Criminal Law Commons^™

Punishment Without Purpose: The Retributive And Utilitarian Failures Of The Child Pornography Non-Production Sentencing Guidelines, Brittany Lowe

Cleveland State Law Review

Pursuant to the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, Congress established the U.S. Sentencing Commission to formulate an empirical set of federal sentencing Guidelines. With the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, Congress intended to further the basic purposes of criminal punishment—deterrence, incapacitation, just punishment, and rehabilitation. Nevertheless, the Guidelines were instantaneously met with disapproval. Asserting that the mandatory Guidelines violated the Constitution, scholars and judges argued that the Commission usurped Congress’s role by prescribing punishments that were essentially binding law. In 2005, the Supreme Court held that the Guidelines were discretionary in United States v. Booker.

While this decision resolved many of …

Habeas As Forum Allocation: A New Synthesis, Carlos M. Vázquez

University of Miami Law Review

The scope of habeas relief for state prisoners, especially during the decades before the Supreme Court’s 1953 decision in Brown v. Allen, is a famously disputed question—one of recognized significance for contemporary debates about the proper scope of habeas review. This Article provides a new answer. It argues that, until the enactment of Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (“AEDPA”), it was broadly accepted that state prisoners were entitled to plenary federal review of the legal and mixed law/fact questions decided against them by state courts. Until 1916, such review was provided by the Supreme Court; after 1953, …

Quantifying The Contours Of Power: Chief Justice Roberts & Justice Kennedy In Criminal Justice Cases, Michael A. Mccall, Madhavi M. Mccall

Pace Law Review

This Article seeks to contribute to the debate with an empirical analysis of voting behavior in criminal justice cases decided during the first ten Terms of the Roberts Court era. The following section presents the study’s case selection and introduces the types of measures used to illuminate influence on the High Court (Part II). Court- and individual-level tendencies (Part III) identify potential spheres of influence occupied by Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kennedy. These bases of judicial power are examined separately in Part IV (Chief Justice Roberts) and Part V (Justice Kennedy). Some possible implications of Justice Scalia’s death on …

Brief Of The National Association Of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Et Al As Amici Curiae Supporting Petitioner, Mcwilliams V. Dunn (U.S. March 6, 2017) (No. 16-5294)., Janet Moore

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

We submit this brief to make three important points. First, Ake itself clearly and unambiguously held as a matter of due process that indigent capital defendants must be provided with independent expert assistance upon a reasonable showing of need. The Court was unanimous on this point and swept aside aging precedent that had held provision of neutral assistance was adequate.

Second, Ake was hardly a revolutionary decision. As the Court noted, many states already provided expert assistance. In the first six years after Ake, numerous states explicitly held independent expert assistance must be provided upon an adequate showing of need. …

Brief Of The National Association For Public Defense, Et Al As Amici Curiae Supporting Petitioner, Christeson V. Roper (U.S. January 30, 2017) (No. 16-7730)., Janet Moore

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This case involves federal courts doubling down on the effective denial of counsel to a severely mentally impaired capital habeas petitioner on the eve of his execution, thereby preventing the full and fair litigation of an issue that demands this Court’s attention: the role played by a petitioner’s mental impairment in determining whether equitable tolling applies to the statute of limitations for filing a habeas petition. This Court should grant the petition to address whether the denial of adequate funding in this case constituted a constructive denial of the right to counsel required by the capital representation statute, 18 U.S.C. …

Following Finality: Why Capital Punishment Is Collapsing Under Its Own Weight, Corinna Barrett Lain

Law Faculty Publications

Death is different, the adage goes - different in its severity and different in its finality. Death, in its finality, is more than just a punishment. Death is the end of our existence as we know it. It is final in an existential way.

Because death is final in an existential way, the Supreme Court has held that special care is due when the penalty is imposed. We need to get it right. My claim in this chapter is that the constitutional regulation designed to implement that care has led to a series of cascading effects that threaten the …

Distorting Extortion: How Bribery And Extortion Became One And The Same Under The Hobbs Act, Sigourney Haylock

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Wrong Decision At The Wrong Time: Utah V. Strieff In The Era Of Aggressive Policing, Julian A. Cook

Scholarly Works

On June 20, 2016, the United States Supreme Court held in Utah v. Strieff that evidence discovered incident to an unconstitutional arrest of an individual should not be suppressed given that the subsequent discovery of an outstanding warrant attenuated the taint from the unlawful detention. Approximately two weeks later the issue of aggressive policing was again thrust into the national spotlight when two African-American individuals — Alton Sterling and Philando Castile — were killed by policemen in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Falcon Heights, Minnesota, respectively, under questionable circumstances. Though connected by proximity in time, this article will demonstrate that these …

Making Room For Juvenile Justice: The Supreme Court's Decision In Montgomery V. Louisiana, Chelsea S. Gumaer

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

No abstract provided.

Brief Of The National Association For Public Defense As Amici Curiae Supporting Petitioner, Christensen V. United States Of America (U.S. November 7, 2016) (No. 16-461)., Janet Moore

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

The jury is essential to our structure of government, available to criminal defendants as the final arbiter of guilt. As this Court has recognized time and again, the jury serves an important role both structurally within the balance of powers and as a check on governmental power, adding a layer of protection for individual defendants.

The rule applied by the Ninth Circuit and some other courts, allowing dismissal of a holdout juror if a judge sees no reasonable possibility that his view is connected to the merits of the case, threatens the fundamental role of the jury. In contrast to …

Brief Of The National Association For Public Defense As Amici Curiae Supporting Petitioner, Bridgeman V. District Attorney For Suffolk District, 476 Mass. 298 (2016) (No. Sjc-12157)., Janet Moore

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

As the highest courts in Florida, Missouri, Michigan, New York, and Pennsylvania have demonstrated, systemic relief is necessary and appropriate to cure systemic failures that deny access to courts by imposing overwhelming demands on struggling public defense systems. Government misconduct created exactly that type of constitutional crisis by flooding the Commonwealth’s criminal legal system with 24,000 Dookhan cases. New revelations of even more corruption in the Commonwealth’s forensic sciences system are now anticipated to exacerbate that crisis by adding another 18,000 Farak wrongful-conviction cases. At the same time, the District Attorneys have undermined progress on fair, reliable case-by-case resolution of …

Choosing A Criminal Procedure Casebook: On Lesser Evils And Free Books, Ben L. Trachtenberg

Faculty Publications

Among the more important decisions a law teacher makes when preparing a new course is what materials to assign. Criminal procedure teachers are spoiled for choice, with legal publishers offering several options written by teams of renowned scholars. This Article considers how a teacher might choose from the myriad options available and suggests two potentially overlooked criteria: weight and price.

Shakin' And Bakin': The Supreme Court's Remarkable Criminal Law Rulings Of The 1999 Term, William E. Hellerstein

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Much Ado About Some Things: Fourth Amendment Rulings Dominate The Supreme Court’S Criminal Law Decisions In The 2000 Term, William E. Hellerstein

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Skilling: More Blind Monks Examining The Elephant, Julie Rose O'Sullivan

Fordham Urban Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The War Against Ourselves: Heien V. North Carolina, The War On Drugs, And Police Militarization, Mallory Meads

University of Miami Law Review

Approximately fifty years ago, America declared a war against itself—the “War on Drugs.” Since then, our local and state police, armed with military weapons and federal funding, have fought tirelessly against “public enemy number one”—drugs. Not surprisingly, this war has created an atmosphere where it is now common to see police officers equipped with a mentality and armor that had previously only been seen in the dark-trenches of an international war zone. Worse yet, this battlefield mentality has leaked into almost every area of police-civilian encounters.

As a “loyal foot solider” in the Executive’s War on Drugs, however, the Supreme …

The Antidemocratic Sixth Amendment, Janet Moore

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Criminal procedure experts often claim that poor people have no Sixth Amendment right to choose their criminal defense lawyers. These experts insist that the Supreme Court has reserved the Sixth Amendment right to choose for the small minority of defendants who can afford to hire counsel. This Article upends that conventional wisdom with new doctrinal, theoretical, and practical arguments supporting a Sixth Amendment right to choose for all defendants, including the overwhelming majority who are indigent. The Article’s fresh case analysis shows the Supreme Court’s “no-choice” statements are dicta, which the Court’s own reasoning and rulings refute. The Article’s new …

When The Police Get The Law Wrong: How Heien V. North Carolina Further Erodes The Fourth Amendment, Vivan M. Rivera

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

No abstract provided.

Prosecutorial Ventriloquism: People V. Tom And The Substantive Use Of Post-Arrest, Pre-Miranda Silence To Infer Consciousness Of Guilt, Joshua Bornstein

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

No abstract provided.

Policing In The Era Of Permissiveness: Mitigating Misconduct Through Third-Party Standing, Julian A. Cook

Scholarly Works

On April 4, 2015, Walter L. Scott was driving his vehicle when he was stopped by Officer Michael T. Slager of the North Charleston, South Carolina, police department for a broken taillight. A dash cam video from the officer’s vehicle showed the two men engaged in what appeared to be a rather routine verbal exchange. Sometime after Slager returned to his vehicle, Scott exited his car and ran away from Slager, prompting the officer to pursue him on foot. After he caught up with Scott in a grassy field near a muffler establishment, a scuffle between the men ensued, purportedly …

The Death Knell For The Death Penalty: Judge Carney's Order To Kill Capital Punishment Rings Loud Enough To Reach The Supreme Court, Alyssa Hughes

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

No abstract provided.

Will Oklahoma Put An Innocent Man To Death?, Lauren Carasik

Media Presence

No abstract provided.

Trending @ Rwulaw: Susan Schwab Heyman's Post: Defining The Boundaries Of Insider Trading, Susan Schwab Heyman

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

Making Sure We Are Getting It Right: Repairing "The Machinery Of Death" By Narrowing Capital Eligibility, Ann E. Reid

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Temporal Arbitrariness: A Back To The Future Look At A Twenty-Five-Year-Old Death Penalty Trial, Mary Kelly Tate

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Interrogation Policies, Brandon L. Garrett

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Cutting Cops Too Much Slack, Wayne A. Logan

Scholarly Publications

Police officers can make mistakes, which, for better or worse, the U.S. Supreme Court has often seen fit to forgive. Police, for instance, can make mistakes of fact when assessing whether circumstances justify the seizure of an individual or search of a residence; they can even be mistaken about the identity of those they arrest. This essay examines yet another, arguably more significant context where police mistakes are forgiven: when they seize a person based on their misunderstanding of what a law prohibits.

In The Beginning There Was None: Supreme Court Review Of State Criminal Prosecutions, Kevin C. Walsh

Law Faculty Publications

This Article challenges the unquestioned assumption of all contemporary scholars of federal jurisdiction that section 25 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 authorized Supreme Court appellate review of state criminal prosecutions. Section 25 has long been thought to be one of the most important provisions of the most important jurisdictional statute enacted by Congress. The Judiciary Act of 1789 gave concrete institutional shape to a federal judiciary only incompletely defined by Article III. And section 25 supplied a key piece of the structural relationship between the previously existing state court systems and the new federal court system that Congress constructed …

Unwrapping The Box The Supreme Court Justices Have Gotten Themselves Into: Internal Confrontations Over Confronting The Confrontation Clause, Paul F. Rothstein

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Williams v. Illinois, handed down in 2012, is the latest in a new and revolutionary line of U.S. Supreme Court cases beginning with the 2004 decision of Crawford v. Washington which radically altered the Court's former approach to the Constitutional Confrontation Clause. That clause generally requires persons who make written or oral statements outside the trial, that may constitute evidence against a criminal defendant, to take the witness stand for cross-examination rather than those statements being presented at the trial only by the writing or by another person who heard the statement.

Previous to Crawford, under Ohio v. …

Two Excursions Into Current U.S. Supreme Court Opinion-Writing, Paul F. Rothstein

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In the last weeks in June, 2015, as the present term of the U.S. Supreme Court drew to a close, many controversial and important decisions were handed down by the Court. The substance of the decisions has been written about extensively. Two of the decisions in particular, though, caught my eye as a teacher of legal techniques, not for the importance of the subject of the particular decision, but for what they may illustrate in a teachable fashion about at least some opinion writing. The two cases are Ohio v. Clark (June 18, 2015) interpreting the Confrontation Clause of the …