Criminal Law Commons^™

Should Brian Nichols Be Tried In A Federal Court?, Ronald Carlson, Donald E. Wilkes

Popular Media

Although Brian Nichols has been sentenced in state court to a total of 485 years of imprisonment, the question has been raised whether he should subsequently be tried in federal court for the murder of an off-duty U.S. Customs agent. Prof. Carlson argues in the affirmative, while Prof. Wilkes finds the suggestion "stupendously stupid."

California Zappers: A Proposal For The Commission For The 21st Century Economy, Richard Thompson Ainsworth

Faculty Scholarship

California has not uncovered a single instance of technology-assisted cash skimming - there are no zappers, and no phantomware in California. Is this because Californians are not skimming cash sales with technology, or is this because the California technology works so well that the fraud cannot be detected?

The record in foreign jurisdictions is reasonable clear. Automated sales suppression technology is widely used to skim cash sales, denying the state revenues from consumption taxes that have been paid by the consumer, reducing taxable business profits, and funding a cash hoard out of which unreported employee wages are paid. Government studies …

Two Ways To Think About The Punishment Of Corporations, Albert Alschuler

Faculty Working Papers

This article compares the criminal punishment of corporations in the twenty-first century with two ancient legal practices—deodand (the punishment of animals and objects that have produced harm) and frankpledge (the punishment of all members of a group when one member of the group has avoided apprehension for a crime). It argues that corporate criminal punishment is a mistake but that viewing it as frankpledge is less ridiculous than viewing it as deodand. The article considers the implications of the choice between these concepts for standards of corporate guilt and for the sentencing of corporate offenders. After a brief historical description …

Delinquent Or Distracted?: Attention Deficit Disorder And The Construction Of The Juvenile Offender, Rashmi Goel

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

William and Billy, 1 two boys, each 13 years old, appear in juvenile court. Neither has any criminal history. Both are doing poorly in school. Both have been cited for truancy in the past. Both are appearing on assault charges arising out of schoolyard fights. If we could peer into their brains, we would find that both have the same brain chemistry, characteristic of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). 2 In the end, the court finds one delinquent, and the other merely distracted. The court finds one in need of confinement, and the other in need of care. Two different …

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

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Taking A Stand On Taking The Stand: The Effect Of A Prior Criminal Record On The Decision To Testify And On Trial Outcomes, Theodore Eisenberg, Valerie P. Hans

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article uses unique data from over 300 criminal trials in four large counties to study the relations between the existence of a prior criminal record and defendants testifying at trial, between testifying at trial and juries' learning about a criminal record, and between juries' learning about a criminal record and their decisions to convict or acquit. Sixty percent of defendants without criminal records testified compared to 45 percent with criminal records. For testifying defendants with criminal records, juries learned of those records in about half the cases. Juries rarely learned about criminal records unless defendants testified. After controlling for …

A Circumspect Look At Problem-Solving Courts, Richard C. Boldt

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Violence On The Brain: A Critique Of Neuroscience In Criminal Law, Amanda C. Pustilnik

Faculty Scholarship

Is there such a thing as a criminally "violent brain"? Does it make sense to speak of "the neurobiology of violence" or the "psychopathology of crime"? Is it possible to answer on a physiological level what makes one person engage in criminal violence and another not, under similar circumstances?

This Article first demonstrates parallels between certain current claims about the neurobiology of criminal violence and past movements that were concerned with the law and neuroscience of violence: phrenology, Lombrosian biological criminology, and lobotomy. It then engages in a substantive review and critique of several current claims about the neurological bases …

Autonomy Feminism: An Anti-Essentialist Critique Of Mandatory Interventions In Domestic Violence Cases, Leigh S. Goodmark

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Curious Case Of Corporate Criminality, Erik Luna

Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Book Review, Victor Peskin, International Justice In Rwanda And The Balkans: Virtual Trials And The Struggle For State Cooperation (2008), Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

Implementation of the law requires strategic cooperation. No surprise there: It does so even in the most taut domestic polity. Law is intrinsically contingent. And political. But what does the particularly acute dependency of international criminal law on political cooperation teach us about its pertinence? Its promise? Its limits? It is one thing to assess the functionality of international criminal law. It is another to gauge the value of international criminal law, when actuated through adversarial trials, in reconstituting shattered communities; and its effectiveness as a tool of transitional justice. At its core, Virtual Trials is an analysis about functionality. …

Discrimination, Coercion, And The Bail Reform Act Of 1984: The Loss Of The Core Constitutional Protections Of The Excessive Bail Clause, Samuel R. Wiseman

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Death By Incarceration As A Cruel And Unusual Punishment When Applied To Juveniles: Extending Roper To Life Without Parole, Our Other Death Penalty, Robert Johnson, Sonia Tabriz

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Criminalization Of Housing: A Revolving Door That Results In Boarded Up Doors In Low-Income Neighborhoods In Baltimore, Maryland, Sarah Spangler Rhine

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Driving Through Arkansas? Have Your Dna Sample Ready, Brian Gallini

School of Law Faculty Publications and Presentations

No Arkansas appellate court has examined the constitutionality of the recently enacted House Bill 1473 – better known as “Juli’s Law” – which allows officers to take DNA samples from suspects arrested for capital murder, murder in the first degree, kidnapping, sexual assault in the first degree, and sexual assault in the second degree. This brief essay contends that Juli’s Law violates the Fourth Amendment of the federal constitution.

From Philly To Fayetteville: Reflections On Teaching Criminal Law In The First Year, Brian Gallini

School of Law Faculty Publications and Presentations

How exactly should we teach the first-year criminal law course? How many credits should the course receive? What should go in the syllabus? How much of what is in the syllabus must be covered? In this essay, I humbly offer some thoughts – from the “newbie’s” standpoint – for your consideration in response to each of these questions. I conclude with some limited comments (reminders?) directed gently to my senior colleagues about teaching this generation of first-year law students.

Help Wanted: Seeking One Good Appellate Brief That Forces The Arkansas Supreme Court To Clarify Its Criminal Discovery Jurisprudence, Brian Gallini

School of Law Faculty Publications and Presentations

This Essay first argues that Arkansas has yet to conclusively articulate when a prosecutorial suppression of evidence in response to defense counsel's discovery request violates either the federal or state due process clauses, or the state rules of criminal procedure. More importantly, however, this Essay contends that the Arkansas Supreme Court should require prosecutors to turn over all statements in response to a specific discovery request even if those statements are only arguably “material” and “favorable to the accused.” Doing so would provide to defendants more protection pursuant to the Arkansas Constitution than they now enjoy under the Federal Constitution.Part …

Step Out Of The Car: License, Registration, And Dna Please, Brian Gallini

School of Law Faculty Publications and Presentations

No Arkansas appellate court has examined the constitutionality of the recently enacted House Bill 1473 – better known as “Juli’s Law” – which allows officers to take DNA samples from suspects arrested for capital murder, murder in the first degree, kidnapping, sexual assault in the first degree, and sexual assault in the second degree. This Essay contends that Juli’s Law violates the Fourth Amendment of the federal constitution. Part I highlights certain features of the statute and explores the rationale underlying its enactment. Part II discusses the only published decision upholding the practice of taking of DNA samples from certain …

Terrorism, Containment And International Law, Ian Shapiro

Other Lectures and Presentations

Prof. Ian Shapiro in a noontime lecture discusses recent developments in dealing with terrorism.

The Significance Of Private Burdens And Lost Benefits For A Fair-Play Analysis Of Punishment, Shawn J. Bayern

Scholarly Publications

This article considers the relevance of several kinds of post-offense events for the justice of punishment under a fair-play account of retributivism. If the justice of punishment depends on something like an offender-centered tally of benefits and burdens, it may be difficult to explain why offenders should be punished by a criminal justice system in situations where they have been punished privately or have lost the relevant benefits they may have received from their offenses. My fault is past.

But, O, what form of prayer

Can serve my turn? 'Forgive me my foul murder?

That cannot be; since I am …

White Collar Crime's Gray Area: The Anomaly Of Criminalizing Conduct Not Civilly Actionable, Wendy Gerwick Couture

Articles

Substantive and procedural differences between criminal and civil treatment of conduct sounding in securities fraud combine to cause the following anomaly: certain false statements to investors may be actionable criminally-subjecting individual defendants to imprisonment-but not civilly-leaving victims without remedy. The imposition of criminal punishment for conduct that does not invoke civil liability risks disrupting the current scheme of securities regulation, at the expense of considerations deemed important by Congress and the courts. Moreover, the extension of criminal liability beyond the scope of civil liability debunks the assumption, which underlies the current scholarship on the civil-criminal divide, that criminal liability is …

Passions We Like… And Those We Don't: Anti-Gay Hate Crime Laws And The Discursive Construction Of Sex, Gender, And The Body, Yvonne Zylan

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article proceeds as follows. In Part II, the author catalogs the history of anti-gay hate crime laws in the United States, describing the rapid spread of state-level laws extending race- and religion-based hate crime laws to LGB people. The Article also provides an overview of federal legislation addressing anti-gay hate crime. In Part III, it examines the policy environment within which anti-gay hate crime laws have been, and continue to be, considered. Specifically, the jurisprudential frameworks that shape, define, and constrain discourses of equality, rights, and social identity are analyzed. The argument is made that the policy environment of …

A Critical Guide To The Iraqi High Tribunal's Anfal Judgement: Genocide Against The Kurds, Jennifer Trahan

Michigan Journal of International Law

In the Anfal trial, the Iraqi High Tribunal (IHT or the Tribunal) in Baghdad convicted former Iraqi high officials of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Unlike its predecessor-the Dujail trial-the Anfal trial included the presentation of a high volume of documentary and eye-witness evidence. This evidence clearly revealed the existence of a genocidal campaign by the former Iraqi government and military that eliminated an estimated 182,000 Iraqi Kurds in 1988, as part of the eight-phased "Anfal campaign" (the Anfal). Relying on this and other evidence, judges in the Anfal Trial Chamber explained fairly persuasively how genocide, crimes against …

Conceptualizing Aggression, Noah Weisbord

Faculty Publications

The special working group tasked by the International Criminal Court’s Assembly of States Parties to define the supreme international crime, the crime of aggression, has produced a breakthrough draft definition.

This paper analyzes the key concepts that make up the emerging definition of the crime of aggression by developing and applying a future-oriented methodology that brings together scenario planning and grounded theory. It proposes modifications and interpretations of the constituent concepts of the crime of aggression intended to make the definition sociologically relevant today and in the foreseeable future.

Orwell’S Vision: Video And The Future Of Civil Rights Enforcement, Howard M. Wasserman

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Regionalizing International Criminal Law?, Charles Chernor Jalloh

Faculty Publications

This article examines the initially cooperative but increasingly tense relationship between the International Criminal Court (ICC) and Africa. It assesses the various legal and political reasons for the mounting criticisms of the ICC by African governments, especially within the African Union (AU), following the indictment of incumbent Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al Bashir. The author situates the ICC within broader African efforts to establish more peaceful societies through the continent-wide AU. He submits that the ICC, by prosecuting architects of serious international crimes in Africa’s numerous conflicts, could contribute significantly to the continent’s fledgling peace and security architecture which aims …

Legalizing Marijuana: California’S Pot Of Gold?, Michael Vitiello

McGeorge School of Law Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Marks Of Mayhem & Murder: When A Few Bad "Mongols" Spoil The Bunch, Should The Government Seize A Motorcycle Association's Registered Trademark?, Tracy Reilly

Buffalo Intellectual Property Law Journal

No abstract provided.

How To Improve Empirical Desert, Adam Kolber

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Categorical Prohibitions On Capital Punishment: How The Current Test Fails Mentally Ill Offenders And What To Do About It, Pamela A. Wilkins

Articles

My aim in this short Article is both specific and general. Specifically, I examine whether the Eighth Amendment should be held to prohibit imposition of death sentences upon offenders with severe mental illnesses, as is the case with mentally retarded and juvenile offenders. More generally, and perhaps more importantly, I examine the current Eighth Amendment test for categorical prohibitions, find it wanting, and propose a different test that, at least in my view, more neatly captures what the Eighth Amendment is intended to accomplish.

I believe the key to an Eighth Amendment analysis of categorical prohibitions lies in two dilemmas …