Criminal Law Commons^™

Issues Of Expanding The Powers Of The Defense Attorney In The Investigative Actions, D. Chorieva

Review of law sciences

In the article emphasizes the need to strengthen the role of advocate in the development and improvement of the institute of advocacy, the role of defence in the consideration of criminal, civil, administrative and economic cases and highlights the focus on the state policy. To eliminate these problems, causing certain obstacles in the defense activity, specific proposals are developed and put forward.

On Combating Violence Against Women In Uzbekistan And In Countries Of Osce, G. Maxamadjanova

Review of law sciences

In the article, the author examines a fight for elimination violence against women in the OSCE and Republic of Uzbekistan. Using corresponding, statistical and normative sources over grounding actuality of fight against this evil, the author recommends establishing the position of the authorized agent of Oliy Majlis of the Republic of Uzbekistan – Оmbudsman for protecting the rights of women and children.

Warren, Jr. (Joseph) V. Eighth Judicial Dist. Court, 134 Nev. Adv. Op. 77 (Sep. 27, 2018) (En Banc), James Puccinelli

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The Court determined that NRS § 177.015(1)(a) authorizes the State to appeal from a justice court dismissal of a criminal complaint because such a decision is a final judgment, and that NRS § 178.562(2) does not limit the State’s remedies to appeal a justice court’s decision to dismiss a criminal complaint because this provision does not mention final judgment.

Examining The School-To-Prison Pipeline: Sending Students To Prison Instead Of School, Fatema Ghasletwala

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

Juvenile delinquents are often thought of as intrinsically evil. These youths are blamed for their own plight, believed to be a result of innate character flaws. However, such an obtuse perception is problematic. In many cases, these juvenile delinquents were made delinquents by a faulty system, namely, the School-to-Prison Pipeline. The School-to-Prison Pipeline is a troubling phenomenon in which students are suspended, expelled or even arrested for minor offenses instead of being sent simply to an administrator’s office. Often, these students have backgrounds of poverty, abuse, neglect, and may even have learning disabilities. Instead of being offered counseling, “unruly” …

Section 4: Criminal Law, Institute Of Bill Of Rights Law, William & Mary Law School

Supreme Court Preview

No abstract provided.

The Johnson & Johnson Problem: The Supreme Court Limited The Armed Career Criminal Act's "Violent Felony" Provision—And Our Children Are Paying, Shelby Burns

Pepperdine Law Review

The Armed Career Criminal Act and United States Sentencing Guidelines prescribe sentence enhancements based upon a defendant’s prior convictions. In particular, these federal sentencing tools contain violent felony provisions that outline the requirements a state criminal statute must satisfy for a conviction to constitute a violent felony, making the convicted person eligible for a federal sentence enhancement. However, the Supreme Court’s holdings in Johnson v. United States, 559 U.S. 133 (2010) and Johnson v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015) severely limited the scope of both sentencing tools’ violent felony provisions, making it more difficult for certain crimes to …

Trafficking Technology: A Look At Different Approaches To Ending Technology-Facilitated Human Trafficking, David Barney

Pepperdine Law Review

In 2018, many believe that slavery is an antiquated concept. But as with anything else, if it has not become extinct, it has evolved with time. Human trafficking is no different. Each year, millions of men, women and children are trafficked in the United States, and internationally, and forced to work against their will. Through the rise of technology and an increasingly globalized world, traffickers have learned to use technology as a tool to help facilitate the trafficking of persons and to sell those victims to others they never could have reached before. But what are we doing about it? …

The Meaning Of Wrongdoing - A Crime Of Disrespecting The Flag: Grounds For Preserving National Unity, Mohammed Saif-Alden Wattad

San Diego International Law Journal

To conclude on this issue, the rights of others, as individuals and as a whole, are formulated as the social protected interest that criminal law seeks to protect through criminal means, and it is with these rights that criminal law theory should be concerned in the first level of scrutiny. However, in the second level of scrutiny, an additional set of rights are brought into play; these are the rights of the individual, namely the actor, to exercise their constitutional rights e.g., free speech, liberty, free exercise of religion. The second level of scrutiny requires balancing those rights with the …

Preventing Drug-Related Deaths At Music Festivals: Why The "Rave" Act Should Be Amended To Provide An Exception For Harm Reduction Services, Robin Mohr

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

Revisiting A Classic: A Qualitative Analysis Of Differential Opportunity Theory And Its Utility In Explaining Residential Burglary, John A. Shjarback

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Cloward and Ohlin’s (1960) differential opportunity theory made several significant contributions to criminology, including the emphasis on illegitimate means and the idea that social structure influences criminal opportunity. The problem, however, is that the field largely misinterpreted Cloward and Ohlin’s intent as a simple variation of strain theory instead of a critical refinement of the existing perspective. Generally, the theory has not received much scholarly attention in terms of testing of its key propositions. Using semi-structured personal interviews with 105 active residential burglars in St. Louis, Missouri during 1989- 1990, the current study uses qualitative measures to analyze differential opportunity …

Interviewing Cybercrime Offenders, Alice Hutchings, Thomas J. Holt

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Research on cybercrime offending and victimization has increased dramatically over the past two decades, though qualitative scholarship on more technical offenses such as computer misuse has not kept pace with this broader trend. This research aims to identify potential best practices for researchers considering qualitative interviews as a method for researching computer misuse offenses, more commonly involving hacking techniques. The authors interviewed six experienced researchers who conducted qualitative examinations of active or incarcerated cybercriminals to understand their common experiences with recruitment, ways in which they interviewed research participants, ethical issues, and publishing their research. This analysis explores the difficulties associated …

The Life Course Of Female Homicide Offenders: The Context Of Turning Points, Alesa Liles

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Although research on female offending has grown in the past few decades, the criminal justice system has remained inadequate in addressing the needs of women. Available research shows some experiences play a significant role in the lives of women that differ from men. To elaborate, this study sought to incorporate life course perspective and the individual’s perspective to show that context is fundamental to life course research. This study identified life events and turning points specific to female homicide offenders and validated the necessary incorporation of perception and attribution to future research with life course perspective."

Culture, Socialization, And Firearms Violence In The United States, Jennifer L. Lanterman, Sarah J. Blithe

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Firearm violence persists in the United States despite innumerable social, political, and economic changes throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries. Collaborative Event Ethnography was used at seven gun shows in three regions of the United States to explore childhood socialization into firearm culture via intergenerational communication of values and views regarding violence, safety, and the use of firearms. Children were observed at all gun shows engaged in activities ranging from standard play to potentially dangerous activity in an environment characterized by bias and controversy. The findings support social learning theory and provide some insight into the role of culture …

Preliminary Investigation Of Pharmaceutical Counterfeiters In The United States, Jay P. Kennedy, Ksenia Petlakh, Jeremy M. Wilson

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

Pharmaceutical counterfeiting is one of the most pressing public health concerns in the United States and abroad, and recently an increasing amount of scholarly attention has been given to this issue. However, the extant literature lacks a systematic investigation of the specific roles undertaken within pharmaceutical counterfeiting schemes. We attempt to address this knowledge gap through an analysis of individuals convicted in federal court of counterfeiting offenses related to U.S.-based pharmaceutical counterfeiting incidents. From our investigation we identified six distinct roles that can classify an individual’s involvement in a pharmaceutical counterfeiting scheme: Key/Lead, Supporting, Sales/Distribution to Legitimate Others, Sales/Distribution to …

Chandler V. Mississippi: Brief Of Amici Curiae Current And Former Prosecutors, Department Of Justice Officials, And Judges In Support Of Petitioner, Barbara L. Mcquade

Appellate Briefs

Amici are current and former federal, state, and local prosecutors, Department of Justice officials, and judges with experience prosecuting, establishing policy for prosecuting, and sentencing for violent crimes, including those committed by juveniles. Amici recognize the importance of fair and proportionate sentencing to the credibility of the criminal justice system and the need to balance the impact of the crime on victims and survivors with the characteristics of the offender, including youth and the possibility of rehabilitation. Amici believe that states have an obligation to provide minimal procedural safeguards to effectuate this Court's direction to reserve the ultimate penalty of …

The Need To Attend To Probabilities—For Purposes Of Self-Defense And Other Preemptive Actions, Larry Alexander

San Diego Law Review

I was not certain I was going to write something for this symposium. After all, I had written a lot on the topic of self-defense, so what was there left to say that I had not said before? I have concluded, however, after reading a new generation of literature on self-defense, that most who write on the topic neglect its perhaps most important aspect, namely, that it is a preemptive action. As a preemptive action, self-defense perforce takes place before the attack to which it is a response occurs. This preemptive aspect of self-defense brings with it a nest of …

Replies, Uwe Steinhoff

San Diego Law Review

Many philosophers who write on self-defense tend to ignore the self-defense discussions offered by legal scholars, and accordingly they often ignore the law or pay insufficient attention to it. In my experience, this attitude stems from a misperception of legal scholarship as some kind of positivistic interpretation of legal documents and as positive law being irrelevant for deciding what the morally right answer to the issues raised by self-defense are. I find this attitude deplorable because legal scholarship, especially in the field of criminal law, is more often than not straightforward moral philosophy; and criminal law especially gives expression to …

Unwitting Justification, Peter Westen

San Diego Law Review

An assailant is on the verge of shooting a hated rival, Jones, when Jones, oblivious to the attack, decides in that instant to kill his assailant, thereby becoming what commentators call an “unknowing self-defender” or “unwittingly justified actor.” By its terms, Jones is guilty of an impossibility attempt under the Model Penal Code because he satisfies all the elements of attempted murder under the Code. The question, which has divided commentators since George Fletcher and Paul Robinson’s debate in the 1970s, is whether Jones is also guilty of the completed crime of murder and whether the latter is the more …

Self-Defense And Culpability: Fault Forfeits First, Richard J. Arneson

San Diego Law Review

Under what conditions is it morally permissible to kill someone in order to save your own life—or the life of another who is threatened? There seem to be clear cases. Threatened by an assailant who is trying to kill you for no good reason, you may use lethal force if necessary to save yourself from death or serious injury from the assailant’s attack. Threatened with death in the form of an onrushing runaway truck, you may not save yourself by using a bystander or imposing on a bystander in a way that inflicts severe harm on her. In a justly …

Defense And Desert: When Reasons Don’T Share, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan

San Diego Law Review

Assume Culpable Aggressor threatens Innocent Victim with a knife. Victim is stronger than Culpable Aggressor and is able to defend herself by punching Culpable Aggressor in the face, causing him to stumble back and drop the knife. Not only was this action necessary, but also Victim believed it to be so to save her life.

I take it that this is an uncontroversial case of self-defense. My question is whether this is also a case of punishment. Uwe Steinhoff suggests that it might be. Indeed, he states that “nothing hinders an act from being both punitive and defensive. In fact, …