Criminal Law Commons^™

Policing Agency Data Trusts, Barry Friedman

Northwestern University Law Review

Policing agencies are indiscriminately collecting, retaining, and using vast quantities of personal data from people who are suspected of no unlawful conduct whatsoever. This has caused expressions of concern or caution from many quarters, including—notably—the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). In a declassified report, the Office of the DNI stated that massive amounts of data are being collected “on nearly everyone that is of a type and level of sensitivity . . . that could be used to cause harm to an individual’s reputation, emotional well-being, or physical safety.”

This practice of universal data collection presents a conundrum. As many …

System Disparities: Racial Criminalization And The Risk Of Coerced And False Confessions In Youth, Cynthia J. Najdowski

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

Black youth may be even more vulnerable than other youth to admitting to crimes they did not commit in the context of police interrogations. In support, analysis of data from the National Registry of Exonerations indicates that 65% of people who were wrongfully convicted on the basis of false confessions they gave when under 18 years old are Black, whereas only 14% of the U.S. population is Black. In this chapter, I seek to understand the overrepresentation of Black youth in samples of juvenile false confessors by examining the cultural stereotype about Black criminality in relation to both investigators and …

The History Of Policing And The Impact On Minority Communities: The Case Against Police Abolition, F. Lee Francis

MC Law Review

This article critically examines the implications of former FBI Director James Comey’s assertions regarding the rise in violent crime and the phenomenon known as “The Ferguson Effect,” which posits that law enforcement officers are increasingly hesitant to engage in proactive policing due to fear of public backlash and viral scrutiny. Comey’s comments, made in a 2015 speech, sparked significant debate about the psychological impact of heightened scrutiny on police behavior and the potential consequences for public safety.

Through a multi-part analysis, the article first traces the historical development of policing in ancient civilizations and its evolution in the United States …

Internal Or External: An Exploration Of The United States Police Chief Hiring Process, Kayleigh Walker

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This paper explores the hiring processes of police chiefs across the United States, focusing on internal versus external hiring practices. The goal of this research was to identify common trends, legislative barriers, and the impact of leadership on the hiring process through historical context, legal analysis, and case studies. The findings suggest that internal hires dominate chief appointments, though external hires are often sought during crises. The paper concludes with recommendations for future research and highlights the need to more fully understand this phenomenon. Understanding the processes and limitations surrounding the appointment of new leadership is critical to reform and …

Video Analytics And Fourth Amendment Vision, Andrew Guthrie Ferguson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

What does the Fourth Amendment have to say about video analytics running on citywide camera systems? Video analytics (also known as computer vision) involves hardware and software in cameras that turns video surveillance streams into useful data, identifying, categorizing, matching, and alerting police about objects, people, and incidents. Video analytics can identify objects (e.g., hat, backpack, person, car) and track that person or thing back in time and through the streets using video surveillance footage. For police officers conducting virtual patrols or retrospective investigations, video analytics lets police scan thousands of linked cameras for suspicious behavior or a particular suspect, …

Abolish What?, Benjamin Levin

Scholarship@WashULaw

From leading academic journals to popular press outlets, abolitionist activism and scholarship have earned airtime in national debates about criminal justice reform. But what is "abolition?" When scholars, lawyers, and activists talk about abolition, they seem to mean very different, even conflicting, things. In this Essay, I focus on a core question that might divide different abolitionists-and different critics of abolition: what is to be abolished? Abolitionists argue that it's critically important to abolish something, while critics of abolition insist that something is necessary to a well-functioning society. Yet, it's not always clear what that something is-both for abolitionists and …

A Study Of Civil Liability Views Of U.S. Midwestern Police, Daniel Hall, Morris Jenkins, Eric Lambert, Shanon L. Gillette, Yung Hyeock Lee

Justice, Law, and Public Safety Studies Department Faculty Conferences

In the past several years, there has been a greater social call for police officers to be civilly and/or criminally liable for their actions. It is unclear if concern for liability exists today among police officers and if this concern influences how officers interaction with community members. The current study explored the civil and criminal liability views of police officers and if officers feel that this liability changed how they provide services. Data for this survey came from a recent survey of police officers in the U.S. Midwest. The results will be presented and discussed

Changemakers: Juris Doctorate: Peter Sabian L'17: Practice With A Purpose 7-15-24, Jane Lee, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Tort Liability For Physical Harm To Police Arising From Protest: Common-Law Principles For A Politicized World, Ellen M. Bublick, Jane R. Bambauer

UF Law Faculty Publications

When police officers bring tort suits for physical harms suffered during protest, courts must navigate two critically important sets of values—on the one hand, protesters’ rights to free speech and assembly, and on the other, the value of officers’ lives, health, and rights of redress. This year courts, including the United States Supreme Court, must decide who, if anyone, can be held accountable for severe physical harms suffered by police called upon to respond to protest. Two highly visible cases well illustrate the trend. In one, United States Capitol Police officers were injured on January 6, 2021, during organized attempts …

Survival Labor, Yvette Butler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Article makes one simple, novel claim: crime is labor when it generates income, allows individuals to pursue self-sufficiency, or allows them to fulfill societal expectations of providing for or caring for dependents. When individuals engage in survival crimes, instead of seeing them as criminals, we should see them as workers engaged in survival labor.

The carceral system continues to disproportionately harm racial minorities and people living in poverty. The foundations of many laws regulating racialized bodies and the policing of those bodies has created a culture where blackness is equivalent to criminality. While a penal abolitionist framework is helpful …

Whom Do Prosecutors Protect?, Vida Johnson

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Prosecutors regard themselves as public servants who fight crime and increase community safety on behalf of their constituents. But prosecutors do not only seek to protect those they are supposed to serve. Instead, prosecutors often trade community safety, privacy, and even the constitutional rights of the general public to enlarge police power. Prosecutors routinely advocate for weaker public rights, shield police from public accountability, and fail to prosecute police when they break the law.

This Article will show how prosecutors often protect police at the expense of the public. This Article suggests a novel theory of evaluating the conduct of …

Police Chases And Pit Maneuvers: Examining The Role Of Officer Conduct In Pursuit-Related Felony Murder Convictions, Margaret L. R. Dubose

Georgia State University Law Review

The United States Supreme Court has described a police officer's decision to terminate a high-speed car chase by making physical contact with the fleeing vehicle as a "choice between two evils." Indeed, while many speed-related deaths occur on Georgia's roadways without the involvement of law enforcement, deaths also transpire when officers choose to make such contact through Precision Intervention Technique (PIT) maneuvers.

In 2015, a Georgia jury found a driver guilty of committing felony murder—a conviction which carries with it a life sentence. The victim, a passenger in the driver's speeding car, died after a law enforcement officer performed a …

“Swifties” Or Swift Suppression? How Police Officers Exploit Copyright Law And Practice Online To Evade Public Accountability, Jeremy Lamstein

Cardozo Law Review

The video recording of the tragic killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers had an immediate and profound impact on the public. The video held essential evidentiary value in the prosecution of Floyd’s killers, as it told a very different story than what the police officers had made the situation out to be. It was by no means the first recording of police misconduct that generated significant attention from the public, but it remains among the most notable.

Now, imagine that the world had never seen the extent of this horrific incident. In this alternate universe, the video never …

Law In Inaction: The Origins And Implications Of Chronic Drug Law Underenforcement In One Southern County, Kay L. Levine, Elizabeth Griffiths, Joshua M. Hinkle, Volkan Topalli

Faculty Articles

Common accounts of police and prosecutorial nonenforcement discretion tend to valorize individual declination choices as demonstrations of mercy and resource constraint. Simultaneously, these accounts critique blanket nonenforcement policies as being outside the bounds of executive authority. Both accounts fail to consider the origins and implications of nonenforcement decisions made by police officers and prosecutors in individual cases that, when taken together, amount to significant underenforcement of an otherwise valid law.

This Article fills the gap between these differing perspectives by empirically examining the hidden and habitual underenforcement of technically valid drug-free-zone (DFZ) laws in one Southern county. Data matching the …

To The Court Of Last Resort: A Prosecutorial Roadmap In The Aftermath Of State Violence In Chile And Colombia, David F. Scollan

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

A great deal of academic research and writing has been done on the most glaring examples of war crimes and crimes against humanity. But, only a small cadre of authors have endeavored to identify the ‘lower limit’ of when state action qualifies as these heinous acts. This Note strives to add to that area of legal scholarship aimed at bringing instances of in-country state perpetrated violence out from the behind the veil of sovereign police action and into the spotlight to call them what they are: crimes worthy of international condemnation and punishment. Specifically, this Note unpacks two spasms of …

Black And Blue Police Arbitration Reforms, Michael Z. Green

Faculty Scholarship

The racial justice protests that engulfed the country after seeing a video of the appalling killing of a Black male, George Floyd, by a Minnesota police officer in 2020 has led to a tremendous number of questions about dealing with racial issues in policing. Similar concerns arose a little more than fifty years ago when police unions gained power to respond to the civil rights protests occurring during those times by establishing strong protections for their officers in light of brutality claims. This rhythmic progression of protests and union responses is destined to continue without any lasting reforms focused on …

Was Atwater V. Lago Vista Decided Correctly? The Fourth Amendment's Shadow And Simulacra Of Police Brutality And The American Dream, Charles Lincoln

Barry Law Review

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Joyce And Bill Cummings Of Cummings Foundation To Deliver Keynote Address At Rwu Commencement 4-20-2023, Jill Rodrigues

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Criminogenic Risks Of Interrogation, Margareth Etienne, Richard Mcadams

Indiana Law Journal

In the United States, moral minimization is a pervasive police interrogation tactic in which the detective minimizes the moral seriousness and harm of the offense, suggesting that anyone would have done the same thing under the circumstances, and casting blame away from the offender and onto the victim or society. The goal of these minimizations is to reinforce the guilty suspect’s own rationalizations or “neutralizations” of the crime. The official theory—posited in the police training manuals that recommend the tactic—is that minimizations encourage confessions by lowering the guilt or shame of associated with confessing to the crime. Yet the same …

Grandma Got Arrested: Police, Excessive Force, And People With Dementia, Rashmi Goel

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Recent events have shone a light on the particular vulnerability of people with dementia to police violence. Police are arresting people with dementia and using excessive force to do it—drawing their firearms, deploying tasers, and breaking bones.

To date, little attention has been paid to the burgeoning number of people with dementia, one of society’s most vulnerable populations, and their experiences with the criminal justice system. This Article examines how dementia leads people to engage in activity that appears criminal (shoplifting (forgetting to pay), and trespass (wandering), for instance) and the disproportionate response of police. In several cases where people …

Abolishing Police Consent Searches Through Legislation: Lessons From Scotland, Josephine Ross

American University Law Review

Why have U.S. civil rights organizations omitted the abolition of consent searches from the panoply of recommended police reforms? As over 90% of all searches of cars and pedestrians in the United States are based on consent, this begs the question. The Supreme Court created the consent loophole so that police who lacked probable cause could nevertheless search pockets and cars. In the American context, consent searches bolster racial profiling and enable police harassment.

Americans do not have to wait for the Court to change the law. States and cities have the power to close off this loophole through legislative …

A Synthesis Of The Science And Law Relating To Eyewitness Misidentifications And Recommendations For How Police And Courts Can Reduce Wrongful Convictions Based On Them, Henry F. Fradella

Seattle University Law Review

The empirical literature on perception and memory consistently demonstrates the pitfalls of eyewitness identifications. Exoneration data lend external validity to these studies. With the goal of informing law enforcement officers, prosecutors, criminal defense attorneys, judges, and judicial law clerks about what they can do to reduce wrongful convictions based on misidentifications, this Article presents a synthesis of the scientific knowledge relevant to how perception and memory affect the (un)reliability of eyewitness identifications. The Article situates that body of knowledge within the context of leading case law. The Article then summarizes the most current recommendations for how law enforcement personnel should—and …

Sheriffs, Shills, Or Just Paying The Bills?: Rethinking The Merits Of Compelling Merchant Cooperation With Third-Party Policing In The Aftermath Of George Floyd’S Death, Stephen Wilks

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Article frames the killing of George Floyd as the result of flawed business regulation. More specifically, it captures the expansion of third-party policing paradigms throughout local nuisance abatement regulations over a period of time that coincided with the militarization of policing culture across the United States. Premised on the notion that law enforcement alone cannot succeed in reducing crime and disorder, such regulations transform grocery stores, pharmacies, bars, and other retail spaces into surveillance hubs by prescribing situations that obligate businesses to contact the police. This regulatory framework, however, sustains the larger historical project of rationalizing enhanced scrutiny of …

Exigencies, Not Exceptions: How To Return Warrant Exceptions To Their Roots, Michael Gentithes

Akron Law Faculty Publications

When a police officer interacts with an individual, the encounter is subject to myriad exceptions to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement that lack a coherent justifying theory. For instance, officers can warrantlessly search if an automobile was involved in the interaction, an arrest occurred, or a protective sweep was necessary to prevent a third- party ambush. Officers and indi viduals struggle to understand the breadth and complexity of these exceptions. The resulting confusion breeds widespread distrust and raises the tension in millions of interactions across the country. There is an easier way. The Supreme Court has recently reaffirmed its support …

Ethical Ai In American Policing, Elizabeth E. Joh

Notre Dame Journal on Emerging Technologies

We know there are problems in the use of artificial intelligence in policing, but we don’t quite know what to do about them. One can also find many reports and white papers today offering principles for the responsible use of AI systems by the government, civil society organizations, and the private sector. Yet, largely missing from the current debate in the United States is a shared framework for thinking about the ethical and responsible use of AI that is specific to policing. There are many AI policy guidance documents now, but their value to the police is limited. Simply repeating …

Defending The Less Dead: Using The Decriminalization Of Sex Work To Combat The High Incidence Of Serial Homicide Of Street-Based Sex Workers, Lauren E. Fernandez

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

Sex workers have historically represented a disproportionate percentage of all victims of serial murder. Several serial murderers in the past thirty years have evaded detection for years, taking the lives of dozens of victims, by targeting sex workers, playing off the biases of society and law enforcement, and counting on the halfhearted investigation techniques that often followed missing person reports for less valued members of society, or the “less dead.” This Note argues that the decriminalization of all aspects of sex work is the surest way to improve the safety of street-based sex workers and reduce high victimization of this …

Police Killings As Felony Murder, Guyora Binder, Ekow Yankah

Journal Articles

The widely applauded conviction of officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd employedthe widely criticized felony murder rule. Should we use felony murder as a tool to check discriminatory and violent policing? The authors object that felony murder—although perhaps the only murder charge available for this killing under Minnesota law—understated Chauvin’s culpability and thereby inadequately denounced his crime. They show that further opportunities to prosecute police for felony murder are quite limited. Further, a substantial minority of states impose felony murder liability for any death proximately caused by a felony, even if the actual killer was a police …

Technology In The Security Sector: Mexico, Vanessa J. Gutierrez, Melina Ponte, Angiee Rosario, Arleen Castillo, Henry Saldarriaga, Hector Tejeda, Stephanie Reich, Rosemary Barberet

Publications and Research

The use of technology in policing seeks to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the daily duties police officers may encounter. However, there is mixed empirical data on the use of technology and if it is really contributing to the institutional goals of the security sector, or, if it is contributing to other factors. This report provides an exploratory approach to understanding what information technology is being used in Mexico at the state level, in order to compare where broader application of information technology could make impactful contributions to the security situation in the country.

With a focus on six …

Mutual Liberation: The Use And Abuse Of Non–Human Animals By The Carceral State And The Shared Roots Of Oppression, Michael Swistara

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

The carceral state has used non–human animals as tools to oppress Black, Indigenous, and People of the Global Majority (BIPGM) for centuries. From bloodhounds violently trained by settlers to aid in their genocidal colonial project through the slave dogs that enforced a racial caste system to the modern deployment of police dogs, non–consenting non–human animals have been coopted into the role of agents of oppression. Yet, the same non– human animals are themselves routinely brutalized and oppressed by the carceral state. Police kill several thousands of family’s companion dogs every year in the United States. Law enforcement agencies train animals …

Bans With No Bite: Why Racial Profiling Bans Are Unable To Create Racial Justice In Policing, Rebecca Yin

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.