Criminal Procedure Commons^™

Georgia's New Evidence Code - An Overview, Paul S. Milich

Georgia State University Law Review

On May 3, 2011, Governor Nathan Deal signed into law House Bill 24 (HB 24) bringing a new set of evidence rules to the State of Georgia.

The new rules went into effect on January 1, 2013. The author of this article was the Reporter for the State Bar Evidence Study Committee when new rules were first proposed back in the mid-1980s, and again throughout the recent, successful effort to reform the rules.

Part I of this article will give a brief history of the twenty-six-year effort to bring new evidence rules to Georgia. Part II will provide a structural …

Have We Come Full Circle? Judicial Sentencing Discretion Revived In Booker And Fanfan, Sandra D. Jordan

Pepperdine Law Review

The much anticipated Supreme Court decision in United States v. Booker and Fanfan has both invalidated the mandatory nature of the federal Sentencing Guidelines as well as restored judicial discretion for federal judges. With the Booker decision there is a renewed opportunity to correct some of the imbalance that came about as a result of the mandatory guidelines and the sentencing policies of the past twenty years. Booker has implications for all future sentencing as the power between the judiciary and the jury has been realigned and the power of the government has been reduced. Sentencing cannot accomplish legitimate goals …

You Have The Right To Remain Silent. Now Please Repeat Your Confession: Missouri V. Seibert And The Court's Attempt To Put An End To The Question-First Technique, Eric English

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

"What Hath Hiibel Wrought?": The Constitutionality Of Compelled Self-Identification, Robert A. Hull

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Criminal Justice, Akhil Reed Amar

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Raising The Bar: How Rompilla V. Beard Represents The Court's Increasing Efforts To Impose Stricter Standards For Defense Lawyering In Capital Cases, Whitney Cawley

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Beyond The (Current) Fourth Amendment: Protecting Third-Party Information, Third Parties, And The Rest Of Us Too, Stephen E. Henderson

Pepperdine Law Review

For at least thirty years the Supreme Court has adhered to its third-party doctrine in interpreting the Fourth Amendment, meaning that so far as a disclosing party is concerned, information in the hands of a third party receives no Fourth Amendment protection. The doctrine was controversial when adopted, has been the target of sustained criticism, and is the predominant reason that the Katz revolution has not been the revolution many hoped it would be. Some forty years after Katz the Court's search jurisprudence largely remains tied to property conceptions. As I have demonstrated elsewhere, however, the doctrine is not the …

Casting A Wider Net: Another Decade Of Legislative Expansion Of The Death Penalty In The United States, Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier

Pepperdine Law Review

During the last decade, judges, politicians, scholars, and the general public have become troubled about problems with the death penalty in the United States. Also during this time, major studies of the death penalty have recommended a reduction in the number of statutory factors that make one eligible for the death penalty. Despite these concerns, legislatures continue to expand their capital punishment statutes to make more defendants eligible for the death penalty. This Article examines how, during a time of growing concern about innocence and arbitrariness in the death penalty system, a number of legislatures have continued to expand their …

Criminal Justice, Vikram Amar

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Cutting The Cord: Ho'oponopono And Hawaiian Restorative Justice In The Criminal Law Context , Andrew J. Hosmanek

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

Ho'oponopono is a traditional Hawaiian dispute resolution system that has recently experienced a resurgence of interest. The word ho'oponopono literally means to make right. In this system, both the offender and victim participate in a type of guided mediation along with other stakeholders in the offense. Ho'oponopono is different from typical mediations because after the session is successfully completed, the participants figuratively cut the cord of legal and psychological entanglement which binds them - in other words, the dispute is put to rest forever. When victim and offender come to a true resolution of the problem, and jointly make the …

Shame By Any Other Name: Lessons For Restorative Justice From The Principles, Traditions And Practices Of Alcoholics Anonymous , Victoria Pynchon

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

Because the painful experience of shame is believed to deter anti-social and criminal conduct, it has long been a staple of our criminal justice system. Its purpose has been to accomplish moral education about the wrongfulness of the crime and to prevent its occurrence through social and self-disapproval. In criminal ADR or "restorative justice" circles, the beneficial effects of "reintegrative" shame are meant to be accomplished by a "restorative justice conference" or "victim-offender mediation" ("VOMS"). These VOMs bring together victims and their loved ones; offenders and their friends and family; and, caring members of the community for the purpose of …

The Gacaca Experiment: Rwanda's Restorative Dispute Resolution Response To The 1994 Genocide, Jessica Raper

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

Since its rise to power in July of 1994, the Rwandan government has been committed to prosecuting all those accused of genocide. To prosecute the approximately 130,000 defendants, Rwanda has adopted a program called gacaca, based on Rwanda's traditional customary dispute resolution system. The gacaca law provides a reconciliation component that allows defendants to trade confessions of past genocide crimes for indemnification, as well as a prosecution component that holds the most serious offenders accountable in a Western style prosecution in a formal court of law. One of the main goals of gacaca is to end the so-called "culture …

Cudgel Or Carrot: How Roper V. Simmons Will Affect Plea Bargaining In The Juvenile System , D. Brian Woo

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

In 2005, the United States Supreme Court held, in Roper v. Simmons, that the execution of convicted juveniles violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. In addressing the issue, the Court determined that a national consensus had developed against the execution of juveniles. Ultimately, a majority of the court decided that a national public consensus had been reached against the execution of juveniles under 18 in age. With Roper, no longer can juveniles of any age be executed. This decision will undoubtedly affect the entire juvenile penal system, from how cases enter the system, to …

Meet Me On Death Row: Post-Sentence Victim-Offender Mediation In Capital Cases, Rachel Alexandra Rossi

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

Since the 1970's, victim-offender mediation (VOM) has increased in use, most commonly with minor offenses. More recently, VOM has been sparingly applied to serious and violent crimes, including "rape, vehicular homicide, attempted homicide, and murder." Death penalty cases have rarely been the focus of restorative justice or VOM, likely because the victim has died and the offender will soon be executed, and these two parties are traditionally the focus of restorative justice. However, while capital cases involve unique concerns and issues, VOM can still be applied in these cases. The process would only require some modification of the focus and …

Davis And The Good Faith Exception: Pushing Exclusion To Extinction?, Eleanor De Golian

Mercer Law Review

To mitigate the effects of unlawful searches and remain faithful to the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the United States Supreme Court created the exclusionary rule, which requires lower courts to suppress evidence obtained from illegal searches. The Court, however, has recognized exceptions to the exclusionary rule, many of which involve police officers' "good faith" reliance on what they believe to be legal authority to search. In Davis v. United States, the Supreme Court held that, where a police officer relies on binding precedent in performing a search, the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule will not be used …

The Jury's Second Coming, Jenny E. Carroll

Faculty Scholarship

This article explores the controversial issue of jury nullification by reconceptualizing nullification through the lens of the Supreme Court’s recent decisions beginning with Apprendi v. New Jersey. Apprendi’s embrace of the jury’s historical powers — require a rejection of the formalized and static paradigm in favor of a more fluid vision of the law. Despite extensive scholarship surrounding Apprendi, an innovative (though admittedly counter-intuitive) reading of the case line has been overlooked. This reading draws on Apprendi’s embrace of a vision of the law constructed and completed through jury interpretation and verdict. Interpreted in this way, the Apprendi case line …

Finding The Original Meaning Of American Criminal Procedure Rights: Lessons From Reasonable Doubt’S Development, Randolph N. Jonakait

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “The prosecution must prove every element of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt for a valid conviction. The Constitution nowhere explicitly contains this requirement, but the Supreme Court in In re Winship1 stated that due process commands it. Justice Brennan, writing for the Court, noted that the Court had often assumed that the standard existed, that it played a central role in American criminal justice by lessening the chances of mistaken convictions, and that it was essential for instilling community respect in criminal enforcement. The reasonable doubt standard is fundamental because it makes guilty verdicts more difficult. As Winship …

The Problem Of Policing, Rachel A. Harmon

Michigan Law Review

The legal problem of policing is how to regulate police authority to permit officers to enforce law while also protecting individual liberty and minimizing the social costs the police impose. Courts and commentators have largely treated the problem of policing as limited to preventing violations of constitutional rights and its solution as the judicial definition and enforcement of those rights. But constitutional law and courts alone are necessarily inadequate to regulate the police. Constitutional law does not protect important interests below the constitutional threshold or effectively address the distributional impacts of law enforcement activities. Nor can the judiciary adequately assess …

Policing, Popular Culture And Political Economy: Towards A Social Democratic Criminology [Book Review], Mark Findlay

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

No abstract provided.

The Defense Attorney As Mediator In Plea Bargains, Gabriel Hallevy

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

In this article, it will be argued that defense counsel's function in negotiating plea bargains is identical to that of a mediator, seeking to reconcile the positions of the defendant and the prosecution. Within this framework, the plea bargain should be seen as part of the broad conception of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) which first made its appearance at the end of the 1970s. An analysis of plea bargains in the Western world as part of the broader concept of ADR actually shows that it is the defense attorney, rather than the court or the other parties to the issue, …

Impeachable Offenses?: Why Civil Parties In Quasi-Criminal Cases Should Be Treated Like Criminal Defendants Under The Felony Impeachment Rule, Colin Miller

Pepperdine Law Review

With one exception, every Federal Rule of Evidence dealing with propensity character evidence or evidence which can be misused as propensity character evidence makes it either: (a) as difficult to admit such evidence in civil trials as it is in criminal trials, or (b) more difficult to admit such evidence in civil trials than it is in criminal trials. The "mercy rule" falls into this latter category as it allows criminal defendants to inject the issue of character into their trials while a similar luxury is not afforded to civil parties. Before 2006, however, a substantial minority of courts extended …

Kimbrough And Gall: Taking Another "Crack" At Expanding Judicial Discretion Under The Federal Sentencing Guidelines, Chris Gaspard

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Given An Inch, The Detainee Effort To Take A Mile: The Detainee Legislation And The Dangers Of The "Litigation Weapon In Unrestrained Enemy Hands", Brian D. Fahy

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

International Travel With A "Digital Briefcase": If Customs Officials Can Search A Laptop, Will The Right Against Self-Incrimination Contravene This Authority?, Ashley H. Verdon

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Sexual Assault Counselor-Victim Privilege: Jurisdictional Delay Into An Unclaimed Sanctuary, Armand Arabian

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

(Re)Forming The Jury: Detection And Disinfection Of Implicit Juror Bias, Anna Roberts

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Waiving Innocence, Samuel R. Wiseman

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Legitimizing International Criminal Justice: The Importance Of Process Control, Nancy Amoury Combs

Michigan Journal of International Law

The last two decades have witnessed an astounding transformation of the international legal landscape as the international community has created a series of courts and tribunals to prosecute those accused of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. As a consequence of this international institution building, prosecutions are currently underway for crimes committed across the globe: in the former Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Cambodia, among other places. These international criminal tribunals and particularly the first modern tribunal- the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)-have undergone two significant evolutions. One of these …

Criminal Sanctions In The Defense Of The Innocent, Ehud Guttel, Doron Teichman

Michigan Law Review

Under the formal rules of criminal procedure, fact finders are required to apply a uniform standard of proof in all criminal cases. Experimental studies as well as real world examples indicate, however, that fact finders often adjust the evidentiary threshold for conviction in accordance with the severity of the applicable sanction. All things being equal, the higher the sanction, the higher the standard of proof that fact finders will apply in order to convict. Building on this insight, this Article introduces a new paradigm for criminal punishments-a paradigm that focuses on designing penalties that will reduce the risk of unsubstantiated …

Predators And Propensity: The Proper Approach For Determining The Admissibility Of Prior Bad Acts Evidence In Child Sexual Abuse Prosecutions, Basyle Tchividjian

Faculty Publications and Presentations

PREDATORS AND PROPENSITY: THE PROPER APPROACH FOR DETERMINING THE ADMISSIBILITY OF PRIOR BAD ACTS EVIDENCE IN CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE PROSECUTIONS

Basyle J. Tchividjian†

Abstract

The admissibility of prior bad act evidence in child sexual abuse prosecutions oftentimes makes the difference between a guilty and not guilty verdict. Recently, jurisdictions have growingly embraced the admission of such evidence for the purpose of establishing the defendant’s propensity to sexually victimize children. Due to the potentially high prejudicial effect of admitting propensity evidence, it is more critical than ever that courts carefully apply the decisive evidentiary gatekeeper, the probative value balancing test …