Criminal Procedure Commons^™

"Sweet Childish Days": Using Developmental Psychology Research In Evaluating The Admissibility Of Out-Of-Court Statements By Young Children, Lynn Mclain

All Faculty Scholarship

A three-year-old child, while being bathed by her babysitter, innocently mentions that her “pee-pee” hurts. When the babysitter asks the child how she hurt it, she says, “Uncle Ernie (her mother’s boyfriend) told me not to tell.” A subsequent medical examination reveals that the child has gonorrhea, a sexually transmitted disease.

By the time of trial, the child is four and-a-half-years old. When questioned by the trial judge, she cannot explain to the judge’s satisfaction, “the difference between the truth and a lie.” Moreover, she has no long term memory of the incident. The judge rules the child incompetent to …

Preventive Detention In American Theory And Practice, Adam Klein, Benjamin Wittes

National Security Law Program

It is something of an article of faith in public and academic discourse that preventive detention runs counter to American values and law. This meme has become standard fare among human rights groups and in a great deal of legal scholarship. It treats the past nine years of extra-criminal detention of terrorism suspects as an extraordinary aberration from a strong American constitutional norm, under which government locks up citizens pursuant only to criminal punishment, not because of mere fear of their future acts. This argument further asserts that any statutory counterterrorism administrative detention regime would be a radical departure from …

Rethinking Parental Incarceration, Sarah Abramowicz

University of Colorado Law Review

Recent changes in sentencing law, in the wake of cases interpreting Blakely v. Washington and United States v. Booker, have raised the possibility that courts sentencing parents may take children's interests into account more extensively than had previously been permissible. Now is thus an opportune time to reevaluate the merits of considering children's interests when sentencing parents. This Article uses the perspective of family law to offer a new rationale for, and a new approach to, taking children's interests into account when sentencing their parents. It does so by bringing out the connection between the debate over parental incarceration and …

Revising Harmless Error: Making Innocence Relevant To Direct Appeals, Helen A. Anderson

Articles

In most jurisdictions, convicted defendants have the right to an appeal at public expense, and to the assistance of counsel with that appeal. But the direct appeal is almost never concerned with actual innocence. On direct appeal, courts will look at claims of trial error, and evaluate those claims and their "harmlessness" based only on the trial record. Thus, the chances of a reversal on direct appeal bear no relation to the chances that the wrong person has been convicted.

While the current appeal system may encourage proper trial procedures, it does not provide a check against wrongful conviction. The …

The Evolution Of The Law Of Evidence: Plus Ça Change…?, Robert Currie

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Originally prepared as a CLE backgrounder for criminal lawyers, this article provides a brief and occasionally critical account of developments in the law of evidence over the last three or so decades. Particular attention is paid to the Supreme Court of Canada’s introduction and development of the “principled approach.” It is argued that this framework has been most successful where it has coalesced into a more traditional-looking “rules-based” stance, albeit one based in principle, and less so where looser tests of principle have been given freer rein.

The Sky Is Not Falling: How The Anticlimactic Application Of Melendez-Diaz V. Massachusetts To Oklahoma's Laboratory Report Procedures Allows Room For Improvement, Danae Vansickle Grace

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Gideon'S Vuvuzela: Reconciling The Sixth Amendments Promises With The Doctrines Of Forfeiture And Implicit Waiver Of Counsel, Sarah Gerwig-Moore

Articles

Dating back to the early decades of the twentieth century, the United States Supreme Court has articulated clear, venerable standards for the waiver of constitutional rights--and in particular the right to counsel. This is a rich area for both litigation and teaching, if only to be able to repeat phrases such as "courts indulge every reasonable presumption against waiver" and "we do not presume acquiescence in the loss of fundamental rights." A defendant must proceed with "eyes open," and a waiver will not be presumed from a "silent record." Consistently affirmed and reaffirmed by the United States Supreme Court and …

Real Rape, Too, Bennett Capers

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Statutory Interpretation, Morality, And The Text, Lawrence Solan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Rise And Fall Of The Miranda Warnings In Popular Culture, Ronald Steiner, Rebecca Bauer, Rohit Talwar

Cleveland State Law Review

While Dickerson's rationale is certainly correct in presuming that those over thirty have already learned about the Miranda warning from decades of television, younger generations only have today's Miranda-less programming on which to form their assumptions about law enforcement. Miranda can still be found on television, but its presence has severely diminished over the years. If this trend continues, how will America's current youth internalize the Miranda warning in the way older generations have? Near-universal awareness of Miranda is an artifact of a shared popular culture in which the repetition of the warnings was pervasive and inescapable. But how can …

Brady-Based Prosecutorial Misconduct Claims, Buckley, And The Arkansas Coram Nobis Remedy, J. Thomas Sullivan

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Hearsay After Crawford: A Practitioner's Guide, Marcia G. Cooke

St. Thomas Law Review

The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides that "[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right ... to be confronted with the witnesses against him." Although it may appear simple, concise and direct, the language of the Sixth Amendment has been the subject of much discussion.' The Confrontation Clause has been inevitably comingled with the hearsay rules, and determining when an out-of-court statement violates the rights of criminal defendants has been no easy task. For many years, it was uncontested, as established in Ohio v. Roberts, that to avoid violating a criminal defendant's Sixth Amendment rights, the …

Fear Itself: The Impact Of Allegations Of Gang Affiliation On Pre-Trial Detention, K. B. Howell

St. Thomas Law Review

This article addresses the impact of alleged gang membership at the initial detention/bail determination for three reasons. First, the right to non-excessive bail is guaranteed by the Eighth Amendment. Second, although the impact of trial testimony about gangs presents a number of issues meriting exploration, the vast majority of criminal cases are either dismissed or resolved by plea. This is particularly so when charges are less serious. When misdemeanors or low-level felonies are charged, the incarceration of the defendant on excessive pre-trial bail will alter negotiation dynamics such that a defendant is likely to plead guilty in order to obtain …

The Importance Of Federal Habeas Review As A Means To Challenge Florida's Death Penalty Sentencing And Drug Possession Statutes, Donna L. Eng

UF Law Faculty Publications

The importance of Federal habeas review of Florida's death penalty and drug possession statues should become apparent in light of the current legal and political landscape surrounding Florida's death penalty scheme. When a State is unable to independently comply with the mandates of the United States Constitution, the citizens of that State have no option other than seek redress in Federal court.

Criminal Acts & Ethical Dilemmas: Some Client Nightmares Sneak Up On You, Barbara Glesner Fines

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Hanging On By A Thread: The Exclusionary Rule (Or What's Left Of It) Lives For Another Day, David A. Moran

Articles

Back when there was a Soviet Union, foreign intelligence officers would anxiously await the May Day parade in Moscow to see who would be standing next to the chairman of the Communist Party and who would be missing from the reviewing platform altogether. Since the Soviet government and the statecontrolled press published very little about what was really going on in the halls of state power, this was considered the most reliable way to determine who was in or out of favor and, by extension, how the domestic and foreign policies of the world's second most powerful country were likely …

Juvenile Life Without Parole: Unconstitutional In Michigan?, Kimberly A. Thomas

Articles

Last term, in Graham v Florida,1 the United States Supreme Court found unconstitutional the sentence of life without parole for a juvenile who committed a non-homicide offense. This attention to the sentencing of juvenile offenders is a continuation of the Court's decision in Roper v Simmons,2 in which the Court held that juvenile offenders could not constitutionally receive the death penalty. This scrutiny should be a signal to Michigan to examine its own jurisprudence on juveniles receiving sentences of life without parole. Michigan has the second-highest number of persons serving sentences of life without parole for offenses committed when they …

Pretrial Incentives, Post-Conviction Review, And Sorting Criminal Prosecutions By Guilt Or Innocence, Samuel R. Gross

Articles

The fundamental problem with false convictions is that they are unobserved, and in general, unobservable. We don't spot them when they happen-if we did, they wouldn't happen-and in most cases we can't identify them after the fact. We have no general reliable test for innocence or guilt; if we did, we'd use it at trial. As result, we often say that we don't know for sure whether a convicted criminal defendant is innocent or guilty, or even that we can't know for sure. But this isn't exactly true-or rather, its truth depends on who we mean by "we."

The Illusory Right To Counsel, Eve Brensike Primus

Articles

Imagine a woman wrongly accused of murdering her fiance. She is arrested and charged with first-degree murder. If convicted, she faces a mandatory sentence of life without the possibility of parole. Her family scrapes together enough money to hire two attorneys to represent her at trial. There is no physical evidence connecting her to the murder, but the prosecution builds its case on circumstantial inferences. Her trial attorneys admit that they were so cocky and confident that she would be acquitted that they did not bother to investigate her case or file a single pre-trial motion. Rather, they waived the …

Disentangling Administrative Searches, Eve Brensike Primus

Articles

Everyone who has been screened at an international border, scanned by an airport metal detector, or drug tested for public employment has been subjected to an administrative search. Since September 11th, the government has increasingly invoked the administrative search exception to justify more checkpoints, unprecedented subway searches, and extensive wiretaps. As science and technology advance, the frequency and scope of administrative searches will only expand. Formulating the boundaries and requirements of administrative search doctrine is therefore a matter of great importance. Yet the rules governing administrative searches are notoriously unclear. This Article seeks to refocus attention on administrative searches and …