Criminal Law Commons^™

The Penalties For Piracy: An Empirical Study Of National Prosecution Of International Crime, Eugene Kontorovich

Faculty Working Papers

This Article examines the sentences imposed by courts around the world in prosecutions of Somali pirates captured on the high seas. Somali piracy has become perhaps the highest-volume area of international criminal law by national courts. As with other international crimes, international law is silent on the subject of penalties. The large number of parallel prosecutions of offenders from a single international "situation" offers an empirical window into the interactions between international and national law in municipal courts; into factors affecting punishment for international crimes and the hierarchy of international offenses; and of course into potential concerns with the current …

Blaming As A Social Process: The Influence Of Character And Moral Emotion On Blame, Janice Nadler

Faculty Working Papers

For the most part, the law eschews the role of moral character in legal blame. But when we observe an actor who causes harm, legal and psychological blame processes are in tension. Procedures for legal blame assume an assessment of the actor's mental state, and ultimately of responsibility, that is independent of the moral character of the actor. In this paper, I present experimental evidence to suggest that perceptions of intent, foreseeability, and possibly causation can be colored by independent reasons for thinking the actor is a bad person, and are mediated by the experience of negative moral emotion. Our …

Pain As Fact And Heuristic: How Pain Neuroimaging Illuminates Moral Dimensions Of Law, Amanda C. Pustilnik

Faculty Scholarship

Legal statuses, prohibitions, and protections often turn on the presence and degree of physical pain. In legal domains ranging from tort to torture, pain and its degree do important definitional work by delimiting boundaries of lawfulness and of entitlements. The omnipresence of pain in law suggests that the law embodies an intuition about the ontological primacy of pain. Yet, for all the work done by pain as a term in legal texts and practice, it has had a confounding lack of external verifiability. As with other subjective states, we have been able to impute pain’s presence but have not been …

The Disparate Treatment Of Neuroscience Expert Testimony In Criminal Litigation, Jamie Wagenheim

The Appendix, Journal of Health Care Law & Policy

No abstract provided.

Don't Say You're Sorry Unless You Mean It: Pricing Apologies To Achieve Credibility, Murat C. Mungan

Scholarly Publications

Remorse and apologies by offenders have not been rigorously analyzed in the law and economics literature. This is perhaps because apologies are regarded as ’cheap talk’ and are deemed to be non-informative of an individual’s conscious state. In this paper, I develop a formal framework in which one can analyze remorse and apologies. I argue that legal procedures can be designed to price apologies, such that only truly remorseful individuals apologize. Hence, apologies would not be mere ’cheap talk’ and could send correct signals regarding an offender’s true conscious state, making them credible. This will lead victims, upon receiving apologies, …

International Decision, International Criminal Court, Judgment On The Appeal Of The Republic Of Kenya Against Pre-Trial Chamber Decision Denying Inadmissibility Of The Kenya Situation, Charles Chernor Jalloh

Faculty Publications

A fundamental pillar of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is Article 17, which enshrines the complementarity principle – the idea that ICC jurisdiction will only be triggered when states fail to act to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes within their national courts or in circumstances where they prove unwilling and or unable to do so. The problem is that, as shown in this case report in the American Journal of International Law on the first ICC Appeals Chamber ruling regarding a state party’s objection to the court’s assertion of jurisdiction over its nationals, …

Decriminalizing Campus Institutional Responses To Peer Sexual Violence, Nancy Chi Cantalupo

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Patent Infringement As Criminal Conduct, Jacob S. Sherkow

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Criminal and civil law differ greatly in their use of the element of intent. The purposes of intent in each legal system are tailored to effectuate very different goals. The Supreme Court's recent decision in Global-Tech Appliances, Inc. v. SEB S.A., 131 S. Ct. 2060 (2011), however, imported a criminal concept of intent--willful blindness--into the statute for patent infringement, a civil offense. This importation of a criminal law concept of intent into the patent statute is novel and calls for examination. This Article compares the purposes behind intent in criminal law with the purposes behind intent in patent law to …

Forensic Collection Of Electronic Evidence From Infrastructure-As-A-Service Cloud Computing, Josiah Dykstra, Damien Riehl

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

As cloud computing becomes ubiquitous, the criminal targeting and criminal use of cloud computing is inevitable and imminent. Similarly, the need for civil forensic analyses of cloud computing has become more prevalent. Forensic investigation of cloud computing matters first requires an understanding of the technology and issues associated with the collection of electronically stored information (“ESI”) in the cloud. The misuse of the broad term “cloud computing” has caused some confusion and misinformation among legal and technology scholars, leading to a muddied and incomplete analysis of cloud-based discovery issues. Cases and academic analyses have dealt primarily with popular online services …

Veterans Court: Towards The Implementation Of A Collaborative Justice Model In San Luis Obispo County, Daniel Smee

Continuing Education (CAPSTONE)

Veterans’ treatment courts represent an emerging trend across the country of collaborative justice designed to deal with criminal justice issues stemming from problems linked to military service. This approach places the veteran in VA (Veterans Affairs) treatment programs as a diversion from incarceration. There are few such courts in California (nine) largely in non-rural counties. This study investigated two rural counties, Tulare and Santa Barbara with Veterans courts to develop a model for such a court in San Luis Obispo County. Early recidivism data at the one-year point for Tulare County showed a zero percent rate of criminal behavior (12 …

Capital Punishment And Race: Racial Culture Of The South, Jerry Joubert

Undergraduate Review

There are currently 34 states with the death penalty and 16 states without the death penalty in the United States. According to the most recent report from the Death Penalty Information Center, there have been 1276 executions in the United States since 1976. In the year 2011 alone, there were 42 executions. This was 4 executions less than the previous year. Among the 1276 total executions in the United States since 1976, 1048 have taken place in the South. There are approximately 3,251 inmates on death row. African-Americans represent 42% of these inmates (Death Penalty Information Center, 2011). This statistic …

Recognizing The Right To Petition For Victims Of Domestic Violence, Tamara L. Kuennen

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Like any citizen, a victim of domestic violence (DV) may call the police for help when she needs it. And yet, when a victim calls the police, she not only seeks law enforcement assistance but also invokes her constitutional right to seek one of the most fundamental services the government can provide—protection from harm. That right, recently described by the Supreme Court as “essential to freedom,” is the right “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” guaranteed by the First Amendment. This Article argues that a combination of law and policy initiatives produces negative collateral consequences for DV …

Of Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, And Legal Expressivism: Why Massachusetts Should Stand Its Ground On "Stand Your Ground", Louis N. Schulze Jr.

Faculty Publications

This essay suggests that the expressive impact of Stand Your Ground laws alters the shared norms governing our collective understanding of the moral limits of “self-defense.” The essay argues that the theory of Legal Expressivism can explain the widespread misunderstanding of the limits of self-defense, as demonstrated by the institutional and popular reactions to the killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman. To support this thesis, the piece briefly explains Stand Your Ground statutes and legal expressivism. It then details the nature of the expressive function of these statutes and asserts that Massachusetts, which recently considered the adoption of such …

Kenya Vs. The Icc Prosecutor, Charles Chernor Jalloh

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Juvenile Life Without Parole, Kallee Spooner

Undergraduate Review

The purpose of this paper is to analyze data, policy trends, and legal concerns on the issue of sentencing juvenile offenders to life without the possibility of parole (LWOP). Policy changes in the 1980s and 90s dramatically changed the sentencing outcomes for juvenile offenders. Significantly departing from the rehabilitative goals established by the juvenile court, states adopted harsher punishments, including LWOP. During this shift, the diminished culpability of youth became insignificant when compared to the nature of their crimes. The recent cases of Roper v. Simmons (2005) and Graham v. Florida (2010) reinstated the importance of recognizing that juveniles are …

Gender And The Charles Taylor Case At The Special Court For Sierra Leone, Valerie Oosterveld

Law Publications

No abstract provided.

Anti-Trafficking Legislation In Sub-Saharan Africa: Analyzing The Role Of Coercion And Parental Responsibility, Ruby Andrew, Benjamin N. Lawrance

Annual Interdisciplinary Conference on Human Trafficking: 4th (2012)

This article discusses the effect of US and international support for local laws to combat child trafficking in sub-Saharan African states. The annual ranking of African anti-trafficking measures, produced by the US State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (OMCTP) in conjunction with the UN Office on Crime and Drugs, not only provides an important source of data but also creates a powerful incentive for African states to effect legislative change.

We argue that, although the US supports criminalization of traffickers and the OMCTP espouses laws to deter parental inducement to support trafficking activities, the implementation of …

Your Lethal Injection Bill: A Fight To The Death Over An Expensive Yellow Jacket, Woody R. Clermont

St. Thomas Law Review

This article reviews in detail the history of capital punishment, and the United States' constitutional proscription of "cruel and unusual" punishment. Examined are the Magna Carta of 1215, English Bill of Rights of 1689, and various bills of rights of the early American colonies, as they were critical to the Drafters' enlightened understanding of corporal punishment, which eschewed the barbaric and inhumane and culminated in the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of "cruel and unusual" punishment. Included, also, is an examination of the early cases alleging Eighth Amendment violations, for they developed the judiciary's determination of whether certain methods of capital punishment, …

What States Should Do To Provide A Meaningful Opportunity For Review And Release: Recognize Human Worth And Potential, Gerard Glynn, Ilona Vila

St. Thomas Law Review

This article begins with a detailed analysis of the Court's mandate in Graham, followed by a review of the science that influenced the Court's decision and an analysis of what states have done so far to comply with the mandate. Then, the article explores existing parole rules, followed by a discussion on the challenges minors face in proving their ability to rehabilitate despite the prison system's complicity in preventing such development. Based on the foregoing discussion and analysis, the authors propose a model statute that states should consider adopting for purposes of implementing the mandates in the Graham opinion.

Sorry Linus, I Need Your Security Blanket: How The Smartphone, Constant Connectivity With The Internet, And Social Networks Act As Catalysts For Juror Misconduct, Patrick M. Delaney

St. Thomas Law Review

In the context of the judicial system, it is the judges, lawyers, and parties to lawsuits who are equally affected by juror's statements. While this problem is not exclusive to criminal law, it is within the context of criminal law that the most severe problems are presented to the courts. This is not an attempt to suggest any lack of seriousness associated with a civil claim, but the fact that the stakes for a defendant remain higher in a criminal case because an individual's fundamental, constitutional rights are at issue is a significant difference. The knee jerk reaction by the …

Democracy And Criminal Discovery Reform After Connick And Garcetti, Janet Moore

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

A leading cause of wrongful conviction and wasteful litigation in criminal cases is the nondisclosure of information beneficial to the defense by prosecutors and law enforcement as required by Brady v. Maryland. In Connick v. Thompson and Garcetti v. Ceballos, the Supreme Court weakened Brady’s enforceability by limiting the deterrent force of 42 U.S.C § 1983 liability. Connick highlights Garcetti’s implications as a criminal discovery case, which scholars have not fully analyzed. While Connick restricted § 1983 liability when prosecutors confess to suppressing exculpatory evidence, Garcetti restricted liability when prosecutors are disciplined for bringing Brady evidence to light. …

Enron, Doma, And Spousal Privileges: Rethinking The Marriage Plot, Bennett Capers

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Politics And Punishment: Reactions To Markel's Political Retributivism, Michael T. Cahill

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

What Were They Thinking?: Competing Culpability Standards For Punishing Threats Made To The President, Craig Matthew Principe

American University Criminal Law Brief

No abstract provided.

Black Beauty - How Schultz And The Trial Of Marion True Changed Museum Acquistions, Michael Murali

American University Criminal Law Brief

No abstract provided.

Letter From The Editor, Monica Trigoso

American University Criminal Law Brief

No abstract provided.

Jobs! How The Economy Has Affected Employment In The Criminal Sector, Bethany J. Peak

American University Criminal Law Brief

No abstract provided.

Supreme Court Watch:Recent Decisions Of Selected Criminal Cases, Max P. Salazar, Jr.

American University Criminal Law Brief

No abstract provided.

Facebook And Myspace In The Courtroom: Authentication Of Social Networking Websites, Julia Mehlman

American University Criminal Law Brief

No abstract provided.

Restorative Justice In The Gilded Age:Shared Principles Underlying Twomovements In Criminal Justice, Ali M. Abid

American University Criminal Law Brief

No abstract provided.