Criminal Law Commons^™

Children Are Constitutionally Different, But Life Without Parole And De Facto Life Sentences Are Not: Extending Graham And Miller To De Facto Life Sentences, Ellen Brink

Fordham Law Review

Under the U.S. Supreme Court’s current juvenile sentencing jurisprudence, a juvenile may legally receive a prison sentence of hundreds of years without parole in instances in which a sentence of life without parole would be unconstitutional. This illogical state of affairs is the result of the Court’s silence on whether its holdings in Graham v. Florida and Miller v. Alabama, which together limit the availability of juvenile life without parole sentences, also apply to so-called de facto life sentences. De facto life sentences are lengthy term-of-years sentences that confine offenders to prison for the majority, if not the entirety, …

Confronting Carpenter: Rethinking The Third-Party Doctrine And Location Information, Charlie Brownstein

Fordham Law Review

The third-party doctrine enables law enforcement officers to obtain personal information shared with third parties without a warrant. In an era of highly accessible technology, individuals’ location information is consistently being transmitted to third parties. Due to the third-party doctrine, this shared information has been available to law enforcement, without the individual knowing or having an opportunity to challenge this availability. Law enforcement has utilized this doctrine to obtain comprehensive information regarding individuals’ whereabouts over long periods of time.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently limited the reach of the third-party doctrine regarding location data held by cellphone providers. However, this …

Deserving Life: How Judicial Application Of Medical Amnesty Laws Perpetuates Substance Use Stigma, Scott Koven

Washington and Lee Law Review

To combat the continued devastation wrought by the opioid crisis in the United States, forty-eight states have passed medical amnesty (or “Good Samaritan”) laws. These laws provide varying forms of protection from criminal punishment for certain individuals if medical assistance is sought at the scene of an overdose. Thus far, the nascent scholarly conversation on medical amnesty has focused on the types of statutory protections available and the effectiveness of these statutes. To summarize, although medical amnesty laws have helped combat drug overdose, the statutes are replete with arbitrary limitations that cabin their life-saving potential.

This Note extends the dialogue …

Indicium Ex Machina: Unstructured Sentencing And Disparate Outcomes In Canada, Damilola Awotula

LLM Theses

Recent advancements in artificial intelligence have caused a wave of technological normality. As expected, the criminal justice system, and more increasingly, criminal sentencing is seeing a trend of “technosolutionism” due to real concerns about unjustified disparity. Truly, artificial intelligence has the prospect of making the sentencing process more effective, value-driven, consistent, and predictable. However, relying on the assumption that using such a system may require being confined to the normative sentencing traditions of each country, this thesis argues that there are crucial questions to be addressed about how this technological normality fits within the normative pillars of extant legal principles, …

Innocent Until Proven Mentally Incompetent., Jade Smith

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

Abstract Forthcoming.

The Death Penalty Seals Racial Minorities’ Fate: The Unfortunate Realities Of Being A Racial Minority In America., Sarah Garcia

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

Abstract Forthcoming.

Expungement In Pennsylvania After Pardon: Excluded By Clean Slate Limited Access, Joseph H. O’Donnell

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Pennsylvania law provides several methods to protect or dispose of a criminal record. Methods to protect a criminal record from public view include expungement, limited access, clean slate limited access, and pardon. Expungement is a relatively limited right in Pennsylvania, but individuals do have a right to expungement upon receipt of a governor’s pardon. This right was created by case law. However, not every state follows this model. The recently enacted Clean Slate Limited Access Act created automated sealing for certain offenses, including cases where the Governor issued a pardon. This created a system of double protection for criminal records …

A Call For Effective Leniency: How The Circuit Split Regarding The Prison Mailbox Rule Fails To Properly Alleviate Issues For Prisoners, Shelby E. Parks

MC Law Review

The prison population has long been an overlooked segment of society. This is particularly true when it comes to pro se litigants within the federal prison system. A pro so litigant is someone involved in litigation, whether civil or criminal, and is representing themselves instead of being represented by an attorney. In other words, pro se prisoners do not have the aid of counsel at their disposal. Although it is an individual’s constitutional right to represent themselves, it can come at a cost, especially when it comes to understanding the nuances of civil or criminal court procedure. For pro se …

A Fiduciary Theory Of Progressive Prosecution, Bruce Green, Rebecca Roiphe

Articles & Chapters

Progressive prosecutors differ from their more traditional counterparts primarily in the way in which they make decisions. They tend to bind their discretion by announcing categorical policies rather than making fact-based decisions case by case. This article catalogs the unusual degree of pushback progressive prosecutors have encountered from the public, legislatures, courts, police, and their own subordinate prosecutors. Drawing on fiduciary theory, it explains this reaction as a response to progressive prosecutors’ abdication of their fiduciary role. As a public fiduciary, prosecutors are entrusted with protecting the public’s abstract interest in justice, and an integral part of this role is …

Preface: New Directions In Prosecutorial Reform, Miriam Aroni Krinsky, Justin Murray, Maybell Romero

Articles & Chapters

This Preface, which introduces the American Criminal Law Review’s Symposium Issue on Reform-Minded Prosecution, begins by describing the power that prosecutors hold in the criminal legal system, which has historically gone unchecked and unquestioned. As mass incarceration, police violence, and wrong- ful convictions began to permeate the public consciousness, many communities focused their attention on the critical role of their local elected prosecutor and elected leaders who promised to do the job differently. Reform-minded prosecu- tors have enjoyed remarkable electoral successes over the past decade such that close to twenty percent of the U.S. population now resides in a jurisdiction …

Academic Economic Espionage?, Elizabeth A. Rowe

William & Mary Law Review

In 2018 the U.S. government announced that Chinese espionage was occurring in university research labs, and the Department of Justice subsequently made it a high priority to prosecute economic espionage in academia. The DOJ’s grave concerns about espionage in academia have continued, and the Director of the FBI has lamented that American taxpayers are footing the bill for China’s technological development. This geopolitical concern about espionage has had real world and personal consequences in academia. Since 2019, over a dozen high-profile criminal prosecutions have put prominent professors at major research universities across the country in handcuffs and almost all the …

Twenty Years After Krieger V Law Society Of Alberta: Law Society Discipline Of Crown Prosecutors And Government Lawyers, Andrew Flavelle Martin

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Krieger v. Law Society of Alberta held that provincial and territorial law societies have disciplinary jurisdiction over Crown prosecutors for conduct outside of prosecutorial discretion. The reasoning in Krieger would also apply to government lawyers. The apparent consensus is that law societies rarely exercise that jurisdiction. But in those rare instances, what conduct do Canadian law societies discipline Crown prosecutors and government lawyers for? In this article, I canvass reported disciplinary decisions to demonstrate that, while law societies sometimes discipline Crown prosecutors for violations unique to those lawyers, they often do so for violations applicable to all lawyers — particularly …

Proceedings At An Impasse: Appealing Fugitive Disentitlement Orders Of International Defendants Under The Collateral Order Doctrine, Parker Siegel

Fordham Law Review

The doctrine of fugitive disentitlement allows federal courts to decline to entertain a defendant’s claims when that defendant is deemed a fugitive from justice. Once disentitled, defendants cannot seek relief from the judicial system until they submit to the court’s jurisdiction. But complications emerge when federal district courts disentitle non–U.S. citizens who reside outside of the United States, who are indicted for alleged misconduct committed abroad, and who attempt to dismiss charges while remaining in their home countries. Federal circuit courts of appeals are split on whether such defendants can appeal from a fugitive disentitlement ruling without submitting to the …

The Mob Lawyer's Constitution, Sara Mayeux

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article reconstructs the constitutional rhetoric of mob lawyers, as well as drug lawyers and other icons of the high-priced criminal defense bar, from the 1970s through the 1990s-the heyday of federal organized crime prosecutions and thus, of the lawyers who defended against them. Drawing upon pop-culture sources including archival television footage, magazine features, newspaper coverage, and ghost-written mass-market memoirs, the article pieces together the constellation of soundbites through which mob lawyers disseminated their views. As the subjects of frequent media coverage, these lawyers advanced a coherent and distinctive (if crude) set of ideas about the proper relationship between individuals, …

Face Recognition Under Adverse Viewing Conditions: Implications For Eyewitness Testimony, Charles C. F. Or, Denise Y. Lim, Siyuan Chen, Alan L. F. Lee

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Eyewitness testimony forms an important component in deciding whether a case can be prosecuted. Yet, many criminal perpetrators deliberately conceal their faces with disguises or under dim lighting, undermining eyewitness accuracy. This article reviews recent studies to characterize the factors that impair face recognition performance, specifically, various forms of face disguise (e.g., face masks, sunglasses) and different lighting conditions. Research shows that identification accuracy, alongside eyewitness confidence and decision bias, all affect the reliability of eyewitness accounts. A consistent finding across studies is that face-identification accuracy can be improved by matching the viewing conditions during the police lineup with those …

A Rights-Based Approach To Determining Venue For Immigration Removal Hearings, Maleah Bradley

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Juvenile Genetic Privacy In New York: Dna Collection And Maintenance Post-Francis O., Cassidy Moon

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The note argues that the compulsory collection and indefinite maintenance of juvenile forensic DNA profiles violate the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. It asserts that such practices are particularly problematic for minors due to their heightened privacy interests, the low recidivism rates among juveniles, and the contradiction with the juvenile justice system's focus on rehabilitation and confidentiality. The note advocates for legislative reforms, such as New York Senate Bills 998 and 3104, to address these issues and protect juveniles' privacy rights.

Public Defenders As Gatekeepers Of Freedom, Alma Magaña

Articles

Nearly half a million people are currently held in pretrial detention across the United States. Legal scholarship has explored many of the actors and factors contributing to the deprivation of freedom of those presumed innocent. And while the scholarship in these areas is rich, it has primarily focused on certain system actors—including judges, prosecutors, and profit-seeking sheriffs—structural concerns, such as the role race plays in who is being held in pretrial detention, or critiques of the failed promise of algorithms to deliver on bias-free bail determinations. But relatively little scholarship exists about the contributions of public defenders to this deprivation. …

A Crazy Quilt: Infanticide In The United States, Susan Ayres

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter builds on previous research to present a sampling of cases in the US, primarily in the twenty-first century, in order to show the harshness and disparity in criminal charges, defences and sentences. The broad term ‘infanticide’ is used for child-murder cases, and the more specific term ‘neonaticide’ is used for the killing of a child in the first 24 hours after birth. This chapter also describes the more recent use of genetic genealogy to solve cold cases of neonaticide. It concludes by considering how the absence of an infanticide offence and expanded defences results in an incoherent, unjust …

The Ever-Shifting Ground Of Pretrial Detention Reform, Jenny E. Carroll

Faculty Scholarship

In the past six decades, pretrial detention systems have undergone waves of reform. Despite these efforts, pretrial jail populations across the country continue to swell. The causes of such growth in jail populations are difficult to pinpoint, but some are more readily apparent: Fear over rising crime rates, judicial reluctance to release accused persons, and monetary burdens associated with release have all contributed to increased detention pretrial across criminal legal systems in the United States. This article examines various pretrial detention reform efforts and highlights the need for greater research in the area.