Criminal Law & Process – Page 56 – Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

Restorative Justice Conference to Consider Healing for Family Members of Homicide Victims

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:February 11, 2013
Post category:Criminal Law & Process Public Speakers at Marquette

I’m looking forward to this year’s annual Restorative Justice Conference, “The Death Penalty Versus Life Without Parole: Comparing the Healing Impact on Victims’ Families and the Community.” The conference was inspired by a fascinating empirical study comparing the long-run experiences of family members of homicide victims in Texas, which has the death penalty, and Minnesota, which does not. Authored by Marilyn Peterson Armour and Mark S. Umbreit and forthcoming in the Marquette Law Review, the article concludes that the Minnesota family members achieved a higher level of physical, psychological, and behavioral health.

The conference kicks off with a keynote address by Armour (pictured here) at 4:30 on February 21. The following day will include several panels providing a diverse set of first-hand perspectives on the impact of homicide, capital punishment, and the criminal process on family members, lawyers, judges, and many others. Additional information about the conference is available here.

Bond’s Back: SCOTUS to Take Another Look at Case on Federalism and Criminal Law

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:January 20, 2013
Post category:Constitutional Law Criminal Law & Process Federal Criminal Law & Process Public U.S. Supreme Court

The recent suicide of Aaron Swartz has provoked a great deal of public discussion of what many consider to be overreaching by federal prosecutors in his case. In the view of some critics, Swartz’s theft of academic articles from JSTOR would have been more properly handled as a minor property offense in state court. Instead, Swartz found himself in federal court facing a possible 35 years in prison and a set of charges invoking a variety of obscure federal criminal statutes.

Whatever the merits of the criticisms, they have served to draw public attention to the extraordinary power exercised by federal prosecutors and the uncertain line between what is most appropriately handled in state court and what is most appropriately handled in federal.

Although the Swartz litigation is now presumably over, another case that has provoked similar charges of prosecutorial overreaching is now on its way to the Supreme Court . . . for a second time.

New Essays on Restitution and Sentencing Commissions

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:January 18, 2013
Post category:Criminal Law & Process Federal Criminal Law & Process Federal Sentencing Legal Scholarship Public

I have two new essays on SSRN assessing the history and future prospects of restitution and sentencing commissions, respectively. These essays will be published later this year in the Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice.

The restitution essay covers such topics as Randy Barnett’s proposal that restitution be used in lieu of imprisonment as our basic form of criminal punishment, debates regarding which types of victims should be able to recover for which types of injuries, and the question of whether victims seeking restitution should be given a right to legal representation.

The sentencing commissions essay focuses particularly on the Minnesota and federal sentencing commissions. In considering these case studies, as well as the experience with sentencing commissions in a few other states, my primary theme is the relationship between sentencing commissions and legislatures. (As I point out in the essay, although sentencing commissions are predominantly legislative creations, commissions have often struggled to maintain their relevance in the face of ongoing legislative policymaking in the sentencing area, which frequently takes the form of harsh statutory responses to the “crime du jour.”) A secondary theme is the relationship between commissions and judges—another relationship that has sometimes proven quite challenging for the commissions to manage effectively.