Criminal Law Commons^™

Is America Becoming A Nation Of Ex-Cons?, John A. Humbach

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Recent rates of mass incarceration have become a concern, but those rates are only part of the challenge facing (and posed by) the American criminal justice system. An estimated 25% of the U.S. adult population already has a criminal record and, with new felony convictions churning out at a rate of a million per year, America is well on its way to becoming a nation of ex-cons. Already, the ex-offender class is the nation’s biggest law-defined, legally discriminated-against minority group, and it is growing. The adverse social implications of this trend remain unclear and the critical demographic tipping point is …

Forensic Evidence And The Court Of Appeal For England And Wales, Lissa Griffin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The Criminal Division of the Court of Appeal has extensively analyzed the role of forensic evidence. In doing so, the court has grappled with the admissibility and reliability of a broad range of forensic evidence, from DNA and computer forensics to medical and psychological proof, to more outlying subjects like facial mapping, fiber analysis, or voice identification. The court has analyzed these subjects from two perspectives: the admissibility of such evidence in the lower courts and the admissibility of such evidence as fresh evidence on appeal. In both contexts, the court has taken a practical approach to admitting forensic proof …

Attribution Evidence Of Cell Phone Data, Sana Haider

War Crimes Memoranda

No abstract provided.

What Is Wrong With Sex In Authority Relations? A Study In Law And Social Theory, Galia Schneebaum

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Criminalization of Sex within Authority Relations (SAR)—such as sex in the relationship between a therapist and a patient or an employer and an employee—is a growing phenomenon. Current theories conceptualize and consequently justify SAR offenses either under a liberal conception of sexual autonomy or under a feminist conception of gender inequality. Yet both conceptualizations are inadequate and fail to capture the distinctiveness of this new legal category. Specifically, they fail to explain the main puzzle underlying SAR offenses, which proscribe sexual contact in the absence of coercion by the offender. Rejecting both liberal and feminist analytical frameworks, this Article draws …

The Influence Of A Juvenile's Abuse History On Support For Sex Offender Registration, Cynthia J. Najdowski, M. C. Stevenson, J. M. Salerno, T. R. A. Wiley, B. L. Bottoms, K. M. Farnum

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

We investigated whether and how a juvenile’s history of experiencing sexual abuse affects public perceptions of juvenile sex offenders in a series of 5 studies. When asked about juvenile sex offenders in an abstract manner (Studies 1 and 2), the more participants (community members and undergraduates) believed that a history of being sexually abused as a child causes later sexually abusive behavior, the less likely they were to support sex offender registration for juveniles. Yet when participants considered specific sexual offenses, a juvenile’s history of sexual abuse was not considered to be a mitigating factor. This was true when participants …

In The Beginning There Was None: Supreme Court Review Of State Criminal Prosecutions, Kevin C. Walsh

Scholarly Articles

This Article challenges the unquestioned assumption of all contemporary scholars of federal jurisdiction that section 25 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 authorized Supreme Court appellate review of state criminal prosecutions. Section 25 has long been thought to be one of the most important provisions of the most important jurisdictional statute enacted by Congress. The Judiciary Act of 1789 gave concrete institutional shape to a federal judiciary only incompletely defined by Article III. And section 25 supplied a key piece of the structural relationship between the previously existing state court systems and the new federal court system that Congress constructed …

Juvenile Sentencing Post-Miller: Preventive And Corrective Measures, Cara H. Drinan

Scholarly Articles

At the end of the twentieth century, the United States was an international outlier in the severity of its juvenile sentencing practices despite having invented the juvenile court model one century earlier. Today, juvenile sentencing reform is underway, particularly in the wake of recent Supreme Court decisions that have cabined the states’ capacity to impose extreme sentences on juveniles. In this Article, I propose two additional reform measures that would help to rationalize the sentences imposed on children in the American criminal justice system—one on the front end of the system and one on the back end. In particular, on …

The Third Dimension Of Victimization, Mary Graw Leary

Scholarly Articles

This article advocates for consideration of a restructuring of criminal laws at a basic level. It argues for the recognition of a third dimension of victimization. States must review criminal codes and restructure them to recognize the many new forms of victimization that are achieved digitally. Because of the uniquely pernicious harms of digital victimization, current criminal codes are insufficient. They fail to capture both the social value being protected and the harms accomplished through these digital victimizations. This article argues that one’s digital presence can, in fact, be an extension of oneself. As such, one’s digital self can be …

Serial: The Presumption Of Guilt, Staff Editors

University of Baltimore Law Review

Below is a transcript of a panel discussion with key participants in the defense of Adnan Syed which inspired the popular Serial podcast. The Student Bar Association of the University of Baltimore School of Law hosted the event on February 12, 2015.

The Highs And Lows Of Wild Justice, Corinna Barrett Lain

Law Faculty Publications

In Part I of this Review, I present a brief summary of Mandery's book, providing readers a glimpse of the fascinating story A Wild Justice tells and the engaging prose with which it is written. In Part II, I do the same for Rosenbaum's book, distilling the argument in Paybackand excerpting illustrative passages to provide readers an idea of what they will be getting. In Part III, I use both books to explore the difference between retribution and revenge, and the role those notions play in the defense of the death penalty today. I conclude that while Rosenbaum is unpersuasive …

Changing Course In The Anti-Domestic Violence Legal Movement: From Safety To Security, Margaret E. Johnson

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Culpability And Modern Crime, Samuel W. Buell

Faculty Scholarship

Criminal law has developed to prohibit new forms of intrusion on the autonomy and mental processes of others. Examples include modern understandings of fraud, extortion, and bribery, which pivot on the concepts of deception, coercion, and improper influence. Sometimes core offenses develop to include similar concepts, such as when reforms in the law of sexual assault make consent almost exclusively material. Many of these projects are laudable. But progressive programs in substantive criminal law can raise difficult problems of culpability. Modern iterations of criminal offenses often draw lines using concepts involving relative mental states among persons whose conduct is embedded …

The Effect Of Statutory Rape Laws On Teen Birth Rates, Michael D. Frakes, Matthew C. Harding

Faculty Scholarship

Policymakers have often been explicit in expanding statutory rape laws to reduce teenage pregnancies and live births by teenage mothers, often with the goal of reducing associated welfare outlays. In this paper, we explore whether expansions in such laws are indeed associated with reductions in teen birth rates. In order to codify statutory-rape-law expansions, we use a national micro-level sample of sexual encounters to simulate the degree to which such encounters generally implicate the relevant laws. By codifying statutory-rape laws in terms of their potential reach into sexual encounters, as opposed to using crude binary treatment variables, this simulation approach …

Evidence Of A Third Party's Guilt Of The Crime That The Accused Is Charged With: The Constitutionalization Of The Soddi (Some Other Dude Did It) Defense 2.0, Edward J. Imwinkelried

Loyola University Chicago Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Condoning The Crime: The Elusive Mens Rea For Complicity, Alexander F. Sarch

Loyola University Chicago Law Journal

There is a long history of disagreement about what the mens rea for complicity is. Some courts take it to be the intention for the underlying crime to succeed while others take mere knowledge of the underlying crime to be sufficient. Still others propose that the mens rea for complicity tracks the mens rea of the underlying crime—the so-called “derivative approach.” However, as argued herein, these familiar approaches face difficulties. Accordingly, we have reason to continue our search for the elusive mens rea for complicity. This Article develops a new account of the mens rea for complicity, drawing on an …

Clarify Terms And Definitions Relevant To Military Commission Prosecutions, Anna Victoria Quiñones Barr

War Crimes Memoranda

No abstract provided.

Cross-Border Distress Calls, Investigation And Potential Compensation, Chadwick P. Cleveland

War Crimes Memoranda

No abstract provided.

How The United States Coast Guard Might Conduct Expedited Border Crossings On The Great Lakes In Cooperation With Canadian Authorities And Law Enforcement. Specifically Addressing How Current Agreements And Policies May Be Utilized In Order To Expedite Border Crossings On The Great Lakes And Additional Measures Which Can Be Taken To Specifically Address The Matter Through Express Agreement, Timothy R. Bierer

War Crimes Memoranda

No abstract provided.

Ballast Water Regulation In The Great Lakes, Erin James

War Crimes Memoranda

No abstract provided.

Prosecution Disclosure Obligations, Jeradon Z. Mura

War Crimes Memoranda

No abstract provided.

International Standards For Forensic Digital Evidence, Amar Dzaferovic

War Crimes Memoranda

No abstract provided.

Is The Test For Fitness To Plead The Same During The Appeal Process As The Trial Process At The Eccc?, Khali Blankenship

War Crimes Memoranda

No abstract provided.

Finality Of Trial Judgment When Accused Dies Or Is Found Mentally Unfit Before Final Appellate Verdict, Katelyn R. Pierce

War Crimes Memoranda

No abstract provided.

Universal Definition Of Piracy & Improvements In International Coorporation And Prosecution, Brad Pyle

War Crimes Memoranda

No abstract provided.

How Long Can We Suspend The Jones Act For Port Emergencies? What Impacts Does The Jones Act Have On International Voyages On The Great Lakes? What Changes To Either Canadian Or U.S. Law Are Necessary To Enhance Commerce On The Great Lakes? What Impacts Would Those Changes Have On The U.S. Domestic Fleet? What Are The Limitations On The Tug-Barge Manning Requirements?, Alpha Taylor

War Crimes Memoranda

No abstract provided.

The Standard That Should Be Used By The U.S. Coast Guard In Regard To Its Provision Of Boarding Vessels Arriving To The U.S. Coasts, Silvia Garcia Ausin

War Crimes Memoranda

No abstract provided.

Blinding Prosecutors To Defendants' Race: A Policy Proposal To Reduce Unconscious Bias In The Criminal Justice System, Shima Baughman, Sunita Sah, Christopher T. Robertson

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Racial minorities are disproportionately imprisoned in the United States. This disparity is unlikely to be due solely to differences in criminal behavior. Behavioral science research has documented that prosecutors harbor unconscious racial biases. These unconscious biases play a role whenever prosecutors exercise their broad discretion, such as in choosing what crimes to charge and when negotiating plea bargains. To reduce this risk of unconscious racial bias, we propose a policy change: Prosecutors should be blinded to the race of criminal defendants wherever feasible. This could be accomplished by removing information identifying or suggesting the defendant’s race from police dossiers shared …

Introduction To The Symposium On Entrepreneurial Lawyering, Anthony J. Luppino, Ellen Suni

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

The Complexity Of International Criminal Trials Is Necessary, 48 Geo. Wash. Int'l L. Rev. 151 (2015), Stuart Ford

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

There is a widespread belief among both academics and policymakers that international criminal trials are too complex. As a result, tribunals have come under enormous pressure to reduce the complexity of their trials. However, changes to trial procedure have not meaningfully affected trial complexity. This Article explains why these changes have failed and argues that the complexity of international criminal trials is necessary for them to achieve their purposes.

Using a multiple regression model of the factors driving trial complexity at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), this Article shows that the largest drivers of complexity are …

Standards Of Legitimacy In Criminal Negotiations, Wesley Macneil Oliver, Rishi Batra

Faculty Articles

Scholarship on negotiation theory and practice is rich and well developed. Almost no work has been done, however, to translate to the criminal context the lessons learned about negotiation from extensive empirical study using the disciplines of economics, game theory, and psychology. This Article suggests that defense lawyers in criminal negotiations can employ tools frequently useful to negotiators in other arenas: neutral criteria as a standard of legitimacy. Judges sometimes exercise a type of discretion analogous to prosecutorial discretion. When they do so, they offer an independent, reasoned, and publicly available assessment of the factors that a prosecutor ought to …