Criminal Defense

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Who Are They to Judge? The Scope of Absolute Immunity as Applied to Parole Psychologists
Zoë Lewis Ewing
Zoë Lewis Ewing is a J.D. Candidate at the University of Chicago Law School, Class of 2026.

She thanks the University of Chicago Law Review Online team for their helpful feedback.

This Case Note first provides a background on the doctrine of absolute immunity. It then evaluates the court’s analysis in Gay and compares Gay with the Third Circuit’s decision in Williams v. Consovoy (3d Cir. 2006). Finally, this Case Note argues that Gay is more consistent with Supreme Court precedent on absolute immunity and more in line with historical understandings of the doctrine. This issue has particularly high stakes, as psychologists’ medical role can create a “guise of objectivity.” As a result, even a biased psychologist might still receive strong deference from a judge and could then be the reason a person spends the rest of their life in prison.

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85.3
Defining Flight Risk
Lauryn P. Gouldin
Associate Professor, Syracuse University College of Law; JD, New York University School of Law; AB, Princeton University

I thank the Criminal Justice Section of the Association of American Law Schools for honoring this work as the First Runner-Up in the 2017 Junior Scholars Paper Competition. For their thoughtful comments and feedback, I am grateful to Laura Appleman, Shima Baradaran Baughman, Todd Berger, Keith Bybee, Michael Cahill, Nicolas Commandeur, Jessica Eaglin, Nicole Smith Futrell, Cynthia Godsoe, Russell Gold, Nina Kohn, Corinna Lain, Kate Levine, Sandy Mayson, Janet Moore, Lauren Ouziel, Ellen Podgor, Anna Roberts, Laurent Sacharoff, Tim Schnacke, Jocelyn Simonson, Cora True-Frost, and Sam Wiseman. Thank you also to the participants in the NYC Markelloquium at Brooklyn Law School; the participants in the 2016 AALS Hot Topics program, “Responding to the Money Bail Crisis”; the participants in CrimFest 2016 at Cardozo Law School; and the participants in the Junior Scholars Criminal Justice Roundtable at Brooklyn Law School and St. John’s University School of Law. With much appreciation also to Hillary Anderson, S. Alex Berlucchi, Jordan Charnetsky, Irem Karacal, David Katz, Amy Rhinehardt, and Erin Shea for outstanding research assistance. I am also indebted to Kyle Jorstad, Pat Ward, Carly Gibbs, John McAdams, Eian Katz, and the other editors of The University of Chicago Law Review for their insightful suggestions.

The number of low-risk defendants who spend time in pretrial detention in this country is staggering: “Every year, more than 11 million people move through America’s 3,100 local jails, many on low-level, non-violent misdemeanors.”

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