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Criminal Law

CrimProf Blog

Criminal law resources, information, and news for the academic community.

Post Frequency: 25.9/day

Last Entry: April 01, 2011 at 16:40:00

Judge?s ban on the use of the word ?rape? at trial reflects trend

Posted on June 10, 2008
It?s the only way Tory Bowen knows to honestly describe what happened to her. She was raped.But a judge prohibited her from uttering the word ?rape? in front of a jury. The term ?sexual assault? also was taboo, and Bowen...

Coming Home After a Reduced Sentence

Posted on June 10, 2008
Those Released Since Disparities in Cocaine Penalties Were Offset Find a Different World Days after her release from prison, Nerika Jenkins made a bold prediction: "I'll bounce right back into society." Although the world changed considerably over the 11 years...

French Judge Aids in San Francisco Homicide Investigation

Posted on June 10, 2008
A French judge has arrived in San Francisco to oversee an unusual probe into the death of a French citizen whose stabbing has puzzled police investigators for more than a year. Police have said they are handling the June 2,...

NYPD Advised to Expand Taser Program

Posted on June 10, 2008
The NYPD could prevent some police-related shootings from escalating into deadly confrontations like the Sean Bell case by giving cops Tasers, a new report says. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly hired the high-powered Rand Corp. to review weapons training six weeks...

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California Obscenity Prosecution Challenges Lawyers and Jurors

Posted on June 10, 2008
What violates community obscenity standards in the nation's reputed pornography capital? Federal prosecutors think they have a case. Ira Isaacs readily admits he produced and sold movies depicting bestiality and sexual activity involving feces and urine...

Cops Target L.A. Gangs' 'Shot Callers'

Posted on June 09, 2008
Los Angeles is the most gang-saturated city per capita in the world. In the nine square miles that make up Los Angeles' Watts neighborhood alone, there are 65 different gangs and roughly 15,000 hardcore gang members. If you are a...

In Philadelphia, 10,000 men's 'call to action' is cut short

Posted on June 09, 2008
Wazier El remembers the excitement that day in October, when nearly 10,000 men gathered in a stadium to send a message to drug dealers, gang members and gun-toting criminals: The violence must stop. In a matter of days, the men...

State sets up watchdog unit for criminal justice system

Posted on June 09, 2008
In a "call to action" to address problems in the justice system, Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Barbara Hervey on Wednesday announced a new Texas Criminal Justice Integrity Unit. The unit has officials from across the state, including Sen....

'Policing Gangs in America' wins book award for ASU professor

Posted on June 08, 2008
An exhaustive study of the police response to gangs in four U.S. cities, co-authored by an ASU professor, has received international acclaim. The Academy of Criminal Justice Studies (ACJS) chose Policing Gangs in America (Cambridge University Press), co-authored by Charles...

U.S. Prison Population Hits All-Time High: 2.3 Million Incarcerated

Posted on June 07, 2008
The Justice Department has released a new report showing the nation's prison and jail population reached a record 2.3 million people last year. The report notes that in the 10 largest states, prison populations increased "during 2006 at more than...

U.S. v. Santos as a Teaching Tool?

Posted on June 06, 2008
I'd be curious to hear what people think of the recent SCOTUS decision in U.S. v. Santos as a tool for teaching statutory interpretation in Criminal Law. I have been thinking of using it instead of U.S. v. Foster, the...

NY to Study Wrongful Convictions

Posted on June 06, 2008
Manhattan attorney Bernice Leber, named president of the 74,000-member [New York State Bar] association on Monday, says that for every wrongful conviction that surfaces, unknown numbers of others remain unfairly resolved.

O.C. Grand Jury calls for limits on Taser use

Posted on June 06, 2008
Alarmed by the recent deaths of two jail inmates who had been shocked with Taser electronic stun weapons, the Orange County Grand Jury on Wednesday recommended that deputies no longer use the weapon if other means to control inmates are...

Pilot program credited for drop in Missouri prison population

Posted on June 06, 2008
ST. LOUIS ? Over the last six years, Missouri has evolved into a national model for helping released prisoners re-enter society and not reoffend. Overcrowding led the state to accept a national group?s offer in 2002 to be a pilot...

4th Circuit Orders New Sentencing for Convicted al-Qaida Member

Posted on June 06, 2008
Yahoo.com: A federal appeals court upheld the conviction Friday of a Virginia man convicted of joining al-Qaida and plotting to assassinate President Bush, but said that he must be resentenced. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a 30-year...

Feds Aim to Dismantle L.A.'s 18th Street Gang

Posted on June 05, 2008
Authorities say Francisco "Puppet" Martinez controlled much of the gang violence and drug trade in the neighborhood around L.A.'s MacArthur Park from a federal prison cell in the late 1990s. Martinez ran the Columbia Lil Cycos clique of the 18th...

Judge tosses two city gun laws

Posted on June 05, 2008
A Philadelphia judge yesterday sided with the National Rifle Association and struck down city ordinances banning assault weapons and limiting handgun purchases to one a month. In a blow to the city's attempt to write its own gun laws, Common...

Goal: Keep mentally ill out of jail

Posted on June 05, 2008
CHAPEL HILL - A group of North Carolina lawmakers assured residents Saturday that they support doing more to prevent people with addictions or mental illness from ending up in jail. Mental illness and its effects on the criminal justice system...

Death Penalty Under Review

Posted on June 04, 2008
The United States is fifth in the world when it comes to executing inmates ? slightly above Iraq and right below Pakistan. Since the death penalty was reinstated in the mid 1970s, all death row inmates have been put to...

Innocence Project Focusing on Freeing the Wrongfully Jailed, Reforming a Flawed System

Posted on June 04, 2008
Before he was convicted of a rape he didn?t commit, Dean Cage of Chicago had a stable existence, his lawyer said. He had a job and he was living with his girlfriend. Now, 14 years later, the 41-year-old Cage is...

Does Child Rape Warrant the Death Penalty?

Posted on June 04, 2008
Patrick Kennedy is on death row at Louisiana's Angola Prison, awaiting capital punishment for brutally raping his 8-year-old step daughter. But does executing someone for child rape violate the 8th Amendment, which bars cruel and unusual punishment?

Immigration Prosecutions Hit New High

Posted on June 03, 2008
Federal law enforcement agencies have increased criminal prosecutions of immigration violators to record levels, in part by filing minor charges against virtually every person caught illegally crossing some stretches of the U.S.-Mexico border, according to new U...

Memo on cops gets spotlight

Posted on June 03, 2008
A Chicago police internal affairs investigator has testified before a federal grand jury about a 2005 memo he wrote questioning whether his bosses ignored alleged misconduct that grew into one of the biggest corruption scandals to hit the Police Department,...

Cracking Open

Posted on June 03, 2008
Michael Short knows he was wrong to sell crack cocaine, but he questions whether he needed 15 years in prison to learn his lesson. Now some of the politicians who helped put him there are wondering, too.

CrimProf Kevin Washburn to Arizona from Minnesota

Posted on June 02, 2008
From the Press Release: "Kevin K. Washburn will join the Arizona Law faculty, teaching and working in the areas of American Indian law and criminal law. ?Professor Washburn?s extensive work in American Indian law and gaming law will consolidate strengths...

Real government waste: Mandatory sentences

Posted on June 02, 2008
Stop government waste. That's what state taxpayers are clamoring for, right? Cut out the padded pensions, lavish trips, no-show jobs ... But all the money spent in those time-worn examples of "waste" pales in comparison to the millions and millions...

Multnomah County juvenile justice system is broken, crime-victims' group says

Posted on June 02, 2008
The Multnomah County juvenile justice system is broken, with youth offenders not being held accountable for serious crimes, according to a report released Tuesday by an influential crime victims' advocacy group.

Mr. Cooley: It's time to let this woman go

Posted on June 02, 2008
Twenty-five years after a Los Angeles prosecutor admitted that the key witness against her was a liar, and three years after L.A. County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley agreed to a deal that would have led to her release, Deborah Peagler...

Executive Vice President and Provost Joseph A. Alutto named Alan C. Michaels as interim dean

Posted on June 01, 2008
On May 28, 2008, The Ohio State University Executive Vice President and Provost Joseph A. Alutto named Alan C. Michaels as interim dean. Michaels replaces Nancy H. Rogers, who was selected as interim Ohio Attorney General by Ohio Governor Ted...

To Treat or Not To Treat:EVIDENCE ON THE PROSPECTS OF EXPANDING TREATMENT TO DRUG-INVOLVED OFFENDERS

Posted on May 31, 2008
Despite a growing consensus among scholars that substance abuse treatment is effective in reducing offending, strict eligibility rules have limited the impact of current models of therapeutic jurisprudence on public safety. This research effort was aimed at providing policy makers...

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