criminal law

Research by social scientists shows that criminals, even violent ones, mature out of lawbreaking before middle age, The Marshall Project's Dana Goldstein reports: "Homicide and drug-arrest rates peak at age 19, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, while arrest rates for forcible rape peak at 18. Some crimes, such as vandalism, crest even earlier, at age 16, while arrest rates for forgery, fraud and embezzlement peak in the early 20s. For most of the crimes the F.B.I. tracks, more than half of all offenders will be arrested by the time they are 30."

The reasons for this are myriad. The parts of the brain that govern risk and reward are not fully developed until age 25. And some crimes are too physically taxing for older people.

And the problem, Goldstein reports, is that sentencing in the U.S. is out of whack with this research. Forty-seven percent of federal inmates are serving sentences of more than 10 years, which is longer than the typical duration of a criminal career. And many people are being kept in prison even though they are physically unable to threaten anybody, Goldstein concludes.

Foreign Affairs' Timothy William Waters suggests that--now that the Palestinian Authority has joined the International Criminal Court and the ICC has acknowledged that Palestine accepts its jurisdiction--there could be trouble for the ICC if it prosecutes a case against Israeli forces operating in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel argues that Palestine is not a state, and the "ICC is a weak institution; prosecuting Israel could prove fatal," Waters writes. On the other hand, avoiding the pursuit of a legitimate case against Israel would make the weak institution irrelevant, especially because ICC has only prosecuted cases in Africa so far, Waters further wrties.

Waters also notes that now that Palestine's citizens can be tried for their own violations: "Standing trial for war crimes is a funny way to prove you’re a state, but if Hamas keeps firing rockets at Israel, Palestinians may get their day in court."

The Huffington Post's Nick Wing examines how rap lyrics are being used to incriminate young black men. Jurors are being told to view lyrics as "as literal autobiography, rather than metaphorical or exaggerated storytelling. This works with disturbing effectiveness, critics say, because rap songs often contain lyrics that reinforce racial stereotypes about black males and hyper-sexuality or violence -- helpful when the prosecutor is trying to make the defendant out to be an actual criminal." Wing says that, under the same lens, the songs of Johnny Cash, Third Eye Blind, Guns N' Roses, Neil Young, Maroon 5 and others would be considered confessions and evidence of their connection to actual crimes.

The Massachusetts Supreme Court, 5-2, has ruled that inmates serving life sentences for murders committed while they were juveniles are constitutionally entitled to be represented by lawyers and to have access to expert witnesses at their parole hearings, NECN reports. The 5-member majority said providing defendants access to lawyers and to experts would ensure they have meaningful access to argue for parole.

The court also ruled that inmates can appeal parole denials, although judges could not order that parole be granted--only order new parole hearings.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that mandatory life sentences for juveniles without the possibility of parole is unconstitutional. 

In the 14 years since Oregon enacted a law to allow defendants to get DNA testing to show they might be innocent, only two have gotten judges to approve such testing. As a result, legislators in Oregon have introduced a bill to reform the state's DNA testing law for defendants, Oregon Public Broadcasting's Amelia Templeton reports.

Under current law, defendants have to show that DNA testing on specific pieces of evidence would conclusively prove their innocence. The new bill would relax the standard, requiring defendants to "present a theory of defense supported by DNA evidence, and prove that a favorable DNA result would lead to finding that person would not have been convicted if the testing had been done before their trial," Templeton reports.

A New York Assemblyman has proposed legislation that would make it a felony to film patients receiving medical treatment without prior consent and give patients and their families a private cause of action to sue for damages, ProPublica's Charles Ornstein reports. The bill was filed after a TV show aired the final moments of a patient's life while he was being treated at NewYork-Presybterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, and his wife recognized his voice when she saw the episode. New York does not recognize a common law right to privacy.

The California Supreme Court has rejected San Diego's blanket ban on where convicted sex offenders can live, the Los Angeles Times' Maura Dolan reports. The Supreme Court ruled that prohibiting sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of schools and parks was unconstitutional because the blanket ban"'has severely restricted their ability to find housing.'"

There are just a few states that doesn't mandate outpatient treatment for the "frequent fliers"--the people with serious mental illnesses who repeatedly are in local jails and hospitals, the Washington Post's Annys Shin reports. The Treatment Advocacy Center, released a report this week "on the outcomes of established mandatory outpatient treatment programs in New York City and Summit County, Ohio, where assisted outpatient treatment has been in place since the 1990s." Studies of those programs found that court-ordered outpatient treatment "reduced the incidence of psychiatric emergency crisis services, hospitalization, and criminal justice involvement," Shin reports.

According to an investigation by The Guardian, Richard Zuley, a detective on Chicago’s north side from 1977 to 2007 and who interrogated terrorism detainees at Guantanamo Bay, imported the type of harsh tactics used at America's holding center for terrorism suspects into his work as a police officer. The newspaper's Spencer Ackerman reports that Zuley allegedly "repeatedly engaged in methods of interrogation resulting in at least one wrongful conviction and subsequent cases more recently thrown into doubt following allegations of abuse." The Guardian alleges that Gitmo detainee Mohamedou Ould Slahi and domestic defendants "confessed untruthfully to try and stop the treatment by Zuley."

Alstory Simon was freed after serving 15 years for a double murder after prosecutors questioned the evidence against him, Slate's Beth Ethier reports. Now Simon is suing a former journalism professor that once led an Innocence Project class at the Medill School of Journalism, his defense attorney and a private investigator. Simon alleges that the defendants conspired to get him to confess to a fatal shooting for which then-professor David Protess' students sought to exonerate another man.