Criminal Law Commons^™

A Perfect Storm: New Mexico As A Case Study For Driving While Intoxicated And Driving Under The Influence Investigation And Persecution Post-Birchfield, Cynthia Armijo

Criminal Law Practitioner

No abstract provided.

How Defendant Characteristics Affect Sentencing And Conviction In The Us, Payton Kuenzli

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This research study analyzes whether or not there is any relationship between sentencing and conviction and certain defendant characteristics in the US legal system. In the midst of a time where the nation is strongly divided politically, the topic is often the center of research projects and discussions in academic journals. Specifically, this research explores the 3 characteristics- race, gender, and socioeconomic status. Within this article, multiple case studies from other journals are cited in which research and experiments have suggested that these factors do have influence on both whether or not a defendant gets convicted or for how long …

"The Way I Felt": Creating A Model Statute To Address Sexual Offenses Which Utilize Virtual Reality, Ryan Esparza

Criminal Law Practitioner

No abstract provided.

From Criminals To Survivors: Recognizing Domestic Sex Trafficking As Violence Against Women In The District Of Columbia, Alice Mutter

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

A Parent’S Final Sacrifice: Self-Incrimination In Failure To Protect Cases, 51 J. Marshall L. Rev. 377 (2018), Maggie Butzen

UIC Law Review

When criminal proceedings commence, the passive parent is forced to choose the lesser of two evils: testify and risk self-incrimination or guard their constitutional right and risk the person who abused them and their child going free.The passive parent exists at a crossroads: defendant, parent, and victim. The main purpose of this Comment is to analyze this crossroads under a Fifth Amendment lens and propose a workable solution to allow these passive parents a way to better navigate these “two evils.” To be clear: this Comment’s purpose is not to assert whether a passive parent should be held culpable for …

From The Italian Mafia To Suppressing Societal Challenges: The Evolution Of Federal Criminal Rico And The Constitutional Objections Against It, 51 J. Marshall L. Rev. 647 (2018), Bianca Ciarroni

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Justice For Victims Of Sex Trafficking: Why Current Illinois Efforts Aren’T Enough, 51 J. Marshall L. Rev. 715 (2018), Rachael Derham

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Safety In Post-Conviction Proceedings, 51 J. Marshall L. Rev. 773 (2018), Boaz Sangero

UIC Law Review

It is extremely difficult to correct an error after conviction.Given the Hidden Accidents Principle in criminal law, it is very hard to uncover mistakes and even harder to prove them. Time is one of the greatest enemies of reconstructing the truth. Evidence gets lost, potential witnesses forget, move away, or die. The legal rules, including the finality of verdicts rule, hinder the rectification of miscarriages of justice. Another factor is that once the indictment has been made, the police usually close their investigation. Even when the appellate court finds a defect in the original trial proceedings, it will most likely …

Illinois’S Class X: One Unhappy Twenty-First Birthday, A Race For A Conviction To Avoid Mandatory Sentencing Enhancements, 51 J. Marshall L. Rev. 905 (2018), Mariela Guzman

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Forensic Analysis Of Pulmonary Embolism And Its Missing Link: Causation, William Price

Dissertations and Honors Papers

This paper explores the use of forensics outside of the criminal context, specifically in regard to pulmonary emboli. This paper will analyze what pulmonary embolism are, how they interact with the rest of the body, what causes them, and the legal considerations that arise because of them. Pulmonary embolism is common and deadly, making them a subject in a vast amount of medical malpractice litigation. This paper aims to educate the public and attorneys as to how this condition can be prevented and how to prove pulmonary embolism in civil suits regarding claims of malpractice.

Police Ignorance And Mistake Of Law Under The Fourth Amendment, Eang L. Ngov

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

"Declinations With Disgorgement" In Fcpa Enforcement, Karen Woody

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article addresses the recent pretrial diversion scheme undertaken by the Department of Justice in conjunction with its Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Pilot Program—specifically, “declinations with disgorgement.” Pursuant to the Pilot Program, the Department of Justice declined to prosecute or even continue an investigation, provided the company disgorge its alleged ill-gotten gains. This Article dissects both the purpose of, and terminology used in, declinations with disgorgement and argues that this novel and creative pretrial diversion is a dangerous conflation of legal remedial theories and terms. A criminal disposition cannot be a declination with attendant penalties because either illegal activity occurred …

What Kind Of Judge Is Brett Kavanaugh?, Elliott Ash, Daniel L. Chen

Cardozo Law Review de•novo

This article reports the results of a series of data analyses of how recent Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh compares to other potential Supreme Court nominees and current Supreme Court Justices in his judging style. The analyses reveal a number of ways in which Judge Kavanaugh differs systematically from his colleagues. First, Kavanaugh dissents and is dissented against along partisan lines. More than other Judges and Justices, Kavanaugh dissents at a higher rate during the lead-up to elections, suggesting that he feels personally invested in national politics. Far more often than his colleagues, he justifies his decisions with conservative doctrines, …

Capital-Sentencing Law And The New Conservative Court, Scott W. Howe

Cardozo Law Review de•novo

With the Supreme Court now dominated by a solidly conservative majority, recent, well-grounded hopes for prompt judicial abolition of the death penalty have vanished. Furthermore, existing Eighth Amendment doctrines that limit the death penalty could be in jeopardy. Historically, many advocates for abolition have criticized these doctrines. They claim that the Eighth Amendment prohibition on Cruel and Unusual Punishments requires “consistency” in capital selection and that current capital-sentencing doctrines do not satisfy—and sometimes conflict with— this requirement. However, these advocates failed to anticipate the need to defend these doctrines should judicial abolition become an impossibility and the rolling-back of current …

Radical Feminist Harms On Sex Workers, I. India Thusi

Faculty Scholarship

Sex work has long been a site for contesting womanhood, sexuality, race, and patriarchy. Its very existence forces us to examine how we think about two very dirty subjects-money and sex. The radical feminist literature highlights the problems with sex work and often describes it as a form of "human trafficking" and violence against women. This influential philosophy underlies much of the work in human trafficking courts, was evident in a letter signed by several Hollywood starlets in opposition to Amnesty International's support for decriminalization, and is the premise of several movies and documentaries about "sex slavery." Radical feminists aim …

Rethinking The Boundaries Of "Criminal Justice", Benjamin Levin

Publications

This review of The New Criminal Justice Thinking (Sharon Dolovich & Alexandra Natapoff, eds.) tracks the shifting and uncertain contours of “criminal justice” as an object of study and critique.

Specifically, I trace two themes in the book:

(1) the uncertain boundaries of the “criminal justice system” as a web of laws, actors, and institutions; and

(2) the uncertain boundaries of “criminal justice thinking” as a universe of interdisciplinary scholarship, policy discourse, and public engagement.

I argue that these two themes speak to critically important questions about the nature of criminal justice scholarship and reform efforts. Without a firm understanding …

Criminal Juries In The 21st Century: A Case-Study Introduction To Contemporary Issues, Margaret C. Stevenson, Cynthia J. Najdowski

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

In this introductory chapter, we provide an overview of the goals of the present volume and a preview of the individual chapters herein. Specifically, we review research on various understudied and cutting-edge topics related to the intersection of psychological research and criminal jury decision making. This research is placed in the real-world context by relating it to actual criminal cases that exemplify each topic addressed in the volume. A common theme reflected throughout the chapter is an emphasis on understanding how current issues related to societal attitudinal shifts, technological advances, and juror experiences affect the structure, function, and performance of …

Justice Outside Of Criminal Courtrooms And Jailhouses, In Arcs Of Global Justice: Essays In Honour Of William A. Schabas (Margaret M. Deguzman & Diane Marie Amann Eds., 2018), Mark A. Drumbl

Books and Chapters

This chapter examines alternate forms of transitional justice, notably, customary forms of dispute resolution, restitution, reparations, amnesties, and civil sanctions. It suggests that the international community’s preference for criminal trials as accountability mechanisms in the aftermath of genocide results in the ‘othering’ of these alternate forms of justice. Such ‘othering’ narrows legal pluralism to questions of the location of criminal process and the imposition of custodial punishment (who prosecutes, who sentences?), rather than a richer examination of how deployment of a conceptual diversity of overlapping mechanisms could promote shared objectives of accountability, justice, and transition.

Innovating Criminal Justice, Natalie Ram

All Faculty Scholarship

From secret stingray devices that can pinpoint a suspect’s location, to advanced forensic DNA-analysis tools, to recidivism risk statistic software—the use of privately developed criminal justice technologies is growing. So too is a concomitant pattern of trade secret assertion surrounding these technologies. This Article charts the role of private law secrecy in shielding criminal justice activities, demonstrating that such secrecy is pervasive, problematic, and ultimately unnecessary for the production of well-designed criminal justice tools. This Article makes three contributions to the existing literature. First, the Article establishes that trade secrecy now permeates American criminal justice, shielding privately developed criminal justice …

State Of Tennessee V. Kevin E. Trent, Ben Raybin, Juliana Lamar

Belmont Criminal Law Journal

Student comments on the Tennessee Supreme Court decision “State of Tennessee v. Kevin E. Trent”. The central holding vacating the sentence in this case did not establish a new doctrine of law but merely reiterated the holding in Travis that the essential elements of the offense alone cannot justify denial of probation in a probation-eligible offense. The Trent decision should be viewed by trial judges and practitioners primarily as a reminder of that principal. On the other hand, the court broke some new ground in appellate review. Prior decisions established that appellate courts can only uphold a sentence if the …

The Gap Between Martinez And Davila: Serving The Next Generation Of Federal Habeas Corpus Cases, Lexie Ward

Belmont Criminal Law Journal

During the summer of 2017, the United States Supreme Court announced a decision in Davis v. Davila, which bars substantial claims of ineffective assistance of appellate counsel that have been procedurally defaulted. However, despite the merits of limiting the number of cases which were not diligently pursued by an inmate, the Court states its conclusion too broadly and now effectively bars a prisoner from bringing claims of significant trial error in front of any court. A prisoner’s claim that was not available until a trial-level appeal, and was then avoided due to ineffective post-conviction counsel, may now be dodged by …

Policing The Prosecutor: Race, The Fourth Amendment, And The Prosecution Of Criminal Cases, Renee Mcdonald Hutchins

Journal Articles

As this article explores, while the Fourth Amendment is commonly criticized for the discretion it affords police officers, an overlooked result of the amendment’s lax regulation of the police is the enhanced power it affords prosecutors. Though for a time a warrant was the notional measure of reasonableness, over the last century the Court has crafted several exceptions to that measure to give the police greater leeway during on-the-street encounters. The Court has concurrently retreated from robust application of the exclusionary rule to remedy constitutional violations. These shifts have meant far more predictable wins for the prosecution at the suppression …

Remedial Reading: Evaluating Federal Courts’ Application Of The Prejudice Standard In Capital Sentences From “Weighing” And “Non-Weighing” States, Sarah Gerwig-Moore

Articles

On March 31, 2016, the State of Georgia executed my client, Joshua Bishop. Until the time of his execution, several successive legal teams challenged his conviction and sentence through the usual channels: direct appeal, state habeas corpus proceedings, and federal habeas corpus proceedings. The last hearing on the merits of his case was before a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, which accepts appeals from death penalty cases out of Georgia, Florida, and Alabama. In a lengthy opinion describing the many mitigating circumstances present in Mr. Bishop’s case, the Eleventh Circuit denied relief. This …

Criminal Procedure, The Police, And The Wire As Dissent, I. Bennett Capers

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Criminalizing Battered Mothers, Courtney Cross

Scholarly Works

How a domestic violence survivor responds to the abuse she is experiencing depends on many factors. Some critical considerations include her access to resources, desire to stay in her relationship, and assessment of her own safety. Criminal and civil court systems place enormous pressure on survivors to separate from their abusive partners. Not only are survivors with children pressured to leave, they are punished when they stay. That punishment can come in any combination of diminished custody rights, limited parental rights, and incarceration. Yet a survivor who flees with her children is not immune to these same consequences: if she …

Game Of Drones: Rolling The Dice With Unmanned Aerial Vehicles And Privacy, Rebecca L. Scharf

Scholarly Works

This Article offers a practical three-part test for courts and law enforcement to utilize when faced with drone and privacy issues. Specifically addressing the question: how should courts analyze the Fourth Amendment’s protection against ‘unreasonable searches’ in the context of drones?

The Supreme Court’s Fourth Amendment jurisprudence produced an intricate framework to address issues arising out of the intersection of technology and privacy interests. In prominent decisions, including United States v. Katz, California v. Ciraolo, Kyllo v. United States, and most notably, United States v. Jones, the Court focused on whether the use of a single …

Fairness Over Finality: Peña-Rodriguez V. Colorado And The Right To An Impartial Jury, Katherine Brosamle

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

No abstract provided.

Police, Heroes, And Child Trafficking: Who Cries When Her Attacker Wears Blue?, 18 Nev. L.J. 1007 (2018), Samuel Vincent Jones

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Criminalizing (Poor) Fatherhood, Cortney E. Lollar

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

States prosecute and incarcerate thousands of fathers every year for failing to pay their child support obligations. Ostensibly, these prosecutions aim to foster the health and well-being of children without requiring the child’s mother to bear the costs of raising the child alone. What may appear on the surface to be a system that balances out inequities is actually a deeply flawed government program—one that promotes criminal recidivism and reinforces the poverty of indigent fathers. Contrary to the common image of a “deadbeat dad” raking in money and staying on the lam to avoid helping a mother raise their child, …

Prosecutors Matter: A Response To Bellin’S Review Of Locked In, John P. Pfaff

Michigan Law Review Online

In this year's Book Review issue, Jeffrey Bellin reviews my book, Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform, and he finds much to disagree with. I appreciate the editors of the Law Review providing me with the opportunity to correct a significant error he makes when discussing some of my data. In the book, I use data from the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) to show that prosecutors filed increasingly more felony cases over the 1990s and 2000s, even as crime fell. Bellin makes two primary claims about how I used …