Criminal Law Commons^™

Global Partnership Should Be The Way Forward To Combat Money Laundering, Maame Nyakoa Boateng

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

This Comment compares the major anti-money laundering (“AML”) laws in the United States and Iran. This Comment argues that even though the United States is advanced in its compliance approach, without a partnership with countries that are more vulnerable to money laundering attacks, its AML efforts could prove counter-productive because of the inter-connectedness of our world today. Accordingly, this Comment proposes a global partnership between countries with effective AML legislation and countries with less effective AML legislation to combat this complex crime.

No Justice, No Pleas: Subverting Mass Incarceration Through Defendant Collective Action, Andrew Manuel Crespo

Fordham Law Review

The American penal system is a system of massive, racially unjust incarceration. It is also, to quote the U.S. Supreme Court, a “system of pleas.” The latter drives the former, as coercive plea bargaining makes it possible for the state to do two things that are otherwise hard to pull off at once: increase convictions and sentence lengths. Mass incarceration is a predictable result. But while plea bargaining is intensely coercive when leveraged against individuals, the system of pleas has a structural weak point. That Achilles’ heel is exposed once we see people facing prosecution not as isolated individuals but …

Progressive Prosecutors Are Not Trying To Dismantle The Master’S House, And The Master Wouldn’T Let Them Anyway, Paul Butler

Fordham Law Review

The first thing to note about Audre Lorde’s famous phrase “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” is that it cannot literally be true. If tools can dismantle the master’s house, the master’s own tools would be good as anyone’s. The main problem would not be that the tools don’t work, but rather how to get them to the people who most need the master’s house dismantled—the enslaved ones. But the considerable work that the phrase does in social justice movements and critical theory is figurative rather than literal. It is usually intended as a rebuke of liberal …

The Computer Got It Wrong: Facial Recognition Technology And Establishing Probable Cause To Arrest, T.J. Benedict

Washington and Lee Law Review

Facial recognition technology (FRT) is a popular tool among police, who use it to identify suspects using photographs or still-images from videos. The technology is far from perfect. Recent studies highlight that many FRT systems are less effective at identifying people of color, women, older people, and children. These race, gender, and age biases arise because FRT is often “trained” using non-diverse faces. As a result, police have wrongfully arrested Black men based on mistaken FRT identifications. This Note explores the intersection of facial recognition technology and probable cause to arrest.

Courts rarely, if ever, examine FRT’s role in establishing …

Human Dignity As A Chameleon, Ariel L. Bendor, Michal Tamir

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

This article offers an innovative argument, according to which courts do not interpret human dignity according to an abstract theoretical position on the nature of the value only, nor subordinate themselves to the subjective purpose of the drafters of a constitution. Thus, courts-whether in the United States, where human dignity is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, or in countries where the right is constitutionally enshrined, such as Germany, South Africa, and Israel-interpret and apply human dignity on the basis of the entirety of the provisions of the particular constitution. Human dignity serves as a constitutional chameleon in the sense …

Reconceiving Coercion-Based Criminal Defenses, Stephen R. Galoob, Erin L. Sheley

Faculty Scholarship

Coercing someone is sometimes wrong and sometimes a crime. People subject to coercion are sometimes eligible for criminal defenses, such as duress. How, exactly, does coercion operate in such contexts? Among legal scholars, the predominant understanding of coercion is the “wrongful pressure” model, which states that coercion exists when the coercer wrongfully threatens the target and, as a result of this threat, the target is pressured to act in accordance with the coercer’s threat. Some tokens of coercion do not fit neatly within existing legal categories or the wrongful pressure model of coercion. For example, coercive control is a psychological …

Second Chances: Why Michigan Should Categorically Prohibit The Sentence Of Juvenile Life Without Parole, Richard Zhao

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The United States is the only country in the world that sentences children to die in prison. This practice, known as juvenile life without parole (JLWOP), is condemned by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Yet twenty-five states still permit the sentence, and Michigan houses one of the nation’s largest JLWOP populations. Despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s ban on some forms of JLWOP, more must be done to further limit the use of this sentence. The current JLWOP sentencing scheme is untenable, imposes a significant financial burden on taxpayers, and perpetuates racial inequality. This Note explores …

The Informed Jury, Daniel Epps, William Ortman

Vanderbilt Law Review

The right to a criminal jury trial is a constitutional disappointment. Cases almost never make it to a jury because of plea bargaining. In the few cases that do, the jury is relegated to a narrow factfinding role that denies it normative voice or the ability to serve as a meaningful check on excessive punishment.

One simple change could situate the jury where it belongs, at the center of the criminal process. The most important thing juries do in criminal cases is authorize state punishment. But today, when a jury returns a guilty verdict, it authorizes punishment without any idea …

Getting To Phi: The Case For Excusatory Derogations From Iccpr Rights, Benjamen F. Gussen

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

This Article highlights the need for excusatory derogations from human rights. Currently, there is exclusive reliance on justification when upholding derogations from International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ("ICCPR ) rights. In contrast, an excusatory derogation accentuates the requisite international policy intervention to assist national and subnational governments toward a proportional response to public emergencies. The right to mobility under the ICCPR, and its renditions in the constitutions of Australia and Canada, are used to illustrate this proposition. Border closures in response to the coronavirus pandemic provide context to elucidate how different types of public emergencies dictate different approaches …

Advance To The Nearest Dispensary: How Quebec's Marijuana Monopoly Is A Model For Future Legalized States, Jason Levine

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

The note argues that a state-run monopoly model for marijuana sales, inspired by Quebec's approach, could more effectively promote public health and reduce black-market competition compared to the current license authorization model used in U.S. states like Colorado and California. By centralizing control over pricing, distribution, and product regulation, a monopolistic structure could address challenges such as high taxes, slow transition phases, and the dominance of illegal markets. The analysis draws parallels to alcohol sales frameworks and highlights how a government-run system could avoid federal tax burdens under Section 280E of the Internal Revenue Code.

Duty To Rescue In The Digital Age: A Comparative Analysis, Cameron Kellett

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

The article advocates for the enactment of state legislation establishing a duty-to-rescue doctrine, arguing that the absence of such a legal duty leads to preventable harm and undermines societal solidarity. It critiques the arbitrary nature of the special relationship exception under current law and proposes Minnesota's duty-to-rescue statute as a model for reform. The analysis emphasizes that requiring bystanders to provide reasonable assistance, without endangering themselves, is both feasible and morally justifiable, as it aligns with human tendencies to help others in distress.

The Ballad Of The "White" Collar Criminal: An Examination Of The Intersection Of Race And Gender In Federal White-Collar Sentencing And Possible Implications Of The Findings, Taylor Tesher

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The note argues that racial and gender disparities exist in federal white-collar crime sentencing, particularly affecting Black women, who often receive harsher sentences compared to their white counterparts. It highlights cases like Felicity Huffman and Kelley Williams-Bolar to illustrate these disparities and calls for reforms to address the lack of transparency and consistency in sentencing.

Non-State Actors "Under Color Of Law": Closing A Gap In Protection Under The Convention Against Torture, Anna R. Welch, Sangyeob Kim

Faculty Publications

The world is experiencing a global restructuring that poses a serious threat to international efforts to prevent and protect against torture. The rise of powerful transnational non-state actors such as gangs, drug cartels, militias, and terrorist organizations is challenging states’ authority to control and govern torture committed within their territory.

In the United States, those seeking protection against deportation under the Convention Against Torture (“CAT”) must establish a likelihood of torture at the instigation of or by consent or acquiescence of a public official acting in an official capacity or other person acting in an official capacity. However, what is …

Llegaron Los Federales: The Federal Government’S Prosecution Of Local Criminal Activity In Puerto Rico, Emmanuel Hiram Arnaud

Faculty Scholarship

In the midst of a debilitating humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico and high-profile litigation concerning other U.S. territories, scholars, political leaders, and activists have elevated conversations of constitutionally sanctioned inequality into the public spotlight. With respect to Puerto Rico, these conversations focus on its current economic morass and relation to the debate over decolonization. Absent from these important discussions is the role that federal criminal law plays in manifesting Congress’ continued plenary power over U.S. territories. This Article breaks from that pattern and highlights an ignored part of federal criminal jurisprudence: the federal prosecution of local criminal activity in Puerto …

Against Criminal Law Localism, Brenner M. Fissell

Faculty Publications

Scholars have long called for greater localism in criminal justice as a response to the crises of racialized mass incarceration and over-policing. A downward shift of power to smaller local governments is thought to maximize an array of values, including liberty, equality, and efficient experimentation, and also to allow for criminal justice to better reflect societal viewpoints. In making these claims, localists have at times either explicitly included control over substantive criminal law in their devolutionary project, or have overlooked that more general calls for localism would presumably include this power.

This Article critiques substantive criminal law localism, arguing that …

"Insanity Is Smashing Up Against My Soul": The Fifth Circuit And Competency To Be Executed Cases After Panetti V. Quarterman, Michael L. Perlin, Talia Roitberg Harmon

Articles & Chapters

One of the open secrets of death penalty law and policy is the astonishingly high percentage of individuals on death row with serious mental disabilities. This is well known to lawyers who represent this cohort (and presumably, equally well known to the district attorneys who nevertheless prosecute them and the judges who try and sentence them), but is not generally discussed in the press nor, certainly, in political discourse. In the aggregate, this is far beneath society’s radar.

It is now over 14 years since the US Supreme Court decided a case that clarified the underlying issues. In Panetti v. …

Shadow Nursing Home Ownership: How A Failure In Government Oversight Of For-Profit Nursing Homes In New York Has Allowed Profits To Balloon And Standards Of Care To Plummet, Marissa Espinoza

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

Complex corporate nursing home structures have become commonplace in for-profit nursing home ownership. These structures, designed to shield owners from regulation and liability, allow owners to evade public scrutiny by obscuring the identify of true owners and allow the true owners to direct revenue to other companies they own or benefit from, such as staffing agencies, payroll businesses, and management companies. This has led to a deterioration in the standard of care for nursing home residents, society's most vulnerable population, while providing a boon in profits for the true owners. Money that should be spent on care is instead diverted …

International White-Collar Crime And The Globalization Of Internal Investigations Ten Years Later, Lucian E. Dervan

Law Faculty Scholarship

In International White-Collar Crime and the Globalization of Internal Investigations Ten Years Later, Lucian E. Dervan revisits and reassesses the framework first articulated in his 2011 article examining the risks and structural challenges of cross-border internal corporate investigations

2StetsonBusLRev120 . The article evaluates how four core areas—selection of investigative counsel, cross-border data collection and transfer, employee interactions in varied labor law environments, and disclosure and settlement strategies—have evolved over the past decade in response to intensified global enforcement cooperation, expanding data privacy regimes, and shifting geopolitical dynamics. Dervan demonstrates that while practitioners have grown more sophisticated in navigating privilege …

In Defense Of Felon-In-Possession Laws, Dru Stevenson

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Bans With No Bite: Why Racial Profiling Bans Are Unable To Create Racial Justice In Policing, Rebecca Yin

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.