Criminal Law

No Action on Kennedy Today

Posted on September 30, 2008
As SCOTUSBlog noted, the USSC didn't issue any orders after their Monday conference. However, action on Kennedy could occur at anytime.

California Passes a Law Restricting Sex Offenders from Teaching

Posted on September 30, 2008
Via Crime & Consequences, there is an AP story about new California efforts to keep sex offenders from teaching at public schools. The new laws close loopholes in California's teacher licensing system that had allowed some teachers accused or even...

Texas Posts Sex Offenders' Jobs on Registry

Posted on September 29, 2008
Crime and Consequences notes that "[i]n addition to a sex offenders' name, home address, photograph and criminal record, the Texas Department of Public Safety is now posting their employers." From WOAI:Just within the past few days, the Department of Public...

New York Protects Exploited Children From Prostitution Charges

Posted on September 29, 2008
CrimProf Blog has a post discussing a New York Times article detailing a New York law which will end the practice of charging underage prostitutes. From The New York Times:Ending years of debate and delay, Gov. David A. Paterson on...

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My Article on Kennedy Rehearing is Up

Posted on September 29, 2008
Thanks to the great efforts of the Northwestern University Law Review Colloquy, my short article, Is Military Law Relevant to the "Evolving Standards of Decency" Embodied in the Eighth Amendment?, is available here. You can also download a PDF version...

CAAFBlog on the Final Kennedy Brief

Posted on September 26, 2008
Col. Sullivan notes some of the positive aspects of the new Louisiana brief:Beyond this and other statements of respect for the military justice system, the brief engages in nuanced discussion of military law reflecting great familiarity with the system...

Sex Offender Held for Being Homeless

Posted on September 26, 2008
A Vermont sex offender who was set to be released from prison has been charged with a probation violation because he his homeless. From The Bennington Banner: A sex offender set to be released from prison on Sept. 20 was...

Final Rehearing Brief in Kennedy

Posted on September 25, 2008
The last brief is in on the question of whether Kennedy v. Louisiana should be reheard. From Louisiana's new brief:Military law is American law. Yet the briefing to this Court continues to be marred by misstatements that demonstrate an inattention...

New Stimulus Package to Fund AWA

Posted on September 25, 2008
Senators Harry Reid (D-NV) and Robert Byrd (D-WV) have announced the Reid/Byrd Economic Recovery Act of 2008, a stimulus package of $56.2 billion. The bill "extend[s] unemployment insurance benefits for seven weeks and provide[s] money for a range of other...

Colorado School District to Conduct Sex Offender Checks on Volunteers

Posted on September 25, 2008
School volunteers in one Colorado city will soon have their names "cross checked with a sex-offender registry." Because the registries are publicly available, the checks should not cost schools "anything but staff time." From The Daily Camera:Boulder Valley School District...

Indiana Appellate Court Upholds Sex Offender Ban

Posted on September 24, 2008
The Indiana Court of Appeals has ruled that although Plainfield, Indiana's ban on sex offenders in the parks does have punitive effects, it is not unconstitutional. The ruling, which may be viewed here, upholds an ordinance "prohibiting persons on the...

Michigan Court Rules that Bestiality Crime Doesn't Result in Registry Listing

Posted on September 24, 2008
A recent ruling from the Michigan Court of Appeals found that a man who pled no contest "to sodomizing a sheep does not have to register as a sex offender after his release from prison." You can view the opinion...

Oklahoma Judge Disbarred; Will be on Sex Offender Registry

Posted on September 24, 2008
The Oklahoma Supreme Court has disbarred a former judge, finding that his "repeated use of a sex device in the courtroom brought shame on the judiciary and the legal profession." The man served a 20 month prison sentence after a...

What's at Stake with the Kennedy Rehearing

Posted on September 23, 2008
Peter Verniero recently had this to say:There is something almost sacrosanct about recitations of law contained in decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court. Lower-court judges, attorneys, law professors and everyday citizens depend on those statements in myriad ways even when...

SORNA Featured in ABA Journal

Posted on September 23, 2008
In the ABA Journal, there is an interesting piece in this month's issue about the problems with the AWA registry system embodied in SORNA. The article quotes Wayne Logan who has written extensively and persuasively about sex offender policy and...

Around the Web

Posted on September 22, 2008
Sentencing Law and Policy has a post discussing a new article on SSRN entitled: Banishment of Sex Offenders: Individual Liberties, National Rights and the Dormant Commerce Clause, Environmental Justice, and Alternatives. You can view the article here...

Around the Web

Posted on September 19, 2008
The Greensboro News Record has an editorial discussing a sex offender registry loophole in North Carolina law. The op-ed discusses a case where a woman, "convicted in 1995 of taking indecent liberties with a child, registered her address as required....

Carnivals Against Sexual Violence 54 and 55

Posted on September 19, 2008
I'm behind in reporting the Carnivals at abyss2hope. This is the legal section from number 54:In "In a rape, the rapists are on trial, not the raped" posted at churumuri, we get a discussion of the ruling by the Supreme...

Around the Web

Posted on September 18, 2008
EvidenceProf Blog notes that in United States v. Jospeh (2nd Cir. 2008), a Defendant "appealed from his conviction for using his computer to send messages on the Internet to entice an individual he believed to be an underaged girl to...

Col. Sullivan on the New Kennedy Briefs

Posted on September 18, 2008
Colonel Sullivan at CAAFlog had some critical remarks for the new brief by Kennedy in Kennedy v. Louisiana:Kennedy's brief displayed unfamiliarity with the military justice system. Any number of military justice experts would have made themselves available to help Kennedy's...

New Briefs in Kennedy v. Louisiana

Posted on September 17, 2008
As noted by SCOTUSBlog and Sentencing Law & Policy have noted, new briefs are out in Kennedy v. Louisiana. First up is the brief from Kennedy. This is from the SCOTUSBlog summary:Lawyers for a death-row inmate in Louisiana, arguing that...

District Court Finds 30 Year Mandatory Minimum in AWA Unconstitutional

Posted on September 17, 2008
It is very rare to see the 8th Amendment applied in favor of the defendant in non-death case. However, Judge Beverly Martin, of the Northern District of Georgia, in U.S. v. Farley , did just that. The Court held that:......

Around the Web

Posted on September 16, 2008
The Las Vegas Review-Journal is running an interesting editorial entitled Upholding our rights: Even sex offenders are entitled to protections of Constitution. The editorial argues that despite being "an unsympathetic lot, ... if the government is allowed to trample and...

New Violent Crime Statistics

Posted on September 15, 2008
Both TalkLeft and Grits have posts about the new violent crime statistics. Violent crime was down in 2007 (for the first time since 2005). One of the biggest statistical declines was in the category of "forcible rape." I'm not sure...

Helen Mirren on Date Rape

Posted on September 15, 2008
Celebrities often don't do well when talking about politics. Well, if Helen Mirren is an example, talking about rape isn't really a strength of celebrities either. Here is what Mirren had to say in the context of her own experience...

My New Article on SSRN

Posted on September 12, 2008
After the Supreme Court requested new briefing in Kennedy v. Louisiana, I decided to start again on a project I had abandoned. I've posted a draft of my short piece, Is Military Law Relevant to the 'Evolving Standards of Decency'...

Around the Web

Posted on September 12, 2008
An attorney for Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) has asked the Minnesota Court of Appeals to allow Sen. Craig to "withdraw his guilty plea to disorderly conduct after his arrest in a sex-sting operation at an airport men?s room last year."...

Does 18 U.S.C. 242 Permit the Death Penalty for Rape?

Posted on September 11, 2008
That was the question that Orin Kerr at Volokh Conspiracy asked and then answered. Before I even read the post, Kent Scheidegger at Crime & Consequences had already pointed the error that Kerr made in his analysis. And so now...

Around the Web

Posted on September 11, 2008
A Wisconsin appellate court has ruled that "[p]olice who videotaped a man having sex with his comatose wife in her nursing home room violated his constitutional rights." The man visited his wife, a stroke victim, at a nursing Home in...

Kennedy v. Louisiana Resource Page Updated

Posted on September 11, 2008
Because of the USSC's request for new briefing, the Kennedy v. Louisiana resource page has been updated. It will be updated periodically until the Court finally decides if it is going to rehear the case.

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