Criminal Procedure Commons^™

Nuance, Technology, And The Fourth Amendment: A Response To Predictive Policing And Reasonable Suspicion, Fabio Arcila Jr.

Scholarly Works

In an engaging critique, Professor Arcila finds that Professor Ferguson is correct in that predictive policing will likely be incorporated into Fourth Amendment law and that it will alter reasonable suspicion determinations. But Professor Arcila also argues that the potential incorporation of predictive policing reflects a larger deficiency in our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence and that it should not be adopted because it fails to adequately consider and respect a broader range of protected interests.

Civil Rights In Crisis: The Racial Impact Of The Denial Of The Sixth Amendment Right To Counsel, Richard Klein

Scholarly Works

Whereas in 2013 there had been widespread celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision in Gideon v. Wainwright, much has been written in subsequent years about the unhappy state of the quality of counsel provided to indigents. But it is not just defense counsel who fail to comply with all that we hope and expect would be done by those who are part of our criminal courts; prosecutorial misconduct, if not actually increasing, is becoming more visible. The judiciary chooses to focus on the rapid processing of cases, often ignoring the rights of those being prosecuted …

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

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Defense Counsel In Ensuring A Fair Justice System, Richard Klein

Scholarly Works

Supreme Court decisions are replete with statements about how crucial it is to have a defense attorney represent the person who is accused of crime. Defense counsel may accurately be considered law enforcers. While representing a lone individual against all the power of the state, counsel must “police the police” to determine if there has been an unconstitutional search, a coerced confession, an unlawfully suggestive lineup, or the fabrication of testimony. Defense counsel must attempt to ensure that the prosecutor is adhering to the professional requirement not merely to convict, but to do justice and comply with his obligations to …

Post-Racialism And Searches Incident To Arrest, Frank Rudy Cooper

Scholarly Works

For 28 years the Court held that an officer's search incident to arrest powers automatically extended to the entire passenger compartment of a vehicle. In 2009, however, the Arizona v. Gant decision held that officers do not get to search a vehicle incident to arrest unless they satisfy (1) the Chimel v. California Court's requirement that the suspect has access to weapons or evanescent evidence therein or (2) the United States v. Rabinowitz Court's requirement that the officer reasonably believe evidence of the crime of arrest will be found therein. While many scholars read Gant as a triumph for civil …

Resurrecting Autonomy: The Criminal Defendant's Right To Control The Case, Erica J. Hashimoto

Scholarly Works

In Faretta v. California, the Supreme Court exalted the value of autonomy – the criminal defendant’s interest in presenting and controlling the defense. Over the course of the past thirty-five years, however, the Court’s enthusiasm has dissipated, and commentators have criticized courts that have given defendants any measure of control over their cases. As a result, lower courts increasingly have shifted control from defendants to their lawyers. In light of that retrenchment, this Article reevaluates the autonomy interest on its merits. This reexamination confirms that Faretta got it right, and the Supreme Court should revitalize the constitutional interest of criminal …

Suspicion And The Protection Of Fourth Amendment Values, Fabio Arcila Jr.

Scholarly Works

Suspicion is perhaps the core foundational principle through which we seek to protect and vindicate Fourth Amendment values. Fourth Amendment law could not be clearer, and repeats over and over again, that it proceeds from a presumptive suspicion requirement. We are all so familiar with that proposition that we can easily incant it: a governmental search is presumptively unconstitutional unless supported by some threshold of prior suspicion. Though suspicion is thus a hallmark of Fourth Amendment black letter law, I come to critique it. I critique it because the presumptive suspicion requirement's provenance is historically questionable, both as a matter …

The Death Of Suspicion, Fabio Arcila Jr.

Scholarly Works

This article argues that neither the presumptive warrant requirement nor the presumptive suspicion requirement are correct. Though representative of the common law, they do not reflect the totality of our historic experience, which includes civil search practices. More importantly, modern developments - such as urban life and technological advancements, the rise of the regulatory state, and security concerns post-9/11 - have sufficiently changed circumstances so that these rules are not just unworkable now, they are demonstrably wrong. Worst of all, adhering to them has prevented us from formulating a more coherent Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. A new paradigm confronts us, in …

Race And The Doctrine Of Self Defense: The Role Of Race In Determining The Proper Use Of Force To Protect Oneself, Richard Klein

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Torture, Necessity, And Supreme Emergency: Law And Morality At The End Of Law, Zachary R. Calo

Scholarly Works

This paper employs Michael Walzer's concept of "Supreme Emergency" to address the permissibility of torture under conditions of necessity. It proposes moving beyond both utilitarian and deontological approaches to legal authority in order to understood necessity as a moral category. A full account of right action under conditions of necessity therefore demands taking account of the distinct yet cooperative function provided by legal and moral norms. A political official might therefore possess moral but not legal warrant to act in contravention of binding legal norms. Preserving the validity of law is essential to the economy of social reconstitution in the …

"Who's The Man?": Masculinities Studies, Terry Stops, And Police Training, Frank Rudy Cooper

Scholarly Works

In this article, Professor Frank Rudy Cooper examines how masculinity contests specifically, and masculinities studies generally, affect policing. He reviews the hegemonic masculinities school of thought and identifies the following background principles of the hegemonic pattern of masculinities in the United States: (1) men's concern with the opinions of other men; (2) anxiety over whether one has proved one's manhood; (3) a competitiveness reflected in a need to dominate other men and a general aggressiveness; and (4) a denigration of contrast figures reflected in a repudiation of femininity and homosexuality as well as subordination of racial minorities. Then he identifies …

A Tangled Web Of Justice: American Indian And Alaska Native Youth In Federal, State, And Tribal Justice Systems, Addie C. Rolnick, Neelum Arya

Scholarly Works

This policy brief is intended to serve as a resource for tribes, juvenile justice professionals, and other stakeholders interested in improving outcomes for Native youth by presenting the current state of knowledge on Native youth and their involvement in justice systems across the country.

Prosecution Of Process Crimes: Thoughts And Trends, Allison Caffarone, Karen Patton Seymour, Stephen R. Peikin

Scholarly Works

The United States Department of Justice has come under attack in recent years because of its increased attention to, and prosecution of, crimes committed during the course of its investigations — obstruction of justice, perjury, and making false statements. These crimes have been labeled “cover-up” or “process crimes,” and the charging prosecutors have been criticized as bringing such charges only against high-profile defendants as to whom there is insufficient evidence to charge the “more serious” underlying offenses that prompted the initial investigation. Some critics have gone so far as to label these prosecutions “vindictive.” Much of this criticism is misplaced. …

In The Trenches: Searches And The Misunderstood Common-Law History Of Suspicion And Probable Cause, Fabio Arcila

Scholarly Works

A detailed analysis of the common law during the Framers’ era, and of how it reflected the Fourth Amendment’s restrictions, shows that many judges believed they could issue search warrants without independently assessing the adequacy of probable cause, and that this view persisted even after the Fourth Amendment became effective. This conclusion challenges the leading originalist account of the Fourth Amendment, which Professor Thomas Davies published in the Michigan Law Review in 1999.

Learned treatises in particular, and to a lesser extent a few case decisions, had articulated a judicial duty to monitor probable cause. But it is a mistake …

A Response To Professor Steinberg’S Fourth Amendment Chutzpah, Fabio Arcila

Scholarly Works

Professor David Steinberg believes that the Fourth Amendment was intended only to provide some protection against physical searches of homes through imposition of a specific warrant requirement because the Framers' only object in promulgating the Fourth Amendment was to ban physical searches of homes under general warrants or no warrants at all. This response essay takes issue with his thesis by (1) discussing its implications, (2) reviewing some concerns with his methodology in reviewing the historical record, and (3) examining the theoretical implication underlying his thesis that, except as to homes, we have a majoritarian Fourth Amendment, and questioning whether …

The Myopia Of U.S. V. Martinelli: Extraterritorial Jurisdiction In The 21st Century, Christopher L. Blakesley

Scholarly Works

Beginning in January 1999 and continuing through January 2000, a U.S. soldier began frequenting an off-post Internet cafe in Darmstadt, Germany, called the Netzwork Café. There he would download images of child pornography and search Internet websites, logging onto Internet chat rooms in order to communicate with individuals willing to send him images of naked children and children engaged in sex acts.

Specialist Martinelli was eventually caught and charged with various violations of 18 U.S.C. § 2252A for knowingly mailing, transporting or shipping child pornography in interstate or foreign commerce (by computer); knowingly receiving child pornography that had been mailed, …

Crumbs From The Master's Table: The Supreme Court, Pro Se Defendants And The Federal Guilty Plea Process, Julian A. Cook

Scholarly Works

This Article will commence with a review of the rather significant evolution of Rule 11, including a review of several pertinent Supreme Court decisions that have helped shape its current structure. Thereafter, the predominant judicial methodology for conducting Rule 11 hearings will be discussed. Specifically, this Article will take a brief but critical look at, inter alia, the examination techniques employed by the judiciary when conducting Rule 11 hearings, and conclude that the process typically employed inadequately assesses whether a defendant's guilty plea was entered into knowingly and voluntarily. Next, this Article will discuss two very recent Supreme Court decisions--United …

Habeas Corpus And Baseball, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

Scholarly Works

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries playing baseball on Sundays was a criminal offense in many states, where police often aggressively intervened to prevent or stop baseball games from being played on the Sabbath. In 1894, “the police of the city of Brooklyn took it upon themselves to chase, club and lock up all boys and men found playing ball on Sunday,” People ex rel. Poole v. Hesterberg, 43 Misc. 510, 89 N.Y.S. 498, 499 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. Kings County 1904); on two consecutive Sundays in July 1910, two professional baseball teams attempting to play in Chemung County, …

Plea Bargaining At The Hague, Julian A. Cook

Scholarly Works

Plea bargaining has come to The Hague. For most of its existence, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) shunned plea bargains. However, under pressure from United Nations member states and the impending deadline for the resolution of its caseload, the ICTY has increasingly relied on plea bargains in recent months. This Article exposes the deficiencies in guilty plea procedures at The Hague, particularly those designed to assess whether a plea is fully informed and voluntary. In a series of case studies, the Article argues that judicial questioning techniques have exploited the vulnerable state of defendants appearing before …

Causing Constitutional Harm: How Tort Law Can Help Determine Harmless Error In Criminal Trials, Jason M. Solomon

Scholarly Works

This Article proceeds in four parts. Part II is a brief overview of harmless-error doctrine in the context of habeas challenges to state criminal convictions, focusing on the nature of the inquiry and the doctrinal deadlock described above. Part III is an empirical analysis of the post-Brecht cases in the federal courts of appeals. To search for a way out of the doctrinal deadlock, I started with a relatively straightforward question: what has happened to harmless-error analysis since Brecht? To answer this question, I reviewed and, with the help of a research assistant, coded all of the 315 …

Empirical Studies Contribute To Death Penalty Debate, Joan W. Howarth

Scholarly Works

At a time of renewed scrutiny of capital punishment, Nevada lawyers may be interested in some of the recent legal scholarship on the death penalty based on social science data, rather than on legal philosophy or constitutional theory. Three projects are of particular interest: Professor James Liebman's work on errors in death penalty cases; the National Jury Project's data about how jurors decide capital cases; and David Baldus' recent study of peremptory challenges in capital cases.

The Writ Of Habeas Corpus, Donald E. Wilkes Jr.

Scholarly Works

A fundamental legal safeguard of freedom and the most important English common law writ, the writ of habeas corpus is a court order commanding that an imprisoned person be personally produced in court and that an explanation be provided as to why that person is detained. The writ of habeas corpus provides a judicial remedy for enforcing a fundamental individual right, the right to personal liberty, which may be defined as the right to be free of physical restraint that is not justified by law. Whenever imprisonment violates a constitutional or fundamental right, there is an infringement of the right …

Exploiting Trauma: The So-Called Victim's Rights Amendment, Lynne Henderson

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

The Prudent Prosecutor, Leslie C. Griffin

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Harmonic Convergence? Constitutional Criminal Procedure In An International Context, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

Throughout the world, a trend toward a shared - a constitutional - criminal procedure may be detected. It is evident in common-law, civil-law, and mixed systems: individual states like China adopt laws promising once-alien concepts like a presumption of innocence, even as supranational bodies like the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia debate how to adapt certain norms to a hybrid structure. Some have suggested that such developments may herald a harmonic convergence of criminal procedure rules. This Article examines the likelihood of such a convergence. It establishes as a keynote around which harmony may develop the model of constitutional …

Revisiting Victim's Rights, Lynne Henderson

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

An Analysis Of Rule 11 Plea Bargain Options, S. Crincoli (Sigman)

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Representing Defendants On Charges Of Economic Crime: Unethical When Done For A Fee, David Orentlicher

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Representing Black Male Innocence, Joan W. Howarth

Scholarly Works

This Article is a case study of a California capital case. Drawing on cultural studies, the first part develops the social construction of Black male gang member, especially as that identity is understood within white imaginations. The powerful and frightening idea of a Black man who is a gang member, even gang leader, captured the imagination and moral passion of the decisionmakers in this case, recasting and reframing the evidence in furtherance of this idea. In fundamental ways, this idea or imposed identity is fundamentally inconsistent with any American concept of innocence.

The second part uses the case to investigate …

Whose Justice? Which Victims?, Lynne Henderson

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.