Criminal Procedure Commons^™

Danforth, Retroactivity, And Federalism, J. Thomas Sullivan

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

All For One: A Review Of Victim-Centric Justifications For Criminal Punishment, Adam J. Macleod

Faculty Articles

Disparate understandings of the primary justification for criminal punishment have in recent years divided along new lines. Retributivists and consequentialists have long debated whether a community ought to punish violators of legal norms primarily because the violator has usurped communal standards (the retributivist view), or rather merely as a means toward some end such as rehabilitation or deterrence (the consequentialist view). The competing answers to this question have demarcated for some time the primary boundary in criminal jurisprudential thought.

A new fault line appears to have opened between those who maintain the historical view that criminal punishment promotes the common …

Roth At Fifty: Reconsidering The Common Law Antecedents Of American Obscenity Doctrine, 41 J. Marshall L. Rev. 393 (2008), James R. Alexander

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

What The High Court Giveth The Lower Courts Taketh Away: How To Prevent Undue Scrutiny Of Police Officer Motivations Without Eroding Randolph's Heightened Fourth Amendment Protections, Marc Mcallister

Cleveland State Law Review

Beginning in 1969 with Frazier v. Cupp and extending through early 2006, the Supreme Court followed a trend of expanding the scope of lawful warrantless consent searches and correspondingly limiting privacy rights under the Fourth Amendment. Most likely, Georgia v. Randolph will be remembered as a bump along the road toward an ever-expanding consent doctrine. Despite Chief Justice Roberts' concerns, post-Randolph case law reveals that Randolph is not the watershed case its dissenters feared. Part II of this article summarizes the Randolph decision with emphasis on the Court's express limitations of its rule. Part III describes various post-Randolph cases that …

Commenting On Credibility In Kansas: A Constructive Criticism Of State V. Pabst, Steve Leben

Faculty Works

In some respects, this is a cautionary tale about overruling precedent. The Kansas Supreme Court openly overruled its own thirty-two year old precedent in deciding State v. Pabst in 2000. Cautionary tales and precedents aside, this Article is primarily about how trials are conducted, and how much latitude an attorney should have in Kansas to talk directly to jurors in closing argument about all the issues-including witness credibility-that will decide the case. Pabst forced attorneys to change the way they conduct closing arguments. While the result in Pabst was right, the rationale the court used to support the decision was …

The Confrontation Right Across The Systemic Divide, Richard D. Friedman

Book Chapters

In his notable work, Evidence Law Adrift, Mirjan Damaška identified three pillars of the common law system of determining facts in adjudication, and examined these through a comparative lens: the organisation of the trial court; the phenomenon of temporally compressed trials; and a high degree of control by parties and their counsel. In reviewing the book, I suggested that a strong concept of individual rights was another critical feature of the common law system, especially in its American variant and especially with respect to criminal defendants.

In this essay, I will explore how these four features play out in the …

Crawford, Retroactivity, And The Importance Of Being Earnest, J. Thomas Sullivan

Law Faculty Scholarship

In this article Professor Sullivan examines the Supreme Court's evolving Confrontation Clause jurisprudence through its dramatic return to pre-Sixth Amendment appreciation of the role of cross-examination in the criminal trial reflected in its 2004 decision in Crawford v. Washington. He discusses the past quarter century of the Court's confrontation decisions and their impact on his client, Ralph Rodney Earnest, recounting the defendant's conviction and twenty-four-year litigation journey through state and federal courts to his eventual release from prison in the only successful attempt to use Crawford retroactively known to date.

Fixed Justice: Reforming Plea-Bargaining With Plea-Based Ceilings, Russell D. Covey

Faculty Publications By Year

The ubiquity of plea bargaining creates real concern that innocent defendants are occasionally, or perhaps even routinely, pleading guilty to avoid coercive trial sentences. Pleading guilty is a rational choice for defendants as long as prosecutors offer plea discounts so substantial that trial is not a rational strategy regardless of guilt or innocence. The long-recognized solution to this problem is to enforce limits on the size of the plea/trial sentencing differential. As a practical matter, however, discount limits are unenforceable if prosecutors retain ultimate discretion over charge selection and declination. Because the doctrine of prosecutorial charging discretion is immune to …

Brennan Lecture Evidence-Based Judicial Discretion: Promoting Public Safety Through State Sentencing Reform, Michael A. Wolff

All Faculty Scholarship

In this speech delivered for the annual Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. Lecture on State Courts and Social Justice, the Honorable Michael Wolff offers a new way of thinking about sentencing. Instead of attempting to limit judicial discretion and increase incarceration, states should aim to reduce recidivism in order to make our communities safer. Judge Wolff uses the example of Missouri's sentencing reforms to argue that states should adopt evidence-based sentencing, in which the effectiveness of different sentences and treatment programs are regularly evaluated. In pre-sentencing investigative reports, probation officers should attempt to quantify - based on historical data - …

Minnesota's Distortion Of Rule 609, Ted Sampsell-Jones

Faculty Scholarship

Rule of Evidence 609, which governs the admission of prior convictions of a witness for purposes of impeachment, occupies an important place in the day to day operation of American criminal trials. The rule is a compromise that reflects these competing values. It admits some prior convictions but not all. Crimen falsi offenses such as perjury and fraud are automatically admissible under 609(a)(2). All other felonies are analyzed under the balancing test of 609(a)(1), which allows the admission of a defendant-witness's crimes if the “probative value of admitting this evidence outweighs its prejudicial effect to the accused.” The rule seeks …

Improving Privacy Protection, But By How Much?, Steve Coughlan

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The discussion of reasonable expectation of privacy in R. v. M. (A.) is extremely useful. In the wake of Tessling, many courts had effectively reduced the protection offered by s. 8 based on two arguments: that what was detected was an emanation in the public domain similar to heat coming from a house, and that what was discovered merely related to informational privacy and was not part of the biographical core of such data. Justice Binnie's decision puts paid the notion that either of these arguments is a trump card. He suggests that generalizing about "emanations" is not a useful …

Reforming Homicide Law To Separate Guilt From Sentence: An International Gloss, Steve Coughlan

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This article argues that Canadian homicide law is handicapped by trying to combine two contradictory approaches. In general, Canadian criminal law adopts the approach of setting out relatively rigid rules for determining guilt or innocence. That is, the Criminal Code sets out particular offences, and if the elements of an offence can be proven, then failing the presence of any defence (also relatively rigidly defined), any accused will be found guilty. The question of guilt or innocence is not individualized to the circumstances of the offender. On the other hand, sentencing decisions adopt exactly the opposite approach, and are made …

The End Of Constitutional Exemptions, Steve Coughlan

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In R. v. Ferguson (reported ante p. 197) the Supreme Court decided that constitutional exemptions are not available as a remedy when a mandatory minimum sentence is said to violate section 12 of the Charter. This is a well reasoned and sensible decision. As mandatory minimum sentences are the context in which the possibility of the constitutional exemption as a Charter remedy has most frequently arisen, as a practical matter Ferguson largely disposes of the issue. Nonetheless, a further clarification at some point that constitutional exemptions are not available in any context, for other violations of section 12 or of …

Is A Forensic Laboratory Report Identifying A Substance As A Narcotic 'Testimonial'?, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

Is a state forensic analyst's laboratory report, prepared for use in a criminal proceeding and identifying a substance as cocaine, "testimonial" evidence and so subject to the demands of the Confrontation Clause as set forth in Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004)?

Does An Accused Forfeit The Confrontation Right By Murdering A Witness, Absent A Purpose To Render Her Unavailable?, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

If an accused murdered a witness, should he be deemed to have forfeited the right under the Sixth Amendment "to be confronted with" the witness, absent proof that the accused committed the murder for the purpose of rendering her unavailable as a witness?

No Longer A Safe Haven For Torturers: The United States Makes Its First Successful Prosecution Under The Torture Statute, Melissa A. Beckman

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Likelihood Of Using Drug Courts: Predictions Using Procedural Justice And The Theory Of Planned Behavior, Evelyn M. Maeder, Richard L. Weiner

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

The current research compares two theoretical models borrowed from social psychology (theory of planned behavior and procedural justice) to predict intentions to make use of a drug court. Medicaid-eligible substance users answered a number of questions regarding their intentions to use a drug court in the future, including items from planned behavior and procedural justice scales. When procedural justice was considered alone, only trustworthiness predicted intention to use drug courts. When planned behavior was considered alone, only deliberative attitudes predicted the intention. After combining the two models, deliberative attitudes from the theory of planned behavior were the only significant predictor …

Rehabilitating Juvenile Sex Offenders With A Life Sentence, 42 J. Marshall L. Rev. 187 (2008), Adam Doeringer

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Federal Sentencing Policy: Learning Lessons From Republican Judicial Appointees In The Guidelines Era, David M. Zlotnick

University of Colorado Law Review

In the two years since the landmark Booker decision, federal sentencing policy has been in a state of suspended animation. This Article urges federal sentencing reform advocates to look to an unlikely source for realistic goals and ideological support-the experiences of Republican judicial appointees in the Guidelines Era. Its findings are based upon a long-term research project into cases in which Republican appointees stated their disagreement with the sentences required by law from the bench. The Article discusses the primary product of my research, forty comprehensive case profiles and their policy implications. Specifically, the Article demonstrates how the lessons of …

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.

The More Things Change: A Psychological Case Against Allowing The Federal Sentencing Guidelines To Stay The Same In Light Of Gall, Kimbrough, And New Understandings Of Reasonableness Review, Jelani Jefferson Exum

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

In December 2007, through two decisions, the Supreme Court sought to clean up the confusion that it created just shy of three years earlier when it rendered the Federal Sentencing Guidelines advisory in United States v. Booker and called for circuit courts to begin reviewing sentences for "unreasonableness." In one of those December decisions, Gall v. United States, the Court clarified what it meant by reasonableness review and explained that such review had both a procedural and substantive component. In the other decision, Kimbrough v. United States, the Court gave more meaning to the substantive component, …

In Whose "Best Interests"? – An International And Comparative Assessment Of Us Rules On Sentencing Of Juveniles, Jelani Jefferson Exum, John W. Head

Faculty Publications

According to numerous sources, both at the international level and within the USA, legal standards governing the treatment of children (commonly defined as persons under 18 years old)—including their treatment at the hands of the judicial system—should reflect an assessment of "the best interests of the child". An explicit announcement of this principle at the international level appears in the Convention on the Rights of the Child ("CRC"), which nearly all countries in the world have adopted. Article 37 of the CRC elaborates on the "best interests" principle, by prescribing six key standards national juvenile justice systems are to follow …

Promoting Prosecutorial Accountability, Independence And Effectiveness, Timothy W. Waters, Belinda Cooper

Books & Book Chapters by Maurer Faculty

Promoting Prosecutorial Accountability, Independence and Effectiveness assists readers in identifying and understanding best practices, and serves as a reference for policymakers, senior prosecutors, academics, and civil society leaders.

The publication should also guide and enrich national debates on prosecutorial reform, especially in countries—such as Bulgaria—which have recently transitioned to democracy.

Proceedings Of The Second International Humanitarian Law Dialogs, Sixtieth Anniversary Of The Genocide Convention: The Power Of A Word, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

Introductory lecture to the Second Annual International Humanitarian Law Dialogs.

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention) was adopted sixty years ago. The legacy of the Genocide Convention is inextricable from the legacy of Nuremberg and the legal work of the Nuremberg prosecutors, some of whom join us today. To this end, celebrating Nuremberg also means celebrating the Genocide Convention.

The Future Of Federal Sentencing Policy: Learning Lessons From Republican Judicial Appointees In The Guidelines Era, David M. Zlotnick

Law Faculty Scholarship

In the two years since the landmark Booker decision, federal sentencing policy has been in a state of suspended animation. This Article urges federal sentencing reform advocates to look to an unlikely source for realistic goals and ideological support --the experiences of Republican judicial appointees in the Guidelines Era. Its findings are based upon a long-term research project into cases in which Republican appointees stated their disagreement with the sentences required by law from the bench. The Article discusses the primary product of my research, forty comprehensive case profiles and their policy implications. Specifically, the Article demonstrates how the lessons …

Incest And Sex Offender Registration: Who Is Registration Helping And Who Is It Hurting?, Jocelyn Ho

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The note argues that sex offender registration and notification laws, such as Megan's Law, disproportionately harm victims and offenders in cases of incest. It contends that incest is distinct from other sex crimes due to its familial nature and low recidivism rates, making its inclusion in public registries unnecessary and counterproductive. The psychological and social consequences of registration extend to victims, violating their privacy and perpetuating stigma. The note advocates for a shift in policy focus toward prevention, victim empowerment, and rehabilitation rather than punitive measures.

"The Public Gaze And The Prying Eye:" The South And The Privacy Doctrine In Nineteenth-Century Wife Abuse Cases, Jerome Nadelhaft

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Cross Dressing And The Criminal, Bennett Capers

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Attorney Ethics And Witness Misidentification In The 26 Year Incarceration Of An Innocent Man, Susan Poll Klaessy

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Pretrial And Preventative Detention Of Suspected Terrorists: Options And Constraints Under International Law, Douglass Cassel

Journal Articles

This article analyzes the grounds, procedures and conditions required by International Human Rights Law and International Humanitarian Law for pretrial detention of suspected terrorists for purposes of criminal law enforcement, and for their preventive detention for security and intelligence purposes. Recognizing the difficulties in securing sufficient admissible evidence to prosecute terrorists within the tight time limits imposed by international law, the Article nonetheless suggests that indefinite detention, solely or primarily for purposes of intelligence interrogation, is probably not lawful under U.S. or international law. Preventive detention for security purposes, on the other hand, is generally permitted by international law, provided …