Criminal Law Commons^™

Improperly Obtained Evidence In Criminal Proceedings: An Updated Framework, Siyuan Chen, Zhi Jia Koh, Jian Wei Joel Soon

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The 2012 amendments to the Evidence Act “significantly broadened the admissibility criteria for expert evidence”; at the same time, the judicial discretion to deny admissibility of relevant expert opinion evidence was also introduced. This article considers the key developments pre- and post-amendments, and in doing so provides an updated framework for prosecutors and defence counsel alike to admit and challenge expert opinion evidence in criminal proceedings. Since it complements earlier articles in this series on similar fact and hearsay evidence, readers are assumed to be broadly familiar with the features of the Evidence Act, such as its admissibility paradigm, the …

The Failed Attempt To Overthrow The American Government: Crime And Insurrection, Frances P. Bernat

Journal of Criminal Justice and Law

President Trump, refusing to concede the 2020 Presidential election, claimed that there was election fraud. On January 6, 2021, the date set to finalize the election results by Congress, President Trump implored hundreds of thousands of his followers to march to the Capitol and “Stop the Steal.” Inside and outside the Capitol building, the police were overpowered by a mob of Trump supporters who did not want to have Joe Biden be formally declared the next U.S. President. The siege on the Capitol, in a failed attempted overthrow of the national government, was thwarted later that night. In the early …

Race, Rallies, And Rhetoric: How Trump’S Political Discourse Contributed To The Capitol Riot, Heather Alaniz, Kimberly D. Dodson, Jared R. Dmello

Journal of Criminal Justice and Law

The January 6, 2021, Capitol riot in Washington D.C. reflects one of the worst moments for democracy in U.S. History. Estimates indicate 10% of the individuals arrested following the Capitol riot had connections to far right militias and other right-wing extremist groups. To investigate the events that led up to the Capitol riot, this study provides a descriptive analysis of Trump’s public rhetoric between 2015-2020 citing tweets, speeches, and news interviews where his words created an environment for violence among his supporters prior to and throughout his presidency.

Police Officer Political Identity And Their Opinions Of Public Protests, Lois V. Woods, Kimberly K. Blackmon

Journal of Criminal Justice and Law

Purpose: Controversy surrounding the BLM movement and the insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, has been felt even within the ranks of policing. Participation of police officers in the Capitol riot seemed to be at odds with the duty and responsibility of those officers who sustained serious injuries that day. Method: Using data collected from active law enforcement officers, the current study examines how political identity may play a role in a police officer’s perceptions of law enforcement engagement in political protests. Results: The only significant difference found was police refraining from engaging in or participating with …

Corruption In University Admissions And The Administrative Allocation Of Scarce Goods, L. Burke Files, Roger E. Meiners, Andrew P. Morriss

BYU Law Review

The Varsity Blues investigation uncovered a seamy side of university admissions. Multiple wealthy parents were indicted for securing their children s admission to selective institutions through bribery. Despite the publicity the indictments and guilty pleas received, and the public schadenfreude over the sight of celebrities being arrested, the investigation is most notable for what it did not do: it did not deploy the federal government's arsenal of anti-money laundering and anti-corruption tools against the universities involved. This represents a significant missed opportunity to address the serious problems that arise from rationing access to selective institutions via opaque, easily manipulated admissions …

Penerapan Sanksi Pidana Terhadap Perbuatan Pengalihan Barang Jaminan Fidusia (Studi Kasus Pada Polres Serang Kota), Rahmat Wiguna, Benny Irawan, Rena Yulia

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

At this time, many financial institutions (leasing) offer easy credit applications for potential customers. This has attracted consumers to apply for motor vehicle loans, both cars and motorbikes, in leasing companies. However, the problem that has occurred recently in financial institutions is the number of cases concerning the transfer of fiduciary collateral. In fact, the said act has been regulated in statutory regulations which have criminal consequences, namely if the debtor transfers goods or pawns the goods which are guaranteed to be Fiduciary without the creditor's permission, the debtor can be subject to a fiduciary crime. This research aims to …

مبدأ الضرورة العسكرية، وانتهاكات قواعد القانون الدولي الإنساني دراسة تطبيقية على مخالفة "إسرائيل" لمبدأ الضرورة العسكرية خلال حرب (مايو2021م)., إياد محمد أبو مصطفى ماجستير

Journal of Al-Azhar University – Gaza (Humanities)

الملخص :

إنَّ التسليم بالاستناد إلى حالة الضرورة أثناء النزاعات المسلحة، كاستناد يُخرج سلوك المقاتل عن التصرفات المسموح بها أصبح أمرًا معترفًا به، غير أنَّ تجريد هذه الحالة من الشروط اللازمة لأعمالها، والضوابط الواجبة لتقييدها خاصة قيدي: "التناسب، والتمييز" أمر لا يمكن السماح به مهما كانت الظروف والمتغيرات الحاصلة في تطوير العلاقات بين الدول، ويُعدُّ هذا المبدأ متغيرًا بطبيعته غير القابلة للضبط أو التحديد بشكل واضح، الأمر الذي جعل هذا المبدأ ذريعة لدى الدول لانتهاك قواعد القانون الدولي الإنساني؛ ومن أهمها: دولة الاحتلال التي قامت بانتهاكه ومخالفة شروطه، وعدم مراعاة قيوده خلال حرب (مايو 2021م) على قطاع غزة.

وخَلُص البحث …

The Role Of The Palestinian Community Reconciliation Committee As A Model For Transitional Justice In Achieving National Reconciliation, Issam Husni Alatrash

Journal of the Arab American University مجلة الجامعة العربية الامريكية للبحوث

The aim of this study was identifying the role of the Palestinian Community Reconciliation Committee as a model for transitional justice in achieving the national reconciliation. This study focused on achieving this goal through three axes: the obstacles encountering the Community Reconciliation Committee, the mechanisms of the Community Reconciliation Committee and support and enhancements of the Community Reconciliation Committee. The researcher used the analytical descriptive approach describing the phenomenon of the study in addition to conducting a field study to identify the role of the Community Reconciliation Committee in achieving the national reconciliation by designing a questionnaire and taking the …

Submission Of Amicus Curiae Observations In The Case Of The Prosecutor V. Dominic Ongwen, Erin Baines, Kamari M. Clarke, Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

The important questions laid out by the Appeals Chamber in this case highlight the need for the proper delineation and interplay between mental illness and criminal responsibility under international law. Specifically, this case represents a watershed moment for the Appeals Chamber to set a framework for adjudicating mental illness in the context of collectivized child abuse and trauma. This is especially true for former child soldiers who occupy both a victim and alleged perpetrator status.

Amicus Curiae Observations By Public International Law & Policy Group, Milena Sterio, Michael P. Scharf, Paul R. Williams

Law Faculty Briefs and Court Documents

The amicus brief argues that in a case where the defendant alleges a ground excluding criminal responsibility (an affirmative defense), such as mental illness or duress, the defendant has an evidentiary burden to produce some evidence to support his/her claim of mental illness or duress, but that the prosecution retains the legal burden of proof to establish the defendant's responsibility beyond reasonable doubt.

“This ruling will have repercussions for future cases where the defendant asserts a mental illness or duress affirmative defense. Depending on how the ICC decides, future defendants will have to meet a specific evidentiary (or legal) burden …

Innocent Until Suspected Guilty, Rebekah Durham

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

Challenging Solitary Confinement Through State Constitutions, Alison Gordon

University of Cincinnati Law Review

Eighth Amendment jurisprudence has resulted in limited scrutiny of solitary confinement despite the known harms associated with the practice. The two-part test established by the federal courts to evaluate Eighth Amendment claims and limitations on challenging prison conditions under the Prison Litigation Reform Act can make it difficult to establish that solitary confinement is cruel and unusual punishment.

State constitutional challenges to solitary confinement are underexplored. Nearly all state constitutions contain an equivalent provision to the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. State courts need not be bound by federal jurisprudence in interpreting the scope of the state …

The High Price Of Poverty In Arkansas’S Courts: Rethinking The Utility Of Municipal Fines And Fees, Madison Miller

Arkansas Law Review

The opposite of poverty is not wealth. It is justice. Beginning in the 1980s, a "trail of tax cuts" led to budget shortfalls and revenue gaps throughout the United States. These budgetary problems resulted in many cities and towns shifting their burden of funding courts and the justice system at large "to the 'users' of the courts, including those least equipped to pay." Although "jailing an indigent person for a fine-only, low-level offense is unconstitutional," it is still an ongoing practice in many states, including Arkansas. In 1995, Arkansas passed new legislation to govern its circuit courts' collection and enforcement …

The Haunting Of Her House: How Virginia Law Punishes Women Who Become Mothers Through Rape, Jordan S. Miceli

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

If a rape victim becomes pregnant following the attack, she has three options: abort the pregnancy, place the child for adoption, or keep and raise the child. However, by requiring proof of conviction of rape to terminate the parental rights of the man who fathered that child through his rape, the Commonwealth of Virginia imposes a substantial burden on a victim weighing those options. To obtain a conviction under the current scheme, a victim, through her local prosecutor, has to prove to a jury that the accused committed the rape beyond a reasonable doubt. The Commonwealth requires proof of conviction …

Current Complications In The Law On Myths And Stereotypes, Lisa Dufraimont

Articles & Book Chapters

Myths and stereotypes represent an ongoing problem in Canadian sexual assault trials. Often, and paradigmatically, defence lawyers and trial judges rely on discredited sexist assumptions to the prejudice of female sexual assault complainants. However, a review of the recent appellate case law reveals many cases that do not fit this paradigm. Complications that have arisen include stereotypes about men or accused persons, legitimate defence arguments misidentified as stereotypes, close cases where reasonable people disagree about whether stereotypes have been invoked, and prejudicial forms of reasoning based other axes of discrimination. This paper surveys these developments and assesses an attempt by …

Out Of Reach: The Mdlea’S Impermissible Extraterritorial Reach On Maritime Drug–Traffickers, Andres Chinchilla

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

46 U.S.C. § 70503, known as the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act (MDLEA), prohibits individuals on board covered vessels from manufacturing, distributing, or possessing with an intent to distribute or manufacture, a controlled substance. The statute, as enacted, permits the prosecution of individuals arrested beyond U.S. jurisdiction and even within the territorial seas of other States. This provision is argued to be an impermissible extraterritorial reach absent a nexus requirement—showing a connection between the drug smuggling activity and the U.S. Recently, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals held the statute’s extraterritorial reach and lack of nexus requirement as unconstitutional under …

Life Without Parole Is Replacing The Death Penalty -- But For Those Who Don’T Have The Possibility Of Parole, Their Future Is Bleak., Jessica Lerner

Capstones

Across the country, life sentences are increasingly being used to replace the death penalty, according to a recent study by The Sentencing Project. Nearly 162,000 people are serving life sentences – one out of every nine in prison, the study found – and for those like Darrell Powell, who don’t have the possibility of parole, their future is bleak.

https://jlerner.exposure.co/life-without-parole-is-replacing-the-death-penalty?source=share-jlerner

Qualitative Leveraging Natural Language Processing To Establish Judge Incrimination Statistics To Educate Voters In Re-Elections, Aurian Ghaemmaghami, Paul Huggins, Grace Lang, Julia Layne, Robert Slater

SMU Data Science Review

The prevalence of data has given consumers the power to make informed choices based off reviews, ratings, and descriptive statistics. However, when a local judge is coming up for re-election there is not any available data that aids voters in making data-driven decision on their vote. Currently court docket data is stored in text or PDFs with very little uniformity. Scaling the collection of this information could prove to be complicated and tiresome. There is a demand for an automated, intelligent system that can extract and organize useful information from the datasets. This paper covers the process of web scraping …

Covid-19, Human Rights And Public Health In Prisons: A Case Study Of Nova Scotia’S Experience During The First Wave Of The Pandemic, Adelina Iftene

Dalhousie Law Journal

The importance of preventing outbreaks in prisons during a pandemic, such as COVID-19, cannot be overstated. The risk of the infection spreading rapidly once inside these institutions is much higher than in the community, due to the underlying vulnerabilities of prison populations and the congregated living nature of prisons. This article documents the Nova Scotia provincial prison system’s experience in dealing with COVID-19 during the first wave, including its uniquely swift decarceration efforts. One goal of this investigation is to identify a set of best practices that can help Canadian prisons systems with their short-term responses to crisis in a …

Prosecutorial Supervisions Of The Implementation Of Anti-Torture Legislation: An Analysis Of International Law And National Legislation, Barno Kadirova

ProAcademy

This article examines the analysis of national legislation and international law on the prevention of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, international standards, principles of responsibility and the improvement of prosecutorial control over the implementation of anti-torture legislation. In addition, the role of prosecutorial oversight in the prevention of torture is based on the views of legal scholars and practitioners, as well as appeals to the prosecutor's office by the Prosecutor General's Office about illegal actions by law enforcement officers and torture by the Supreme Court. Information on criminal cases on torture is provided. The author …