Criminal Law & Process – Page 100 – Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

California Parole May Be Broken, But Federal Courts Cannot Fix It

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:January 25, 2011
Post category:Criminal Law & Process Prisoner Rights Speakers at Marquette U.S. Supreme Court

By some curious coincidence, at about the same time that Jonathan Simon was explaining in his Barrock Lecture yesterday that parole has effectively become unavailable in California in homicide cases, the United States Supreme Court was overturning a pair of Ninth Circuit decisions that would have established a basis for federal-court review of parole denials.

The California parole statute indicates that the state Board of Prison Terms “shall set a release date unless it determines that . . . consideration of the public safety requires a more lengthy period of incarceration.” According to the California Supreme Court, the statute requires that there be ”some evidence ” in support of a conclusion “that the inmate is unsuitable for parole because he or she currently is dangerous.” As Simon discussed, this requirement of some evidence of current dangerousness has been applied by the state courts such that the state can justify a parole denial in nearly any case.

The two cases decided by the Court yesterday in Swarthout v. Cooke (No. 10-333) nicely illustrate Simon’s point.

Murder Sentences Becoming “Too Flat and Too Severe,” Barrock Lecturer Says

Post author:Alan J. Borsuk
Post published:January 25, 2011
Post category:Criminal Law & Process Speakers at Marquette

A reactor or a radiator?

A radiator performs service by dissipating heat. A reactor generates increasingly intense heat, presenting difficult challenges for how to contain that heat.

Punishment for murder in the United States increasingly resembles a reactor more than a radiator, Prof. Jonathan Simon at Boalt Hall, University of California-Berkeley School of Law, said in a lecture at Marquette University Law School Monday. And like a reactor, the trends in murder sentences are building up heat that presents increasing challenges.

Was Oedipus Culpable?

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:January 16, 2011
Post category:Criminal Law & Process Popular Culture & Law

As I noted in an earlier post on Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, I am (very slowly) working my way through the ancient Greek tragedies. I recently finished the sequel to Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus. One of the central questions in OC is the extent to which Oedipus was truly culpable for killing his father, King Laius, and sleeping with his mother, Queen Jocasta. And, indeed, to modern sensibilities (or at least my modern sensibilities), Oedipus suffers far in excess of his blameworthiness. After all, he did not know that Laius and Jocasta were his father and mother — he was raised by the King and Queen of Corinth, and they never told him that they were not his biological parents. The whole patricide and incest thing was an accident. So why should Oedipus suffer blindness, exile, and life as a wandering beggar — how he can deserve such a fate?

To be sure, Oedipus did massacre Laius and his attendants following a dispute over whose chariot had the right of way — what seems to be an ancient instance of road rage. Even if he did not know that Laius was his father, we might say Oedipus was culpable for a hyper-violent overreaction to a minor slight.