Criminal Law

Print
Comment
Volume 89.5
Pretrial Detention by a Preponderance: The Constitutional and Interpretive Shortcomings of the Flight-Risk Standard
Jaden M. Lessnick
B.A. 2020, Emory University; J.D. Candidate 2023, The University of Chicago Law School.

I am immeasurably grateful for the input and mentorship of Professor Alison Siegler, whose tireless and groundbreaking pretrial detention advocacy inspired this Comment. I also benefitted greatly from the suggestions and patience of Alec Mouser and Simon Jacobs. Thanks as well to Professors Ryan Doerfler, Daniel Wilf-Townsend, Erica Zunkel, and Judith Miller, and to the editors of the University of Chicago Law Review. Finally, thanks to my parents, whose support has been unwavering.

This Comment contends that the preponderance standard for flight risk is unconstitutional and interpretively incorrect. In cases involving similar government restrictions on physical liberty, the Supreme Court has generally required at least a “clear and convincing evidence” standard to comport with due process.

Online
Essay
The Unconstitutional Racial Animus Behind Federal Marijuana Criminalization
Alessandro Clark-Ansani
Alessandro Clark-Ansani is a J.D. Candidate at the University of Chicago Law School, Class of 2023.

He thanks Anson Fung, Matthew Makowski, Virginia Robinson, and the University of Chicago Law Review Online team.

In August 2021, the Honorable Miranda M. Du, Chief Judge for the district court of the District of Nevada, struck down 8 U.S.C § 1326, the federal criminal statute that addresses “illegal reentry” into the United States.

Online
Essay
A Critical Eye Toward Commercial DNA Database Criminal Procedures
Laura Geary
Laura Geary is a J.D. Candidate at the University of Chicago Law School, Class of 2023.

She thanks the University of Chicago Law Review Online team.

After the Golden State Killer was arrested and sentenced in 2018, interest in investigative genetic genealogy spiked.

Print
Article
Volume 89.4
Kids Are Not So Different: The Path from Juvenile Exceptionalism to Prison Abolition
Emily Buss
Mark and Barbara Fried Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School

Thanks to Herschella Conyers, Jessica Feierman, Martin Guggenheim, Esther Hong, Genevieve Lakier, Robert Schwartz, and Elizabeth Scott for their helpful comments and to Alexandra Bright Braverman, Eleanor Brock, Ryne Cannon, Robert Clark, Kyra Cooper, William Cope, Kim Johnson, Tori Keller, Crofton Kelly, Rachel Smith, and Anna Ziai for their excellent research assistance. Thanks to the Arnold and Frieda Shure Research Fund for its generous support of this research. 

Inspired by the Supreme Court’s embrace of developmental science in a series of Eighth Amendment cases, “kids are different” has become the rallying cry, leading to dramatic reforms in our response to juvenile crime designed to eliminate the incarceration of children and support their successful transition to adulthood. The success of these reforms represents a promising start, but the “kids are different” approach is built upon two flaws in the Court’s developmental analysis that constrain the reach of its decisions and hide the true implications of a developmental approach.

Online
Essay
Uncompassionate Incarceration: United States v. Thacker and Its Impact on Nonretroactivity-Based Compassionate Release
Jaden M. Lessnick
Jaden Lessnick is a J.D. Candidate at the University of Chicago Law School, Class of 2023.

He is especially grateful for the insight of Professor Erica Zunkel, whose support and compassionate release expertise were invaluable in drafting this Case Note. He also thanks Professors Alison Siegler and Judith Miller, Reagan Kapp, Matthew Makowski, Benjamin Klein, and the University of Chicago Law Review Online team.

The area of law colloquially known as compassionate release—which allows prisoners to seek sentence reductions or early release from incarceration under limited circumstances—garnered heightened attention at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Print
Comment
Volume 89.3
Neither Here nor There: Wire Fraud and the False Binary of Territoriality Under Morrison
Jason Petty

This Comment argues that this broad domestic application of the wire fraud statute shields courts from asking whether the statute applies extraterritorially. Further, this Comment argues that courts’ domestic application of the wire fraud statute is sufficiently broad as to begin to resemble extraterritoriality because courts can almost always find sufficient domestic activity to apply the wire fraud statute.

Print
Essay
Volume 89.2
Symposium Introduction: This Violent City? Urban Violence in Chicago and Beyond
Aziz Z. Huq
Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School.
John Rappaport
Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School.

Bartosz Woda provided invaluable help in preparing the charts in this Introduction; we owe him great thanks for his remarkable work. Professor Huq thanks the Frank J. Cicero Fund; Professor Rappaport thanks the Darelyn A. and Richard C. Reed Memorial Fund.

Our modest goal in this Introduction is to assemble some baseline empirics concerning both private violence and state coercion to provide a context for the pieces that follow. In so doing, we aim to mitigate the need for “scene setting” by each paper in the Symposium. Readers of the Symposium will find here a synoptic guide to some basic facts about the distribution and extent of criminal violence, as well as socioeconomic conditions and police activity, in Chicago.

Print
Essay
Volume 89.2
The Enduring Neighborhood Effect, Everyday Urban Mobility, and Violence in Chicago
Robert J. Sampson
Robert J. Sampson is the Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University and Affiliated Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation.
Brian L. Levy
Brian L. Levy is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at George Mason University.

The authors acknowledge financial support from National Science Foundation Grant SES #1735505. Direct correspondence to rsampson@wjh.harvard.edu.

A longstanding tradition of research linking neighborhood disadvantage to higher rates of violence is based on the characteristics of where people reside. This Essay argues that we need to look beyond residential neighborhoods to consider flows of movement throughout the wider metropolis.

Print
Essay
Volume 89.2
Neighborhood Inequality and Violence in Chicago, 1965–2020
Patrick Sharkey
William S. Tod Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.
Alisabeth Marsteller
Researcher at Princeton University’s Office of Population Research.

The authors wish to thank the editors at the University of Chicago Law Review, participants at the Symposium “This Violent City? Rhetoric, Realities, and the Perils and Promise of Reform,”moderator Aziz Huq and panelist Allegra McLeod for their insights on violence in Chicago, and Robert Sampson and Michael Maesano for their comments and feedback on the Essay.

This Essay analyzes trends in violence from a spatial perspective, focusing on how changes in the murder rate are experienced by communities and groups of residents within the city of Chicago. The Essay argues that a spatial perspective is essential to understanding the causes and consequences of violence in the United States and begins by describing the social policies and theoretical mechanisms that explain the connection between concentrated disadvantage and violent crime.

Print
Essay
Volume 89.2
Prospects for Reform? The Collapse of Community Policing in Chicago
Wesley G. Skogan
Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science and the Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University.

The author thanks Mark Iris for his review of this manuscript. The author remains solely responsible for any errors.

Community policing’s accomplishments were numerous, but it fell victim to issues commonly facing reform: money—especially the impact of economic downturns; leadership turnover and policy preferences; changes in the social, political, and crime environments; and the emergence of new technologies for responding to community concerns.