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Full-Text Articles in Criminal Law

Comity Of Errors: When Federal Sentencing Guidelines Ignore State Law Decriminalizing Sentences, Hon. James A. Shapiro Jun 2015

Comity Of Errors: When Federal Sentencing Guidelines Ignore State Law Decriminalizing Sentences, Hon. James A. Shapiro

Akron Law Review

The Guidelines’ policy behind counting most diversionary dispositions as if they were criminal convictions is that “defendants who receive the benefit of a rehabilitative sentence and continue to commit crimes should not be treated with further leniency.”15 However, it is not “further leniency” to treat a state diversionary disposition in a way that state statutes say they should not be treated, thereby ratcheting up a federal defendant’s sentence. “Further leniency” would be to give a federal defendant another diversionary disposition for the federal crime. It is not principled for the Guidelines to undo the original leniency of the state diversionary …


Newsroom: Nason '05 Cited By U.S. Supreme Court, Roger Williams University School Of Law Jun 2015

Newsroom: Nason '05 Cited By U.S. Supreme Court, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.


License To Harass: Holding Defendants Accountable For Retaining Recidivist Harassers, Kerri Lynn Stone Jun 2015

License To Harass: Holding Defendants Accountable For Retaining Recidivist Harassers, Kerri Lynn Stone

Akron Law Review

This Article proposes that courts change the way in which they adjudicate Title VII disputes by evaluating the harm avoidance demonstrated by plaintiffs and employers in light of the totality of what each party knew or should have known about the potential harm, and what each party did or could have done to prevent it. Specifically, this Article is premised on the ideas that 1) harassment complaints are, typically, initially dealt with internally; often, an employer will remediate reported harassment by ordering or granting a transfer to separate a harasser and his victim; and 2) many harassers are, in fact …


An Analysis Of Thirty-Five Years Of Rape Reform: A Frustrating Search For Fundamental Fairness, Richard Klein Jun 2015

An Analysis Of Thirty-Five Years Of Rape Reform: A Frustrating Search For Fundamental Fairness, Richard Klein

Akron Law Review

This article will analyze the most significant changes in the manner in which individuals who are charged with the crime of rape are prosecuted for that offense. In the last thirty five years, there has been a steady erosion of the due process rights of those accused of rape. I have designated the first stage of “reforms,” which affected the arrest, pretrial, and trial phases of rape prosecutions, as the First Wave of rape reform. The Second Wave are the more recent changes in the law that have focused on measures, such as sexual registry or civil commitment statutes, that …


After Rape Law: Will The Turn To Consent Normalize The Prosecution Of Sexual Assault?, Donald Dripps Jun 2015

After Rape Law: Will The Turn To Consent Normalize The Prosecution Of Sexual Assault?, Donald Dripps

Akron Law Review

This essay explores the new rape exceptionalism. My thesis holds that rape exceptionalism is rooted in a divide between elite opinion, reflected in statutes, court decisions, and academic commentary, and popular opinion, as reflected in jury verdicts. Elite opinion values sexual autonomy and suspects, when it does not despise, sexual aggression. Popular opinion supposes that sexual autonomy may be forfeited by female promiscuity or flirtation, and views male sexual aggression as natural, if not indeed admirable...pressions of consent,8 is an academic exercise. If we really want to normalize rape law, we must bypass the jury openly. We can’t conceal the …


Constructing Consent: Legislating Freedom And Legitimating Constraint In The Expression Of Sexual Autonomy, Vanessa E. Munro Jun 2015

Constructing Consent: Legislating Freedom And Legitimating Constraint In The Expression Of Sexual Autonomy, Vanessa E. Munro

Akron Law Review

In the first section, the nature and parameters of the conventional understanding of consent will be examined in more detail and the contemporary challenges that have been lodged against it – particularly from those influenced by structural, post-structural, and communitarian analyses – will be considered. With the terrain of these debates on consent – and related concepts such as autonomy, agency, and self-determination – in place, the second section of this article will focus specifically upon their implications in the context of sexual consent in general, and women’s sexual consent in particular. It will outline the development of the Sexual …


The Trouble With Drink: Intoxication, (In)Capacity, And The Evaporation Of Consent To Sex, Dr. Sharon Cowan Jun 2015

The Trouble With Drink: Intoxication, (In)Capacity, And The Evaporation Of Consent To Sex, Dr. Sharon Cowan

Akron Law Review

The paper explores the contemporary concerns surrounding issues of intoxicated consent in cases of rape, particularly as expressed in U.K. case law, statute, and government policy. During the course of this paper, I will examine recent research on the problematic role of alcohol in sexual assault before going on to discuss specific policy and legislative responses to the problem of intoxicated consent. I will also engage in a close reading of several recent rape cases in the U.K. in which the capacity of the intoxicated complainant to consent to sexual intimacy has been of central concern. The paper deals only …


Rethinking Affirmative Consent In Canadian Sexual Assault Law: Neoliberal Sexual Subjects And Risky Women, Lise Gotell Jun 2015

Rethinking Affirmative Consent In Canadian Sexual Assault Law: Neoliberal Sexual Subjects And Risky Women, Lise Gotell

Akron Law Review

While the struggle for affirmative consent is typically framed as a feminist law reform project, I contend that we need to understand the legal elaboration of a positive and explicit consent standard in relation to wider shifts in governance. The second section of this article explores how the legal elaboration of affirmative consent in Canadian law might be seen as a specific expression of neoliberal governmentality, forging new normative sexual subjects who interact within a transactional sexual economy. In section three, I demonstrate how discourses of responsibilization and risk management inform recent Canadian sexual assault decisions, constituting the ideal victim …


Copulemus In Pace: A Meditation On Rape, Affirmative Consent To Sex, And Sexual Autonomy, Dan Subotnik Jun 2015

Copulemus In Pace: A Meditation On Rape, Affirmative Consent To Sex, And Sexual Autonomy, Dan Subotnik

Akron Law Review

Social change, to be sure, is not necessarily bad. But what if affirmative consent is not biologically or psychologically sound and, for that reason, women do not even desire it? Questioning the idea that increasing women’s power will be desirable even if not founded on the “the truth,” I ask: Can and should women — to say nothing of men — say “no” to affirmative consent? I examine this question in two parts. Part I evaluates the sexual environment today from which affirmative consent has arisen. Part II deals specifically with affirmative consent.


Rape, Affirmative Consent To Sex, And Sexual Autonomy: Introduction To The Symposium, Jane Campbell Moriarty Jun 2015

Rape, Affirmative Consent To Sex, And Sexual Autonomy: Introduction To The Symposium, Jane Campbell Moriarty

Akron Law Review

Introduction to the Symposium focusing on issues arising from determining when sex is the product of free choice, when it is the result of force, and the legal and philosophical implications arising from those issues. To introduce this Symposium, I first discuss the issues related to the crime of rape, the idea of sexual autonomy, and the concept of affirmative consent to sex. Then, I briefly summarize the symposium authors’ various approaches to these topics.


To Catch The Lion, Tether The Goat: Entrapment, Conspiracy, And Sentencing Manipulation, Derrick Augustus Carter Jun 2015

To Catch The Lion, Tether The Goat: Entrapment, Conspiracy, And Sentencing Manipulation, Derrick Augustus Carter

Akron Law Review

This article examines how sentencing enhancement schemes play into undercover operations and manipulation ploys. This article reviews entrapment doctrines, starting with the common law principles of unclean hands and estoppel, to settled principles of objective and subjective entrapment. Through principles of conspiracy, the undercover operation ensnares perpetrators who intend factually impossible crimes, as long as an overt step is taken. Sentencing enhancement crimes, induced by government agents, must be proven before a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. A reciprocal corollary is that the accused must be able to defend enhancement accusations through defenses such as sentencing manipulation and sentencing entrapment. …


Examining Crack Cocaine Sentencing In A Post-Kimbrough World, Michael B. Cassidy Jun 2015

Examining Crack Cocaine Sentencing In A Post-Kimbrough World, Michael B. Cassidy

Akron Law Review

This article examines Kimbrough’s effect on crack cocaine sentencing. Part I discusses the rise of crack cocaine use in the United States during the 1980s. Part II provides a short history on modern federal sentencing, including the Sentencing Reform Act, the Commission’s Guidelines, and its reports to Congress concerning the 100-to-1 ratio. Part III examines the Supreme Court’s recent Sixth Amendment jurisprudence through its seminal cases, Apprendi and Blakely. In Part IV, this article analyzes the Court’s Booker holding as well as Kimbrough and Gall v. United States, two cases that clarified Booker and its application to crack cocaine cases. …


Remarks: Neuroscience, Gender, And The Law, Stacey A. Tovino Jd, Phd Jun 2015

Remarks: Neuroscience, Gender, And The Law, Stacey A. Tovino Jd, Phd

Akron Law Review

n my recent research, I have been exploring the legal impact of advances in the neuroscience of gender, such as whether and how stakeholders are using recent studies finding structural and functional differences between male and female brains in an attempt to influence the law. I also have been examining whether and how stakeholders are using the neuroscience of both gender-specific and gender-prevalent health conditions to influence the interpretation of civil and regulatory health law. Today, I am going to explore how stakeholders are using advances in the neuroscience of three gender-specific and genderprevalent conditions (the postpartum mood disorders, premenstrual …


Black Boxes: Fmri Detection And The Role Of The Jury, Julie Seaman Jun 2015

Black Boxes: Fmri Detection And The Role Of The Jury, Julie Seaman

Akron Law Review

Before I offer some thoughts on that question, let me mention three real-life cases in which cutting-edge neuroscientific evidence either did – or conceivably might in a not-so-distant future – influence the outcome of a criminal prosecution. In the first case, reported last week in the New York Times, EEG brain-fingerprinting-type evidence was admitted against a woman on trial in India for murdering her husband. She was convicted. In the second case, in England recently, neuroscientists performed an fMRI lie-detection scan on a woman who had previously been convicted of poisoning a child in her care. She claimed that she …


Neuroscience And Juvenile Justice, Jay D. Aronson Jun 2015

Neuroscience And Juvenile Justice, Jay D. Aronson

Akron Law Review

Recent advances in the field of neuroscience, especially improved magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques, are providing scientists and decision-makers with an increasingly complex understanding of how our brains develop from birth to adulthood. While these studies are still in their infancy, they have already made it clear that the brain typically continues to develop long after the point at which an individual becomes a legal adult (i.e., at age 18), and that the slow maturation process that plays out in the social context is mirrored by a slow maturation process at the neural level. Despite the tentative nature and unsettled …


"His Brain Has Been Mismanaged With Great Skill": How Will Jurors Respond To Neuromimaging Testimony In Insanity Defense Cases?, Michael L. Perlin Jun 2015

"His Brain Has Been Mismanaged With Great Skill": How Will Jurors Respond To Neuromimaging Testimony In Insanity Defense Cases?, Michael L. Perlin

Akron Law Review

A review of the literature on neuroimaging, predictably, reveals a broad array of positions, promises and prophecies. Carter Snead argues that the ambition of cognitive neuroscientists is “to use the claims of their discipline and the new powers conferred by neuroimaging to overthrow retributive justice as a legitimate justification for criminal sanctions.” In this paper, I do not take sides on this debate. Rather, I discuss a related, but distinctly separate issue: which of these positions will jurors think is right, especially in the context of deciding insanity defense cases. The primary and robust debate that has taken place so …


Foreword To The Neuroscience, Law & Government Symposium, Jane Campbell Moriarty Jun 2015

Foreword To The Neuroscience, Law & Government Symposium, Jane Campbell Moriarty

Akron Law Review

It is with much pleasure that I write the foreword for this Symposium in the Akron Law Review. The authors were each presenters at the Neuroscience, Law & Government Conference, held at The University of Akron School of Law in September, 2008. The articles in this edition of Akron Law Review are as diverse as the presentations themselves, and provide a fascinating glimpse into various ways in which neuroscience is making inroads in both law and government. The explosion of neuroscience and neuroimaging discoveries this decade is nothing short of remarkable, leading one prominent scientist to term the last several …


Two Wrongs Don't Make A Right: Federal Death Eligibility Determinations And Judicial Trifurcations, Michael D. Pepson, John N. Sharifi Jun 2015

Two Wrongs Don't Make A Right: Federal Death Eligibility Determinations And Judicial Trifurcations, Michael D. Pepson, John N. Sharifi

Akron Law Review

Broadly speaking, the purpose of this article is to bring attention to this radical and irreconcilable disparity between the unequivocal Sixth Amendment right of confrontation criminal defendants are afforded at trial,and the limited, qualified right of confrontation the FDPA grants federal capital defendants during death-eligibility determinations, which occur as part of the sentencing phase. It advances the argument that there is no tenable principled distinction on which this disparate procedural treatment may rest. We will attempt to demonstrate that, as written, the statutory provision that governs the admission of evidence at capital sentencings—18 U.S.C. § 3593(c)—is unconstitutional on its face …


The Challenge And Dilemma Of Charting A Course To Constitutionally Protect The Severely Mentally Ill Capital Defendant From The Death Penalty, Lyn Entzeroth Jun 2015

The Challenge And Dilemma Of Charting A Course To Constitutionally Protect The Severely Mentally Ill Capital Defendant From The Death Penalty, Lyn Entzeroth

Akron Law Review

This article examines these issues in the context of an important and emerging constitutional challenge to the death penalty: whether the death penalty can be imposed on capital defendants who suffer from severe mental illness at the time of the commission of their crimes. The American Bar Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, and the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill all endorse a death penalty exemption for the severely mentally ill. Recent law review articles suggest that such an exemption may even be compelled by the Supreme Court’s decisions in Roper v. Simmons and Atkins v. …


Transitional Justice And Local Ownership: A Framework For The Protection Of Human Rights, Andrew B. Friedman Jun 2015

Transitional Justice And Local Ownership: A Framework For The Protection Of Human Rights, Andrew B. Friedman

Akron Law Review

The focus of this paper will be only on prosecutions and other mechanisms with formality and ability to punish akin to a prosecution. Of the many such pseudo-prosecutions, particular focus will be paid to Truth and Reconciliation Commissions for their formality, their ability to grant amnesty, and the darling space they occupy in the collective public and scholarly imagination. Second, the importance of local ownership will be discussed. As previously mentioned, a great deal of work has been done on this particular topic. The discussion in this article will be limited to the problems associated with local ownership in transitional …


Prime Time For Japan To Take Another Step Forward In Lay Participation: Exploring Expansion To Civil Trials, Matthew J. Wilson Jun 2015

Prime Time For Japan To Take Another Step Forward In Lay Participation: Exploring Expansion To Civil Trials, Matthew J. Wilson

Akron Law Review

With Japan marking its three-year anniversary of the lay judge system, now is an ideal time to assess the progress of the new system, examine its effect on Japanese society, and explore future possibilities. More significantly, this paper asserts that the convergence of various forces makes this an ideal time to expand lay participation into the civil realm so as to enhance the justice process and fully achieve the objectives of Japan’s major legal reforms. Accordingly, this paper is separated into three sections. First, Part I details the underpinnings of Japan’s new lay judge system and examines its triumphs and …


Developmental Detour: How The Minimalism Of Miller V. Alabama Led The Court's "Kids Are Different" Eighth Amendment Jurisprudence Down A Blind Alley, Mary Berkheiser Jun 2015

Developmental Detour: How The Minimalism Of Miller V. Alabama Led The Court's "Kids Are Different" Eighth Amendment Jurisprudence Down A Blind Alley, Mary Berkheiser

Akron Law Review

With its narrow ruling, Miller has taken the Eighth Amendment kids are different jurisprudence on a deleterious detour that could lead Miller and Jackson and others like them to a certain dead end. Where Miller went wrong is the subject of this paper. It begins with Graham and the significance of the Court’s ruling that the Eighth Amendment categorically precludes imposition of a sentence of life without parole on a juvenile nonhomicide offender. Next, this paper turns to the Supreme Court’s decision in Miller, parsing the Court’s reliance on precedent and the reasoning that led it to adopt a ruling …


Bright Lines, Black Bodies: The Florence Strip Search Case And Its Dire Repercussions, Teresa A. Miller Jun 2015

Bright Lines, Black Bodies: The Florence Strip Search Case And Its Dire Repercussions, Teresa A. Miller

Akron Law Review

Part I is a brief history of Search and Seizure law, focusing on seismic doctrinal shifts that occurred from the 1950s to the present. As a framework for the important cases, the Founders’ concerns about abuse of governmental authority are discussed, as well as the rights protected by the Fourth Amendment. Various governmental programs will also be presented, such as the War on Drugs and its call for a large-scale federal anti-drug policy, first initiated by President Richard Nixon in 1969. Part II is a description of the central reasoning presented in Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders, including the …


Florence V. Board Of Chosen Freeholders: Police Power Takes A More Intrusive Turn, Wayne A. Logan Jun 2015

Florence V. Board Of Chosen Freeholders: Police Power Takes A More Intrusive Turn, Wayne A. Logan

Akron Law Review

This symposium affords an opportunity to reflect upon the combined force of Florence and one of its foundational precedents, also decided by a 5-4 vote: Atwater v. City of Lago Vista. In Atwater, the Court afforded police explicit authority to arrest individuals for very minor offenses (there failure to wear a seatbelt) without a warrant, paving the way not only for arrests such as experienced by Albert Florence, but also a myriad of others, based on laws contained in state, local and federal codes. With Atwater, the Court refused to limit the governmental power to subject individuals to the trauma …


Peacemaking And Provocation: A Response To Professor Tracey Jean Boisseau, Dan Subotnik Jun 2015

Peacemaking And Provocation: A Response To Professor Tracey Jean Boisseau, Dan Subotnik

Akron Law Review

I will show in this response a psychological link between what the academics did in the Duke Lacrosse case and the very circumstances they and Professor Boisseau decry.


The Duke Rape Case Five Years Later: Lessons For The Academy, The Media, And The Criminal Justice System, Dan Subotnik Jun 2015

The Duke Rape Case Five Years Later: Lessons For The Academy, The Media, And The Criminal Justice System, Dan Subotnik

Akron Law Review

The time that has since passed allows for a more comprehensive evaluation of the cultural meaning of the Duke Rape case. This is the goal of the newly released “Institutional Failures,” which constitutes a point of departure for this review. The aim of this article is first to clarify the contribution this book makes to an understanding of the case. I will describe and analyze the content of the nine essays that make up the book; I will make reference to related works, and I will offer a concluding evaluation of the book’s likely impact.


Response To "The Duke Rape Case Five Years Later: Lessons For The Academy, The Media, And The Criminal Justice System" By Dan Subotnik, Tracey Jean Boisseau Jun 2015

Response To "The Duke Rape Case Five Years Later: Lessons For The Academy, The Media, And The Criminal Justice System" By Dan Subotnik, Tracey Jean Boisseau

Akron Law Review

There are all kinds of injustices in the world—unwarranted punishments and deprivations of liberty as well as undeserved material, psychological, and emotional injuries, inequities, and wrongs. False accusations provide the basis for one of the most poignant narratives of injustice because we have the sense that someone punished for a specific, discrete act that they did not commit is entirely innocent, not only of that discrete act but in some sort of existential sense of the word. ...Tragic irony is always compelling in a narrative, but, if one can identify with that falsely accused person, either because one shares similar …


Finding Nino: Justice Scalia's Confrontation Clause Legacy From Its (Glorious) Beginning To (Bitter) End, Joëlle Anne Moreno Professor Jun 2015

Finding Nino: Justice Scalia's Confrontation Clause Legacy From Its (Glorious) Beginning To (Bitter) End, Joëlle Anne Moreno Professor

Akron Law Review

Until very recently, Justice Scalia has steered the Court’s modern confrontation jurisprudence. However, as discussed below, his leadership is increasingly threatened by deep divisions on questions of historical accuracy, constitutional interpretation, and the practical realities of twenty-first century criminal prosecutions.


Contact That Can Kill: Orders Of Protection, Caller Id Spoofing And Domestic Violence, Gabriella Sneeringer Jun 2015

Contact That Can Kill: Orders Of Protection, Caller Id Spoofing And Domestic Violence, Gabriella Sneeringer

Chicago-Kent Law Review

The Illinois Domestic Violence Act (IDVA) was created as a means of providing protection and remedies to domestic violence victims through orders of protection. The orders of protection can insulate victims from abusers through a variety of ways such as mandating that the abuser be prohibited from contacting the victim by any means. Under the IDVA, any violation of the order is a crime. As technology advances, abusers begin using more and more technology as a means to circumscribe orders of protection. One such technology, Caller ID spoofing, is particularly problematic. This technology enables abusers to easily contact, stalk and …


Babies Behind Bars: An Evaluation Of Prison Nurseries In American Female Prisons And Their Potential Constitutional Challenges, Seham Elmalak Jun 2015

Babies Behind Bars: An Evaluation Of Prison Nurseries In American Female Prisons And Their Potential Constitutional Challenges, Seham Elmalak

Pace Law Review

This note opens the prison doors and delves into the United States female prison system, primarily focusing on the positive and negative impact of nursery programs on mothers and children, along with potential constitutional claims that can be brought against these programs. Part I provides a general background about the American prison system, and briefly touches on the constitutional standards of prisoners’ rights. It also discusses the history and development of female prisons and illustrates the rapid increase of female incarceration. Part II focuses on the prevalence of mothers within the female population in prisons. Part III introduces prison nursery …