Miranda, Please Report to the Principal\u27s Office

This Article addresses whether Miranda v. Arizona should apply to students interrogated by school officials during school hours. First, the article provides a brief overview of the law of minors and confessions. Next, it considers the increasing law enforcement presence on our school campuses and evaluates how this presence affects the role of school officials. Finally, the high level of cooperation between law enforcement and school officials in criminal law enforcement is considered to determine whether Miranda should apply in the principal\u27s office

US/Leap Quarterly Newsletter, Issue #3

The US Labor Education in the Americas Project is an independent non-profit organization that supports the basic rights of workers in Latin America, especially those who are employed directly or indirectly by U.S. companies. This newsletter includes articles on the Latin American Banana Union’s action plan in their campaign with Dole, Maquila updates, and the Colombian flower workers’ strike

The Decline of the Virginia (and American) Death Penalty

The American death penalty is disappearing. Death sentences and executions have reached the lowest levels seen in three decades. Even the states formerly most aggressive in pursuit of death sentences have seen death sentences steadily decline. Take Virginia, which has the highest rate of executions of any death penalty state, and which has executed the third highest number of prisoners since the 1970s. How times have changed. There has not been a new death sentence in Virginia since 2011. Only seven counties have imposed death sentences in the past decade in Virginia. There are now two or fewer trials a year at which a judge or jury considers imposing the death penalty. Still more surprising, at over one half of those trials the judge or jury chooses a sentence of life without parole (eleven of twenty-one cases from 2005 to 2015 at which there was a capital sentencing hearing resulted in a life sentence). Why is this happening-and in Virginia of all places? In this study, I examine every capital trial from 2005 to 2015-twenty-one trials-and I compare a group of twenty capital trials from 1996 to 2004. The law on the books has not meaningfully changed. However in 2004, the legislature created regional defense resource centers to handle capital cases. From 1996 to 2004, the crucial sentencing phase, at which the judge or jury decided whether to impose the death penalty, was typically cursory, averaging less than two days long. In the more recent trials, the average was twice that-four days-and still more striking was the increase in the numbers of defense witnesses called, the greater use of expert witnesses, and the added complexity of sentencing proceedings. Improved capital defense resources may explain this sharp and sudden decline in death sentences. North Carolina, which created a similar state capital defense resource office, experienced a decline that tracks Virginia\u27s, and yet in states like Florida, lacking statewide defense resources, the rate with which death sentences are imposed has remained fairly stable. This evidence: (1) raises heightened Eighth Amendment arbitrariness concerns with the scattered state of the American death penalty, including that death sentences may result from local failures to provide adequate defense resources; (2) demonstrates that those same failures implicate Sixth Amendment ineffective assistance of counsel claims in individual cases and in systematic challenges in states that fail to provide adequate resources; and (3) strongly supports the establishment of statewide capital-and non-capital-public defender offices

School Leader Update, November 2002

Monthly newsletter produced by Iowa Department of Educatio

Tipping the Balance: Why Legal Services Are Essential to Health Care for Drug Users in Ukraine

Examines the need to integrate legal support for drug users with harm reduction programs to effectively stem the spread of HIV/AIDS. Discusses approaches, legal problems, and recommendations for government policy and for nongovernmental organizations