Observations by a 3L in a First-Degree Intentional Homicide Jury Pool

I was recently summoned to serve as a juror in Jefferson County, Wisconsin. As a 3L about to graduate, I have had some recent exposure in my classes and internships to the jury selection process. Being on the other side of the process, being in the pool of potential jurors, gave me some unique insights into the process that I think I may not have ever had otherwise. I took many notes during the course of my time in the pool of potential jurors, and I will share a number of these observations in my blog entries during the month of December.  For myself, perhaps the most interesting thing I observed is how the experiences jurors have on the day of jury duty, before entering the courtroom, influence their moods or attitudes once they are in the courtroom.

The case I was in the jury pool for was State v. Curtis Forbes, a first-degree intentional homicide case being tried in Columbia County with a Jefferson County jury. A few weeks earlier, a Columbia County jury heard a Jefferson County case involving two counts of first-degree intentional homicide.  This was reported in the press as an intentional “jury swap” between the two counties.

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Cleaning Up the ACCA Mess

David Holman has a helpful new article exploring the mess that has become the Armed Career Criminal Act jurisprudence in the wake of Begay v. United States. (I’ve blogged about this unfolding jurisprudence several times, e.g., here and here.)  The ACCA, of course, imposes a fifteen-year mandatory minimum for felons in possession of a firearm who have three or more prior convictions for a “violent felony” or a serious drug offense. It is the definition of “violent felony” that has occasioned so much litigation and so many unsatisfying judicial decisions over the past couple of years.  I’m glad to see David’s article because I think legal scholars have not been paying nearly enough attention to recent developments in this important area of federal criminal law.

I think David is correct to trace the jurisprudential difficulties to the tension between two lines of Supreme Court decisions.  

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The Dead End of Deterrence

The Sentencing Project has a new report out that summarizes research on the effectiveness of criminal punishment as a deterrent.  It’s nothing pathbreaking, but it does offer a nice, succinct statement of the evidence against robust deterrence effects.  Here’s the conclusion:

Existing evidence does not support any significant public safety benefit of the practice of increasing the severity of sentences by imposing longer prison terms. In fact, research findings imply that increasingly lengthy prison terms are counterproductive. Overall, the evidence indicates that the deterrent effect of lengthy prison sentences would not be substantially diminished if punishments were reduced from their current levels. Thus, policies such as California’s Three Strikes law or mandatory minimums that increase imprisonment not only burden state budgets, but also fail to enhance public safety. As a result, such policies are not justifiable based on their ability to deter.

Based upon the existing evidence, both crime and imprisonment can be simultaneously reduced if policy-makers reconsider their overreliance on severity-based policies such as long prison sentences. Instead, an evidence-based approach would entail increasing the certainty of punishment by improving the likelihood that criminal behavior would be detected. Such an approach would also free up resources devoted to incarceration and allow for increased initiatives of prevention and treatment.

I’ll offer four reactions of my own.

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