Cyber And Tech-Based Partner Stalking In Jefferson County,
2025
Bellarmine University
Cyber And Tech-Based Partner Stalking In Jefferson County, Norah Wulkopf
Undergraduate Theses
Since stalking laws were enacted in the 1990s, they have been historically difficult to enforce. As less and less of our lives become private due to our ever-present devices, stalkers frankly have more access to their targets than ever before. The tenuous nature of stalking laws and the growing resources for stalkers place targets of stalking in a very precarious situation: the legal system has never been adequately equipped to handle stalking cases, and local justice systems do not have the resources to handle tech-based crimes. Through interviews with actors in the criminal justice system, this presentation considers how these …
Navigating Circuit Splits: Analyzing Career Offender Enhancements In The Federal Sentencing Guidelines Through Canons Of Construction,
2025
Bellarmine University
Navigating Circuit Splits: Analyzing Career Offender Enhancements In The Federal Sentencing Guidelines Through Canons Of Construction, Riley M. Goff
Undergraduate Theses
This paper analyzes the Career Offender Enhancement within the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. This enhancement can provide unequal sentences for similarly situated defendants in different federal circuits. This paper seeks to investigate the current circuit split and utilize the canons of construction to provide a better understanding of how this split could be resolved and the philosophical reasoning. To answer this question, I conducted a case study on four different cases within four different circuits to understand the courts' reasoning behind their application or lack of application of the Career Offender Enhancement. The results show two main issues surrounding the enhancement: …
Champions For Justice 2025 03-27-2025,
2025
Roger Williams University
Champions For Justice 2025 03-27-2025, Roger Williams University School Of Law
School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events
No abstract provided.
Roger Williams University Law Review Symposium: Trauma-Informed Lawyering: Approaches To Advocating For Diverse Populations 11-15-2024,
2025
Roger Williams University
Roger Williams University Law Review Symposium: Trauma-Informed Lawyering: Approaches To Advocating For Diverse Populations 11-15-2024, Roger Williams University School Of Law
School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events
No abstract provided.
Sentencing,
2025
University of Maine School of Law
Sentencing, Melvyn Zarr
Maine Law Review
Once the legislature has defined the acts it will punish as criminal, it must then establish a sentencing system. There are two principal features of a sentencing system: it grades crimes according to seriousness, and it apportions sentencing discretion among the legislature, the courts, and administrative agencies. The device for apportionment between the legislature and the courts is the mandatory sentence, by which the legislature may fix a period of imprisonment for a crime and forbid judges to grant probation. Apportionment of sentencing discretion between the courts and administrative agencies, on the other hand, is governed by the choice between …
White Collar Crimes,
2025
University of Maine School of Law
White Collar Crimes, Maine Law Review
Maine Law Review
This Article deals with those sections of the Maine Criminal Code which criminalize certain nonviolent conduct. Many of the offenses contained in the Chapters on bribery, fraud and falsification are new to Maine law. Here, as elsewhere, the drafters of the Code have attempted to distinguish between conduct that is sufficiently detrimental to community interests to require the criminal sanction and conduct that is regarded as merely undesirable. These sections in particular represent the societal interests in preserving the integrity of documents, official statements and public offices, and in encouraging honesty in business transactions. This Article focuses on the derivation …
Sex Offenses,
2025
University of Maine School of Law
Sex Offenses, Judy R. Potter
Maine Law Review
A central theme of the Maine Criminal Code is to "distinguish behavior that is merely socially undesirable from that which is sufficiently threatening to require the specialized effort of the criminal law to prevent it." Nowhere in the Code is this distinction more apparent than in the area of sex offenses, which encompasses a wide spectrum of degrees of social harm. At one end of this spectrum are acts which clearly involve dangerous behavior, such as non-consensual sexual acts and acts of sexual imposition on minors and incompetents. At the other end of the spectrum are sexual acts done in …
Homicide,
2025
University of Maine School of Law
Homicide, Peter J. Rubin
Maine Law Review
The homicide provisions of the Maine Criminal Code break down culpable killings into six degrees. Until the line of cases beginning with State v. Wilbur, the law of Maine had always seemed to separate the various unlawful killings into separate crimes rather than degrees of the same crime. Commencing with State v. Rollins and State v. Lafferty, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court announced that there was and always had been only one crime of "felonious homicide." Murder and manslaughter were merely punishment categories or degrees of "felonious homicide." The new homicide provisions are similar to the pre-Code court interpretation in …
Property Offenses,
2025
University of Maine School of Law
Property Offenses, Peter G. Ballou
Maine Law Review
The Criminal Code has sought to accomplish three goals in the area of property crimes: consolidation, simplicity, and consistency in the treatment of similar offenses. The consolidation of a variety of previously separate crimes into the single crime of theft may be the most drastic change from prior law in the entire Code. Almost all of the ways in which a person may be deprived of his property or services to the gain of another are now included in this single crime. The consolidation under the heading of burglary of a variety of crimes involving entry of buildings in combination …
Gambling,
2025
University of Maine School of Law
Gambling, Michael D. Seitzinger
Maine Law Review
Simplification of the laws which define criminal offenses and decriminalization of behavior no longer warranting the enforcement mechanisms of the criminal law were two principal objectives of the Criminal Code Revision Commission. Chapter 39 of the Criminal Code contains the revision of Maine's anti-gambling statutes and illustrates as well as any Code chapter the application of these objectives to the formulation of substantive criminal offenses. The substantive provisions of the prior law failed, for the most part, to define key terms. Without such definitions, the provisions of Title 17 which established the elements of an offense were often prolix and …
Prefatory Note,
2025
University of Maine School of Law
Prefatory Note, Robert Checkoway Editor-In-Chief
Maine Law Review
In its recent simplification and clarification of the criminal law, the Maine Criminal Law Revision Commission was also obliged to reconsider the proper breadth of the criminal sanction itself. The results of these parallel efforts are apparent throughout the Criminal Code. Those activities ordinarily considered criminal have been more precisely and comprehensively regulated, while the limits of the law controlling activities less socially damaging have been readjusted in the process of exact delineation. The Articles in this Special Issue offer an explanation and critical evaluation of the Commission's efforts.
Introduction,
2025
University of Maine School of Law
Introduction, Gerald F. Petruccelli
Maine Law Review
Others, most notably the late Professor Herbert Packer, have written extensively in recent years concerning the limits of the criminal sanction, and it seems trite to observe that the subject matter is hardly novel and has been the subject of literary and philosophical discourse for centuries. The purpose of this brief presentation, therefore, is not to review that voluminous literature or to make expansive claims for the new Maine Criminal Code. Rather, it is to show that the new Maine Code was written with an awareness of the basic premises both of classical theories of limited public intrusion into private …
Mens Rea And Insanity,
2025
University of Maine School of Law
Mens Rea And Insanity, Maine Law Review
Maine Law Review
Two developments in the administration of criminal law call for a closer examination of the relationship between mens rea and insanity. The first is the practice of bifurcating trials into a guilt phase and an insanity phase. The new Maine Criminal Code, for example, allows the defendant to elect such a procedure. The second development is the increasing willingness of courts to admit evidence of the accused's mental disease or defect as probative of whether he possessed the culpable state of mind, or mens rea, which must be proven as one of the elements of the crime charged. When the …
The Burden Of Proof And The Insanity Defense After Mullaney V. Wilbur,
2025
University of Maine School of Law
The Burden Of Proof And The Insanity Defense After Mullaney V. Wilbur, Maine Law Review
Maine Law Review
In 1970, the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of In re Winship specified an evidentiary standard of proof for criminal prosecutions as a requirement of the due process clause of the 14th amendment: "Lest there remain any doubt about the constitutional stature of the reasonable doubt-standard, we explicitly hold that the Due Process Clause protects the accused against conviction except upon proof beyond a reasonable doubt of every fact necessary to constitute the crime with which he is charged." Five years later, in Mullaney v. Wilbur, the Court extended Winship to invalidate Maine's statutory scheme of …
Constitutional And Legislative Issues Raised By The Entrapment Defense In Maine,
2025
University of Maine School of Law
Constitutional And Legislative Issues Raised By The Entrapment Defense In Maine, Maine Law Review
Maine Law Review
In recent years the increase in undercover investigative activity by police agents has generated considerable interest in the defense of entrapment. The entrapment defense to a criminal prosecution has been recognized either judicially or legislatively in most jurisdictions in the United States. The proper formulation of the defense, however, has given rise to conflicting opinions involving various evidentiary and constitutional considerations. In raising the defense of entrapment, a defendant does not deny that he committed the acts constituting the crime, but rather asserts that, on grounds of public policy, he should not be convicted. In Maine, the defense of entrapment …
The Effect Of State Conviction Relief On Federal Deportation Law,
2025
University of Maine School of Law
The Effect Of State Conviction Relief On Federal Deportation Law, Maine Law Review
Maine Law Review
Federal statute requires deportation of any alien drug offender convicted under federal or state law. An offender may have his conviction set aside, however, under federal or state provisions which authorize relief from the penalties and disabilities resulting from a conviction. Use of the relief conferred by these statutes presents the issue of whether the alien remains "convicted" and therefore deportable under federal law. In Kolios v. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and Rehman v. INS, the First and Second Circuits reached apparently conflicting resolutions of this problem. The Kolios and Rehman decisions illustrate the confusion regarding the proper …
"Jurisdictional" Indictments, Informations And Complaints: An Unnecessary Doctrine,
2025
University of Maine School of Law
"Jurisdictional" Indictments, Informations And Complaints: An Unnecessary Doctrine, Peter G. Ballou
Maine Law Review
In the majority of jurisdictions in the United States, including the federal courts and Maine, a sufficient indictment, information or complaint is deemed an absolute prerequisite to a valid conviction. This right to a sufficient charging instrument is not subject to waiver and may be asserted at any time, even though not raised before or during trial or on direct appeal from a conviction. This characteristic of nonwaivability, probably unique among the rights belonging to a criminal defendant, has led some courts, including the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, to characterize the requirement of a sufficient indictment as "jurisdictional." When an …
The Meaning And Implications Of "Indian Country": State V. Dana,
2025
University of Maine School of Law
The Meaning And Implications Of "Indian Country": State V. Dana, Maine Law Review
Maine Law Review
The jurisdictional reach of many federal laws relating to Indians is expressly tied to the term "Indian country.” Where "Indian country" exists, these laws, together with the strong federal policies underlying them, can preempt state jurisdiction. According to 18 U.S.C. § 1151, "Indian country" includes (a) any Indian reservation under the jurisdiction of the United States, (b) all dependent Indian communities within the borders of the United States, and (c) all Indian allotments, the Indian titles to which have not been extinguished. The State of Maine, under the belief that no Indian Country is located within its borders, has throughout …
State V. Hayes: Privacy Of The Mind And The Incompetent Defendant,
2025
University of Maine School of Law
State V. Hayes: Privacy Of The Mind And The Incompetent Defendant, Maine Law Review
Maine Law Review
Although numerous jurisdictions have faced the question of whether a criminal defendant can be considered competent to stand trial when his competency is medically induced, the question of whether the state may force the accused to take competency-inducing medication during trial over the pretrial objections of the defense is relatively novel. Confronted with that issue recently, the Supreme Court of New Hampshire in State v. Hayes held that the state could compel a criminal defendant to take psychotropic drugs' necessary to maintain competency if the jury was informed about the use of medication. It is clear from the New Hampshire …
Mental Abnormality In The Maine Criminal Code: Section 58 (1-A),
2025
University of Maine School of Law
Mental Abnormality In The Maine Criminal Code: Section 58 (1-A), Susan E. Peck
Maine Law Review
The law surrounding the insanity defense has always been complex and problematic. Since the promulgation of the M'Naghten test in 1843, courts and legislators have attempted to articulate a clear and easily understood definition of insanity. Legal scholars have created an overwhelming volume of literature on such important aspects of the defense as the role of psychiatrists in a jury trial, the appropriateness of the diminished capacity defense, and the constitutionality of imposing the burden of proving insanity on the defendant. Even the necessity of retaining the defense has been questioned. The Maine Supreme Judicial Court has recently confronted a …
