1,761 research outputs found
Recognizing Victims in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure: Proposed Amendments in Light of the Crime Victims\u27 Rights Act
Tradeoffs Between Wrongful Convictions and Wrongful Acquittals: Understanding and Avoiding the Risks
This article focuses on trade-offs that inhere in the criminal justice system, tradeoffs neatly encapsulated in Blackstoneâs famous ten-to-one ratio of guilty persons who should be allowed escape justice rather than an innocent suffer. Blackstoneâs aphorism reminds us not only of the importance of ensuring that innocent persons are not convicted, but also that unbounded protections might unduly interfere with convicting the guilty. In my contribution to a symposium in honor of Professor Michael Risinger, I respond to thoughtful articles written by both Professors Laudan and Zalman and make two main points. First, in Part I, I turn to Professor Laudanâs policy proposal for reducing the number of wrongful acquittals â e.g., lowering the prosecutionâs burden of proof at trial for previously-convicted felons to clear and convincing evidence. This proposal is unconstitutional under existing Supreme Court precedents, which interpret the Constitution to require the prosecutor to prove a defendantâs guilty by proof beyond a reasonable doubt. And in addition, Laudan has failed to demonstrate that his proposal is cost-beneficial because he has not persuasively articulated a way to weigh the costs of wrongful convictions against those of wrongful acquittals. But I offer a âfriendly amendmentâ to Laudanâs idea. It should be possible to capture almost all of the benefits of his proposal by placing violent felons on extended periods of parole or supervised release â a condition of which would be that they not commit new crimes. Then, when a previously-convicted felon is arrested for a new crime, he could be tried for a parole violation rather than given a new trial. Supreme Court precedent allows parole violations to be tried under a lower burden of proof. Reconfigured in this way, there are strong reasons for thinking that the proposal might well be a cost-beneficial way of reducing wrongful acquittals. In Part II, I challenge Professor Zalmanâs claim that he is truly writing from an innocentric perspective. Someone proceeding from this vantage should be willing to endorse a criminal justice reform measure if it meets three criteria: first and most important, it reduces wrongful convictions of the innocent; second, it does not reduce (and ideally would increase) the number of guilty persons convicted; and third, it should not significantly impair any other competing values. With these evaluative criteria in mind, Zalman appears to be a mere fair-weather friend of the innocent, as he does not appear to truly privilege innocence over other competing values. In contrast, my reform proposals (which Zalman is reluctant to endorse) reorient the criminal justice system away from adjudicating procedural issues and toward adjudicating substantive issues of guilt or innocence. The truly innocent will benefit in a system that values substance over procedure â and someone who truly holds an innocentric perspective should endorse reforms that move the criminal justice system in that direction
Infectious causes of chronic inflammatory diseases and cancer.
Powerful diagnostic technology, plus the realization that organisms of otherwise unimpressive virulence can produce slowly progressive chronic disease with a wide spectrum of clinical manifestations and disease outcomes, has resulted in the discovery of new infectious agents and new concepts of infectious diseases. The demonstration that final outcome of infection is as much determined by the genetic background of the patient as by the genetic makeup of the infecting agent is indicating that a number of chronic diseases of unknown etiology are caused by one or more infectious agents. One well-known example is the discovery that stomach ulcers are due to Helicobacter pylori. Mycoplasmas may cause chronic lung disease in newborns and chronic asthma in adults, and Chlamydia pneumoniae, a recently identified common cause of acute respiratory infection, has been associated with atherosclerosis. A number of infectious agents that cause or contribute to neoplastic diseases in humans have been documented in the past 6 years. The association and causal role of infectious agents in chronic inflammatory diseases and cancer have major implications for public health, treatment, and prevention
Freeing the Guilty Without Protecting the Innocent: Some Skeptical Observations on Proposed New âInnocenceâ Procedures
Protecting Crime Victims in Federal Appellate Courts: The Need to Broadly Construe the Crime Victims\u27 Rights Act\u27s Mandamus Provision
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