Criminal Law Commons^™

False Confessions And Post-Conviction Relief: Integrating Social Science Into C.P.L. Section 440.10(1)(G) Proceedings, Emma K. Brammer

NYLS Law Review

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Abstract: False confessions are a primary cause of wrongful convictions, contributing to almost one-third of all known convictions …

Optimization Of The Cmc Algorithm, Christopher Joseph Moner

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Cartridge cases recovered from discharged firearms contain tool marks produced by the internal mechanisms of said firearm. Firearm and tool mark examiners com pare these marks to determine whether two cartridge cases originated from the same firearm. Traditional comparison methods have been criticized for their subjective nature and reliance on examiner interpretation rather than objective decision thresholds. The Congruent Matching Cells (CMC) algorithm was developed as a quantitative, objective method for tool mark comparison. CMC is a surface topography correlation algorithm that partitions a tool mark into small regions, or cells, and evaluates their similarity using the areal cross-correlation function …

Conspiracy And Social Movements, Steffen Seitz

Michigan Law Review

Conspiracy prosecutions of social movements are on the rise. From anti-“Cop City” protesters in Atlanta to pro-Palestinian protesters in California, prosecutors are increasingly wielding conspiracy law to suppress social movements. This development is troubling. Social movements have long served as vital engines of democratic self-governance; they crystallize issues, foster public discourse, and mobilize citizens. Yet conspiracy law endangers these movements— and thus democracy—by targeting what makes them work: public expression and social ties between activists.

This Article makes three significant contributions to our understanding of this threat. First, it demonstrates that a charge of conspiracy requires remarkably little—just the appearance …

The Limits Of "Punishment", Benjamin Levin

Scholarship@WashULaw

“Punishment” is an all-important category in criminal legal thought. Conventional scholarship adopts a narrow definition and focuses on justifying penal sanctions. Much critical work, in contrast, seeks to expand the category—defining more practices and institutions as “punishment.” In this Article, I argue that the focus on purposes of punishment and on what constitutes punishment distracts from a larger theoretical and practical issue—much of what the criminal system does probably isn’t punishment as such. Certainly, a carceral sentence is punishment. But what about a curfew requirement for a defendant awaiting trial? What about a restriction on gun ownership post conviction? What …

Eroding Protections: The Decline Of Miranda Rights And Its Impact On Due Process In Contemporary America, Autumn G. Pelfrey

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis examines whether the protections established in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), remain robust within contemporary criminal justice practice or have been weakened through doctrinal and practical developments. Miranda warnings were originally designed to mitigate the risk that coercive custodial interrogation would produce compelled or unreliable self-incrimination. Since 1966, however, both judicial interpretation and evolving law-enforcement practices have created a growing gap between Miranda’s formal legal promise and its practical operation in real-world interrogations.

The study evaluates the erosion of Miranda’s protective force through three primary mechanisms. First, doctrinal developments have narrowed Miranda’s scope by redefining …

Pretrial Publicity In A Modern World: Exploration Of Defense Attorney Experiences And Perspectives, Giray Uzen

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This research examined how pretrial publicity, like statements made by law enforcement and prosecutors, affects criminal defense strategy. Using a qualitative, phenomenological design, interviews were held with practicing defense attorneys to understand how they deal with media coverage, protect their clients’ rights, and adjust their strategy when a case starts getting attention. The project identifies common themes, including attorney concerns about biased jurors, distorted narratives, and pressure created by public commentary. Findings work towards reforming policy discussions to respect free speech while protecting the constitutional right to an impartial jury in our modern media environment.

Belief, Capacity, Foresight Epistemic Exchange In American Law, Edwin T. Mcquillen Iv

West Chester University Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Final Projects

American law sometimes assigns responsibility under conditions of uncertainty–even when there’s no completed harm, no demonstrable knowledge, and no identifiable victim. This thesis argues that across three otherwise unrelated doctrines, courts engage in what might be called epistemic exchange: when the kind of knowledge normally required for responsibility is unavailable, some alternative epistemic basis gets treated as functionally sufficient for judgment instead. Courts never state this practice outright; it is a philosophical description of what they are doing. In criminal attempt law, a justified but false belief can stand in for knowledge of whether the contemplated crime could actually be …

Undermining Discretion: The Selective Attacks On Progressive Prosecutors, Angela J. Davis

Cardozo Law Review

Prosecutors are the most powerful officials in the criminal legal system. They decide whether to bring criminal charges and what those criminal charges should be. These decisions are totally within their discretion. The U.S. Supreme Court has consistently protected the power and discretion of prosecutors in making these decisions, and legal challenges to the exercise of prosecutorial discretion have been largely unsuccessful.

In recent years, a growing number of individuals have successfully run for chief prosecutor on platforms of reducing the prison and jail populations, consistent with public safety. They pledged to use their power and discretion to implement policies …

Developing Your Research Project: Writing An Annotated Bibliography, Fabiola Ceballos-Durham

Open Educational Resources

Students build the foundation for a criminal justice research project by evaluating and summarizing scholarly articles and websites in an APA-style annotated bibliography.

Negligent Hiring: Recidivism And Employment With A Criminal Record, Benjamin David Pyle

Faculty Scholarship

This Article tackles a difficult legal and policy challenge— reducing the impact of criminal records on job applicants’ chances in a manner that does not spur more discrimination—by looking at how another area of law, tort liability, impacts employers’ decision-making. It uses theoretical and empirical methods to study the most common reason employers report being reluctant to hire workers with a criminal record: legal liability generated by the tort of negligent hiring. While the purpose of the tort is ostensibly to protect and make whole those harmed when an employee misbehaves in a foreseeable manner, I show that, in practice, …

Informed Applicants: Anti-Discrimination Enforcement Based On The Use Of Criminal Records, Benjamin David Pyle

Faculty Scholarship

Navigating the labor market with a criminal record is treacherous. Countless job applicants will be turned down immediately after a potential employer learns they have had contact with the criminal legal system. Criminal records reflect and exacerbate long-standing racial and economic inequalities in the United States. Thus, the use of records in employment decisions will often implicate anti-discrimination laws. However, successfully enforcing these protections requires job applicants to, at minimum, understand why they were not hired. Many applicants never learn why they were not hired and thus will never be able to protect their rights. This Article argues that understanding …

The Punishment Paradox, Steven Arrigg Koh

Faculty Scholarship

What does criminal punishment do? Across centuries of criminal legal thought, a shared answer persists: punishment incapacitates the wrongdoer. And yet punishment sometimes yields its opposite. Paradoxically, punishment sometimes becomes a rallying point-expanding community identification and solidarity around the defendant. This Article shows this punishment paradox using the 2023-24 prosecutions of President Trump and recent and historical case examples-from Luigi Mangione to Karen Read to Rosa Parks. By arguing that criminal law can generate solidarity rather than stigma, the Article both rethinks foundational theories of punishment and reconsiders the role of criminal law in democratic politics. Such an approach transcends …

Regulated Victimization: The Rise Of Human Trafficking Within The Oregon Massage Industry, Hannah Beaulieu

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Illicit massage businesses are massage spas that appear to operate as legitimate businesses but facilitate commercial sex acts behind closed doors. Recent law enforcement investigations in Oregon have revealed that some illicit massage businesses have facilitated the human trafficking of multiple victims. The illicit massage industry has steadily grown across the country but has especially boomed in recent years in Oregon. This Note investigates how the illicit massage industry has evolved to be so prevalent in our communities and what factors have contributed to the growth. It goes on to recommend ways to protect victims, to prevent further harm, and …

Lethal Injection Then And Now: A Topsy-Turvy Moment For The Abolition Movement, Corinna Barrett Lain

Law Faculty Publications

At first glance, how states execute prisoners is an entirely unattractive question for those who think that states shouldnot be executing prisoners at all. Indeed, one might reasonably take the position that discussions about how states execute presume that executions can be carried out in ways that are acceptable and unacceptable, which is antitheticalto the very core of the abolitionist position. As the renowned Henry Schwarzschild-longtime director of the ACLU's Capital Punishment Project and founder of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty-wrote in 1980, "Theworst sin of all is to do well that which should not be done …

Trial By Character, Hillel J. Bavli

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

In this Article, I argue that courts regularly deviate from Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b), which prohibits character evidence—evidence of a defendant’s past misdeeds offered to prove that the defendant acted in conformity with a certain character trait on the occasion in question. These deviations undermine the fairness of a trial and the presumption of innocence. The Article addresses this problem in three ways. First, it explains how courts have misinterpreted Rule 404(b)—an error that I call the permitted-purpose fallacy—and how they have fortified this misinterpretation with a body of flawed principles and precedent. Second, it reports the results of …

Let’S Modify Safety Valve To Value Family Ties, Laura Ginsberg Abelson

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Federal sentencing law has long struggled to balance the breadth of drug conspiracy liability with the prin­ciple of proportional punishment. The statutory “safety valve” provision, codified at 18 U.S.C. § 3553(f) and mirrored in the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, was designed to provide relief from mandatory minimum sentences for low- level, nonviolent offenders. Yet its requirement that defendants disclose all information concerning the offense sometimes places family-member codefendants in an untenable position: they may avoid harsh penalties only by incriminating loved ones. The requirement also conflicts with other provisions of the Guide­lines that provide guidelines reductions, but not relief from mandatory …

Negotiated Outcomes And Abbreviated Trials In Criminal Cases: Balancing Fairness And Efficiency In Three Legal Systems, Michele Caianiello, Jenia I. Turner, Thomas Weigend

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Facing expanded criminal dockets, justice systems around the world are looking for ways to expedite proceedings and save resources while still offering credible procedures for adjudicating criminal cases. In the United States, defendants tend to face an all-or-nothing choice between two alternatives: a full trial at which all relevant evidence is presented and examined; or a plea bargain leading to a conviction without any presentation of evidence and the waiver of the defendant’s procedural rights in exchange for a reduced sentence. Even in routine misdemeanor cases, a full trial requires substantial expenditures of resources, and its procedural complexity may be …

Pona V. State, 329 A.3d 485 (R.I. 2025)., Trina Capezza

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Thornton V. State, 332 A.3d 912 (R.I. 2025)., Matthew Alden Zeller

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

How To Stop Mass Shootings Without Violating The Second Amendment: Designing Regulations To Prevent Acts Of Mass Violence That Pass The 6:3 History And Tradition Test, Robert D'Alessandro

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article proposes that states can constitutionally implement ammunition possession limits to reduce mass violence by aligning such laws with the "history and tradition" test established by the current Supreme Court. It argues that modern caps on ammunition are analogous to early American gunpowder restrictions, which were enacted for public safety to prevent catastrophic explosions in populated areas.