Criminal Procedure Commons^™

Finding The Proper Measure For Conditions Of Pretrial Confinement, Alexander A. Reinert

Articles

Comment in response to Catherine T. Struve, The Conditions of Pretrial Detention, 161 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1009 (2013).

Four Reforms For The Twenty-First Century, Barry C. Scheck

Articles

What follows are my top four suggestions for judicial action and advocacy that can result in urgently needed and readily achievable reforms. Ass the American Judicature Society and its members consider their agenda and mission for the coming years, each of these issues deserves their support.

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, …

Admissibility Compared: The Reception Of Incriminating Expert Evidence (I.E., Forensic Science) In Four Adversarial Jurisdictions, Gary Edmond, Emma Cunliffe, Simon A. Cole, Andrew J. Roberts

All Faculty Publications

There is an epistemic crisis in many areas of forensic science. This crisis emerged largely in response both to the mobilization of a range of academic commentators and critics and the rise and influence of DNA typing. It gained popular and authoritative support through the influence of the National Academy of Science (NAS) and a surprisingly critical report produced under its auspices by a committee of the National Research Council (NRC). Interestingly, as this article endeavors to explain, the courts themselves seem to have played a rather indirect, inconsistent and ultimately ineffective role in the supervision and evaluation of forensic …

Untold Stories Or Miraculous Mirrors? The Possibilities Of A Text-Based Understanding Of Socio-Legal Transcript Research, Emma Cunliffe

All Faculty Publications

Austin Sarat has described legal understandings of the transcript as “the verbatim record of a present soon to become past, a mirror/a record/a voice machine in which the “author” exercises no authorial presence.” In this paper I argue that when seeing a transcript as an authorless mirror of court proceedings, lawyers and socio-legal scholars risk overlooking the ways in which the technology of transcripts influences the record that is produced. Paying attention to the laws and practices governing transcript production allows those who engage in transcript research to appreciate how the transcript is defined in relation to the spoken proceedings …

"Children Are Different": Constitutional Values And Justice Policy, Elizabeth S. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

This essay explores the importance for Eighth Amendment jurisprudence and for juvenile crime regulation of Miller v. Alabama (2012) and two earlier Supreme Court opinions rejecting harsh sentences for juveniles. It argues that the Court has broken new ground in defining juveniles as a category of offenders who are subject to special Eighth Amendment protections. In Miller and in Graham v. Florida (2010) particularly, the Court has applied to juveniles' non-capital sentences the rigorous proportionality review that, for adults, has been reserved for death sentences. The essay then turns to the implications of the opinions for juvenile crime policy, arguing …

Summary Of Brass V. State, 128 Nev. Adv. Op. 68, Joseph Sakai

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

An appeal addressing whether a district court committed reversible error by dismissing a prospective juror before conducting a Batson2 hearing, and whether there was evidence to support a kidnapping conviction.

Panel Iv: Challenges To Proving Cases Of Torture Before The Committee Against Torture, Juan E. Mendez

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Wisdom Is Thrown Into Jail: Using Therapeutic Jurisprudence To Remediate The Criminalization Of Persons With Mental Illness, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

The common wisdom is that there are two related villains in the saga of the “criminalization of persons with mental illness”: the dramatic elimination of psychiatric hospital beds in the 1970s and 1980s as a result of the “civil rights revolution,” and the failure of the deinstitutionalization movement. Both of these explanations are superficially appealing, but neither is correct; in fact, the causal link between deinstitutionalization and criminalization has never been rigorously tested. It is necessary, rather, to consider another issue to which virtually no attention has been or is being paid: the near-disappearance of mental status issues from the …

The Judge, He Cast His Robe Aside: Mental Health Courts, Dignity And Due Process, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

One of the most important developments in the past two decades in the way that criminal defendants with mental disabilities are treated in the criminal process has been the creation and the expansion of mental health courts, one kind of “problem-solving court.” There are now over 300 such courts in operation in States, some dealing solely with misdemeanors, some solely with non-violent offenders, and some with no such restrictions. There is a wide range of dispositional alternatives available to judges in these cases, and an even wider range of judicial attitudes. And the entire concept of “mental health courts” is …

They’Re Planting Stories In The Press: The Impact Of Media Distortions On Sex Offender Law And Policy, Heather Ellis Cucolo, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

Individuals classified as sexual predators are the pariahs of the community. Sex offenders are arguably the most despised members of our society and therefore warrant our harshest condemnation. Twenty individual states and the federal government have enacted laws confining individuals who have been adjudicated as “sexually violent predators” to civil commitment facilities post incarceration and/or conviction. Additionally, in many jurisdictions, offenders who are returned to the community are restricted and monitored under community notification, registration and residency limitations. Targeting, punishing and ostracizing these individuals has become an obsession in society, clearly evidenced in the constant push to enact even more …

After United States V. Jones, After The Fourth Amendment Third Party Doctrine, Stephen E. Henderson

Faculty Articles

In United States v. Jones, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected the proposition that the Government can surreptitiously electronically track vehicle location for an entire month without Fourth Amendment restraint. While the Court's three opinions leave much uncertain, in one perspective they fit nicely within a long string of cases in which the Court is cautiously developing new standards of Fourth Amendment protection, including a rejection of a strong third party doctrine. This Article develops that perspective and provides a cautiously optimistic view of where search and seizure protections may be headed.

More detail:

United States v. Jones, in which the …

Gideon’S Amici, Why Do Prosecutors So Rarely Defend The Rights Of The Accused?, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

In Gideon v. Wainwright, twenty-three state attorneys general, led by Walter F. Mondale and Edward McCormack, joined an amicus brief on the side of the criminal accused, urging the Supreme Court to recognize indigent defendants’ Sixth Amendment right to appointed counsel in felony cases. This was a unique occurrence. Although amicus filings by public entities have increased significantly since then, including in criminal cases, government lawyers rarely submit amicus briefs in the Supreme Court supporting criminal defendants’ procedural rights, and never en masse as in Gideon. The states’ public support for Gideon’s position points up the special nature of the …

Why Strickland Is The Wrong Test For Assessing Violations Of The Right To Testify, Daniel J. Capra, Joseph Tartakovsky

Faculty Scholarship

A criminal accused has a constitutional right to testify in his own defense. The right has an undisputed place alongside the most important "personal" rights, like the right to remain silent or the right to represent oneself. But in the 1990s, courts began to apply the ineffective-assistance test of Strickland v. Washington to evaluate claims by a defendant that his right to testify was abridged. In practice this nullifies the right. Moreover, the Strickland test is inapposite because it focuses on counsel and not the defendant's right to testify. This Article proposes a new test to better secure and enforce …

The Skeptic's Guide To Information Sharing At Sentencing, Ryan W. Scott

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The “information sharing model,” a leading method of structuring judicial discretion at the sentencing stage of criminal cases, has attracted broad support from scholars and judges. Under this approach, sentencing judges should have access to a robust body of information, including written opinions and statistics, about previous sentences in similar cases. According to proponents, judges armed with that information can conform their sentences to those of their colleagues or identify principled reasons for distinguishing them, reducing inter-judge disparity and promoting rationality in sentencing law.

This Article takes a skeptical view of the information sharing model, arguing that it suffers from …

The Skeptic’S Guide To Information Sharing At Sentencing, Ryan W. Scott

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The “information sharing model,” a leading method of structuring judicial discretion at the sentencing stage of criminal cases, has attracted broad support from scholars and judges. Under this approach, sentencing judges should have access to a robust body of information, including written opinions and statistics, about previous sentences in similar cases. According to proponents, judges armed with that information can conform their sentences to those of their colleagues or identify principled reasons for distinguishing them, reducing inter-judge disparity and promoting rationality in sentencing law. This Article takes a skeptical view of the information sharing model, arguing that it suffers from …

Do Sexually Violent Predator Laws Violate Double Jeopardy Or Substantive Due Process? An Empirical Inquiry, Tamara Rice Lave, Justin Mccrary

Articles

No abstract provided.

Qualified Immunity Developments: Not Much Hope Left For Plaintiffs, Karen Blum, Erwin Chemerinsky, Martin A. Schwartz

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reassessing The Citizens Protection Act: A Good Thing It Passed, And A Good Thing It Failed, Rima Sirota

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Citizens Protection Act (CPA) of 1998 has always been a lightening rod for criticism, and it remains so today. This article reassesses the CPA’s perceived inadequacies in light of how it has actually affected (or, not affected) federal prosecutors’ involvement in criminal investigations. The article takes issue with the critics and demonstrates that the CPA succeeded where it should have, failed where it should have, and left us—however inadvertently—with a remarkably coherent and consistent approach to regulating federal prosecutors’ involvement in criminal investigations regardless of whether a suspect retains counsel early in the proceedings.

The CPA requires federal prosecutors …

Effective Remedies For Ineffective Assistance, Jenia I. Turner

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

In two recent cases, Missouri v. Frye and Lafler v. Cooper, the Supreme Court affirmed that criminal defendants have a right to competent counsel during plea bargaining. The Court also established that the injury caused by ineffective assistance is not mooted by the subsequent conviction of the defendant at trial. The cases were broadly celebrated for clarifying that the Sixth Amendment applies fully to plea bargaining — the standard process by which our justice system resolves criminal cases today.

The most significant and surprising part of Lafler, however, was the Court’s holding concerning remedies. The Court held that trial courts …

A Feather On One Side, A Brick On The Other: Tilting The Scale Against Males Accused Of Sexual Assault In Campus Disciplinary Proceedings, Barclay S. Hendrix

Georgia Law Review

On April 4, 2011, the Department of Education's Office
of Civil Rights issued a "Dear Colleague" letter regarding
Title JX's applicability to sexual violence on college
campuses. This letter was sent to every college or
university receiving federal funding and instructed
recipients on how to meet their legal obligations. Some of
the most important changes in the letter pertained to how
schools must conduct their grievance procedures in
adjudicatingsexual assault claims. First, the 2011 letter
requires that schools use a preponderance of the evidence
standard to determine the accused's guilty or innocence.

Second, the letter strongly discourages schools from
allowing …

The Degrading Character Rule In American Criminal Trials, Paul S. Milich

Georgia Law Review

The rule prohibiting evidence of the accused's bad
character is steadily degrading as courts and legislatures
expand existing exceptions and add new ones. In Georgia,

we saw the rule almost disappear as trial courts blithely
admitted a defendant's past crimes to prove his or her
"bent of mind" to commit the crime charged. This Article
examines why the character rule is losing ground.
The thesis is that a rule requiring as much careful
balancing as the character rule needs a clear, strong
justification to hold its own when faced with competing
claims to admit the evidence in the search for …

Taking A Toll On The Equities: Governing The Effect Of The Plra's Exhaustion Requirement On State Statutes Of Limitations, Keri E. Mccrary

Georgia Law Review

If prisoners are required by federal law to exhaust
institutional remedies before they may file suit in federal
court, should a prisoner with a legitimate claim suffer
dismissal by the federal court if the statute of limitations
lapses during the time the prisoner spends exhausting
administrative remedies? The Prisoner Litigation Reform
Act (PLRA) of 1996 offers no guidance. Federal courts
may choose to apply equitable tolling to a prisoner's claim
should this predicament arise, saving it from dismissal
based on tardiness, but nothing requires the court to do so.
The PLRA's enigmatic exhaustion requirement has
engendered much litigation, and the …

Killers Shouldn't Inherit From Their Victims-Or Should They?, Carla Spivack

Georgia Law Review

This Article questions, for the first time, the equitable and policy basis of Slayer Rules, the rules that bar killers from inheriting from those they kill. It shows that killings that involve inheritance usually occur as a result of domestic abuse or severe mental illness, and argues that, because the legal and social service systems offer little help to those trapped in abusive relationships or those disabled by mental illness, it is not justifiable for those systems to deprive the killer of an inheritance when he or she takes the only means of escape available.

Shields, Swords, And Fulfilling The Exclusionary Rule's Deterrent Function, James L. Kainen

Faculty Scholarship

When the exclusionary rule prevents the prosecution from using evidence necessary to bring a case to trial, the rule deters illegality while raising no issue about how it might interfere with usual factfinding processes. However, when a case proceeds to trial although a court has suppressed some prosecution evidence, courts need to decide the extent to which the defendant may benefit from the absence of the proof without opening the door to its admission. The exclusion of any relevant evidence raises similar questions, and courts often say the exclusionary rule is a shield from suppressed evidence, but not a sword …

The Right To Plea Bargain With Competent Counsel After Cooper And Frye: Is The Supreme Court Making The Ordinary Criminal Process Too Long, Too Expensive, And Unpredictable In Pursuit Of Perfect Justice, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

In Lafler v. Cooper and Missouri v. Frye, the Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of criminal defendants who were deprived of a favorable plea offer because of their lawyers’ professional lapses. In dissent, Justice Scalia complained that “[t]he ordinary criminal process has become too long, too expensive, and unpredictable,” because of the Court’s criminal procedure jurisprudence; that plea bargaining is “the alternative in which...defendants have sought relief,” and that the two new decisions on the Sixth Amendment right to effective representation in plea bargaining would add to the burden on the criminal process. This essay examines several aspects of …

Military Veterans, Culpability, And Blame, Youngjae Lee

Faculty Scholarship

Recently in Porter v. McCollum, the United States Supreme Court, citing “a long tradition of according leniency to veterans in recognition of their service,” held that a defense lawyer’s failure to present his client’s military service record as mitigating evidence during his sentencing for two murders amounted to ineffective assistance of counsel. The purpose of this article is to assess, from the just deserts perspective, the grounds to believe that veterans who commit crimes are to be blamed less by the State than offenders without such backgrounds. Two rationales for a differential treatment of military veterans who commit crimes are …

Federalism And The Eighth Amendment, Youngjae Lee

Faculty Scholarship

How many “cruel and unusual punishments” clauses are there? Michael Mannheimer, in his article, Cruel and Unusual Federal Punishments, argues that there are two—one for the federal government and one for state governments.1 Mannheimer contends that courts have been unduly neglecting the former and mistakenly applying the latter to the federal government without adequate reflection.2 Mannheimer further argues that the Eighth Amendment is primarily a device to promote state sovereignty and that we should accordingly read it as requiring that federal punishments be no more severe than state punishments for equivalent crimes.3 I cannot do justice in this brief Response …

Federal Criminal Discovery Reform: A Legislative Approach, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

In general, discovery is far narrower in federal criminal cases than in federal civil litigation. Under current federal law, prosecutors do not have to disclose evidence and information that is favorable to the defense for its use in investigating, advising the defendant, plea negotiations or trial, unless the favorable evidence falls within one of several narrow categories or might be probative enough to produce an acquittal. Proponents of broader federal criminal discovery law express concern both that disclosure is too limited to ensure fair outcomes and provide a fair process in criminal cases and that prosecutors do not universally comply …

Katz On A Hot Tin Roof: Saving The Fourth Amendment From Commercial Conditioning By Reviving Voluntariness In Disclosures To Third Parties, Mary Graw Leary

Scholarly Articles

In a world in which Americans are tracked on the Internet, tracked through their cell phones, tracked through the apps they purchase, and monitored by hundreds of traffic cameras, privacy is quickly becoming nothing more than a quaint vestige of the past.

In a previous article discussing the intersection of technology and the Fourth Amendment, I proposed reframing the issue away from conventional commentary. The Missed Opportunity of United States v. Jones: Commercial Erosion of Fourth Amendment Protection in a Post-Google Earth World, 15 PENN. J. CON. L. 331, 333 (2012). That article posits that society has reached the point …