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Criminal Law

Crime and Consequences

Criminal law issues from the perspective of victims of crime and the law-abiding public.
By Kent Scheidegger et al.

Post Frequency: 1.8/day

Last Entry: November 25, 2008 at 18:31:33

Blog Scan

Posted on June 20, 2008
Predictions of Kennedy v. Louisiana: Yesterday, Corey Rayburn Yung posted his prediction for the Supreme Court's decision in Kennedy v. Louisiana. In his post, Yung states that while he had earlier predicted that the Court might strike down Louisiana's law...

A Rehnquist Ode

Posted on June 20, 2008
Prof. John Q. Barrett, who authors the emailed Jackson List on things relating to Justice Robert Jackson, has an article in the Green Bag on a Gilbert and Sullivan spoof written by Jackson clerk William Rehnquist. The article is here,...

News Scan

Posted on June 20, 2008
Texas Courts Accused of "Facilitating" Executions: Steve Mills reports for the Chicago Tribune that a judge's decision to reinstate an inmate's death warrant drew charges from death penalty opponents that the court was behaving "as if their job is to...

News Scan

Posted on June 19, 2008
New Poll Shows European Support for Death Penalty Despite EU Ban: Despite the fact that the European Union requires entrants to ban the death penalty, a recent poll taken in the Czech Republic shows that Czech support for the ultimate...

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Degrees of Mental Competence

Posted on June 19, 2008
Today's Supreme Court opinion in Indiana v. Edwards is available on the Court's website. The case deals with the issue of the marginally competent defendant who is mentally able to stand trial but not to represent himself, yet he insists...

News Scan

Posted on June 18, 2008
115,000 Florida Ex-Felons Have Rights Restored: When ex-convicts in Florida wanted their civil rights restored, they used to have to petition the Board of Executive Clemency and undergo an individual hearing to determine whether or not the request should be...

The Criminal Vote

Posted on June 18, 2008
Virginia's Democratic Governor Tim Kaine is expediting the process to restore the voting rights of convicted felons before the November election, reports Tim Craig of AP. Query for law-abiding people: The fact that the Democratic Party expects the criminal vote...

Blog Scan

Posted on June 18, 2008
DOJ Recommends Habeas Proceedings: Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog has a post on the Justice Department's recommendation to the D.C. Circuit to put the appeals of 190 detainees on hold, so that the detainees may go forward with their habeas claims...

Texas Execution Postponed; Oklahoma Goes Forward

Posted on June 17, 2008
The state trial judge has withdrawn the execution warrant in the controversial case of Charles Dean Hood. AP story by Michael Graczyk is here. -------------------------------------------------------- Thirteen years ago, Japanese exchange student Ken Yamamoto was burned to death in his Oklahoma...

Lab Techs and Confrontation

Posted on June 17, 2008
Via SCOTUSblog, here is the brief for the petitioner in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, No. 07-591, on the Confrontation Clause and lab tech reports. My impression at this point is that the state has a seriously uphill battle here. We should...

Blog Scan

Posted on June 17, 2008
Boumediene Backlash: Over at Bench Memos, Ed Whalen offers a critique of Washington Post writer, George F. Will's attack of McCain's comment that Boumediene was "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.? Whalen's post discusses the....

News Scan

Posted on June 17, 2008
Mexico Adopts Reform Modeled on US System: Long criticized for a harsh judicial system that was prone to human rights abuses, Mexico has embraced reforms based on the US judicial system, includig public trials and a presumption of innocence until...

Worth 1000 Words

Posted on June 16, 2008
Last week we noted the coverage on the decision of Judge James Burge of Ohio on that state's use of the three-drug protocol for lethal injection. However, we somehow overlooked this AP photograph of Judge Burge by Tony Dejak....

Taking The Importance of Words Too Far

Posted on June 16, 2008
Hattip to BLT for its link to Tresa Baldas article in The National Law Journal, "Courts Putting Hot-Button Words on Ice." The article reports on the success of the defense bar in convincing trial judges to ban prosecutors and...

Today's Orders

Posted on June 16, 2008
Two habeas cases of note were denied certiorari today, and two were conspicuously absent from the orders list. In Quarterman v. Chambers, No. 07-1329, the court denied review of a Fifth Circuit decision overturning the sentence Ronald Chambers, who has...

New Zealand Sentencing

Posted on June 16, 2008
"Yesterday, the Sensible Sentencing Trust joined families of victims outside Auckland's Mt Eden Prison and staged a demonstration for tougher parole laws," reports Greer McDonald for the Dominion Post. (Hat tip: SL&P.) On the same site, another story reports that...

News Scan

Posted on June 16, 2008
Ninth Circuit Strikes Again: As we posted last Friday, the Ninth Circuit has overturned murderer Fernando Belmonte's death sentence for a third time. Bob Egelko reports for the San Francisco Chronicle on this ruling. Creative Use of Internet Assists Investigations:...

Viewing SCOTUS Through a Partisan Glass, Part II

Posted on June 16, 2008
Dahlia Lithwick has this op-ed in the WashPost puzzling over the nonideological lineups this term: Court watchers have stood dumbfounded all spring as the high court rejected and renounced the 5 to 4 conservative-liberal splits that seemed to have calcified...

Habeas Corpus: GITMO Style

Posted on June 16, 2008
The Commonwealth Club of San Francisco has a program this Thursday evening with the above title. The speakers are CJLF's Legal Director Kent Scheidegger and Center for Constitutional Rights Executive Director Vincent Warren. Bob Egelko of the San Francisco Chronicle...

Cert. Grants

Posted on June 16, 2008
The Supreme Court granted certiorari in three civil cases today, SCOTUSblog reports. Two are law-enforcement related. One is Ashcroft v. Iqbal, No. 07-1015 on post-9/11 suits against high DoJ officials. The other is Haywood v. Drown on state court jurisdiction...

Ignoring History in the Gitmo Case

Posted on June 13, 2008
My "initial thoughts" post on the Boumediene decision noted that the Court gave short shrift to the historical point regarding habeas and military prisoners with no prior connection to the country. I will expand on that point a bit here....

Belmontes on Remand

Posted on June 13, 2008
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has demonstrated once again why it simply cannot be trusted to decide capital cases fairly. The Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit in the case of Ayers v. Belmontes in 2006...

News Scan

Posted on June 13, 2008
Arms Trafficker Extradited to NY for Trial: Tom Hays reports for the Associated Press that Spain gave final approval for the extradition of a wealthy arms trafficker to face trial on charges related to funneling arms to revolutionary Colombian forces...

Nigeria: In Defence of Death Penalty

Posted on June 13, 2008
From the Daily Trust of Abuja, Nigeria, comes this excellent piece by Adamu Adamu with the above title. Adamu addresses many of the same topics that are debated in the United States: deterrence, retribution, and especially the "we have to...

Blog Scan

Posted on June 12, 2008
Habeas Rights After Boumediene and Al Odah: As expected, the blogosphere was saturated with posts and comments on today's Boumediene and Al Odah decision. Lyle Denniston has a post on SCOTUSblog analyzing detainee rights now that they have been granted...

News Scan

Posted on June 12, 2008
Habeas Corpus Extends to Military Prisoners?: Despite CJLF's research that the Great Writ did not extend to military prisoners under common law, the Supreme Court ruled today that Guantanamo detainees have the right to challenge their detention in civilian court...

Initial Thoughts on the Gitmo Case

Posted on June 12, 2008
The good news is that all the people who have been squawking about the "ultraconservative" Supreme Court look pretty foolish this morning. A quick scan of the Boumediene opinion indicates that most of it is refuting the government's theory that...

Blog Scan

Posted on June 11, 2008
Ohio Trial Court's Lethal Injection Decision: Doug Berman at Sentencing Law and Policy posted today on the Catch-22 of lethal injection reform in the United States. In his post, Berman discusses a press release from a "team of medical, ethical,...

News Scan

Posted on June 11, 2008
Ohio Judge Orders New Execution Method: Adam Liptak and Adam B. Ellick report for the New York Times that Judge Burge of Ohio has ordered a change in Ohio's execution protocol. Despite the Supreme Court's decision in Baze v. Rees,...

The O'Connor Precedents

Posted on June 11, 2008
As noted in yesterday’s Blog Scan, there is much discussion about which of the cases where Justice O’Connor cast the deciding vote might be overruled following her replacement by a more “conservative” justice. I put “conservative” in quotes because such...

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