Criminal Procedure Commons^™

The Not So Speedy Trial Act, Shon Hopwood

Washington Law Review

The Speedy Trial Act (STA) of 1974 occupies a peculiar place in the criminal justice system. Very few pieces of legislation can lay claim to protecting both the rights of criminal defendants and the public’s significant interest in timely justice, while reducing the cost of judicial administration. The STA formerly accomplished these lofty aims by reducing pretrial delays. But for the past two decades legal scholars have ignored the STA, and both prosecutors and defense attorneys have subverted the STA’s goals by routinely moving for continuances. And although the Act categorically applies in every federal criminal case, it has been …

Not-So-Harmless Error: A Higher Standard For Mitigation Errors On Capital Habeas Review, Ryan C. Thomas

Washington Law Review

This Comment looks at how federal courts handle mitigation errors during the penalty phase of capital punishment cases on habeas corpus review; it argues that the United States Supreme Court should expressly adopt the Chapman “harmless beyond a reasonable doubt” standard rather than the Brecht “substantial and injurious effect” standard. The heightened stakes of capital sentencing dictate that a higher standard of review should apply. The Court has yet to rule on this matter, and the United States Courts of Appeals cannot agree upon which standard to apply. Currently, a lopsided circuit split exists regarding whether harmless error review applies …

Not-So-Harmless Error: A Higher Standard For Mitigation Errors On Capital Habeas Review, Ryan C. Thomas

Washington Law Review

This Comment looks at how federal courts handle mitigation errors during the penalty phase of capital punishment cases on habeas corpus review; it argues that the United States Supreme Court should expressly adopt the Chapman “harmless beyond a reasonable doubt” standard rather than the Brecht “substantial and injurious effect” standard. The heightened stakes of capital sentencing dictate that a higher standard of review should apply. The Court has yet to rule on this matter, and the United States Courts of Appeals cannot agree upon which standard to apply. Currently, a lopsided circuit split exists regarding whether harmless error review applies …

Killing A Chicken To Scare The Monkey: The Unequal Administration Of Death In China, Jessica J. Shen

Washington International Law Journal

China’s frequent usage of the death penalty in order to achieve deterrence of crime is well known to the international community; however, China also has a strong tradition of legal mercy stemming from imperial rule. In turn, imperial legal mercy originated from Confucian values of benevolence and humaneness. Although modern China emerged as a rejection of Imperial China’s Confucian hierarchal social structures, these cultural traditions have endured. For example, Confucianism’s humane influence can be seen in statutory and procedural mechanisms demonstrating benevolence towards criminals. However, only applying this benevolence to a select group of people betrays modern China’s statutory and …

Are Courts Phoning It In? Resolving Problematic Reasoning In The Debate Over Warrantless Searches Of Cell Phones Incident To Arrest, Derek A. Scheurer

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

In 1973, the United States Supreme Court in United States v. Robinson granted police broad authority to search arrestees’ personal property. Robinson’s broad rule has not been significantly limited and appears increasingly anachronistic in an age of rapidly advancing mobile technologies. Whether upholding or invalidating such searches, courts have relied on reasoning that ignores or conflicts with Robinson. This Article illustrates four problematic contrivances used by state and federal courts: (1) the comparison of mobile devices to “containers; (2) the misinterpretation of United States v. Chadwick’s concept of “property not immediately associated with the person;” (3) the …

Sentencing Court Discretion And The Confused Ban On Internet Bans, Matthew Fredrickson

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

In United States v. Wright, issued June 2013, the Sixth Circuit cited a supposed consensus among circuit courts that Internet bans are per se unreasonably broad sentences in electronic child pornography possession and distribution cases. This Article demonstrates that the Sixth Circuit’s claim of a consensus is mistaken. While some circuit courts of appeal have limited judicial sentencing discretion when it comes to imposing Internet bans, many more have not imposed this limit. Despite this lack of consensus, in cases where such bans are challenged, most courts make their decisions partly based on either the Internet’s pervasive importance in …

The Undersigned Attorney Hereby Certifies: Ensuring Reasonable Caseloads For Washington Defenders And Clients, Andrea Woods

Washington Law Review

The Standards governing Washington’s public defenders represent a significant reform aimed at protecting an important constitutional right for our state’s vulnerable citizens. This Comment provides the necessary introduction to the Standards and addresses skepticism on the part of current practitioners and elected officials. Cooperation among defense attorneys, local governments, and the courts could ensure the Standards’ success and—in turn—a better system of public defense for attorneys and defendants alike. Part I of this Comment introduces the reader to the new Standards. Part II offers an overview of common critiques of the Washington State Supreme Court Standards that were voiced by …

Street Diversion And Decarceration, Mary Fan

Articles

States seeking more cost-effective approaches than imprisoning drug offenders have explored innovations such as drug courts and deferred prosecution. These treatment-based programs generally involve giving diversion discretion to prosecutors and judges, actors further down the criminal processing chain than police. The important vantage of police at the gateway of entry into the criminal system has been underutilized. [para] The article explores developing the capacity of police to take a public health approach to drug offending by engaging in street diversion to treatment rather than criminal processing. This approach entails giving police therapeutic discretion—the power to sort who gets treatment rather …

Citizen Participation: Appraising The Saiban’In System, Daniel H. Foote

Articles

Of the many reforms affecting the Japanese judiciary that were undertaken in connection with the recommendations of the Justice System Reform Council, one reform above all attracted widespread public attention: the introduction of the so-called saiban'in system. In this system, mixed panels of professional judges and lay jurors judge guilt and assess penalties in serious criminal cases. Following a five-year preparation period, the new system went into effect for the specified categories of crimes for which indictments were issued on or after May 21, 2009, with the first trials under the new system commencing in August 2009. Pursuant to the …

A Rejoinder To Professor Schauer's Commentary, Yale Kamisar

Washington Law Review

It is quite a treat to have Professor Frederick Schauer comment on my Miranda article. Professor Schauer is a renowned authority on freedom of speech and the author of many thoughtful, probing articles in other areas as well, especially jurisprudence. I am pleased that in large measure, Schauer, too, laments the erosion of Miranda in the last four-and- a-half decades and that he, too, was unhappy with the pre-Miranda due process/“totality of circumstances”/“voluntariness” test. I also like what Schauer had to say about “prophylactic rules,” a term that has sometimes been used to disparage the Miranda rules. As Schauer …

The Miranda Warning, Frederick Schauer

Washington Law Review

Largely as a consequence of American television and movies, Miranda v. Arizona may well be the most famous appellate case in the world. On the screen, innumerable actors playing American police officers give Miranda warnings to other actors playing suspects, a portrayal that reflects the reality of genuine police officers giving genuine Miranda warnings to genuine suspects millions of times every year. Indeed, such has been the influence of Miranda that Russian television cops give something like a Miranda warning to suspects even though no actual Russian law imposes such an obligation on real Russian cops. And it is said …

When Is A Phone A Computer?, J. C. Lundberg

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

In United States v. Kramer, the Eighth Circuit upheld a two-level sentence enhancement for a defendant who made calls and sent text messages from a cellphone to a minor in order to lure her across state lines for criminal sexual activity. This enhancement was based on a provision in the United States Sentencing Guidelines that incorporates the definition of “computer” from the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The broad language of that statute encompasses not only computers—in the plainest sense—and cellphones, but also a myriad of other devices such as automobiles equipped with GPS navigation. In contrast to the …

Prosecution Review Commissions, The Public Interest, And The Rights Of The Accused: The Need For A "Grown Up" In The Room, Carl F. Goodman

Washington International Law Journal

The recent amendments to Japan’s Inquest of Prosecution Law (popularly called the Prosecution Review Commission (“PRC”) Law) give the eleven lay member PRC (and their court appointed lawyers) unreviewable authority to compel the prosecutions and appeals of defendants who the professional prosecutor service has determined do not require indictment and prosecution. Viewed as “democratic” because it brings lay participation to the criminal justice system, the PRC process differs sharply from the American Federal Grand Jury because it places ordinary citizens at risk of potential retribution and the political system at risk of possible “gaming” of the process for political advantage, …

The Rise, Decline, And Fall (?) Of Miranda, Yale Kamisar

Washington Law Review

No abstract provided.

An Open Courts Checklist: Clarifying Washington's Public Trial And Public Access Jurisprudence, Jeanine Blackett Lutzenhiser

Washington Law Review

Fundamental to the American system of justice is the right to a public trial and a general presumption of openness in judicial proceedings. These values are reflected in the First and Sixth Amendments of the United States Constitution and in many state constitutions. Washington is one of a number of states whose constitution (unlike the U.S. Constitution) also explicitly guarantees the open administration of justice. Constitutional dilemmas arise when a party requests the closure of a courtroom or the sealing of documents. These requests force courts to harmonize values of open justice with other compelling interests. U.S. Supreme Court decisions …

Protecting Child Victims' Rights As Vigorously As Criminal Defendants' When Prosecuting Possession Or Distribution Of Child Pornography, Kiel Willmore

Washington Law Review

Among the devastating effects of the worldwide child pornography epidemic is a concerning legal dilemma. Until recently, courts have frequently held that a defendant charged with child pornography offenses has a nearly unrestricted right to receive and view copies of the pornographic evidence as part of discovery of the state’s evidence. The duplication, dissemination, and viewing of child pornography is not only a violation of federal law, but is also a further violation of the child victims’ privacy and renewal of their abuse. The Washington State Legislature recently enacted Substitute House Bill 2177 (“H.B. 2177”), which amends the legislative findings …

A Fresh Cut In An Old Wound–A Critical Analysis Of The Trayvon Martin Killing: The Public Outcry, The Prosecutors’ Discretion, And The Stand Your Ground Law, Tamara F. Lawson

Articles

If the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case is to have value beyond its immediate facts, it is important to consider the case through a broad lens that encompasses law, politics, and culture and the relevant intersectionality of each. This essay gives a contextualized historical perspective with which to view the Black community’s reaction to the initial lack of criminal charges in the case. It explains why the circumstances surrounding Trayvon’s death were experienced as a fresh cut in an old, but deep, collective wound, for many Blacks. It addresses the exacerbation African Americans felt regarding law enforcement’s perceived indifference towards Trayvon, …

Aedpa's Ratchet: Invoking The Miranda Right To Counsel After The Antiterrorism And Effective Death Penalty Act, David Rubenstein

Washington Law Review

In Davis v. United States, the United States Supreme Court established a high standard to invoke the Miranda right to counsel, holding that a suspect must make a clear and unequivocal request for an attorney. Two years later, Congress passed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), which created a highly deferential standard of review for state court judgments challenged under federal habeas corpus jurisdiction. Generally, a state prisoner challenging the alleged deprivation of his Miranda right to counsel may obtain federal court relief under AEDPA only if his conviction in state court was based on an “objectively …

Death Penalty Sentencing In Japan Under The Lay Assessor System: Avoiding The Avoidable Through Unanimity, Elizabeth M. Sher

Washington International Law Journal

The Lay Assessor Act of 2004 mandated the creation of a mixed lay judge system, called the saibanin seido. Under this new system, jurors, or lay judges, sit with professional judges to decide the fate of criminal defendants. The Lay Assessor Act requires lay judges to decide both the verdict and sentencing of defendants in the same sitting. The verdict and sentence require support from a majority of the jurors and must include one professional judge on the panel. For certain crimes in Japan, the death penalty is one possible sentence. Under the saibanin seido system, for the first …

To Plea Or Not To Plea: The Benefits Of Establishing An Institutionalized Plea Bargaining System In Japan, Priyanka Prakash

Washington International Law Journal

Plea bargaining, the practice that permits the prosecution and defense to negotiate reduced charges or a lighter sentence in exchange for the defendant’s guilty plea, is a bedrock component of the criminal justice system in many nations. The Japanese legal community, however, has resisted introducing plea bargaining into Japan’s legal system. From 2001 to 2004, the Japanese legislature passed over twenty reform laws to prepare the country’s criminal justice system for the demands of the twenty-first century, but provisions for plea bargaining were conspicuously absent from the reform package. This is largely because the Japanese legal community views plea bargaining …

The Police Gamesmanship Dilemma, Mary D. Fan

Articles

Police gamesmanship poses a recurring regulatory challenge for constitutional criminal procedure, leading to zigzags and murky zones in the law such as the recent rule shifts regarding searches incident to arrest and interrogation. Police gamesmanship in the “competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime” involves tactics that press on blind spots, blurry regions or gaps in rules and remedies, undermining the purpose of the protections. Currently, courts generally avoid peering into the Pandora’s Box of police stratagems unless the circumvention of a protection becomes too obvious to ignore and requires a stopgap rule-patch that further complicates the maze of criminal procedure. …

Initial Research On The Malfunctions Of The Criminal Process, Chen Ruihua, Timothy Webster

Washington International Law Journal

In recent years, as China’s legislature has placed the amendment of the Criminal Procedure Law on its legislative plan, more and more legal scholars are paying attention to the problem. Legal academics have produced a series of theses and books, and qualified scholars have even organized experts’ drafts of the Criminal Procedure Law, offering comprehensive and systematic theoretical works on how to revise the law. I participated in scholarly activities organized by the Criminal Affairs Committee of the All China Lawyers Federation, and drafted the first lawyers’ edition of the revised Criminal Procedure Law. Thus, the next revision of the …

Addressing The Overrepresentation Of The Maori In New Zealand's Criminal Justice System At The Sentencing Stage: How Australia Can Provide A Model For Change, Joanna Hess

Washington International Law Journal

New Zealand’s 2002 Sentencing Act provides several ways a sentencing court may take an offender’s cultural or ethnic background into account. Given the disproportionate rate of recidivism among New Zealand’s indigenous Maori offenders and international and domestic concerns regarding this problem, the Act’s provisions offer one method for addressing and mitigating this issue. However, these sentencing provisions remain largely unknown or underused. This comment argues that in order to tackle these concerns, left unaddressed by the current Sentencing Act, New Zealand should restructure its sentencing provisions to follow the legislative model that is developing in Australian states, particularly the model …

Revising Harmless Error: Making Innocence Relevant To Direct Appeals, Helen A. Anderson

Articles

In most jurisdictions, convicted defendants have the right to an appeal at public expense, and to the assistance of counsel with that appeal. But the direct appeal is almost never concerned with actual innocence. On direct appeal, courts will look at claims of trial error, and evaluate those claims and their "harmlessness" based only on the trial record. Thus, the chances of a reversal on direct appeal bear no relation to the chances that the wrong person has been convicted.

While the current appeal system may encourage proper trial procedures, it does not provide a check against wrongful conviction. The …

The Asymmetry Of Duty In Criminal Trial Practice, Maureen A. Howard

Articles

Although the American trial system has been likened to an arena in which mental combatants fight “to the death” (the verdict), each warrior similarly skilled and equally committed to vanquishing the other in a forum with formal rules of engagement enforced by a learned and impartial judge, the role of the criminal prosecutor is qualitatively different than that of other advocates. This is because, unlike any other lawyer, a criminal prosecutor has an affirmative duty to the opposing party.

A lawyer who represents an individual client is duty-bound to advance that client’s interests vigorously within the bounds of the law. …

The Terrorist Informant, Wadie E. Said

Washington Law Review

A man sets himself on fire in front of the White House in a dispute with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He has been working as an informant for the FBI in a high-profile terrorism prosecution and is unhappy with the $100,000 he has been paid so far. He has also been recently convicted of bank fraud. As a result, the government declines to call him as a witness, given the damage his actions have on his credibility and trustworthiness. This incident underscores the difficulty inherent in relying on paid informants to drive a prosecution, where material considerations such …

State V. Grier And The Erroneous Adoption Of The "Punishment-Based" Standard Of Review For Ineffective Assistance Of Counsel Claims Based On All-Or-Nothing Strategies, Jacque St. Romain

Washington Law Review

In June 2009, the Washington State Court of Appeals, Division II, reversed Kristina Grier’s second-degree murder conviction in State v. Grier. The court concluded that Grier had received ineffective assistance of counsel because her attorney failed to request jury instructions for any lesser-included offenses, choosing instead to pursue an all-or-nothing defense strategy. That same month, Division I issued a contrary opinion, finding the pursuit of an all-or-nothing strategy reasonable. The Washington State Supreme Court has granted certiorari and will soon hear oral arguments in Grier. This Comment reviews federal and state courts’ approaches to questions of ineffective assistance of …

State V. Grier And The Erroneous Adoption Of The "Punishment-Based" Standard Of Review For Ineffective Assistance Of Counsel Claims Based On All-Or-Nothing Strategies, Jacque St. Romain

Washington Law Review

In June 2009, the Washington State Court of Appeals, Division II, reversed Kristina Grier’s second-degree murder conviction in State v. Grier. The court concluded that Grier had received ineffective assistance of counsel because her attorney failed to request jury instructions for any lesser-included offenses, choosing instead to pursue an all-or-nothing defense strategy. That same month, Division I issued a contrary opinion, finding the pursuit of an all-or-nothing strategy reasonable. The Washington State Supreme Court has granted certiorari and will soon hear oral arguments in Grier. This Comment reviews federal and state courts’ approaches to questions of ineffective assistance of …

The Racial Geography Of The Federal Death Penalty, G. Ben Cohen, Robert J. Smith

Washington Law Review

Scholars have devoted substantial attention to both the overrepresentation of black defendants on federal death row and the disproportionate number of federal defendants charged capitally for the murder of white victims. This attention has not explained (much less resolved) these disquieting racial disparities. Little research has addressed the unusual geography of the federal death penalty, in which a small number of jurisdictions are responsible for the vast majority of federal death sentences. By addressing the unique geography, we identify a possible explanation for the racial distortions in the federal death penalty: that federal death sentences are sought disproportionately where the …

State V. Grier And The Erroneous Adoption Of The "Punishment-Based" Standard Of Review For Ineffective Assistance Of Counsel Claims Based On All-Or-Nothing Strategies, Jacque St. Romain

Washington Law Review

In June 2009, the Washington State Court of Appeals, Division II, reversed Kristina Grier’s second-degree murder conviction in State v. Grier. The court concluded that Grier had received ineffective assistance of counsel because her attorney failed to request jury instructions for any lesser-included offenses, choosing instead to pursue an all-or-nothing defense strategy. That same month, Division I issued a contrary opinion, finding the pursuit of an all-or-nothing strategy reasonable. The Washington State Supreme Court has granted certiorari and will soon hear oral arguments in Grier. This Comment reviews federal and state courts’ approaches to questions of ineffective assistance of …