Criminal Law Commons^™

A Battle Of The Amendments: Why Ending Discrimination In The Courtroom May Inhibit A Criminal Defendant’S Right To An Impartial Jury, Gina M. Chiappetta

Fordham Law Review

    Since the U.S. Supreme Court began limiting the exercise of peremptory challenges to safeguard potential jurors from discrimination, it has faced a nearly impossible task. The Court has attempted to safeguard a juror’s equal protection rights without eradicating the peremptory challenge’s ability to preserve a criminal defendant’s right to an impartial jury. Under the current legal framework, it is not certain whether either constitutional right is adequately protected. This Note examines the history of the Supreme Court’s limitation on peremptory challenges. It then discusses the current federal circuit split over whether peremptory challenges should be further limited. Finally, this Note …

Criminal Infliction Of Emotional Distress, Avlana K. Eisenberg

Michigan Law Review

This Article identifies and critiques a trend to criminalize the infliction of emotional harm independent of any physical injury or threat. The Article defines a new category of criminal infliction of emotional distress (“CIED”) statutes, which include laws designed to combat behaviors such as harassing, stalking, and bullying. In contrast to tort liability for emotional harm, which is cabined by statutes and the common law, CIED statutes allow states to regulate and punish the infliction of emotional harm in an increasingly expansive way. In assessing harm and devising punishment, the law has always taken nonphysical harm seriously, but traditionally it …

Keynote Speaker, Jonathan Rapping

Working in the Public Interest Conferences

Keynote address presented by president and founder of Gideon’s Promise and director of the honors program in criminal justice at Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School, lecturer on law at Harvard Law School, 2014 MacArthur Foundation fellow and "genius grant" recipient, and 2013 Public Interest Scholar in Residence at Touro Law School.

Suffocated Habeas Corpus And Merciless Clemency In The Execution Of Warren Hill, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

Popular Media

On Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2015, the state of Georgia executed Warren Lee Hill, Jr. by lethal injection at the state prison in Jackson. This state unconstitutionally wielded its most dangerous and irreversible power, the power to kill. A prisoner with significantly sub-average intellectual functioning, a 54-year old man with the mind of a boy, was strapped down and killed in flagrant violation of a provision of the Bill of Rights intended to maintain human dignity.

This article discusses capital punishment against intellectually disabled individuals and how the erosion of habeas corpus at the Federal and state level and the abandonment …

Trending@Rwu Law: Professor Emily Sack's Post: More Death Penalty Puzzles Highlighted By New Supreme Court Case, Emily Sack

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

The #Ferguson Effect: Opening The Pandora’S Box Of Implicit Racial Bias In Jury Selection, Sarah Jane Forman

NULR Online

No abstract provided.

Hidden Racial Bias: Why We Need To Talk With Jurors About Ferguson, Patrick C. Brayer

NULR Online

No abstract provided.

Race Matters In Jury Selection, Peter A. Joy

NULR Online

No abstract provided.

Newsroom: Horwitz On Mandatory Minimum Sentences, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Newsroom: Coombs Named Weisberger Professor, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Extradition Treaty Improvements To Combat Drug Trafficking, J. Richard Barnett

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Combatting International Terrorism: The Role Of Congress, Dante B. Fascell

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Newsroom: Horwitz On Traffic Obstruction Bills, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Extortion Through The Public Record: Has The Internet Made Florida’S Sunshine Law Too Bright?, Michael Polatsek

Florida Law Review

In recent years, privately owned websites around the country have begun to gather arrest records directly from law enforcement websites and republish them on their own sites. Often, the images are displayed without regard to the ultimate disposition of the arrestee’s case. Images and arrest records of individuals who were eventually convicted or acquitted are stored on these websites indefinitely, and specifically designed search algorithms ensure that potentially damaging information is just a click away on commonly used search engines such as Google. Some websites categorize images under derogatory headings based solely on the individual’s appearance and allow users to …

Using Outcomes To Reframe Guilty Plea Adjudication, Anne R. Traum

Florida Law Review

The Supreme Court’s 2012 decisions in Lafler v. Cooper and Missouri v. Frye lay the groundwork for a new approach to judicial oversight of guilty pleas that considers outcomes. These cases confirm that courts possess robust authority to protect defendants’ Sixth Amendment right to the effective assistance of counsel and that plea outcomes are particularly relevant to identifying and remedying prejudicial ineffective assistance in plea-bargaining. The Court’s reliance on outcome-based prejudice analysis and suggestions for trial court-level reforms to prevent Sixth Amendment violations set the stage for trial courts to take a more active, substantive role in regulating guilty pleas. …

A Justice System Overwhelmed, Colin Starger

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Excuses In Exile, Anders Kaye

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Suppose that I have intentionally killed another person and that I have done so without any justification. At first glance, it appears that I am guilty of murder, a very serious crime. Since I am guilty of this very serious crime, the state may inflict a very serious punishment on me—at least many years in prison, if not my whole life or the death penalty. But suppose that one of the following is also true in my case: (A) At the time that I killed my victim, I suffered from a mental disease and, as a result, lacked the substantial …

Coercing Pregnancy, A. Rachel Camp

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

Intimate partners coerce thousands of women in the United States into pregnancy each year through manipulation, threats of violence, or acts that deliberately interfere with the use of, or access to, contraception or abortion. Although many of these pregnancies occur within the context of otherwise abusive relationships, for others, pregnancy serves as a trigger for intimate partner violence. Beyond violence preceding or resulting from pregnancy, women who experience coerced pregnancies often suffer other physical, financial and emotional harms. Despite its correlation to domestic violence, reproductive coercion fits imperfectly, if at all, within our existing laws designed to combat domestic violence …

Judicial Patriarchy And Domestic Violence: A Challenge To The Conventional Family Privacy Narrative, Elizabeth Katz

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

According to the conventional domestic violence narrative, judges historically have ignored or even shielded “wife beaters” as a result of the patriarchal prioritization of privacy in the home. This Article directly challenges that account. In the early twentieth century, judges regularly and enthusiastically protected female victims of domestic violence in the divorce and criminal contexts. As legal and economic developments appeared to threaten American manhood and traditional family structures, judges intervened in domestic violence matters as substitute patriarchs. They harshly condemned male perpetrators—sentencing men to fines, prison, and even the whipping post—for failing to conform to appropriate husbandly behavior, while …

Cooperative (And Uncooperative) Federalism At Tribal, State, And Local Levels: A Case For Cooperative Charging Decisions In Indian Country, Danna R. Jackson

Montana Law Review

No abstract provided.

Indemnification As An Alternative To Nullification, Robert A. Mikos

Montana Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Right To Remain Armed, Jeffrey Bellin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The laws governing gun possession are changing rapidly. In the past two years, federal courts have wielded a revitalized Second Amendment to invalidate longstanding gun carrying restrictions in Chicago, the District of Columbia, and throughout California. Invoking similar Second Amendment themes, legislators across the country have steadily deregulated public gun carrying, preempting municipal gun control ordinances in cities like Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Cleveland. These changes to substantive gun laws reverberate through the constitutional criminal procedure framework. By making it lawful for citizens to carry guns even in crowded urban areas, enhanced Second Amendment rights trigger Fourth Amendment protections that could …

The Discretionary Penalty For Murder: Guidance At Last, S. Chandra Mohan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In a much awaited decision, the Court of Appeal (“CA”) has finally provided some guidelines to judges on whether or not to impose the discretionary death penalty in murder cases. The decision of a specially constituted court of five judges, in Kho Jabing v Public Prosecutor [2015] SGCA 1, has made history of sorts. It is a case where five judges, of whom two delivered dissenting judgments, sat to hear an appeal from the decision of a single High Court judge; and is the first CA decision under the 2012 Penal Code amendments which provides for a discretionary death penalty …

Probing The Law On Probation: Suggestions For Reform, Darius Chan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

To any criminal law practitioner, the Court’s power to grant probation as a sentencing option is of significant importance. Probation represents, to their clients, the key out of incarceration.Section 5 of the Probation of Offenders Act (Cap 252, 1985 Rev Ed) (“POA”) sets out the power of the Singapore Courts to grant probation. Section 5 uses three peculiar terms to create three categories of offences, namely:1. Sentences which are “fixed by law”; 2. Sentences carrying “specified minimum sentences”; and 3. Sentences carrying “mandatory minimum sentences”.For the latter two categories of offences, the Court can only grant probation if the offender:1. …

The Divisibility Of Crime, Jessica A. Roth

Articles

Near the end of the Supreme Court's 2012-2013 term, the Court decided Descamps v. United States, which concerned the application of the federal Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA). The ACCA is a recidivist statute that vastly increases the penalties for persons convicted of federal firearms offenses if they have previously been convicted of certain qualifying felonies. Descamps represents the Court's most recent word on the so-called categorical approach, which directs courts to consider the elements of a prior offense of conviction, rather than the underlying facts of the crime, in determining whether the prior conviction "counts" for purposes of applying …

Letting Innocence Suffer: The Need For Defense Access To The Law Enforcement Dna Database, Jason Kreag

Cardozo Law Review

Law enforcement has gradually amassed a sizable DNA database that holds considerable promise for solving cold cases and identifying suspects. The Supreme Court has blessed this effort, allowing investigators to include profiles of arrestees as well as convicted persons in the database. At present, though, law enforcement has a near monopoly on use of the DNA database, leaving defendants at the whim of the law enforcement officials who control access to this tool. Legal scholars have alternatively praised and decried the database, but none has examined its prospects for proving defendants' innocence post-conviction. This Article fills that void by identifying …

The Case For Prosecuting Arms Traffickers In The International Criminal Court, Leigh Rome

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Intracorporate Conspiracy Trap, J. S. Nelson

Cardozo Law Review

In the recent case of Commonwealth v. Lynn, Pennsylvania prosecuted a Roman Catholic priest who had not abused children himself but who, to protect the archdiocese that employed him, covered up information about priests who had abused children and reassigned the priests to new parishes. This case was the first of its kind to bring criminal charges against an official of the Church solely for how he supervised the careers of priests to protect his employer.

Because the intracorporate conspiracy doctrine prohibits it, the state - as is now typical of both state and federal jurisdictions around the country …

Hijacking Justice: Assessing The Emergency Driven Analysis Of Confrontation Clause Jurisprudence, Steven C. Berlowitz

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Leveraging Predictive Policing Algorithms To Restore Fourth Amendment Protections In High-Crime Areas In A Post-Wardlow World, Kelly K. Koss

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Rapid technological changes have led to an explosion in Big Data collection and analysis through complex computerized algorithms. Law enforcement has not been immune to these technological developments. Many local police departments are now using highly advanced predictive policing technologies to predict when and where crime will occur in their communities, and to allocate crime-fighting resources based on these predictions.

Although predictive policing technology has an array of the potential uses, the scope of this Note is limited to addressing how the statistical outputs from these technologies can be used to restore eroded Fourth Amendment rights in alleged high-crime areas. …