Criminal Law Commons^™

Awareness Of Sex Offender Registration Policies And Self-Reported Sexual Offending In A Community Sample Of Adolescents, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Hayley M. D. Cleary

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

Sex offender registration laws are widely implemented, increasingly restrictive, and intended to serve both specific and general deterrent functions. Most states have some form of policy mechanism to place adolescents on sex offender registries, yet it remains unclear whether adolescents possess the requisite policy awareness to be deterred from sexual offending. This study examined awareness of sex offender registration as a potential sanction and its cross-sectional association with engagement in several registrable sexual behaviors (sexting, indecent exposure, sexual solicitation, and forcible touching) in a community sample of 144 adolescents. Results revealed that many adolescents were unaware that these behaviors could …

Law Symposium: Adjudicating Sexual Misconduct On Campus: Title Ix And Due Process In Uncertain Times, Roger Williams University School Of Law, Michael M. Bowden

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Brett Kavanaugh Vs. The Exonerated Central Park Five: Exposing The President's "Presumption Of Innocence" Double Standard, Sofia Yakren

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

In the service of Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the United States Supreme Court, the President of the United States (and Republican Senators) both misappropriated and further eroded the already compromised concepts of due process and presumption of innocence. This Essay uses the prominent “Central Park Five” case in which five teenagers of color were wrongly convicted of a white woman’s widely-publicized beating and rape to expose the President’s disparate use of the presumption along race and status lines. This narrative is consistent with larger systemic inequities that leave poor black and brown criminal defendants less likely to benefit …

Accounting For Adolescents’ Twice Diminished Culpability In California’S Felony Murder Rule, Raychel Teasdale

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

In 2018, the California legislature passed S.B. 1437 to narrow California’s felony murder rule and theoretically apply the rule only to those with the greatest culpability in a murder. However, whether intentionally or negligently, the law leaves room to disproportionally and unjustly affect adolescents by charging those with “reckless indifference” with first-degree murder. Imbedded in psychology and neuroscience research is the conclusion that adolescent brain structure and function are still rapidly developing. As a result, adolescents are less able to weigh the risks of their actions, resist peer pressure, regulate their emotions, and control their impulses. Therefore, this Note argues …

Criminal Disenfranchisement: Deconstructing Its Justifications And Crafting State-Centered Solutions, Neely Baugh-Dash

Belmont Law Review

No abstract provided.

See No Evil, Hear No Evil: Applying The Sight And Sound Separation Protection To All Youths Who Are Tried As Adults In The Criminal Justice System, Lauren Knoke

Fordham Law Review

American law treats youths within the criminal justice system with contrasting impulses. In some cases, the law deems youths worthy of special protections and places them within the juvenile justice system. In other situations, however, it views youths as posing distinct dangers and funnels them into justice systems designed for adults. So long as youths remain under the jurisdiction of the juvenile justice system, they are afforded the protections of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA). One of the JJDPA’s core protections, sight and sound separation, aims to prevent youths from having any visual or spoken exchanges with …

The First Amendment And Speech Urging Suicide: Lessons From The Case Of Michelle Carter And The Need To Expand Brandenburg'S Application, Clay Calvert

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article examines the level of First Amendment protection that applies when a defendant-speaker is charged with involuntary manslaughter based on successfully urging a person to commit suicide. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts’ February 2019 decision in Commonwealth v. Carter provides a timely analytical springboard. The Article argues that courts should adopt the United States Supreme Court’s test for incitement created a half-century ago in Brandenburg v. Ohio before such speech is deemed unprotected by the First Amendment. It contends this standard is appropriate even in involuntary manslaughter cases where intent to cause a specific result is not required …

Misdemeanors For All Purposes? Interpreting Proposition 47’S Ameliorative Scope In A New Era Of Criminal Justice Reform, Kayla Burchuk

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

In 2014, Proposition 47 reclassified seven low-level felonies to misdemeanors, demonstrating voters’ striking rejection of California’s historically punitive sentencing policies. This Note examines the recent wave of California Supreme Court jurisprudence interpreting Proposition 47 by exploring the court’s varied readings of the initiative’s ballot materials and statutory text. While the court has liberally construed relief for affected property crimes, it has responded ambivalently in more controversial areas such as drug offenses, mandatory parole periods, and automatic resentencing. This variation reveals ideological tensions between the goal of expanding ameliorative benefits to low-level offenders and anxiety regarding public safety. This Note analyzes …

The Future Of Bail In California: Analyzing Sb 10 Through The Prism Of Past Reforms, Adam Peterson

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

The cash bail system is the cause of numerous injustices. It favors the rich over the poor, it packs jails to the breaking point, and it forces those who have yet to be found guilty to sit in jail—often for weeks or months at a time. In 2018, the California legislature passed SB 10. The bill purported to abolish cash bail wholesale and replace it with a risk assessment program. While SB 10 is a step in the right direction, it faces many obstacles before it accomplishes its goal. This Note examines the bill in light of past attempts at …

Criminal Law And Procedure, Rachel L. Yates, John I. Jones Iv, Brittany Dunn-Pirio

University of Richmond Law Review

This Article surveys recent developments in criminal procedure and law in Virginia. Because of space limitations, the authors have limited their discussion to the most significant appellate decisions and legislation.

Critical Reviews Of Flawed Research On Prostitution, Donna M. Hughes

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Gathrite V. Eighth Jud. Dist. Ct., 135 Nev. Adv. Op. 54 (Nov. 7, 2019), Skylar Arakawa-Pamphilon

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

For purposes of NRS 172.135(2), evidence that has been suppressed in justice court proceedings on a felony complaint is not “legal evidence,” and therefore, may not be presented to a grand jury. The Court will grant an exception to this rule if the suppression was reversed before the grand jury proceedings.

Witter V. State, 135 Nev. Adv. Op. 73444 (Nov. 14, 2019), John Bays

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court determined that (1) a judgment of conviction containing a restitution provision must contain the specific amount of restitution required; (2) a judgment of conviction containing an indeterminate restitution provision is not a final judgement for purposes of appeal or for purposes of triggering the deadline for filing a habeas petition; and (3) the principle of finality requires that even when such an error is made, if the defendant treats the judgment as final by litigating, the defendant is estopped from later arguing that judgment was not final and that subsequent proceedings were null and void for lack of …

A Political Interpretation Of Vagueness Doctrine, Brenner M. Fissell, Guyora Binder

Faculty Publications

The “void-for-vagueness” doctrine requires the specific definition of criminal offenses. In this Article, though, we claim it does more: it largely restricts criminalization decisions to legislatures, which are unlikely to criminalize conduct they see as both harmless and widespread. Thus, rather than constitutionalizing the harm principle and thereby assuming a judicial obligation to define harm, the Supreme Court has used the vagueness doctrine to constrain majorities to make their own assessments of harmfulness. While American law has no explicit requirements that criminal liability be created by legislation or conditioned on harm, the vagueness doctrine achieves those ends indirectly

Why Robert Mueller’S Appointment As Special Counsel Was Unlawful, Steven Calabresi, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

Since 1999, when the independent counsel provisions of the Ethics in Government Act expired, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) has had in place regulations providing for the appointment of Special Counsels who possess “the full power and independent authority to exercise all investigative and prosecutorial functions of any United States Attorney.” Appointments under these regulations, such as the May 17,2017 appointment of Robert S. Mueller to investigate the Trump campaign, are patently unlawful, for three distinct reasons.
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/="/">First, all federal offices must be “established by Law,” and there is no statute authorizing such an office in the DOJ. …

The Effects Of Criminal Embeddedness On School Violence In Brazil, Braulio Figueiredo Alves Da Silva, Silvio Segundo Salej Higgins, Elenice Desouza Oliveira

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This study examines the influence of criminal embeddedness on the intensity of criminal behavior among primary and secondary school students in a large Brazilian city. A database conceived by the Center for the Study of Crime and Public Security at the Federal University in Minas Gerais is used to analyze the involvement of youths displaying delinquent behavior at home or at school and how school performance and peer relationships are effected. Based on differential association and learning theories, the main hypotheses are (1) the greater the criminal embeddedness, the lower the degree of school satisfaction as well as future expectation …

The Noisy "Silent Witness": The Misperception And Misuse Of Criminal Video Evidence, Aaron M. Williams

Indiana Law Journal

This Note examines recent developments in the research of situational video evidence biases. Part I examines the current and growing body of psychological research into the various situational biases that can affect the reliability of video evidence and the gaps in this research that require further attention from researchers and legal academics. Because these biases do not “operate in a vacuum,” Part I also examines some of the recent and exciting research into the interaction between situational and dispositional biases. Part II examines the development of camera and video processing technology and its limitations as a means of mitigating such …

Unusual Deference, William W. Berry Iii

Florida Law Review

Three Eighth Amendment decisions—Harmelin v. Michigan, Pulley v. Harris, and McCleskey v. Kemp—have had enduring, and ultimately, cruel and unusual consequences on the administration of criminal justice in the United States. What links these cases is the same fundamental analytical misstep—the decision to ignore core constitutional principles and instead defer to state punishment practices. The confusion arises from the text of the Eighth Amendment where the Supreme Court has read the “cruel and unusual” punishment proscription to rest in part on majoritarian practices. This is a classical analytical mistake—while the Amendment might prohibit rare punishments, it …

Convictions Based On Character: An Empirical Test Of Other-Acts Evidence, Michael D. Cicchini, Lawrence T. White

Florida Law Review

Despite the time-honored judicial principle that “we try cases, rather than persons,” courts routinely allow prosecutors to use defendants’ prior, unrelated bad acts at trial. Courts acknowledge that jurors could improperly use this other acts evidence as proof of the defendant’s bad character. However, courts theorize that if the other acts are also relevant for a permissible purpose—such as proving the defendant’s identity as the perpetrator of the charged crime—then a cautionary instruction will cure the problem, and any prejudice is “presumed erased from the jury’s mind.”

We put this judicial assumption to an empirical test. We recruited 249 participants …

State Constitutional Provisions Allowing Juries To Interpret The Law Are Not As Crazy As They Sound, Marcus Alexander Gadson

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

This Article questions that consensus. Joining a larger debate about the jury’s proper role, it argues that, even today, these provisions are a defensible component of a criminal justice system. First, this Article argues that the jury is the entity in the justice system most incentivized to approach legal questions with an eye to what the best interpretation is and not the most politically palatable result. Second, this Article argues that the jury’s ability to deliberate and consider opinions from individuals hailing from a wider variety of backgrounds than those who typically become judges may provide advantages over a …