Criminal Procedure Commons^™

Getting Jurors To Awesome, Cortney E. Lollar

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

A 2011 American Bar Association report on the death penalty in Kentucky revealed that a shocking two-thirds of the 78 people sentenced to death in Kentucky since reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976 have had their sentences overturned on appeal. Kentucky’s reversal rate is more than twice the national average, with a 31% reversal rate in capital cases and almost four times the 17% national reversal rate in all other case types. With a sentence as irreversible as death, troubling does not begin to describe the depth of concern many experience when viewing such a startling statistic.

A closer …

Creating Constitutional Procedure: Frye, Lafler, And Plea Bargaining Reform, Mike Work

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

The New Prosecutor’S Dilemma: Prosecutorial Ethics And The Evaluation Of Actual Innocence, Dana Carver Boehm

Utah Law Review

Buoyed by advances in forensic science, the number of postconviction exonerations has significantly risen in the American criminal justice system over the last twenty years. The ethical obligations of prosecutors faced with such claims, however, have not kept pace. Most efforts within district and U.S. attorneys’ offices have been incremental at best, and even those few prosecutors’ offices with more robust “conviction integrity units”—units that affirmatively investigate claims of actual innocence and seek to mitigate the likelihood of wrongful convictions in the first place—suffer from various structural defects. Often a prosecutor’s default posture when faced with a claim of actual …

Forget Sentencing Equality: Moving From The “Cracked” Cocaine Debate Toward Particular Purpose Sentencing, Jelani Jefferson Exum

Faculty Publications

While a racial equality-themed discourse has traditionally fueled the crack-versus-powder cocaine sentencing debate, this Article asserts that seeking equality in sentencing outcomes is the wrong goal. This Article argues that reformers seeking racial equality in sentencing are misguided in using the cocaine sentencing standards as a benchmark of fairness, because the current cocaine sentencing standards do not effectively serve the purposes of punishment. Rather than focusing on equality, this Article advocates implementing Particular Purpose Sentencing, which involves developing a framework for drug offenses to be analyzed individually and matched with punishments that purposefully address the concerns associated with the particular …

Blind Injustice: The Supreme Court, Implicit Racial Bias, And The Racial Disparity In The Criminal Justice System, Tyler Rose Clemons

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” This statement by Chief Justice John Roberts in 2007 is alluring in both its grammatical symmetry and its logical simplicity. Yet it encapsulates the naiveté of the view of racial discrimination currently held by the majority of the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. Chief Justice Roberts’s assertion contains the implied assumption that the only racial discrimination that exists—or at least the only kind that matters under the Constitution—is explicit and susceptible to conscious control. Decades of …

Impeachment By Unreliable Conviction, Anna Roberts

Faculty Publications

This Article offers a new critique of Federal Rule of Evidence 609, which permits impeachment of criminal defendants by means of their prior criminal convictions. In admitting convictions as impeachment evidence, courts are wrongly assuming that such convictions are necessarily reliable indicators of relative culpability. Courts assume that convictions are the product of a fair fight, that they demonstrate relative culpability, and that they connote moral culpability. But current prosecutorial practice and other data undermine each of these assumptions. Accordingly, this Article proposes that before a conviction is used for impeachment, there should be an assessment of the extent to …

Objective Mens Rea And Attenuated Subjectivism: Guidance From Justice Charron In R. V. Beatty, Palma Paciocco

Articles & Book Chapters

Justin Ronald Beatty was driving on the Trans-Canada Highway on July 23, 2003 when, for no apparent reason, his truck suddenly crossed the solid centre line and collided with an oncoming car, killing three people. Beatty was charged with dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing death. He was acquitted at trial on the grounds that his momentary lapse of attention was not enough to establish fault. The Crown appealed, and the Court of Appeal ordered a new trial after concluding that the trial judge had misapplied the fault standard. Beatty appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada, which undertook …

From Villa Grimaldi To Guantánamo Bay: Remedying Human Rights Abuses In Chile And The United States, Nadia Shamsi

Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law

The article examines the effectiveness of transitional justice mechanisms in addressing human rights abuses, using Chile's experience under Augusto Pinochet as a model. It critiques the U.S. for failing to adopt similar approaches to accountability, particularly in addressing abuses at Guantanamo Bay and other detention centers. The analysis highlights the importance of combining truth commissions, criminal prosecutions, and reparations to achieve justice and promote democratic transition. It argues that the U.S. must align its domestic practices with the international human rights standards it promotes.

Table Of Contents, Public Interest Law Reporter

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Fixing Education Spending In Illinois Through Efficient Targeted Funding, Conor Desmond

Public Interest Law Reporter

Educational attainment has been tied to income levels, employment, health, and numerous other benefits. Economic research indicates that if we focus our funding on programs targeting children from birth to age five, the returns on the public investment will result in higher returns than if it was invested in the open market. In fact, fifteen US States spent over $400 million on pre-k education alone in 2013. Illinois spent approximately $300 million in the 2014 Fiscal year. Through this paper, it will be shown that through effective funding of programs that develop cognitive skills in children aged three to four, …

To Whom Should The Job Of Solving Inequity In School Funding Schemes Fall?, Calli Leigh Burnett

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Illinois School Funding Reform: An Overview Of District Variance, Jordan Fries

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

A Step In The Right Direction, But Sb16 Bobby Otter Comes Up Short, Ralph Martire, Bobby Otter

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Consensual Police-Citizen Encounters: Human Factors Of A Reasonable Person And Individual Bias., Evan M. Mcguire

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable government intrusion. The government must establish probable cause and obtain a warrant to search a particular location. However, there are minute Fourth Amendment distinctions at various levels of police-citizen interaction which act as exceptions to the general rule. Officers may approach a citizen for any reason as long as a reasonable person in their place would feel able to escape the officer’s advances. Ultimately, abuse of this exception to Fourth Amendment protections occurs frequently, especially when it comes to minority populations. The police can conduct a search without a warrant if there is reasonable …

Sentencing Terrorist Crimes, Wadie E. Said

Publications

The legal framework behind the sentencing of individuals convicted of committing terrorist crimes has received little scholarly attention, even with the proliferation of such prosecutions in the eleven years following the attacks of September 11, 2001. This lack of attention is particularly striking in light of the robust and multifaceted scholarship that deals with the challenges inherent in criminal sentencing more generally, driven in no small part by the comparatively large number of sentencing decisions issued by the United States Supreme Court over the past thirteen years. Reduced to its essence, the Supreme Court's sentencing jurisprudence requires district courts to …

The Genealogy Of Prosecutorial Discretion In Latin America: A Comparative And Historical Analysis Of The Adversarial Reforms In The Region, Daniel Pulecio-Boek

Richmond Journal of Global Law & Business

No abstract provided.

A Dedication To Andrew E. Taslitz: “It’S All About The Egyptians,” And Maybe Tinkerbell Too, Stephen Henderson

Other Faculty Publications

This brief memorial remembers Andy's incredible friendship and service, and explains why this Symposium volume is so appropriately dedicated to his memory.

We Are Not Who We Pretend To Be: Odr Alternatives To Online Impersonation Statutes, Kori Clanton

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

This Note focuses on how online dispute resolution ("ODR") processes, as opposed to litigation, offer a more efficient and effective legal solution to resolving online impersonation disputes. The purpose of this Note is to analyze the measures state legislatures and social media websites have implemented to combat online impersonation cases, and to propose a practical ODR solution that will eliminate the burdens of litigation and provide a cost-efficient and time-effective remedy. Section I provides an introduction to the current relevance and rising incidents of online impersonation via social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter. Section II explores the historical …

In Need Of Clarification: A Call To Define The Scope Of The Routine Booking Exception By Adopting The Legitimate Administrative Function Test, Elizabeth Parrish

Catholic University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Book Review: American Jericho: A Book Review Of The Hanging Judge By Michael A. Ponsor, Giovanna Shay

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.