Criminal Procedure Commons^™

The Decision Maker Matters: An Empirical Examination Of The Way The Role Of The Judge And The Jury Influence Death Penalty Decision-Making, William J. Bowers, Wanda D. Foglia, Jean E. Giles, Michael E. Antonio

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Review Essay: Using All Available Information, Max Huffman

ExpressO

This is a review essay entitled “Using All Available Information,” in which I review and comment on Justice Stephen Breyer’s new book, Active Liberty: Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution, published in September 2005. Justice Breyer’s book, adapted from the Tanner Lectures given in 2005 at Harvard Law School, serves partly as a response to Justice Scalia’s 1997 volume A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law. I review Justice Breyer’s book in part by comparison to and contrast with Justice Scalia’s. I propose that much about Justice Breyer’s interpretive philosophy, which centers on determining the “purposes” of texts and interpreting …

Adding Fuel To The Fire: United States V. Booker And The Crack Versus Powder Cocaine Sentencing Disparity, Briton K. Nelson

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Z-Test For Percentages: A Statistical Tool To Detect Pretextually Neutral Juror Challenges, Marvin L. Longabaugh

ExpressO

In the article, I discuss the potential use of public opinion polls to measure the discriminatory effect of certain questions in jury selection. While the laws surrounding race and gender based jury selection are known to most lawyers, there has been little scrutiny on questions that might be posed to potential jurors that are facially neutral, yet have a discriminatory impact. This article examines a number of such questions and offers a statistical test to determine whether a proposed question has, in fact, a 98% certainty of having a discriminatory effect if relied upon in jury selection.

Flipping A Coin: A Solution For The Inherent Unreliability Of Eyewitness Identification Testimony, Noah A. Clements

ExpressO

By most accounts, mistaken eyewitness identification is the leading cause of wrongful convictions in the U.S. As DNA evidence frees ever more people wrongfully convicted on the basis of mistaken identification testimony, it is worth asking: “What about those cases where there is no DNA evidence?” Study after study shows that eyewitness identifications are unreliable. Courts pay lip service to the concept of reliability, but even after identifications are tainted by suggestion, very few courts actually exclude this tainted identification testimony.

And identifications are powerful. Jurors tend to believe identification testimony more than any other kind. And judges are people …

Fixing The Constable's Blunder: Can One Trial Judge In One County In One State Nudge A Nation Beyond The Exclusionary Rule?, H. Mitchell Caldwell

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Cambodia At A Crossroads: How Repealing Untac Article 63, Cambodia's Current Defamation Law, Will Lead To A More Vigorous Democracy, Alicia A. Adornato

ExpressO

Cambodia’s current criminal defamation law is an impermissible intrusion of Cambodians’ constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of expression. The law itself is a remnant of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia. Moreover it is now being used as a tool to silence the government’s political opposition through a weak judiciary system, leaving in its wake a democracy afraid to exercise its constitutionally guaranteed rights. This law is an unconstitutional violation for several reasons: first, it violates the right to freedom of expression which is guaranteed in Cambodia’s Constitution. Secondly, it is incompatible with Cambodia’s human rights obligations under the …

Remarks, Eli M. Rosenbaum

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Nuremberg Trials: A Reappraisal And Their Legacy: An Introduction, Sheri P. Rosenberg

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

From Nuremberg To Tokyo: Some Reflections On The Tokyo Trial (On The Sixtieth Anniversary Of The Nuremberg Trials), Zhang Wanhong

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Bringing Human Rights Abusers To Justice In U.S. Courts: Carrying Forward The Legacy Of The Nuremberg Trials, Sandra Coliver

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Transitional Justice: Postwar Legacies, Ruti Teitel

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Justice Story Cuts The Gordian Knot Of Hung Jury Instructions, George C. Thomas Iii, Mark Greenbaum

Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers

Constitutional law grows more complex over time. The complexity is due, in large part, to the rule of stare decisis. When faced with precedents that it does not wish to follow, the Court usually distinguishes the case before it. Thus, the constitutional landscape is littered with cases that do not fit well together. Navigating past these shoals is often difficult for courts following the Supreme Court’s lead. One example is the law governing instructions that a trial judge can give a deadlocked jury in a criminal case. The right to a jury trial entails the right to have the jury …

Manson V. Brathwaite: The Supreme Court's Misunderstanding Of Eyewitness Identification, 39 J. Marshall L. Rev. 539 (2006), Ruth Yacona

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Adjudicated On The Merits?: Why The Aedpa Requires State Courts To Exhibit Their Reasoning, 39 J. Marshall L. Rev. 995 (2006), Ezra Spilke

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Dostoyevsky And The Therapeutic Jurisprudence Confession, 40 J. Marshall L. Rev. 41 (2006), Amy D. Ronner

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Second Chance For Justice: Reevaluation Of The United States Double Jeopardy Standard, 40 J. Marshall L. Rev. 371 (2006), Andrea Koklys

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Stevens's Ratchet: When The Court Should Decide Not To Decide, Joel A. Flaxman

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

Hidden underneath the racy death penalty issues in Kansas v. Marsh lurks a seemingly dull procedural issue addressed only in separate opinions by Justices Stevens and Scalia: whether the Court should have heard the case in the first place. As he did in three cases from the Court’s 2005 term, Justice Stevens argued in Marsh that the Court has no legitimate interest in reviewing state court decisions that overprotect federal constitutional rights. Instead, the Supreme Court should exercise its certiorari power to tip the scales against states and in favor of individuals. Granting certiorari in Marsh, Stevens argued, was not …

The High Court Remains As Divided As Ever Over The Death Penalty, George H. Kendall

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

More than three decades ago, in Furman v. Georgia, a sharply divided Supreme Court struck down all existing capital punishment schemes be-cause the results they generated were arbitrary, discriminatory, and unreasoned. No member of that Court remains on the Court today, and the Court has grown increasingly conservative ever since. Nevertheless, impor-tant questions concerning the administration of capital punishment continue to wrought deep divisions within the Court, for instance in determining whether racial bias influences the system, in determining the sufficiency of new evidence of innocence to justify review of a defaulted claim in habeas corpus proceedings, in determining a …

Putting The Guesswork Back Into Capital Sentencing, Sean D. O'Brien

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

In 1972, in Furman v. Georgia, the Supreme Court deemed it “incon-testable” that a death sentence is cruel and unusual if inflicted “by reason of [the defendant’s] race, religion, wealth, social position, or class, or if it is imposed under a procedure that gives room for the play of such prejudices.” Arbitrary and discriminatory patterns in capital sentencing moved the Court to strike down death penalty statutes that required judges or juries to cast thumbs-up or thumbs-down verdicts against offenders found guilty of capi-tal crimes. The issue of innocence was barely a footnote in Furman; the Court’s concerns focused on …

The Revolution Enters The Court: The Constitutional Significance Of Wrongful Convictions In Contemporary Constitutional Regulation Of The Death Penalty, Jordan Steiker

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

Over the last decade, the most important events in American death pen-alty law have occurred outside the courts. The discovery of numerous wrongfully convicted death-sentenced inmates in Illinois led to the most substantial reflection on the American death penalty system since the late 1960s and early 1970s. Former Illinois Governor George Ryan, a Republi-can, first declared a moratorium on executions in 2000 and eventually commuted all 167 inmates on Illinois’s death row in 2003. The events in Illinois reverberated nationwide. Almost overnight, state legislative agendas shifted from expanding or maintaining the prevailing reach of the death penalty to studying its …

Legitimizing Error, Rebecca E. Woodman

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

Since Furman v. Georgia, the Supreme Court has sought to harmonize competing constitutional demands under Eighth Amendment rules regulat-ing the two-step eligibility and selection stages of the capital decision-making process. Furman’s demand for rationality and consistency requires that, at the eligibility stage, the sentencer’s discretion be limited and guided by clear and objective fact-based standards that rationally narrow the class of death-eligible defendants. The selection stage requires a determination of whether a specific death-eligible defendant actually deserves that punish-ment, as distinguished from other death-eligible defendants. Here, fundamental fairness and respect for the uniqueness of the individual are the cornerstones of …

Convicting The Innocent: Aberration Or Systemic Problem?, Rodney J. Uphoff

Faculty Publications

In practice, the right to adequate defense counsel in the United States is disturbingly unequal. Only some American criminal defendants actually receive the effective assistance of counsel. Although some indigent defendants are afforded zealous, effective representation, many indigent defendants and almost all of the working poor are not. The quality of representation a defendant receives generally is a product of fortuity, of economic status, and of the jurisdiction in which he or she is charged. For many defendants, the assistance of counsel means little more than counsel's help in facilitating a guilty plea. With luck, money, and location primarily determining …

The Supervisory Power Of The Supreme Court, Amy Coney Barrett

Journal Articles

Relying on something it calls supervisory power or supervisory authority, the Supreme Court regularly prescribes rules of procedure and evidence for inferior courts. Both scholars and the Court have treated the Court's exercises of this authority as unexceptional exercises of the inherent authority that Article III grants every federal court to regulate procedure in the course of adjudication. Article III's grant of inherent authority, however, is conventionally understood as permitting a federal court to regulate its own proceedings. When the Supreme Court exercises supervisory power, it regulates the proceedings of other federal courts. More than a reference to every court's …

Mediating Cases Involving Domestic Violence: Solution Or Setback?, Aimee Davis

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

This Note will first explore the psychological and social aspects of domestic violence. It will then examine the appropriateness of mediation for such cases, exploring viewpoints on the topic. Lastly, the Note will propose a standard to guide cases involving domestic violence. Although the victim should always have the final word on whether to mediate, a judge, psychologist, and mediator should collaborate and make a united recommendation as to how they suggest the victim should proceed. This will allow the victim to make a thoughtful and individualized assessment of her situation.

We Really (For The Most Part) Mean It!, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

I closed my petition for certiorari in Hammon v. Indiana by declaring, “ ‘We really mean it!’ is the message that lower courts need to hear, and that decision of this case can send.” The prior year, Crawford v. Washington had transformed the law of the Confrontation Clause, holding that an out-ofcourt statement that is testimonial in nature may be admitted against an accused only if the maker of the statement is unavailable and the accused has had an opportunity to cross-examine her. But Crawford deliberately left undetermined what the term “testimonial” meant. Many lower courts gave it a grudging …

Indecent Standards: The Case Of U.S. Versus Weldon Angelos, Eva Nilsen

Faculty Scholarship

In today's highly punitive culture, perhaps Weldon Angelos' fifty-five-year sentence does not seem unusual. He's a 25-year-old man who was convicted in December 2003 of selling marijuana, possessing firearms while drug dealing, and money laundering. ³ The facts proven at trial are that on three occasions in June and July, 2002, Angelos sold eight one-ounce bags of marijuana for $350 each to a government informant. ⁴ The purchaser testified that a firearm was visible during two of these drug sales.⁵ Police seized another gun from Angelos' home five months later pursuant to a warrant.⁶ At no time was …

"Reasonably Predictable:" The Reluctance To Embrace Judicial Discretion For Substantial Assistance Procedures, India Geronimo Thusi

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Comment focuses on the nuances of post-Booker cooperation departures and sentence variances. Section 5K1.1 of the Guidelines governs the provision of cooperation, or substantial assistance, departures. This provision was the primary method for defendants to receive cooperation departures prior to Booker. The section 5K1.1 provision allowed substantial assistance departures where the prosecution actually benefited from the defendant’s cooperation.

First, Part I.A of this Comment will provide an overview of the original goals of the Sentencing Commission and the section 5K1.1 substantial assistance provision. Part I.B of the Comment summarizes United States v. Booker and its impact on cooperation departures. …

Confronting Death: Sixth Amendment Rights At Capital Sentencing, John G. Douglass

Law Faculty Publications

The Court's fragmentary approach has taken pieces of the Sixth Amendment and applied them to pieces of the capital sentencing process. The author contends that the whole of the Sixth Amendment applies to the whole of a capital case, whether the issue is guilt, death eligibility, or the final selection of who lives and who dies. In capital cases, there is one Sixth Amendment world, not two. In this Article, he argues for a unified theory of Sixth Amendment rights to govern the whole of a capital case. Because both Williams and the Apprendi-Ring-Booker line of cases purport to rest …

Boys Will Be Boys: A Social Control Approach To Assessment Of Gender-Based Sentencing Disparity In Norfolk Circuit Court Cases, Fay F. Spence

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

This study evaluated the relationship between gender and sentencing severity for defendants convicted of violent crimes, victimless crimes, and theft crimes in Norfolk Circuit Court during 2001 and 2002. Based upon social control theories, the author hypothesized that women receive harsher penalties than men for violent crimes and victimless crimes, but that men receive harsher penalties for theft crimes. To test these hypotheses, the author relied, in part, upon data collected by the Norfolk Commonwealth Attorney's office on 3368 criminal cases filed in 2001 and concluded by May 22, 2002. After eliminating cases not pertinent to the study, the data …