Criminal Procedure Commons^™

Criminal Procedure: Confessions, Searches, And Seizures, Elizabeth G. Rozacky, Michael E. Keasler

SMU Annual Texas Survey

No abstract provided.

Eradicating The Label “Offender” From The Lexicon Of Restorative Practices And Criminal Justice, Lynn S. Branham

All Faculty Scholarship

This Essay enumerates three reasons for abandoning the prevailing practice of utilizing the label “offender” when referring to a person who has committed a crime. The Essay next identifies and debunks reasons that have been cited for persisting in referring to a person as an “offender.” The Essay then explores the question of what term or terms could supplant this label and profiles signs of emerging support for desisting from the convention of calling people “offenders.” One of the themes that permeates this Essay is that the language we use when referring to people can thwart systemic and cultural change …

The Exclusionary Rule In The Age Of Blue Data, Andrew Ferguson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

In Herring v. United States, Chief Justice John Roberts reframed the Supreme Court’s understanding of the exclusionary rule: “As laid out in our cases, the exclusionary rule serves to deter deliberate, reckless, or grossly negligent conduct, or in some circumstances recurring or systemic negligence.” The open question remains: how can defendants demonstrate sufficient recurring or systemic negligence to warrant exclusion? The Supreme Court has never answered the question, although the absence of systemic or recurring problems has figured prominently in two recent exclusionary rule decisions. Without the ability to document recurring failures, or patterns of police misconduct, courts can dismiss …

Accommodating Competition: Harmonizing National Economic Commitments, Jonathan Baker

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This article shows how the norm supporting governmental action to protect and foster competitive markets was harmonized with economic rights to contract and property during the 19th century, and with the development of the social safety net during the 20th century. It explains why the Constitution, as understood today, does not check the erosion of the entrenched but threatened national commitment to assuring competitive markets.

Reimagining Prosecution: In Search Of The True Progressive, Angela J. Davis

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Prosecutors are the most powerful officials in the criminal justice system. At least ninety percent of all criminal cases are prosecuted on the state level, and in all but five jurisdictions, the chief prosecutor (also known as the district attorney) is an elected official. Most district attorneys run unopposed and serve for decades. However, in recent years, a number of incumbent district attorneys have been challenged and defeated by individuals who pledged to use their power and discretion to reduce the incarceration rate and eliminate unwarranted racial disparities in the criminal justice system. These so-called “progressive prosecutors” have enjoyed some …

Perjury By Omission, Ira P. Robbins

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?” There are few legal phrases that the layperson can repeat verbatim; this is one of them. But how many people truly understand the nuances and ramifications of testifying under oath? Many assume that if they do not provide the “whole truth” under oath, they will face a perjury charge. However, perjury is a charge often threatened but rarely used. The offense requires that the defendant willfully and knowingly make a false statement, under oath, regarding a material fact.

The federal perjury statute does not contemplate …

The Strings In The Books Ain't Pulled And Persuaded: How The Use Of Improper Statistics And Unverified Data Corrupts The Judicial Process In Sex Offender Cases, Heather Ellis Cucolo, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

An examination of a range of judicial decisions involving sexual offender determinations reveals that, frequently, courts rely improperly on inaccurate and under-developed statistics as well as unverified and outdated information. This reliance, too often, underlies rulings that subject the sex offender to significant sanctions and loss of liberty. Additionally, the continuation of the testimonial script that all sex offenders are high recidivists, dangerous, compulsive and untreatable, contributes to the anti-therapeutic effect of shaming and humiliation. This results in isolation, seclusion, lack of dignity; also, it further trivializes the judicial process, and violates the tenants of therapeutic jurisprudence. Despite the “frightening …

Should Robots Prosecute And Defend?, Stephen E. Henderson

Faculty Articles

Even when we achieve the ‘holy grail’ of artificial intelligence—machine intelligence that is at least as smart as a human being in every area of thought—there may be classes of decisions for which it is intrinsically important to retain a human in the loop. On the common account of American criminal adjudication, the role of prosecutor seems to include such decisions given the largely unreviewable declination authority, whereas the role of defense counsel would seem fully susceptible of automation. And even for the prosecutor, the benefits of automation might outweigh the intrinsic decision-making loss, given that the ultimate decision—by judge …

Constitutional Confessions: In Favor Of A "Loewy Plus' Approach, Tracy Hresko Pearl

Faculty Articles

Professor Arnold Loewy famously argues that, given the failings of Fifth Amendment jurisprudence, the Sixth Amendment right to counsel should attach at interrogation rather than at the onset of adversarial proceedings. His proposal is wise and should be adopted. However, given the failure of the Court's ruling in Miranda v. Arizona to reduce psychological coercion during custodial interrogations, several additional reforms are needed. Namely, it should be significantly more difficult for suspects to waive their right to counsel during interrogation, all custodial interrogations should be recorded, and particularly coercive interrogation techniques – like lying about evidence – should be banned.

Prosecuting In The Shadow Of The Jury, Anna Offit

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This article offers an unprecedented empirical window into prosecutorial discretion drawing on long-term participatory research between 2013 and 2017. The central finding is that jurors play a vital role in federal prosecutors’ decision-making, professional identities, and formulations of justice. This is because even the remote possibility of lay scrutiny creates an opening for prosecutors to make common sense assessments of (1) the evidence in their cases, (2) the character of witnesses, defendants and victims, and (3) their own moral and professional character as public servants. By facilitating explicit consideration of the fairness of their cases from a public vantage point, …

Evidence On Fire, Valena Beety, Jennifer Oliva

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Fire science, a field largely developed by lay “arson investigators,” police officers, or similar first responders untrained in chemistry and physics, has been historically dominated by unreliable methodology, demonstrably false conclusions, and concomitant miscarriages of justice. Fire investigators are neither subject to proficiency testing nor required to obtain more than a high school education. Perhaps surprisingly, courts have largely spared many of the now debunked tenets of fire investigation any serious scientific scrutiny in criminal arson cases. This Article contrasts the courts’ ongoing lax admissibility of unreliable fire-science evidence in criminal cases with their strict exclusion of the same flimsy …

The International Law Commission's First Draft Convention On Crimes Against Humanity, Charles C. Jalloh

Articles

The UN General Assembly established the International Law Commission ("ILC") in 1947 to assist States with the promotion of 1) the progressive development of international law and 2) its codification. The ILC's first assignment from the General Assembly was to formulate the Nuremberg Principles, which affirmed the then radical idea that individuals can be held liable for certain international crimes at the international level. Since then, the ILC has played a seminal role in the development of modern international criminal law. In 2017, the ILC adopted on first reading a draft convention aimed at the prevention and punishment of crimes …

Redefining The Reasonable Person In Police Encounters: The Impact Of The Mainstream News Media’S Portrayal Of Modern Police Conduct, Taurus Myhand

Scholarly Works

Who is the “reasonable person”? There is little doubt that every competent legal professional, both in law practice and in the academic setting, has spent a great deal of time attempting to define the reasonable person. “Reasonableness is largely a matter of common sense.” In police encounters, the definition is certainly important to the outcome of questionable police conduct. How the reasonable person is defined often determines whether a police officer has infringed on an individual’s Fourth Amendment guarantee to be secure in their person against unreasonable searches and seizures. As the narratives of the news media shape how some …

How Courts In Criminal Cases Respond To Childhood Trauma, Deborah W. Denno

Faculty Scholarship

Neurobiological and epidemiological research suggests that abuse and adverse events experienced as a child can increase an adult’s risk of brain dysfunction associated with disorders related to criminality and violence. Much of this research is predictive, based on psychological evaluations of children; few studies have focused on whether or how criminal proceedings against adult defendants consider indicators of childhood trauma. This Article analyzes a subset of criminal cases pulled from an 800-case database created as part of an original, large-scale, empirical research project known as the Neuroscience Study. The 266 relevant cases are assessed to determine the extent to which, …

Fourth Amendment Textualism, Jeffrey Bellin

Michigan Law Review

The Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of “unreasonable searches” is one of the most storied constitutional commands. Yet after decades of Supreme Court jurisprudence, a coherent definition of the term “search” remains surprisingly elusive. Even the justices know they have a problem. Recent opinions only halfheartedly apply the controlling “reasonable expectation of privacy” test and its wildly unpopular cousin, “third-party doctrine,” with a few justices in open revolt.

These fissures hint at the Court’s openness to a new approach. Unfortunately, no viable alternatives appear on the horizon. The justices themselves offer little in the way of a replacement. And scholars’ proposals exhibit …

Incorporating Collateral Consequences Into Criminal Procedure, Paul T. Crane

Law Faculty Publications

A curious relationship currently exists between collateral consequences and criminal procedures. It is now widely accepted that collateral consequences are an integral component of the American criminal justice system. Such consequences shape the contours of many criminal cases, influencing what charges are brought by the government, the content of plea negotiations, the sentences imposed by trial judges, and the impact of criminal convictions on defendants. Yet, when it comes to the allocation of criminal procedures, collateral consequences continue to be treated as if they are external to the criminal justice process. Specifically, a conviction’s collateral consequences, no matter how severe, …

The State Of The Death Penalty, Ankur Desai, Brandon L. Garrett

Faculty Scholarship

The death penalty is in decline in America and most death penalty states do not regularly impose death sentences. In 2016 and 2017, states reached modern lows in imposed death sentences, with just thirty-one defendants sentenced to death in 2016 and thirty-nine in 2017, as compared with over three hundred per year in the 1990s. In 2016, only thirteen states imposed death sentences, and in 2017, fourteen did so, although thirty-one states retain the death penalty. What explains this remarkable and quite unexpected trend? In this Article, we present new analysis of state-level legislative changes that might have been expected …

Self-Policing: Dissemination And Adoption Of Police Eyewitness Policies In Virginia, Brandon L. Garrett

Faculty Scholarship

Professional policing organizations emphasize the importance of the adoption of sound police policies and procedures, but traditionally doing so has been left to individual agencies. State and local government typically does not closely regulate police, and neither federal constitutional rulings nor state law typically sets out in any detail the practices that police should follow. Thus, law enforcement agencies must themselves draft and disseminate policy. This paper presents the results of studies used to assess the adoption of eyewitness identification policies by law enforcement agencies in Virginia. Policymakers were focused on this problem because Virginia experienced a series of DNA …

Judging Risk: The Use Of Risk Assessment In Sentencing, Brandon L. Garrett, John Monahan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The End Of Intuition-Based High-Crime Areas, Ben Grunwald, Jeffrey Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

In 2000, the Supreme Court held in Illinois v. Wardlow that a suspect’s presence in a “high-crime area” is relevant in determining whether an officer has reasonable suspicion to conduct an investigative stop. Despite the importance of the decision, the Court provided no guidance about what that standard means, and over fifteen years later, we still have no idea how police officers understand and apply it in practice. This Article conducts the first empirical analysis of Wardlow by examining data on over two million investigative stops conducted by the New York Police Department from 2007 to 2012.

Our results suggest …