reason of insanity in her 2006 retrial.' Although Yates likely will spend the rest of her life in a mental institution, she will receive mental health treatment throughout her time at the facility. …

Catching Up: The Need For New York State To Amend Its Juvenile Offender Law To Reflect Psychiatric, Constitutional And Normative National Trends Over The Last Three Decades, Michelle Haddad

Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal

The note argues that New York's Juvenile Offender Law of 1978 is outdated and in need of reform. Enacted in response to a tragic crime, the law shifted juvenile justice from rehabilitation to punishment, allowing children as young as 13 to be tried as adults. However, advancements in psychological understanding of adolescent brain development, constitutional rulings, and international trends emphasize the need for a more nuanced, rehabilitative approach. The note advocates for amending the law to reflect these developments and prioritize individualized consideration of juvenile cases.

Meta-Theory Of International Criminal Procedure: Vindicating The Rule Of Law, Jens David Ohlin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

International criminal procedure is in a second phase of development, moving beyond the common law/civil law dichotomy and searching for its sui generis theory. The standard line is that international criminal procedure has an instrumental value: it services the general goals of international criminal justice and allows punishment for violations of substantive international criminal law. However, international criminal procedure also has an important and often overlooked intrinsic value not reducible to its instrumental value: it vindicates the Rule of Law. This vindication is performed by adjudicating allegations of criminal violations that occurred during periods of anarchy characterized by the absence …

Redefining Harm, Reimagining Remedies And Reclaiming Domestic Violence Law, Margaret E. Johnson

All Faculty Scholarship

Civil domestic violence laws do not effectively address and redress the harms suffered by women subjected to domestic violence. The Civil Protective Order (“CPO”) laws should offer a remedy for all domestic abuse with an understanding that domestic violence subordinates women. These laws should not remedy only physical violence or criminal acts. All forms of abuse — psychological, emotional, economic, and physical — are interrelated. Not only do these abuses cause severe emotional distress, physical harm, isolation, sustained fear, intimidation, poverty, degradation, humiliation, and coerced loss of autonomy, but, as researchers have demonstrated, most domestic violence is the fundamental operation …

Dan Freed: My Teacher, My Colleague, My Friend, Ronald Weich

All Faculty Scholarship

At a recent meeting of the National Association of Sentencing Commissions, Yale professor Dan Freed was honored during a panel discussion titled "Standing on the Shoulders of Sentencing Giants," Dan Freed is indeed a sentencing giant. but he is the gentlest giant of all. It is hard to imagine that a man as mild-mannered, soft-spoken, and self-effacing as Dan Freed has had such a profound impact on federal sentencing law and so many other areas of criminal justice policy, Yet he has.

I've been in many rooms with Dan Freed over the years — classrooms, boardrooms, dining rooms, and others. …

The False Claims Act: How Vigilantes Find Justice Fighting Government Fraud And Corruption, Wayne Turner

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

This comment focuses on the False Claims Act and its increasing potential to bring greater accountability to government programs designed to serve disadvantaged opulations. Citizen avengers play an increasing role in seeking retribution against grafters because existing safeguards built into government contracting and procurement often fail to ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent efficiently. The False Claims Act, the citizens' tool against fraud, is contrasted with the Inspectors General, the federal government's principle means of investigating, auditing, and prosecuting fraud in federal agencies and programs.

Summary Of In Re Application Of Shin, 125 Nev. Adv. Op. No. 10, Kendal L. Davis

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

No abstract provided.

Gender-Related Violence And International Criminal Law And Justice, Christine Chinkin

Book Chapters

The treatment of gender-related violence within ICL is inextricably tied up with the recognition of women's rights as human rights, and the growing jurisprudence recognizing violence against women in non-armed conflict situations as human rights violations. Following from the Third World Conference on Women in Nairobi in 1985 women's NGOs campaigned to have gender-based acts of violence against women recognized as abuses of human rights, a goal that was achieved at the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights in 1993. That Conference was held against the backdrop of the 'massive, organized and systematic detention and rape of women that were …

Intergenerational Transmission Of Abuse Of Incarcerated Fathers: A Study Of The Measurement Of Abuse, Jeremy Ball

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications and Presentations

Research on the intergenerational transmission of abuse hypothesis often only examined the existence of abuse. The current study utilizes retrospective recalls of incarcerated male defendants (N = 414), using questions formulated from the modified Conflict Tactics Scales (Straus, 1974). Five logistic regression models are ran, representing a different physical abuse measure, including incidence of physical abuse, severity of physical abuse, and three composite measures: total frequency, total severity, and total frequency/severity. Although social desirability is a limitation in any study relying on self-report data, the comparison of the chi-square (x²) values of each model may give indication …

Brief Of Amici Curiae In Support Of Respondent, Robert Calvin Brown, Iii V. State Of Maryland, No. 08-118, Brenda Bratton Blom

Court Briefs

Amici brief filed by the University of Maryland School of Law’s Clinical Program and members of the Baltimore legal community including legal educators, lawyers, student attorneys, service providers, government administrators, community based organizations, and nationally recognized individuals from community justice initiatives and organizations on Respondent’s behalf. The individuals and organizations represented in the brief have all collaborated together to build and support what are colloquially known as “problem solving dockets”: courts that are specialized, alternative sentencing dockets that offer diversionary programs to qualified offenders. The dockets are run out of Maryland’s district and circuit courts, but not separate, freestanding judicial …

Evaluating The Consequences Of Calibrated Sentencing: A Response To Professor Kolber, Miriam Baer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Much Ado About Non-State Actors: The Vanishing Relevance Of State Affiliation In International Criminal Law, John Cerone

San Diego International Law Journal

Much has been made recently of the deficiencies of international law in grappling with violence perpetrated by non-state actors. From transnational terrorist networks to private security contractors (PSCs), organizations that are not officially part of the apparatus of any state are increasingly engaged in protracted episodes of intense violence, giving rise to questions of accountability under international law. Does international law provide rules applicable to such conduct? While the repression of crime, especially that perpetrated by non-state actors, has traditionally been left to the internal law of states, most international jurists will point to the ancient rules of international law …

If Not Now, When? Individual And Collective Responsibility For Male Intimate Violence, G. Kristian Miccio

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

The Government Menage 'A Trois: Unraveling The Government Sex Partner In Undercover Prostitution Stings, Kelley Frances Stieler

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Terrorist Detention: Directions For Reform, Benjamin J. Priester

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Extraordinary Rendition: A Wrong Without A Right, Robert Johnson

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Run For The Border: Laptop Searches And The Fourth Amendment, Nathan Alexander Sales

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Why Is Torture Different And How Different Is It?, Sherry F. Colb

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Almost every serious commentator to address the moral and legal question of torture has taken for granted the proposition that the infliction of torture is a sufficiently grave evil to require a distinctly demanding moral scrutiny, one that categorically sets torture apart from other terrible things (including killing) that human beings do to one another. To borrow from the Supreme Court's death penalty jurisprudence, most people agree that torture is "different. "

Under the Eighth Amendment, the fact that death is different does not rule out its application; it simply alters the relevant procedural and substantive standards. By contrast, many …

Protecting The Party Girl: A New Approach For Evaluating Intoxicated Consent, Christine Chambers Goodman

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Does Unconscious Racial Bias Affect Trial Judges?, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Sheri Johnson, Andrew J. Wistrich, Chris Guthrie

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Race matters in the criminal justice system. Black defendants appear to fare worse than similarly situated white defendants. Why? Implicit bias is one possibility. Researchers, using a well-known measure called the implicit association test, have found that most white Americans harbor implicit bias toward Black Americans. Do judges, who are professionally committed to egalitarian norms, hold these same implicit biases? And if so, do these biases account for racially disparate outcomes in the criminal justice system? We explored these two research questions in a multi-part study involving a large sample of trial judges drawn from around the country. Our results …

The Aftermath Of Crawford And Davis: Deconstructing The Sound Of Silence, Kimberly D. Bailey

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Why Is Torture "Different" And How "Different" Is It?, Sherry F. Colb

Cardozo Law Review

Almost every serious commentator to address the moral and legal question of torture has taken for granted the proposition that the infliction of torture is a sufficiently grave evil to require a distinctly demanding moral scrutiny, one that categorically sets torture apart from other terrible things (including killing) that human beings do to one another. To borrow from the Supreme Court's death penalty jurisprudence, most people agree that torture is "different."

Under the Eighth Amendment, the fact that death is different does not rule out its application; it simply alters the relevant procedural and substantive standards. By contrast, many scholars …

Contemplating Cruel And Unusual: A Critical Analysis Of Baze V. Rees In The Context Of The Supreme Court's Eighth Amendment Proportionality Jurisprudence, Katie Roth Heilman

American University Law Review

This Comment argues that, while the Court’s modern Eighth Amendment jurisprudence has gradually reduced the circumstances under which the death penalty may be imposed, this trend is inconsistent with the Court’s unwillingness to critically examine the specific procedures states use to execute, even in the face of growing concerns over the humaneness of such procedures. Part I gives a historic overview of the Court’s limited method-of-execution jurisprudence, followed by a review of the Court’s recent line of rulings on challenges to the death penalty’s proportionality. Part II analyzes Baze within the broader context of the Court’s Eight Amendment proportionality jurisprudence. …

When Gender Meets Sex: An Exploratory Study Of Women Who Seduce Adolescent Boys, Kay L. Levine

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

This article describes the origins, design, and implications of a new study exploring female-perpetrated statutory rape against adolescent boys in the United States. In contrast to both legal frameworks, which typically regard statutory rape as a male-on-female phenomenon, and existing literature from the fields of psychology and psychiatry derived from clinical samples and sex offender registries, this study examines the incidence of female-perpetrated statutory rape using data from electronic news reports covering the period 1990-2008. In this short article, the author explains the advantages of her approach over those taken by prior scholars, in terms of the size of the …

Cyber Civil Rights, Danielle K. Citron

Faculty Scholarship

Social networking sites and blogs have increasingly become breeding grounds for anonymous online groups that attack women, people of color, and members of other traditionally disadvantaged groups. These destructive groups target individuals with defamation, threats of violence, and technology-based attacks that silence victims and concomitantly destroy their privacy. Victims go offline or assume pseudonyms to prevent future attacks, impoverishing online dialogue and depriving victims of the social and economic opportunities associated with a vibrant online presence. Attackers manipulate search engines to reproduce their lies and threats for employers and clients to see, creating digital "scarlet letters" that ruin reputations. Today's …

Summary Of Savage V. Dist. Ct., 125 Nev. Adv. Op. 2, Moorea Katz

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

Consolidated petitions for writs of mandamus that challenged district court failures to consider applications pursuant to NRS 484.37941 on their merits.

Summary Of Stromberg V. Dist. Ct., 125 Nev. Adv. Op. No. 1, Brandon Johansson

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

Original petition for a writ of mandamus challenging the district court’s decision to deny petitioner’s request to apply for treatment.

A Lawyer's Worst Nightmare: The Story Of A Lawyer And His Nurse Clients Who Were Both Criminally Charged Because The Nurses Resigned En Mass, Mitchell H. Rubinstein

NULR Online

No abstract provided.

Cyberthreats: The Emerging Fault Lines Of The Nation State, Susan W. Brenner

School of Law Faculty Publications

As new technologies develop, terrorist groups are developing new methods of attack by using the Internet, and by using cyberspace as a battlefield, it has become increasingly difficult to discover the identity of attackers and bring them to justice. The seemingly limitless boundaries of cyberspace have allowed virtually anyone to launch an attack from a remote and anonymous location. But once these attacks occur, it raises several important questions. Who should respond, and how? How should nation-states effectively deal with a cyber-attack? Will the United States and other nation-states be able to survive in a world where virtual boundaries are …

What To Do About The Torturers?, David Cole

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.