Criminal Law Commons^™

The Expanding Limits Of Prosecutorial Discretion: Ramalingam Ravinthran V Attorney-General [2012] Sgca 2, Siyuan Chen

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The applicant was convicted of drug trafficking under the Misuse of Drugs Act and sentenced to hang. His appeal to the Court of Appeal was unsuccessful, but he filed a Criminal Motion to reopen judgment. He alleged a violation of his right to equality guaranteed by the Constitution of the Republic of Singapore; the alleged violation occurred when another accused who was involved in the same criminal enterprise (both had trafficked the same bag containing the drugs) was charged with trafficking in an amount of drugs quantified just below the threshold for the mandatory death penalty, while the accused was …

Technological Leap, Statutory Gap, And Constitutional Abyss: Remote Biometric Identification Comes Of Age, Laura K. Donohue

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Federal interest in using facial recognition technology (“FRT”) to collect, analyze, and use biometric information is rapidly growing. Despite the swift movement of agencies and contractors into this realm, however, Congress has been virtually silent on the current and potential uses of FRT. No laws directly address facial recognition—much less the pairing of facial recognition with video surveillance—in criminal law. Limits placed on the collection of personally identifiable information, moreover, do not apply. The absence of a statutory framework is a cause for concern. FRT represents the first of a series of next generation biometrics, such as hand geometry, iris, …

Are Prosecutors Born Or Made?, Abbe Smith

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In more than thirty years of criminal law practice--from public defender in Philadelphia to professor running a criminal law clinic in New York, Boston, and DC--the author has had countless encounters with prosecutors and countless conversations. Early in her career, the encounters and conversations were noteworthy--something to rail about back at the office, or to "dine out on" with friends. Soon enough they became commonplace, not even worthy of mention, just the way things were. But the author felt it important to pick a few examples and talk about them.

Rethinking Attempt Under The Model Penal Code, William T. Pizzi

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Message And Means Of The Modern Terrorism Prosecution, Wadie E. Said

Publications

This Article, written in conjunction with Transnational Law and Contemporary Problems' 2011 Symposium on Ten Years After 9/11: Rethinking Counterterrorism, stemmed from a panel that examined "how the United States and other Western countries receive Islamic culture in their societies and how they export their Western cultures to the Islamic world, in each case to assess the degree to which their cross-cultural behaviors mitigate or worsen anti-Western terrorism from the Middle East and Central/South Asia and to recommend solutions if needed."' This contribution focuses on the criminal terrorism prosecution in the United States, and takes up the panel's theme by …

Kiss The Ring, But Never Touch The Crown: How U.S. Policy Denies Indian Women Bodily Autonomy And The Save Native Women Act's Attempt To Reverse That Policy, Hossein Dabiri

American Indian Law Review

No abstract provided.

Crimes Of Misery And Theories Of Punishment, John B. Mitchell

Faculty Articles

Increasingly, one sees the homeless on the streets, alleys, and doorways of commercial, recreational, and living spaces of our cities otherwise populated by the affluent and relatively affluent. At the same time, there has been an increase in the creation and use of so-called “public order laws,” such as forbidding sitting on sidewalks, lying down on benches, and panhandling in certain tourist areas. Together with laws already on the books forbidding public intoxication, open containers of liquor in public and urinating in public, this suite of laws provide police with a means to control the day-to-day lives of the homeless …

Do Sex Offender Registries Make Us Less Safe?, J. J. Prescott

Articles

State legislatures enacted sex offender registration and notification (SORN) laws with the explicit and exclusive aim of reducing sex offender recidivism. The general idea that we ought to “regulate” released offenders — of any type — to reduce the likelihood of their returning to crime is an attractive one, at least in theory. Criminal recidivism generates significant social harm. Nevertheless, despite their now-widespread use, SORN laws became the norm without any systematic study of their consequences. Admittedly, the logic underlying these laws seems at first difficult to gainsay: if a known sex offender poses even a small risk to a …

Shaken Baby Syndrome, Abusive Head Trauma, And Actual Innocence: Getting It Right, Keith A. Findley, Patrick D. Barnes, David A. Moran, Waney Squier

Articles

In the past decade, the existence of shaken baby syndrome (SBS) has been called into serious question by biomechanical studies, the medical and legal literature, and the media. As a result of these questions, SBS has been renamed abusive head trauma (AHT). This is, however, primarily a terminological shift: like SBS, AHT refers to the two-part hypothesis that one can reliably diagnose shaking or abuse from three internal findings (subdural hemorrhage, retinal hemorrhage, and encephalopathy) and that one can identify the perpetrator based on the onset of symptoms. Over the past decade, we have learned that this hypothesis fits poorly …

Exonerations In The United States, 1989-2012: Report By The National Registry Of Exonerations, Samuel R. Gross, Michael Shaffer

Other Publications

This report is about 873 exonerations in the United States, from January 1989 through February 2012. Behind each is a story, and almost all are tragedies. The tragedies are not limited to the exonerated defendants themselves, or to their families and friends. In most cases they were convicted of vicious crimes in which other innocent victims were killed or brutalized. Many of the victims who survived were traumatized all over again, years later, when they learned that the criminal who had attacked them had not been caught and punished after all, and that they themselves may have played a role …

Torture And The War On Terror: The Need For Consistent Definitions And Legal Remedies, Linda Carter

McGeorge School of Law Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Intentional Discrimination In Farrakhan V. Gregoire: The Ninth Circuit's Voting Rights Act Standard "Results In" The New Jim Crow, Jonathan Sgro

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Even Moe Dalitz Would Blush: Why The District Attorney Has No Business Collecting Unpaid Casino Markers, Francis J. Mootz Iii

McGeorge School of Law Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

The Sacrifice Of Unarmed Prisoners To Gladiators: The Post-Aedpa Access-To-The-Courts Demand For A Constitutional Right To Counsel In Federal Habeas Corpus, Emily Garcia Uhrig

McGeorge School of Law Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

Rebellious State Crimmigration Enforcement And The Foreign Affairs Power, Mary Fan

Articles

The propriety of a new breed of state laws interfering in immigration enforcement is pending before the Supreme Court and the lower courts. These laws typically incorporate federal standards related to the criminalization of immigration ("crimmigration'), but diverge aggressively from federal enforcement policy. Enacting states argue that the legislation is merely a species of "cooperative federalism" that does not trespass upon the federal power over foreign affairs, foreign commerce, and nationality rules since the laws mirror federal standards. This Article challenges the formalist mirror theory assumptions behind the new laws and argues that inconsistent state crimmigration enforcement policy and resulting …

Judicial Challenges To Mandatory Minimum Sentences: A New Frontier In Debate Over Child Pornography Sentencing?, Mary Graw Leary

Scholarly Articles

Over the past decade, federal sentencing issues concerning child pornography have produced considerable legal debate, much of it focused on the application of federal sentencing guidelines as set forth by the United States Sentencing Commission (U.S.S.C.). Many judges have opined that the factors used to calculate the adjusted offense level for some child pornography offenses may be out of date, impracticable, and/or in conflict with 18 U.S.C. 3553(a), which requires, among other things, “just punishments.” Particular concerns have been expressed that strict application of the sentencing guidelines can produce results in which possessors of child pornography (i.e. those who commit …

Against Theories Of Punishment: The Thought Of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Marc O. Degirolami

Scholarly Articles

This paper reflects critically on what is the near-universal contemporary method of conceptualizing the tasks of the scholar of criminal punishment. It does so by the unusual route of considering the thought of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, a towering figure in English law and political theory, one of its foremost historians of criminal law, and a prominent public intellectual of the late Victorian period. Notwithstanding Stephen's stature, there has as yet been no sustained effort to understand his views of criminal punishment. This article attempts to remedy this deficit. But its aims are not exclusively historical. Indeed, understanding Stephen's ideas …

Promising Criminal Justice Practices In Human Trafficking Cases: A County-Level Comparitive Overview (2005-2010) With An Emphasis On Cases Involving Children, Angela Inzano

Center for the Human Rights of Children

The aim of the project is to review and analyze other similarly sized counties as Cook County, with large, metropolitan centers across the country, in order to identify best practice, challenges and efforts that have led to successful case outcomes. This research project identifies and synthesizes cases from 2005-2010 that involved human trafficking and developed at county-level law enforcement agencies and task forces across the United States. Where possible, cases involving minors will be high-lighted, in order to address distinct issues facing children who have been victimized by human trafficking. Best practices in victim identification, case investigation, perpetrator prosecution, and …

Confine Is Fine: Have The Non-Dangerous Mentally Ill Lost Their Right To Liberty? An Empirical Study To Unravel The Psychiatrist’S Crystal Ball, Donald H. Stone

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article will examine the reverse trend in civil commitment laws in the wake of recent tragedies and discuss the effect of broader civil commitment standards on the care and treatment of the mentally ill. The 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, the 2011 shooting of Congresswoman Giffords, and the 2012 Aurora movie theatre shooting have spurred fierce debates about the dangerousness of mentally ill and serve as cautionary tale about what happens when warning signs go unnoticed and opportunities for early intervention missed. This piece will explore the misconception about the role medication and inpatient civil commitments should play in prevention …

Introduction: Benefits Of Private Enforcement: Empirical Background, Robert H. Lande

All Faculty Scholarship

This short piece takes a first step toward providing the empirical bases for an assessment of the benefits of private enforcement. It presents evidence showing that private enforcement of the antitrust laws is serving its intended purposes and is in the public interest. Private enforcement helps compensate victimized consumers, and it also helps deter anticompetitive conduct. This piece demonstrates this by briefly summarizing a more detailed analysis of forty of the largest recent successful private antitrust cases.

To analyze these cases' compensation effects this presents, inter alia, the amount of money each action recovered, what proportion of the money was …

The First Amendment’S Borders: The Place Of Holder V. Humanitarian Law Project In First Amendment Doctrine, David Cole

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the Supreme Court’s first decision pitting First Amendment rights against national security interests since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Court appears to have radically departed from some of the First Amendment’s most basic principles, including the maxims that speech may not be penalized because of its viewpoint, that even speech advocating crime deserves protection until it constitutes incitement, and that political association is constitutionally protected absent specific intent to further a group’s illegal ends. These principles lie at the core of our political and democratic freedoms, yet Humanitarian Law Project …

"U" Stands For Underutilization: The U Visa's Vulnerability For Underuse In The Sex Trafficking Context, Erin Bistricer

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The U Visa, established in 2000 under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) reauthorization, was designed to provide legal status to victims of certain crimes, including sex trafficking, without fear of deportation. However, its implementation has been hindered by significant challenges, including delayed regulations, confusion among applicants, and reliance on law enforcement cooperation, which can be a barrier for traumatized victims. While the U Visa offers more flexibility than the T Visa by covering a broader range of crimes and requiring a lower standard of proof, its effectiveness is limited by factors such as annual caps, inadequate state anti-trafficking laws, …

Convenient Scapegoats: Juvenile Confessions And Exculpatory Dna In Cook County, Illinois, Joshua A. Tepfer, Craig M. Cooley, Tara Thompson

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article examines the pervasive issue of false confessions, particularly among juveniles and mentally challenged individuals, which often lead to wrongful convictions. It underscores the critical role of DNA evidence in exonerating the innocent and highlights the need for systemic reforms in police interrogation practices and prosecutorial oversight. The analysis emphasizes the importance of transparency in evidence handling and the implementation of policies to prevent future injustices.

Predators In Paradise: Puerto Rico's Recent Sex Offender Problems And The Federal Government's Ill Suited Solutions, Adan Soltren

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The note examines the challenges and implications of implementing the Adam Walsh Act (2006) in Puerto Rico, particularly its Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA) provisions. It highlights Puerto Rico's noncompliance with SORNA due to its less stringent sex offender laws and the economic and policy concerns surrounding full adoption. The analysis critiques SORNA's one-size-fits-all approach, especially its treatment of juvenile offenders, and proposes tailored solutions for Puerto Rico to address these issues while maintaining public safety.

Cartoons Aren't Real People, Too: Does The Regulation Of Virtual Child Pornography Violate The First Amendment And Criminalize Subversive Thought?, Keisha April

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The note argues that the government's regulation of virtual child pornography, particularly under the Obscene Visual Representations of the Sexual Abuse of Children (OVR) provision of the PROTECT Act, raises significant First Amendment concerns. While the provision aims to protect children, it criminalizes depictions that do not involve real children, undermining free expression. The analysis critiques the OVR provision's overbreadth and vagueness, asserting that it chills artistic expression and fails to serve a compelling government interest. The note advocates for narrowing the provision to focus on actual harm rather than fictional depictions.

Cyber Commodification, Miriam A. Cherry

All Faculty Scholarship

When it comes to commodification on the Internet, it is a wild, wild World Wide Web. Researching encyclopedia articles for Wikipedia is an unpaid labor of love, but connecting to your friends on Facebook is a $100 billion enterprise. Newspaper classified advertisements are definitely commercial, but their equivalent on Craigslist was mostly non-commercial – until the Delaware Chancery Court stepped in. Selling your organs is prohibited in the United States, whereas selling hair promises to rescue third-world citizens from poverty. Selling sex is illegal as prostitution, but selling adultery online is a hot new business model. And a small company …

Follow The Leader: The Advisability And Propriety Of Considering Cost And Recidivism Data At Sentencing, Lynn S. Branham

All Faculty Scholarship

The Missouri Sentencing Advisory Commission has begun to provide judges with information that enables them, before imposing a sentence, to compare the financial costs of several different sentencing options and the recidivism risks they pose. Although this initiative has sparked controversy, I, for one, favor taking steps like this one to help extricate us from the “same ole, same ole” sentencing box in which uninformed, and sometimes misinformed, sentencing decision making is the norm.

This article provides an overview of six of the primary reasons why providing judges some very basic facts about the financial cost of several sentencing options …

American Legal History Survey: Syllabus, Anders Walker

All Faculty Scholarship

This syllabus provides an overview of American Legal History, focusing on the manner in which law has been used to organize American society. Several themes will be traced through the semester, including law’s role in encouraging innovation and regulating social relations, in part through the elaboration of legal disciplines like property, tort, contract, criminal law, tax, business associations, administrative law, environmental law, securities regulation, commercial law, immigration, and health law. Emphasis will also be placed on the origins and evolution of constitutional law, from the founding to the present.

Proving Corporate Criminal Liability For Negligence In Vessel Management And Operations: An Allision-Oil Spill Case Study, Craig H. Allen

Articles

Maritime policy analysts often invoke the "vessel safety net" metaphor to explain the independent, but overlapping, risk management roles and responsibilities of the vessel master and crew, owner and charterer, operating company, classification society, flag state and port states. Oil spills from the 2002 M/T Prestige break up off the coast of Galicia, Spain, the 2007 M/V Cosco Busan bridge allision in San Francisco Bay and the 2010 Deepwater Horizon debacle in the Gulf of Mexico, among others, demonstrate that any or all of the components of that safety net may come under scrutiny following a marine casualty, possibly leading …

Defining Federal Crimes – Chapters 2-4, Daniel C. Richman, Kate Stith, William J. Stuntz

Faculty Scholarship

These are three chapters from a forthcoming Federal Criminal Law casebook that will focus on institutional interactions – between Congress and the courts; the courts and prosecutors, and among elements within the federal enforcement bureaucracy. Chapter 2 focuses on criminal jurisdiction under the Commerce Clause. Chapter 3 generally considers how separation of powers issues play out in the interpretation of federal criminal statutes. Chapter 4 explores mail and wire fraud.