Criminal Procedure Commons^™

Misunderstanding Judy Norman: Theory As Cause And Consequence, Martha R. Mahoney

Articles

Judy Norman shot her abusive husband during a late afternoon nap while he rested before violently trafficking her that night. The sharp contrast between the extreme violence and danger Judy faced and the denial of a self-defense instruction triggered extensive academic debates about justification and the use of deadly force. Norman became one of the most famous cases involving battered women, appearing in many casebooks and hundreds of law review articles. Despite all this work, the facts of the case contradict much of what scholars have said about Norman. Misconceptions about expert evidence, "Battered Woman Syndrome, "and battered women drive …

Social Media, Venue And The Right To A Fair Trial, Leslie Y. Garfield Tenzer

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Judicial failure to recognize social media's influence on juror decision making has identifiable constitutional implications. The Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial demands that courts grant a defendant's change of venue motion when media-generated pretrial publicity invades the unbiased sensibility of those who are asked to sit in judgment. Courts limit publicity suitable for granting a defendant's motion to information culled from newspapers, radio, and television reports. Since about 2014, however, a handful of defendants have introduced social media posts to support their claims of unconstitutional bias in the community. Despite defendants' introduction of negative social media in support …

Texas Indian Holocaust And Survival: Mcallen Grace Brethren Church V. Salazar, Milo Colton

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

When the first Europeans entered the land that would one day be called Texas, they found a place that contained more Indian tribes than any other would-be American state at the time. At the turn of the twentieth century, the federal government documented that American Indians in Texas were nearly extinct, decreasing in number from 708 people in 1890 to 470 in 1900. A century later, the U.S. census recorded an explosion in the American Indian population living in Texas at 215,599 people. By 2010, that population jumped to 315,264 people.

Part One of this Article chronicles the forces contributing …

Skinning The Cat: How Mandatory Psychiatric Evaluations For Animal Cruelty Offenders Can Prevent Future Violence, Ashley Kunz

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

In 2017, the Texas legislature amended Texas Penal Code § 42.092, which governs acts of cruelty against non-livestock animals. The statute in its current form makes torturing, killing, or seriously injuring a non-livestock animal a third degree felony, while less serious offenses carry either a state jail felony or a Class A misdemeanor charge.

While a step in the right direction, Texas law is not comprehensive in that it fails to address a significant aspect of animal cruelty offenses: mental illness. For over fifteen years, Texas Family Code § 54.0407 has required psychiatric counseling for juveniles convicted of cruelty to …

Civil Rico: An Effective Deterrent To Fraudulent Asbestos Litigation?, Lester Brickman

Cardozo Law Review

In January 2014, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge George Hodges, presiding over the asbestos-related bankruptcy of Garlock Sealing Technologies, LLC, a manufacturer of gaskets containing asbestos, issued an order estimating Garlock's liability for pending and future mesothelioma cases. Judge Hodges, after hearing evidence discovered by Garlock in a sampling of settled cases, rejected using the usual bankruptcy court recourse to the debtor's historic settlement values as a valid basis for estimating Garlock's total future liability for asbestos-related injuries. He found that Garlock's prior mesothelioma settlements were not a reliable predictor of Garlock's liability because those settlements had been infected by misrepresentations by …

Individualized Sentencing, William W. Berry

Washington and Lee Law Review

In Woodson v. North Carolina, the Supreme Court proscribed the use of mandatory death sentences. One year later, in Lockett v. Ohio, the Court expanded this principle to hold that defendants in capital cases were entitled to “individualized sentencing determinations.” The Court’s reasoning in both cases centered on the seriousness of the death penalty. Because the death penalty is “different” in its seriousness and irrevocability, the Court required the sentencing court, whether judge or jury, to assess the individualized characteristics of the offender and the offense before imposing a sentence. In 2012, the Court expanded this Eighth Amendment concept …

Killing Silence: A Path To Increasing Homicide Solvability In Urban Communities, Dennis Thornton

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Relatively low rates of homicide solvability results in law-abiding citizens being forced to co-exist with known murderers, which is detrimental to a community’s psyche. This condition happens disproportionately in neighborhoods where crime is high, cohesiveness among its members is weak, and the citizen/police relationship is little or non-existent. This research sought to understand this phenomenon by asking,” How can murder solvability rates improve in marginalized communities?” and employing four theoretical lenses. Using the city of New Orleans as a case study and holding Social Disorganization Theory constant, Spiral of Silence, Habitus, and Dramaturgy were utilized in an attempt to understand …

Justice Begins Before Trial: How To Nudge Inaccurate Pretrial Rulings Using Behavioral Law And Economic Theory And Uniform Commercial Laws, Michael Gentithes

William & Mary Law Review

Injustice in criminal cases often takes root before trial begins. Overworked criminal judges must resolve difficult pretrial evidentiary issues that determine the charges the State will take to trial and the range of sentences the defendant will face. Wrong decisions on these issues often lead to wrongful convictions. As behavioral law and economic theory suggests, judges who are cognitively busy and receive little feedback on these topics from appellate courts rely upon intuition, rather than deliberative reasoning, to resolve these questions. This leads to inconsistent rulings, which prosecutors exploit to expand the scope of evidentiary exceptions that almost always disfavor …

When Death Becomes An Option: How Aedpa’S Opt-In Provisions Will Violate The Constitutional Rights Of Habeas Corpus Petitioners, Alexander Brock

Journal of Law and Policy

For centuries, the writ of habeas corpus has allowed imprisoned men and women to challenge the validity of their detention as the final source of relief from criminal sentences. For those convicted of the death penalty, it is the last resource standing between life and death. Despite its monumental significance in America’s legal history, the “Great Writ” was dealt a devastating blow with the introduction of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (“AEDPA”) of 1996. Designed to expedite the legal processes from sentencing to execution, AEDPA drastically limited the avenues of relief sought by habeas petitioners. Yet, the law …

Reducing Recidivism Or Misclassifying Offenders?: How Implementing Risk And Needs Assessment In The Federal Prison System Will Perpetuate Racial Bias, Rachel Dibenedetto

Journal of Law and Policy

Your Honor, I understand the appeal of using this sentencing software, EVALUATE. I do. It appears to be efficient, precise, immune to emotion and lapses in logic. It seems fair and unbiased, so shouldn’t we attempt to be fair and unbiased in evaluating whether it actually works? 32, 19, 34 . . . 32% is the federal recidivism rate. 19%? 19% is the recidivism rate of defendants tried and sentenced in your court, Judge Barish. It’s one of the lowest in the Southern District. 34%? That’s the recidivism rate of EVALUATE, higher than the national average, 15 points behind you.

A Rhetorical Analysis Of Opening Statements In Trial: Reconsidering The Classical Canon Of Invention, Andrew Chandler

Undergraduate Theses

This analysis of 21 opening statements probes at current persuasive practices employed by trial attorneys through the lens of mainstream legal advice and an expanded definition of rhetorical invention – one which includes both discovery and creation. An evaluation of such practice reveals the utility, and furthermore the duty of the advocate, to draw upon an expanded realm of available arguments.

Discretionary Life Sentences For Juveniles: Resolving The Split Between The Virginia Supreme Court And The Fourth Circuit, Daniel M. Coble

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

At the age of 17, Donte Lamar Jones shot and killed a store clerk as she laid down on the floor during a robbery. He was spared the death penalty by agreeing instead to die in prison at the end of his life. Two years later in Virginia, 12 individuals were murdered for doing nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Those individuals were killed by Lee Malvo and John Muhammad, better known as the “D.C. Snipers.” While John Muhammad was given the death penalty for his heinous crimes, Lee Malvo, who was 17 during …

Sex Offenders, Custody And Habeas, Wendy R. Calaway

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

This Article focuses on habeas petitioners under a conviction from state court seeking federal habeas review. First, Part I will discuss the historical context of the writ of habeas corpus and the development of its purpose and scope. Part I also examines the current status of habeas corpus law, recent legislative efforts to limit its reach, and, specifically, the idea of custody as a prerequisite to habeas relief. Part II explores the evolution of the custody requirement both at the Supreme Court and in lower federal courts. In particular, this section looks at how the meaning of custody has …

To Bail Or Not To Bail: Protecting The Presumption Of Innocence In Nevada, Ebeth Palafox, Brendan Mcleod

Nevada Law Journal Forum

This white paper aims to discuss the issues associated with bail reform in Nevada, provide an analysis of bail reform efforts across the country, and purpose possible solutions for obstacles to bail reform in Nevada. The white paper’s proposed recommendations for practical bail reform is a three-phase plan to eliminate the injustices that arise from Nevada’s current cash bail model.

Incarceration Or E-Carceration: California’S Sb 10 Bail Reform And The Potential Pitfalls For Pretrial Detainees, Ashley Mullen

Cornell Law Library Prize for Exemplary Student Research Papers

California’s bail system not only infringes on individual rights, but also exacerbates a cobweb criminal justice system. The In re Humphrey court framed the issue perfectly when it stated that the problem with the bail system stems “from the enduring unwillingness of our society, including the courts, to correct a deformity in our criminal justice system that close observers have long considered a blight on the system.” California sought to rectify this “deformity” of a wealth-based bail system by passing SB 10 (the California Money Bail Reform Act of 2017).

This Note addresses the arguments that will likely be raised …

Ohio's Targeted Community Alternative To Prison Program: How A Good Idea Is Implemented Through Bad Policy, Samantha Sohl

Cleveland State Law Review

Just because a legislature can make a law doesn’t mean that they should. The Ohio General Assembly enacted the Targeted Community Alternatives to Prison (T-CAP) program to decrease the number of convicted defendants sent to state prison and to increase funding for community control efforts. While the law may be upheld under the Ohio Constitution’s Uniformity Clause, the law should still be repealed because legislative control and financial influence have no place in the judicial branch, specifically the criminal sentencing process. However, the law is rooted in good intentions, and many judges have found the additional funding useful, but the …

Beyond The Witness: Bringing A Process Perspective To Modern Evidence Law, Edward K. Cheng, G. Alexander Nunn

Faculty Scholarship

The focal point of the modern trial is the witness. Witnesses are the source of observations, lay and expert opinions, authentication, as well as the conduit through which documentary, physical, and scientific evidence is introduced. Evidence law therefore unsurprisingly concentrates on – or perhaps obsesses over – witnesses. In this Article, we argue that this witness-centered perspective is antiquated and counterproductive. As a historical matter, focusing on witnesses may have made sense when most evidence was the product of individual observation and action. But the modern world frequently features evidence produced through standardized, objective, and even mechanical processes that largely …

Guilt By Genetic Association: The Fourth Amendment And The Search Of Private Genetic Databases By Law Enforcement, Claire Abrahamson

Fordham Law Review

Over the course of 2018, a number of suspects in unsolved crimes have been identified through the use of GEDMatch, a public online genetic database. Law enforcement’s use of GEDMatch to identify suspects in cold cases likely does not constitute a search under the Fourth Amendment because the genetic information hosted on the website is publicly available. Transparency reports from direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing providers like 23andMe and Ancestry suggest that federal and state officials may now be requesting access to private genetic databases as well. Whether law enforcement’s use of private DTC genetic databases to search for familial relatives …

The Power Of Prosecutors, Jeffrey Bellin

Faculty Publications

One of the predominant themes in the criminal justice literature is that prosecutors dominate the justice system. Over seventy-five years ago, Attorney General Robert Jackson famously proclaimed that the “prosecutor has more control over life, liberty, and reputation than any other person in America.” In one of the most cited law review articles of all time, Bill Stuntz added that prosecutors—not legislators, judges, or police—“are the criminal justice system’s real lawmakers.” And an unchallenged modern consensus holds that prosecutors “rule the criminal justice system.”

This Article applies a critical lens to longstanding claims of prosecutorial preeminence. It reveals a curious …

Assessing Risk And Cash Bail In Massachusetts, Brittany M. Gammett

Honors Program Theses and Projects

The use of risk assessments to determine the outcome of bail hearings has the potential to eliminate inequality in bail decisions and establish an impartial uniformity for the use of bail in jurisdictions across Massachusetts – but only when the assessments are based on empirical evidence and combined with judicial discretion. In April of 2018, Massachusetts passed a criminal justice reform bill. Under the new reform, a judge must take into account a defendant’s ability to pay bail when a bail amount is set. I measured the success of the bill through an ethnographic study, by sitting in on bail …

Good Prosecutor And Good Person? The Conflict Of Humanness And The Prosecutorial Field, Zaiya Dillon

The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research

No abstract provided.

Institutional Death: Effects Of Carceral State And Education Institution On Black Men, Shontoria D. Pratt

African American Studies - All Scholarship

African American men have been dying at an alarming rate for many years. Issues such as violence, prison, education success rates, and health related issues, as well as institutional injustice, have been significant factors in these physical and mental deaths of African American men. The purpose of this research is to investigate the correlation, if any, between the quality of life of African American men in urban cities and their level of Afrocentric knowledge. To what extent does the exposure of Afrocentric knowledge affect the views or help African American men avoid these deaths? This research will present preliminary ideas …

The Concrete Jungle: Where Dreams Are Made Of . . . And Now Where Children Are Protected, Samantha A. Mumola

Pace Law Review

The tragic and unsettling story of Kalief Browder has notably emerged as a prominent illustration of our criminal justice system’s historical failure to protect our youth. Kalief’s story gained massive media attention with the help of a TIME documentary series featured on Netflix and famous A-listers such as music artist Jay-Z and TV host Rosie O’Donnell. It is hard to ignore the fact that Kalief Browder was cheated by the system; he chose suicide to escape his demons, which developed after undeserved time spent at Riker’s – a place he would have never experienced had he initially been tried as …

The Haves Of Procedure, Ion Meyn

William & Mary Law Review

In litigation, “haves” and “have-nots” battle over what procedures should govern. Yet, much greater hostilities have been avoided—a war between the “haves” themselves. “Criminal haves” (prosecutors) and “civil haves” (institutional players) litigate in separate territories and under different sets of rules. This is good, for them, because they have incompatible objectives. This Article contends that protecting the “haves” from each other has profoundly influenced the development of procedure in the United States.

The “haves” reap significant benefits in being insulated from each other as they seek rules responsive to their unique preferences. A “criminal have” seeks easy access to the …

Show Me Criminal Procedure, Ben L. Trachtenberg, Anne M. Alexander

Open Educational Resources

Show Me Criminal Procedure is an open educational resources casebook available for free to students. This is the 2d ed. published in Spring 2019.

Sixth Amendment Sentencing After Hurst, Carissa Byrne Hessick, W. W. Berry

Faculty Publications

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2016 decision in Hurst v. Florida, which struck down Florida’s capital sentencing scheme, altered the Court’s Sixth Amendment sentencing doctrine. That doctrine has undergone several important changes since it was first recognized. At times the doctrine has expanded, invalidating sentencing practices across the country, and at times it has contracted, allowing restrictions on judicial sentencing discretion based on findings that are not submitted to a jury. Hurst represents another expansion of the doctrine. Although the precise scope of the decision is unclear, the most sensible reading of Hurst suggests that any finding required before a …

Criminal Procedure—Jurisdictional Limitations On Federal Judges' Ability To Authorize Electronic Surveillance: A Cry For Congressional Guidance, Meredith A. Powell

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Addressing Racial Bias In The Jury System: Another Failed Attempt?, Alisa Micu

Georgia State University Law Review

This Note explores the majority opinion and the dissents in Pena- Rodriguez regarding whether the Supreme Court has adequately provided guidance for lower courts to follow the ruling, which now allows exceptions for evidence of racial bias to Rule 606(b). Part I discusses the history of the no-impeachment rule, its foundation in the Sixth Amendment, and its constitutional requirements. Further, Part I discusses the different approaches that courts have taken in adopting Rule 606(b) and what problems courts have identified in its application. Part II analyzes whether the Supreme Court, as a practical matter, has provided a workable procedural scheme …

Panel 4: Criminal Procedure And Affirmative Action

Georgia State University Law Review

Moderator: Lauren Sudeall

Panelists: Dan Epps, Gail Heriot, and Corinna Lain

Are Police Obsolete? Breaking Cycles Of Violence Through Abolition Democracy, V. Noah Gimbel, Craig Muhammad

Cardozo Law Review

On February 5, 2018, Baltimore activists organized a successful "cease-fire weekend," during which no one was killed-and the cops were not to thank. Indeed, as community anti-violence organizers worked to cool hot feuds in order to prove that endless violence was not their destiny, the Baltimore Police Department was sinking ever-deeper into perhaps the most shocking police corruption scandal of the twenty-first century.

The stark contrast between ordinary city residents risking their safety to fight against violence in their community and a corrupt police force committing and propagating acts of violence in the microcosmic streets of Baltimore raises what may …