Criminal Law Commons^™

How House Bill 2063 And The Expansion Of Access To Protective Orders Could Have Saved Yeardley Love's Life, Amy Weiss

Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest

Battered women often face an uphill battle in the legal system. In the 2011 session, the Virginia General Assembly added a new tool to these women's arsenal.o An amended version of House Bill 2063 sponsored by Delegate Rob Bell (R- Albemarle) passed the House and Senate unanimously on February 26, 2011. This paper will examine Virginia protective order law before the enactment of House Bill 2063, how Yeardley Love's death was a catalyst for reform of the law, how the law will change under House Bill 2063, and possible future developments in legislative reform that could further help victims of …

Rectifying Wrongful Convictions: May A Lawyer Reveal Her Client's Confidences To Rectify The Wrongful Conviction Of Another? (A Roundtable Discussion Of The Aba's Standards For Criminal Litigation), James E. Moliterno

Scholarly Articles

None available.

Quieting Cognitive Bias With Standards For Witness Communications, Melanie D. Wilson

Scholarly Articles

Last year, as part of a project to revise the ABA Criminal Justice Standards for Prosecution and Defense Functions, the ABA Criminal Justice Section initiated roundtable discussions with prosecutors, criminal defense lawyers, and academics throughout the United States. The Standards under review provide aspirational guidance for all criminal law practitioners. This Article stems from the Criminal Justice Section's undertaking. It considers the wording, scope, and propriety of several of the proposed changes that address lawyer-witness communications. It begins with a discussion of the effects of cognitive bias on these communications and explains why carefully tailored Standards may lessen the detrimental …

Combating Acid Violence In Bangladesh, India, And Cambodia, Sital Kalantry, Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum

Avon Global Center for Women and Justice and Dorothea S. Clarke Program in Feminist Jurisprudence

This Report is the first comprehensive, comparative study of acid violence that examines the underlying causes, its consequences, and the multiple barriers to justice for its victims. Acid attacks, like other forms of violence against women, are not random or natural phenomena. Rather, they are social phenomena deeply embedded in a gender order that has historically privileged patriarchal control over women and justified the use of violence to “keep women in their places.”

Through an in-depth study of three countries, the authors of the Report argue that the due diligence standard can be a powerful tool for state and non-state …

Nuremberg And The Crime Of Abortion, Jeffrey C. Tuomala

Faculty Publications and Presentations

The crime of abortion played prominently in two international trials held at Nuremberg following World War II—the Goering and Greifelt cases. Allied prosecutors made the case that voluntary and involuntary abortion were war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Goering Judgment identified policies promoting abortion as activities marking the Political Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party as a Criminal Organization. The Greifelt Indictment charged ten defendants with voluntary and involuntary abortion. A focus of the prosecution’s case was the removal of the protection of law from unborn children in occupied Poland and racially non-valuable unborn children of Eastern workers in …

Perpetuating The Marginalization Of Latinos: A Collateral Consequence Of The Incorporation Of Immigration Law Into The Criminal Justice System, Yolanda Vazquez

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Latinos currently represent the largest minority in the United States. In 2009, we witnessed the first Latina appointment to the United States Supreme Court. Despite these events, Latinos continue to endure racial discrimination and social marginalization in the United States. The inability of Latinos to gain political acceptance and legitimacy in the United States can be attributed to the social construct of Latinos as threats to national security and the cause of criminal activity.

Exploiting this pretense, American government, society and nationalists are able to legitimize the subordination and social marginalization of Latinos, specifically Mexicans and Central Americans, much to …

Reaching Batson's Challenge Twenty-Five Years Later: Eliminating The Peremptory Challenge And Loosening The Challenge For Cause Standard, Matt Haven

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

"Mosaic Theory" And Megan's Laws, Wayne A. Logan

Scholarly Publications

This essay urges reexamination of the privacy implications of registration and community notification (RCN) laws, commonly known as Megan’s Laws. Applying the analytic construct recently employed by the D.C. Circuit in United States v. Maynard to conclude that extended use of a GPS tracking device constitutes a search for Fourth Amendment purposes, the essay argues that the collection and aggregation of registrant data entailed in RCN implicates a protectable Fourteenth Amendment privacy interest. In both contexts, the government collects nominally public data – in Maynard, car travel, with RCN, registrants’ home/work/school addresses, physical traits, etc. – and creates an informational …

Realizing Padilla's Promise: Ensuring Noncitizen Defendants Are Advised Of The Immigration Consequences Of A Criminal Convictions, Yolanda Vazquez

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

On March 31, 2010 the United States Supreme court decided Padilla v. Kentucky and created a Sixth Amendment duty for defense attorneys to advise defendants of the immigration consequences of a criminal conviction. While Padilla answered the broad question of whether there is a duty to advise a defendant under the Sixth Amendment, it left many questions unanswered. One critical inquiry is how defense attorneys and the courts will determine what advice concerning the immigration consequences of the criminal conviction will satisfy defense counsels’ Sixth Amendment duty under Padilla.

This Article discusses the potential detrimental impact of Padilla’s ambiguous holding …

Causes, Consequences And Cures Of Racial And Ethnic Disproportionality In Conviction And Incarceration Rates: An Introduction, Janet Moore

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This piece introduces Prosecution and Racial Justice, a panel discussion with Wayne McKenzie of the Vera Institute for Justice, by outlining the legal-historical context for reform strategies that detect and correct effects of racial bias in prosecutorial decision-making.

She Blinded Me With Science: Wrongful Convictions And The "Reverse Csi-Effect", Mark A. Godsey, Marie Alou

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Prosecutors in the United States are often heard to complain these days of the "CSI-effect."' When they make this complaint, they mean that the popularity of television shows like CSI has made it unduly difficult for them to obtain convictions of guilty defendants. Jurors today have become spoiled as a result of the proliferation of these "high-tech" forensic shows, and now unrealistically expect conclusive scientific proof of guilt before they will convict. The unfortunate result is that guilty defendants are acquitted because of a lack of forensic evidence in cases where, in reality, no such forensic evidence was possible or …

Moral Character, Motive, And The Psychology Of Blame, Janice Nadler, Mary-Hunter Morris Mcdonnell

Faculty Working Papers

Blameworthiness, in the criminal law context, is conceived as the carefully calculated end product of discrete judgments about a transgressor's intentionality, causal proximity to harm, and the harm's foreseeability. Research in social psychology, on the other hand, suggests that blaming is often intuitive and automatic, driven by a natural impulsive desire to express and defend social values and expectations. The motivational processes that underlie psychological blame suggest that judgments of legal blame are influenced by factors the law does not always explicitly recognize or encourage. In this Article we focus on two highly related motivational processes – the desire to …

Rethinking Parental Incarceration, Sarah Abramowicz

Law Faculty Research Publications

Recent changes in sentencing law, in the wake of cases interpreting Blakely v. Washington and United States v. Booker, have raised the possibility that courts sentencing parents may take children's interests into account more extensively than had previously been permissible. Now is thus an opportune time to reevaluate the merits of considering children's interests when sentencing parents. This Article uses the perspective of family law to offer a new rationale for, and a new approach to, taking children's interests into account when sentencing their parents. It does so by bringing out the connection between the debate over parental incarceration and …

Modal Retributivism: A Theory Of Sanctions For Attempts And Other Criminal Wrongs, Anthony M. Dillof

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Building The International Criminal Court, Anita Usacka

Global Business & Development Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Controlling Sexually Violent Predators: Continued Incarceration At What Cost?, Tamara Rice Lave

Articles

Sexually violent predator (SVP) laws are inherently suspicious because they continue to incarcerate people not because of what they have done, but because of what they might do. I focus on three major criticisms of the laws. First, I use recent recidivism data to challenge the core motivation for the SVP laws-that sex offenders are monsters who cannot control themselves. Second, I situate the laws theoretically as examples of what Feeley and Simon call the "new penology." I argue that the SVP laws show the limited promise of the new penology—that we can use science to predict risk accurately--because the …

Megan's Laws As A Case Study In Political Stasis, Wayne A. Logan

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Police Mistakes Of Law, Wayne A. Logan

Scholarly Publications

This Article addresses something that most Americans would consider a constitutional impossibility: police officers stopping or arresting individuals for lawful behavior and courts deeming such seizures reasonable for Fourth Amendment purposes, thereby precluding application of the exclusionary rule. Today, however, an increasing number of courts condone seizures based on what they consider “reasonable” police mistakes of law, typically concerning petty offenses, and permit evidence secured as a result to support prosecutions for unrelated, more serious offenses (usually relating to guns or drugs). The Article surveys the important rule-of-law, separation-of-powers, and legislative-accountability reasons supporting continued judicial adherence to the historic no-excuse …

She Blinded Me With Science: Wrongful Convictions And The "Reverse Csi-Effect", Mark A. Godsey

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Prosecutors in the United States are often heard to complain these days of the "CSI-effect.'' Jurors today, the theory goes, have become spoiled as a result of the proliferation of these "high-tech" forensic shows, and now unrealistically expect conclusive scientific proof of guilt before they will convict. What I have come to notice, however, is a different kind a reverberation from the CSI-type shows that I believe often hurts defendants and benefits the prosecution. While not reported or discussed in the popular media as is the "CSI Effect," the other side of the coin, which I will call the "Reverse …

Engendering Injustice: Drug Laws, Drug Economies, And The Marginalization Of Women In New York State, Kate Mcgee

American Studies Senior Theses

On November 8, 1983, Elaine Bartlett left her apartment in Harlem, and headed to Grand Central Station. There, she met her boyfriend, Nate. They were headed to the Monte Mario Hotel in Albany. To any bystander, they may have looked like any other couple. But Elaine Bartlett knew different. That’s because she had a four-ounce bag of cocaine stuffed down the front of her pants. In 1983, Bartlett was a twenty-six year old woman with four children. A male friend, George Deets—although she knew him as Chris at the time—told her that if she delivered the drugs, she could earn …

Coercive Plea Bargaining: The Unrecognized Scourge Of The Justice System, H. Mitchell Caldwell

Catholic University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Experiential Future Of The Law, Adam Kolber

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Limited Diagnosticity Of Criminal Trials, Dan Simon

Vanderbilt Law Review

Few political institutions play as palpable, ubiquitous, and solemn a role in the U.S. public life as the criminal justice system. The task of determining the defendant's criminal liability with a high degree of certitude is performed through the ritualized and highly proceduralized adjudicative process, with the trial at its core. The United States Supreme Court has portrayed the criminal trial as a "decisive and portentous" and "paramount" event. Trials are considered "the central institution of law as we know it," the "crown jewel" of the legal system. Amidst its multiple purposes, an essential objective of the criminal trial is …

The Gender Jurisprudence Of The Special Court For Sierra Leone: Progress In The Revolutionary United Front Judgments, Valerie Oosterveld

Law Publications

No abstract provided.

Atrocity Crimes Litigation Year-In- Review (2010): A Gender Perspective, Valerie Oosterveld

Law Publications

No abstract provided.

Correlates And Consequences Of Pre-Incarceration Gang Involvement Among Incarcerated Youthful Felons, Sean P. Varano, Beth M. Huebner, Timothy S. Bynum

Justice Studies Faculty Publications

Objective: The primary aim of the study is to document the prevalence and variation in types of pre-incarceration gang membership among a sample of incarcerated felons. The second goal is to consider if and how pre-incarceration gang involvement affects institutional behavior. Materials and Methods: This study builds on the existing literature by considering if and how different types of pre-incarceration gang involvement effect prison misconduct. This relationship is examined while controlling for attitudinal measures and pre-prison social characteristics that may condition entrance into gangs and involvement in serious prison misconduct. The study includes a sample of 504 youthful adults incarcerated …

Building A Child Welfare Response To Child Trafficking Handbook (2011), Katherine Kaufka Walts Jd, Shelby French Msw, Msc, Heather Moore Msw, Sehla Ashai Jd

Center for the Human Rights of Children

In 2007, the International Organization for Adolescents (IOFA), under the leadership of Katherine Kaufka Walts the then Executive Director, developed and launched the Building Child Welfare Response to Child Trafficking project. The purpose of this project is to build the capacity of child welfare agencies and service providers to identify and respond to this often invisible and underserved population. The primary goals are to ensure that children are correctly identified as trafficked persons and that they receive the appropriate protections and referrals to specialized services to which they are entitled under federal and state laws. This project, supported by funding …

Annual Juvenile Recidivism Report, Becky Noréus

Justice Policy

Executive Summary:

The Maine Department of Corrections (MDOC) Division of Juvenile Services (DJS) contracts with the Muskie School of Public Service in a state-university partnership to analyze juvenile recidivism rates. DJS measures juvenile justice outcomes to guide policy and program development geared toward recidivism reduction. Reduction of youth recidivism in Maine increases public safety.

Recidivism in this report is defined as a re-adjudication (juvenile) or conviction (adult) for an offense committed by a youth in Maine within three years of his or her first adjudication. This report measures DJS impact on youth who have been adjudicated and placed under supervision …

The U.S. Supreme Court Gets It Right In Arizona V. Gant: Justifications For Rules Protect Constitutional Rights, Shenequa L. Grey

St. Thomas Law Review

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how the justifications or rationales for legal principles form the basis for compliance with the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution; and that therefore, failure to comply with those justifications leads to unconstitutional searches and seizures. Strict compliance with the underlying justifications prevents the courts from circumventing the Constitution by establishing a rule, then expanding it beyond its intended purpose. This article demonstrates and reiterates that compliance with the underlying justifications for establishing rules is essential to protecting individual constitutional rights. In addressing these issues, Part I of this article gives …

From Sounds Bites To Sound Policy: Reclaiming The High Ground In Criminal Justice Policy-Making, Anthony C. Thompson

Fordham Urban Law Journal

In this article, the author contemplates the way the criminal justice system is portrayed in the media and suggests how the media's emphasis on "sound bites" - which makes it difficult to separate fact from hype - has had significant policy ramifications. The author makes a point of exploring the many ways that conceptions of crime are formed and influenced, as well as how the media has shaped legislation. In the author's opinion, in order to curb the excessive influence of most mainstream representations of the criminal justice system, there must be some mechanism for oversight of both the media …