New Issue of FSR Considers Recent Developments Affecting Right to Counsel

In three cases since 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court has seemingly strengthened the chronically anemic right to effective assistance of counsel. Padilla v. Kentucky, the first in the trilogy, indicated that defense lawyers must in some circumstances provide accurate information to their clients regarding the deportation consequences of a conviction. The Court then followed Padilla with decisions in Lafler v. Cooper and Missouri v. Frye that reaffirmed and clarified the right to effective assistance in plea bargaining. (See my post here.)

Inspired by these decisions, Cecelia Klingele and I put together an issue of the Federal Sentencing Reporter devoted to recent legal developments affecting the right to counsel. The issue is now out in print.

The issue includes commentary from several of the nation’s most astute observers of criminal procedure; the contents appear after the jump.  I do have a few extra copies on hand and would be happy to forward them gratis to any interested readers of this blog. Just email me your mailing address (michael.ohear@marquette.edu).

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The Basketball Kings and the Football Colts are the Most Frequently Relocated Teams

Professional sports team relocations have been a feature of the American sports industry since the nineteenth century.  Team owners have been willing to move from one city to another, and, occasionally, from one league to another, in search of greater profits.   While some relocations have produced litigation and legislative efforts to regulate the movement process, in most situations the decision to move has been left to the team owner. It now appears that the Sacramento Kings of the National Basketball Association are poised to move to Seattle, a city that lost its previous NBA team, the Supersonics, to Oklahoma City in 2008.  Since the story broke, a number of publications, including the Wall Street Journal, have reported that the Kings are the most travelled major league sports franchise in American history.  That is true, although at least one other current team can claim to have moved as frequently. The current Kings began life in the 1920’s as a semi-professional team in Rochester, New York.  In 1945, the Rochester Royals joined the National Basketball League, then switched to the Basketball Association of America in 1948, and in 1949, it was one of the inaugural teams of the National Basketball Association which was formed with the BAA merged with the NBL. In 1957, the Royals moved to Cincinnati, and in 1972, they moved to Kansas City and Omaha, splitting their home games between the two cities.  Because the American League baseball team in Kansas City was already known as the Royals, the team changed its name to the Kings.  After the 1974-75 season, the team began playing all its games in Kansas City, where it remained until it moved to Sacramento in 1985.  If they do move to Seattle, that will be the team’s sixth city. However, a case can be made that the Indianapolis Colts of the National Football League have also played in at least six different cities.  Here’s the argument. From 1913 to 1916, the top semi-professional team in Dayton, Ohio was called the Cadets.  In 1916, the team apparently became fully professional and changed its name to the Dayton Triangles.  The Triangles quickly established themselves as one of the strongest professional elevens in the Midwest, and when the National Football League was organized in 1920 (originally as the American Professional Football Association) the Triangles were a charter member. The Triangles played in the NFL until 1929, when the team finished last in the 12-team league with an 0-6 record while being outscored 136-7.  (The 1929 championship was won by the Green Bay Packers who finished the season 12-0-1, which is still the second best record in NFL history). At the conclusion of the season, the Dayton owners sold the team’s franchise to New Yorkers Bill Dwyer (a fomer NHL owner) and Jack Tepler (coach of the NFL’s Orange Toronados).  The new owners moved the team to Brooklyn  and renamed the team the Dodgers in imitation of the borough’s major league baseball team. (Trademark protection did not extend to…

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Criminal Process as Morality Play

My review of Stephanos Bibas’s book The Machinery of Criminal Justice is now available on SSRN.  Here is the abstract: Stephanos Bibas’s new book, The Machinery of Criminal Justice, looks back to colonial-era criminal justice as an ideal of sorts. Criminal trials in that time were a “participatory morality play,” in which ordinary members of the community played a crucial role. In Bibas’s view, the subsequent professionalization of the criminal-justice system, as well as related developments like the introduction of plea bargaining, have led to widespread contemporary distrust of the system. The present essay reviews Bibas’s book and suggests additional reasons besides professionalization why the morality-play model broke down in the nineteenth century. Taking these additional considerations into account, the prospects for reviving the morality-play model may be even dimmer than Bibas recognizes, although a number of his proposed reforms nonetheless appear attractive. Entitled “(The History of) Criminal Justice as a Morality Play,” my essay will appear in the Penn Law Review’s on-line journal, PENNumbra.

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