When I Was Just a Baby, My Mama Told Me, Son/Always Be a Good Boy . . .

. . . but I internalized the norms of the legal profession early. I first became a lawyer at Badger Boy’s State. My first case was to defend a floormate who was accused of throwing water out a window on a counselor. I knew he did it because I was there. I also knew that he was far enough from the window that he could not be identified. Great cross (for a 17 year old) and an acquittal. Since then, I haven’t been clean a day in my life. My name is Rick E., and I believe in the adversarial system . . . .

I’m not stalking Mr. Samis through the Blog, but his post on the demands of confidentiality when a client has disclosed evidence of a past crime reflects a timeless ethical dilemma. Here’s another good one.

Assume that your client has told you that he committed the crime. You now can’t call him to deny it, but you were probably never going to do that anyway. How else should that impact the way in which you present a defense?

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Felony Convictions and the Right to Vote

On April 23, Marc Mauer, Executive Director of the Sentencing Project, will be on campus to speak on “Losing the Vote: Felony Disenfranchisement and American Democracy.”  Mauer has been a national leader in drawing public attention to the ever-expanding body of “collateral consequences” suffered by convicted felons, including loss of the right of vote.  I look forward to hearing Mauer’s talk, which is part of the McGee Lecture series sponsored by Marquette’e Department of Social and Cultural Sciences.  The talk will begin at 7:00 in Room 001 of Cudahy Hall.

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Seventh Circuit Week in Review: Corporate Criminal Liability, Reconsideration of Suppression Rulings, and More

The Seventh Circuit had four new opinions in criminal cases this week.  The cases addressed the mens rea requirements for corporate criminal liability, procedural aspects of suppression hearings, child pornography sentencing, and conditional guilty pleas.  Taking the cases in that order:

In United States v. L.E. Myers Co. (No. 07-2464), the defendant corporation was convicted of criminal OSHA violations in connection with the electrocution death of one its employees.  The Seventh Circuit (per Judge Sykes) reversed and remanded for a new trial in light of erroneous jury instructions.  The errors related to mens rea issues.  Myers was convicted under a statute that bases liability on the knowing creation of a hazardous condition in knowing violation of an OSHA requirement. 

The problem is that a corporation, as a legal construct, cannot really know anything; the only way a corporation knows something is to the extent the law is willing to impute the knowledge of particular employees to the corporation.  Seventh Circuit precedent indicated that “corporations ‘know’ what their employees who are responsible for an aspect of the business know.”  More specifically, the corporation was said to know what an employee knows if the employee has a duty to report that knowledge to someone higher up in the corporation.

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