Criminal Law Commons^™

Coordinating Community Reintegration Services For “Deportable Alien” Defendants: A Moral And Financial Imperative, Amy F. Kimpel

Florida Law Review

Recidivism rates for individuals who are convicted of illegal entry and re-entry (U.S.C. §§ 1325 and 1326) are quite high despite post-sentencing deportations. The “holistic defense” model developed in New York City at the Neighborhood Defender Services and Bronx Defenders has been instrumental in achieving better outcomes for criminal defendants and their communities, in large part due to an emphasis on re-entry or reintegration services for defendants being released from incarceration. However, that model is difficult to implement when applied to noncitizen defendants who are to be deported. This Article argues that some attention to re-entry services for deportable non-citizen …

Taming Self-Defense: Using Deadly Force To Prevent Escapes, Robert Leider

Florida Law Review

The modern fleeing felon rule permits police officers to use deadly force when necessary to prevent the escape of a person who has committed a violent felony. To justify this rule, the Supreme Court has relied on self-defense and defense of others. This Article argues against the self-defense justification. Fleeing felons—even those suspected of violent crimes—are not imminent threats to others solely by virtue of their flight. Stretching self-defense doctrine to justify the fleeing felon rule undermines critical limitations on private self-defense and has not produced an effective set of rules to limit police violence.

This Article further argues that …

Does Bitcoin Use Affect Crime Rates?, Kevin Keane

The Corinthian

Bitcoin is the most widely used cryptocurrency in the world because of its decentralized network that completes user-to-user transactions, eliminating the need for intermediaries. During 2017, the volume of Bitcoin transactions totaled $94.3 trillion. Bitcoin transactions are recorded in a public database called the blockchain. Although the blockchain can keep track of how many transactions there are, it can’t identify the people involved in transactions. The lack of identity increases the anonymity of Bitcoin transactions, making it less detectable when used for crime. Using the Uniform Crime Reporting’s state-level crime rate data and blockchain’s Bitcoin transaction information, I estimate the …

Going Rogue: Independent Grand Juries Throughout America, Nino Monea

Maine Law Review

Grand juries today do little more than passively approve (almost never disapprove) indictments proposed by prosecutors. But this stands in stark contrast to grand juries in the past. They investigated cases themselves and their purview went well beyond criminal matters. This Article looks in-depth at three historical cases where grand juries not only conducted major investigations but took on major additional roles. They ousted corrupt public officials, ran their cities in the interim, or booted prosecutors that failed to do their jobs. These examples demonstrate that grand juries in modern society could have a more robust role in the justice …

Combating Environmental Pollution - A Study Of The Legislation Of The United Arab Emirates, Dr. Emadeldin Mohamed Kammel Abdulhamed

Faculty Peer-Reviewed Papers | بحوث هيئة التدريس المحكمة

The problem of environmental pollution is one of the most important problems that plague most countries of the world, especially in light of the feverish race by those countries to obtain scientific, industrial and technological progress, and information and communication technology, and the consequent adverse effects on the elements of the natural and industrial environment alike. And the belief that a pollution - free environmental environment is impossible to achieve, especially as the elements of the environment are intertwined with soil, water and air. Any pollution of any element that extends easily to the rest of the elements may even …

Forecasting Crime? Algorithmic Prediction And The Doctrine Of Police Entrapment, Mathew Zaia

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

As the Commissioners of Police in mid-19th century England illustrate above, the prevention of crime is an inherent function of public policing. To carry out their function of detecting and combating crime, police frequently endeavour to locate and use new tools enabling them to pre-empt criminal activity.2 Many conceptual policing models that drive law enforcement’s focus have been highlighted in scholarly literature: community, problem-oriented, CompStat- driven (short for computer statistics), harm-focused, and order maintenance policing. Developments in modern technology provide additional tools, allowing police forces to delve deeper into suspects’ behaviour and uncover previously unknown patterns of information. Such developments …

Criminal Trespass And Computer Crime, Laurent Sacharoff

William & Mary Law Review

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) criminalizes the simple act of trespass upon a computer—intentional access without authorization. The law sweeps too broadly, but the courts and scholars seeking to fix it look in the wrong place. They uniformly focus on the term “without authorization” when instead they should focus on the statute’s mens rea. On a conceptual level, courts and scholars understand that the CFAA is a criminal law, of course, but fail to interpret it comprehensively as one.

This Article begins the first sustained treatment of the CFAA as a criminal law, with a full elaboration of …

Dispute Settlement Under The African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement: A Preliminary Assessment, Olabisi D. Akinkugbe

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement (AfCFTA) will add a new dispute settlement system to the plethora of judicial mechanisms designed to resolve trade disputes in Africa. Against the discontent of Member States and limited impact the existing highly legalized trade dispute settlement mechanisms have had on regional economic integration in Africa, this paper undertakes a preliminary assessment of the AfCFTA Dispute Settlement Mechanism (DSM). In particular, the paper situates the AfCFTA-DSM in the overall discontent and unsupportive practices of African States with highly legalized dispute settlement systems and similar WTO-Styled DSMs among other shortcomings. Notwithstanding the transplantation of …

Structural Sensor Surveillance, Andrew Guthrie Ferguson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

City infrastructure is getting smarter. Embedded smart sensors in roads, lampposts, and electrical grids offer the government a way to regulate municipal resources and the police a new power to monitor citizens. This structural sensor surveillance, however, raises a difficult constitutional question: Does the creation of continuously-recording, aggregated, long-term data collection systems violate the Fourth Amendment? After all, recent Supreme Court cases suggest that technologies that allow police to monitor location, reveal personal patterns, and track personal details for long periods of time are Fourth Amendment searches which require a probable cause warrant. This Article uses the innovation of smart …

The Case Against Prosecuting Refugees, Evan J. Criddle

Faculty Publications

Within the past several years, the U.S. Department of Justice has pledged to prosecute asylum-seekers who enter the United States outside an official port of entry without inspection. This practice has contributed to mass incarceration and family separation at the U.S.–Mexico border, and it has prevented bona fide refugees from accessing relief in immigration court. Yet, federal judges have taken refugee prosecution in stride, assuming that refugees, like other foreign migrants, are subject to the full force of American criminal justice if they skirt domestic border controls. This assumption is gravely mistaken.

This Article shows that Congress has not authorized …

Equal Protection Under Algorithms: A New Statistical And Legal Framework, Crystal S. Yang, Will Dobbie

Michigan Law Review

In this Article, we provide a new statistical and legal framework to understand the legality and fairness of predictive algorithms under the Equal Protection Clause. We begin by reviewing the main legal concerns regarding the use of protected characteristics such as race and the correlates of protected characteristics such as criminal history. The use of race and nonrace correlates in predictive algorithms generates direct and proxy effects of race, respectively, that can lead to racial disparities that many view as unwarranted and discriminatory. These effects have led to the mainstream legal consensus that the use of race and nonrace correlates …

Possible Reliance: Protecting Legally Innocent Johnson Claimants, Keagan Potts

Michigan Law Review

The writ of habeas corpus presents the last chance for innocent defendants to obtain relief from invalid convictions and sentences. The writ constitutes a limited exception to the finality of judgments. Given the role finality plays in conserving judicial resources and deterring criminal conduct, exceptions created by habeas must be principally circumscribed. Since the Supreme Court’s invalidation of the Armed Career Criminal Act’s residual clause in Johnson v. United States, the federal courts of appeals have attempted to develop a test that protects the writ from abuse by Johnson claimants.

This Note first contributes a new understanding of the …

The Due Process Of Bail, Jenny E. Carroll

Faculty Scholarship

The Due Process Clause is a central tenet of criminal law’s constitutional canon. Yet defining precisely what process is due a defendant is a deceptively complex proposition. Nowhere is this more true than in the context of pretrial detention, where the Court has relied on due process safeguards to preserve the constitutionality of bail provisions. This Essay considers the lay of the bail due process landscape through the lens of the district court’s opinion in O’Donnell v. Harris County and the often convoluted historical description of pretrial due process. Even as the O’Donnell court failed to characterize pretrial process as …

Incorporating Social Science Into Criminal Defense Practice, Eve Brensike Primus

Articles

In recent decades, social scientists have created a treasure trove of empirical and sociological data that defenders can and should use to help their clients. Evidence rules, criminal law, and criminal procedure are filled with concepts informed by social science. When is evidence likely to unfairly prejudice a defendant in the eyes of a jury? Do police interact differently with members of minority populations and how should that inform concepts of reasonableness? How easy or difficult is it for people to identify individuals they see during high-stress criminal episodes? How effective are police interrogation tactics at getting at the truth …

Big Brother Is Watching: Law Enforcement's Use Of Digital Technology In The Twenty-First Century, Samuel D. Hodge Jr.

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

Looking Back, Looking Forward: Women In Criminal Justice Task Force, Maryam Ahranjani

Faculty Scholarship

Since the Criminal Justice Section’s Women in Criminal Justice Task Force launched in November 2018, we have heard from women in criminal law around the country about their experiences with (1) hiring, (2) retention, and (3) promotion of women in criminal justice. We set many goals for ourselves, including hosting listening sessions, publishing columns, and collecting data, and we are proud of all we have accomplished over the past nearly two years.

Government Tweets, Government Speech: The First Amendment Implications Of Government Trolling, Douglas B. Mckechnie

Seattle University Law Review

President Trump has been accused of using @realDonaldTrump to troll his critics. While the President’s tweets are often attributed to his personal views, they raise important Constitutional questions. This article posits that @realDonaldTrump tweets are government speech and, where they troll government critics, they violate the Free Speech Clause. I begin the article with an exploration of President Trump’s use of @realDonaldTrump from his time as a private citizen to President. The article then chronicles the development of the government speech doctrine and the Supreme Court’s factors that differentiate private speech from government speech. I argue that, based on the …

The Weaponization Of The “Alien Harboring” Statute In A New-Era Of Racial Animus Towards Immigrants, Hannah Hamley

Seattle University Law Review

Federal law 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(1)(A)(iii), commonly referred to as the “Alien Harboring” statute, was passed sixty-eight years ago and has been used as a weapon against immigrants and their allies. Spanning back decades, numerous scholars, alarmed by the dangerous use of the statute, have written about its muddled congressional intent and the unclear definition of “harboring.” These issues continue to be relevant and are foundational concerns with the enforcement of the harboring statute. However, in the era of President Donald J. Trump, we are faced with a new danger. We are confronted with an Administration that is ferociously anti-immigrant …

Justice Sonia Sotomayor: The Court’S Premier Defender Of The Fourth Amendment, David L. Hudson Jr.

Seattle University Law Review

This essay posits that Justice Sotomayor is the Court’s chief defender of the Fourth Amendment and the cherished values it protects. She has consistently defended Fourth Amendment freedoms—in majority, concurring, and especially in dissenting opinions. Part I recounts a few of her majority opinions in Fourth Amendment cases. Part II examines her concurring opinion in United States v. Jones. Part III examines several of her dissenting opinions in Fourth Amendment cases. A review of these opinions demonstrates what should be clear to any observer of the Supreme Court: Justice Sotomayor consistently defends Fourth Amendment principles and values.

“Don’T Move”: Redefining “Physical Restraint” In Light Of A United States Circuit Court Divide, Julia Knitter

Seattle University Law Review

To reduce sentencing disparities and clarify the application of the sentencing guide to the physical restraint enhancement for a robbery conviction, this Comment argues that the United States Sentencing Commission (USSC) must amend the USSC Guidelines Manual to provide federal courts with a clearer and more concise definition of physical restraint. Additionally, although there are many state-level sentencing systems throughout the United States, this Comment only focuses on the federal sentencing guidelines for robbery because of the disparate way in which these guidelines are applied from circuit to circuit.

Enough Is As Good As A Feast, Noah C. Chauvin

Seattle University Law Review

Ipse Dixit, the podcast on legal scholarship, provides a valuable service to the legal community and particularly to the legal academy. The podcast’s hosts skillfully interview guests about their legal and law-related scholarship, helping those guests communicate their ideas clearly and concisely. In this review essay, I argue that Ipse Dixit has made a major contribution to legal scholarship by demonstrating in its interview episodes that law review articles are neither the only nor the best way of communicating scholarly ideas. This contribution should be considered “scholarship,” because one of the primary goals of scholarship is to communicate new ideas.

Defending Bridgegate, George D. Brown

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

The Supreme Court’s decision in the “Bridgegate” controversy has been the subject of intense debate. It has received strong support. However, some critics assail the decision as representative of a pattern of recent cases in which the Court has shown itself as indifferent to political corruption, if not supportive of it. Somewhat lost in the discussion is the decision’s potential to be the foundation for a seismic re-alignment of anti-corruption enforcement in the United States. The current model—with federal prosecution as the norm—is not cast in stone.

An Evolution Of Legal Rights For Guantanamo Bay Detainees: Habeas Corpus In The 21st Century, Jennifer Hirst

Student Theses

Guantanamo Bay, resting under United States’ jurisdiction since the early 20th century, has infamously stood as the symbol for where alleged terrorists and constitutional protections disappear. However, between the years of 2004 – 2008, the United States Supreme Court ruled on four landmark cases, gradually providing Guantanamo Bay detainees constitutional protections and access to the writ of habeas corpus – allowing detainees for the first time to challenge the legalities behind their detentions. Subsequently, judicial and executive powers have continuously contested one another, as Supreme Court rulings and documents released by the Bush Administration have intentionally aimed to minimize the …

Analysis Of Criminal Law Literature A Bibliometric Study From 2010-2019, Jibran Jamshed Mr., Salman Naeem Dr., Khurshid Ahmad

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The purpose of this research paper is to present a quantitative analysis of the Criminal Law Literature published from 2010 to 2019.

Design/Methodology: The Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) Web of Science database was used as a source for extracting the data of published documents during the period 2010-2019. The analysis of the published literature was based on the following indicators: research productivity of each country, annual publications, annual citations, highly cited articles, highly cited law journals, most productive institutions in the field of criminal law, and most prolific authors. Research articles, conference proceeding papers, book reviews and editorials …

Determining The Perspective Of A Reasonable Police Officer: An Evidence-Based Proposal, Mitch Zamoff

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission’S Recidivism Studies: Myopic, Misleading, And Doubling Down On Imprisonment, Nora V. Demleitner

Scholarly Articles

Recidivism has now replaced rehabilitation as the guiding principle of punishment. It is increasingly used to steer criminal justice policy despite research limitations. It serves as a stand-in for public safety, even though lengthy incarceration may have criminogenic and other negative ramifications for family members and communities. Yet the U.S. Sentencing Commission emphasizes recidivism. It emphasizes what amounts to preemptive imprisonment for those with long criminal records to prevent future offending.

The Commission’s work should come with a warning label. First, its recidivism studies should not be consumed on their own. Instead they must be read in conjunction with U.S. …

Crisis And Coercive Pleas, Thea Johnson

JCLC Online

No abstract provided.

Criminalizing Match-Fixing As America Legalized Sports Gambling, Jodi Balsam

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Sick Deal: Injustice And Plea Bargaining During Covid-19, Ryan T. Cannon

JCLC Online

No abstract provided.

The Opportunity In Crisis: How 2020'S Challenges Present New Opportunities For Prosecutors, Chesa Boudin

JCLC Online

No abstract provided.