Criminal Procedure Commons^™

Native Nations' Autonomy In The Modern Era, Brynna Collins

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

In The Shadow Of Pico: Book Bans And The Struggle Between Viewpoint Discrimination And Educational Suitability, Tripp Frank

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

U.S. Hyper-Surveillance In The Name Of Counterterrorism: Responses To State-Sanctioned Repression Of Arabs And Muslims Then And Now, Rama Izar

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

The Epa's Failure To Revise The Clean Water Act And Its Impact On Communities, Will Matushek

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

From Bulwark To Puppet: A Call To Democratize The Archaic Grand Jury, Maris Medina

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Kinship Care: What Could Make This Ideal More Attainable For Families?, Dani Scudder

Public Interest Law Reporter

In recent years, there has been a radical shift by child protective agencies to look towards extended family before placing a child in foster care.¹ Placing children with family or fictive kin, people who are not related but still important to that child's life, is called kinship care.² This shift is a result of increased research surrounding the emotional and physical benefits of kinship care for displaced youth.³ Although professionals agree that placing children with relatives reduces trauma and enhances outcomes, the ability of relatives to care for their extended family members is hindered by financial and …

Pretrial Fairness Increases Procedural Fairness, Isabel Smith

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Collective Bargaining Agreements: An Untapped Pathway For Educators To Advocate For Students With Disabilities, Martha Rubin

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Capital Punishment In Context: Kenneth Smith And The Eight Amendment, Elizabeth Stamper

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Shotspotter And Chicago, Mehreen Tariq

Public Interest Law Reporter

On February 16, 2024, Mayor Brandon Johnson decided not to renew Chicago's contract with ShotSpotter. To better understand Mayor Johnson's reasoning, this article will explore Chicago's history with ShotSpotter, arguments from its proponents, concerns from those in opposition, and national takeaways from other municipalities that have faced a similar decision.

The War On Cannabis, Marla Zappa

Public Interest Law Reporter

Federal legalization of marijuana has the potential to drastically reform the criminal justice system as thousands of Americans face lifelong penalties for simple drug offenses, especially communities of color who are prosecuted at much higher rates compared to white individuals.

Today, possession of marijuana is the leading drug offense for which Americans are arrested.¹ Every year approximately 550,000 individuals are arrested for cannabis offenses, typically possession.² This is because marijuana is the most common illicit drug used in the United States.³ In 2021, over 52.2 million Americans consumed cannabis in some form.⁴ Across the population, marijuana …

Table Of Contents, Public Interest Law Reporter

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

What A Waste: The Prosecution Of Hazardous Substances Crimes During The Trump Administration, Joshua Ozymy, Ph.D., Melissa Jarrell Ozymy, Ph.D.

Public Interest Law Reporter

The Trump Administration went to great lengths to roll back environmental regulatory and enforcement efforts. Yet, researchers know very little about the impact of the Administration on the criminal prosecution of hazardous substance crimes. This study utilizes content analysis of EPA criminal investigations leading to prosecution during the Trump Era to analyze charging and sentencing patterns and illustrate the greater themes that emerged during this period. Prosecutions are dominated by hazardous waste (48%), pesticide (41%), and lead-based paint (11%) crimes. Results show prosecutors were able to pursue crimes involving significant harm and culpable conduct, while securing over $90 million in …

Free Speech Restrictions On College Campuses: When Maintaining The Status Quo Demands Complacency In The Genocide Of Oppressed Peoples, Martha Rubin

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Is Sustainable Finance The Solution To Funding The U.N. Sdgs? Exploring The Potential Of Sustainable Finance Strategies In Achieving Climate Action, Amanda Scheichet

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Coercion, Control, And Criminal Law: Rethinking Accomplice Liability And Duress For Intimate Partner Violence Survivor-Defendants, Rachel Still

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Two Men Walked In Front Of A Storefront: Why The Supreme Court Should Consider Race In Fourth Amendment Decisions, Sara Totten

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

The Procedural Justice Industrial Complex, Shawn E. Fields

Faculty Scholarship

The singular focus on procedural justice police reform is dangerous. Procedurally just law enforcement encounters provide an empirically proven subjective sense of fairness and legitimacy, while obscuring substantively unjust outcomes emanating from a fundamentally unjust system. The deceptive simplicity of procedural justice – that a polite cop is a lawful cop – promotes a false consciousness among would-be reformers that progress has been made, evokes a false sense of legitimacy divorced from objective indicia of lawfulness or morality, and claims the mantle of “reform” in the process. It is not just that procedural justice is a suboptimal type of reform; …

Mandatory Sentences As Strict Liability, William W. Berry Iii

Washington and Lee Law Review

Strict liability crimes—crimes that do not require a criminal intent—are outliers in the world of criminal law. Disregarding criminal intent risks treating the blameworthy the same as the blameless.

In a different galaxy far, far away, mandatory sentences—sentences automatically imposed upon a criminal conviction—are unconstitutional in certain contexts for the exact same reason. Mandatory death sentences risk treating those who do not deserve death the same as those that might.

Two completely separate contexts, two parallel rules of law. Yet courts and commentators have failed to see the similarities between these two worlds, leaving an analytical black hole. Indeed, equity …

Forfeiture By Wrongdoing In Domestic Homicide Cases: Where Are We Now?, Caren Myers Morrison

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

One of the few common law exceptions to the rule that every criminal defendant enjoys the right to “be confronted with the witnesses against him” is if the defendant has deliberately caused a witness’s unavailability. That a defendant could forfeit his confrontation rights through his own wrongdoing developed from the equitable concept that “no man shall profit from his wrong.” When the Supreme Court narrowed the common law doctrine of forfeiture by wrongdoing in Giles v. California, it seemed like it had dealt a serious blow to the prosecution of domestic homicide cases. Rather than being able to introduce …

Confrontation, The Legacy Of Crawford, And Important Unanswered Questions, Paul F. Rothstein, Ronald J. Coleman

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The right to confront has a long history. In the United States, the Confrontation Clause provides: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right… to be confronted with the witnesses against him[.]” One of the most troublesome areas of Confrontation Clause jurisprudence has been the Clause’s application to “hearsay statements offered against a criminal defendant pursuant to a hearsay exception or exemption[.]” The Supreme Court’s confrontation analysis in this situation once hinged on the statement’s reliability, with the traditional hearsay rule and its exceptions and exemptions as a guide. But in Crawford v. Washington, the Court considered …

Crawford And The Common Law Criminal Trial, Robert K. Kry

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Three weeks after the Supreme Court decided Crawford v. Washington, Justice Scalia delivered the keynote address at the annual meeting of the American Society of International Law. Justice Scalia expounded on his views of when United States courts should and should not rely on foreign law. He urged that courts interpreting a treaty should look to how foreign courts construe the same instrument, on the reasonable assumption that treaty partners would want to strive for a consistent interpretation. By contrast, he took a dim view of relying on modern foreign law to interpret the U.S. Constitution, as the Court …

Crawford And Criminal Justice, William Ortman

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This essay reflects on whether Crawford v. Washington, now in its third decade of life, matters to criminal justice. For all the talk of Crawford as “revolutionary,” that is, has it made any real difference to the world of crime and punishment? I’ve confronted the question before. In a 2021 essay, I argued that Crawford probably has modest real-world effects. Crawford articulated a right that criminal defendants can exercise only at trial. In an adjudicatory system bereft of trials, trial rights don’t count for much. They impact plea outcomes only when they confer bargaining power sufficient to offset prosecutors’ …

Failing To Close Pandora's Box: Why Motions To Suppress Are Inadequate As A Remedy For False Confessions, Christina G. Leung

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.

Beyond The Reach Of Legal Process – Lessons From United States V Rafiekian, Vivian M. Williams

Publications and Research

The influence of foreign agents on the domestic affairs of countries is now a major issue in global affairs. This issue gained significance after foreign influence was blamed for a massive protest demanding fair election, rocked Moscow in 2011. It has been amplified after Russian involvement was cited for Donald Trump’s surprised election as President of the United States in 2016. There is now great anxiety among nations that foreign actors could influence electoral outcomes. Consequently, the past decade has seen a proliferation of laws regulating the operation of foreign agents within a country. Aggressive enforcement of Foreign Agents laws …

The Consumer’S Choice To Boycott, Agnes Bresee

Seattle University Law Review

In the wake of employees losing their jobs upon voicing their political opinions concerning Israel, Harvard and Columbia law students’ job offers being rescinded upon expressing support for Palestine, and the names and social media profiles of individuals who support Palestine being collected and listed on Canary Mission, such backlash may leave many Americans wondering what form of resistance to settler-colonialist apartheid is acceptable in the twenty-first century. Recently, the movement to collectively boycott brands like Starbucks, which sued its Worker’s Union for a tweet expressing support for Palestine; Disney, which donated money to Israel; and McDonald’s, where a location …

A Different Approach To Agency Theory And Implications For Esg, Jonathan Bonham, Amoray Riggs-Cragun

Seattle University Law Review

In conventional agency theory, the agent is modeled as exerting unobservable “effort” that influences the distribution over outcomes the principal cares about. Recent papers instead allow the agent to choose the entire distribution, an assumption that better describes the extensive and flexible control that CEOs have over firm outcomes. Under this assumption, the optimal contract rewards the agent directly for outcomes the principal cares about, rather than for what those outcomes reveal about the agent’s effort. This article briefly summarizes this new agency model and discusses its implications for contracting on ESG activities.

Overseeing The Administrative State, Jill E. Fisch

Seattle University Law Review

In a series of recent cases, the Supreme Court has reduced the regulatory power of the Administrative State. Pending cases offer vehicles for the Court to go still further. Although the Court’s skepticism of administrative agencies may be rooted in Constitutional principles or political expediency, this Article explores another possible explanation—a shift in the nature of agencies and their regulatory role. As Pritchard and Thompson detail in their important book, A History of Securities Law in the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court was initially skeptical of agency power, jeopardizing Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR)’s ambitious New Deal plan. The Court’s acceptance …

The Sec, The Supreme Court, And The Administrative State, Paul G. Mahoney

Seattle University Law Review

Pritchard and Thompson have given those of us who study the SEC and the securities laws much food for thought. Their methodological focus is on the internal dynamics of the Court’s deliberations, on which they have done detailed and valuable work. The Court did not, however, operate in a vacuum. Intellectual trends in economics and law over the past century can also help us understand the SEC’s fortunes in the federal courts and make predictions about its future.

A Hard Pill To Swallow: The Abysmal Mental Health Standards Of Detained Immigrant Children In The United States, Rama Bankesly

Seattle University Law Review

After setting foot into the U.S., unaccompanied children must learn to navigate academic and legal systems while receiving little support and carrying the heavy burden of effects of trauma on their mental health. They need access to mental health care from qualified professionals, but as this Comment will explain, they systematically fail to receive care, as can be seen in cases like Doe v. Shenandoah Valley Juv. Ctr. Comm’n. In Shenandoah, an unaccompanied child arrived in the U.S. and was placed in a facility that failed to provide remotely adequate mental health care and in fact was subjected …