Postpartum Psychosis is a rare illness, compared to the rates of postpartum depression or anxiety. It occurs in approximately 1 to 2 out of every 1,000 deliveries, or approximately .01% of births. The onset is usually sudden, most often within the first 4 weeks postpartum.

Symptoms of postpartum psychosis can include:

• Delusions or strange beliefs
• Hallucinations (seeing or hearing things that aren’t there)
• Feeling very irritated
• Hyperactivity
• Decreased need for or inability to sleep
• Paranoia and suspiciousness
• Rapid mood swings
• Difficulty communicating at times

The most significant risk factors for postpartum psychosis are a personal or family history of bipolar disorder, or a previous psychotic episode.

Of the women who develop a postpartum psychosis, there is a 5% infanticide or suicide rate associated with the illness. This is because the woman experiencing psychosis is experiencing a break from reality. In her psychotic state, the delusions and beliefs make sense to her; they feel very meaningful and are often religious. Immediate treatment for these women is imperative.

It is also important to know that many survivors of postpartum psychosis never had delusions containing violent commands. Delusions take many forms, and not all of them are destructive. Most women who experience postpartum psychosis do not harm themselves or anyone else. However, there is always the risk of danger because psychosis includes delusional thinking and irrational judgment, and this is why women with this illness must be treated and carefully monitored by a trained healthcare professional.

Postpartum psychosis is temporary and treatable with professional help, but it is an emergency and it is essential that you receive immediate help. If you feel you or someone you know may be suffering from this illness, know that it is not your fault and you are not to blame. Call your doctor or an emergency crisis hotline right away so that you can get the help you need.

Garrett on Eyewitnesses and Exclusion

Brandon L. Garrett (University of Virginia School of Law) has posted Eyewitnesses and Exclusion (Vanderbilt Law Review, Vol. 65, 2012) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

The dramatic moment when an eyewitness takes the stand and points to the defendant in the courtroom can be pivotal in a criminal trial. That piece of theater, however compelling to jurors, is staged. It is obvious where the defendant is sitting. And the memory of that eyewitness will have invariably been tested before trial using photo arrays or lineups. Such courtroom displays have been so long accepted that their role in the U.S. Supreme Court’s due process jurisprudence regulating the eyewitness identifications has been neglected. The due process test that regulates tens of thousands of eyewitness identifications each year permits suggestive pre-trial procedures – long known to increase the dangers that the innocent may be misidentified – if the judge decides those identifications are otherwise “reliable.” In this Article, I uncover an approach adopted by the vast majority of courts, but whose importance has not been appreciated, which short-circuits that already malleable due process inquiry. Even if a prior lineup was suggestive and illegal, judges allow a courtroom identification by citing to its supposed “independent source.” This approach to exclusion of eyewitness identifications has it backwards. It is the courtroom identification that should be excluded. In contrast, flaws in procedures used shortly after the crime should be fully aired before the jury. As efforts to improve eyewitness identification procedures gain traction in response to DNA exonerations and social science research establishing the fragility of eyewitness memory, lawmakers and judges must revisit the entrenched problem of the courtroom identification. If courtroom identifications are not per se excluded in cases with a prior identification, judges may circumvent crucial efforts to safeguard the accuracy of eyewitness procedures.

April 15, 2011 | Permalink

Rushin on Post-Arrest Silence

Stephen Rushin has posted Rethinking Miranda: The Post-Arrest Right to Silence (California Law Review, Vol. 99, p. 151, 2011) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Some scholars have recently observed that Miranda protections are under attack. At its core, Miranda requires law enforcement to inform a criminal suspect of her constitutional rights before custodial interrogation in order to protect her privilege against self-incrimination. But today, Miranda warnings inform individuals of only a small subset of their actual Fifth Amendment rights, partially due to ambiguity in the current doctrine. Perhaps no area of Fifth Amendment doctrine is more ambiguous than a suspect’s right to silence during post-arrest interrogation.

This Comment explores the selective invocation of the right to silence during custodial interrogations. I define selective invocation as the ability of a suspect to exercise her right to silence on a question-to-question basis after an earlier waiver of Miranda rights. State and federal courts have split on the issue of whether a criminal suspect may selectively invoke the right to silence in this way. I argue, however, that a rule permitting criminal suspects to selectively invoke the right to silence accords with constitutional doctrine and public policy considerations. Further, I argue that suspects ought to bear the burden to explicitly invoke the right to silence during interrogation. Lastly, to avoid due process concerns arising from such burdens on suspects, I argue Miranda warnings should be expanded to bridge the current information asymmetry between law enforcement and citizenry. In total, I contend that these policy proposals would benefit law enforcement and comprehensively protect a criminal suspect’s Fifth Amendment rights.

April 4, 2011 | Permalin

Taslitz on the Fourth Amendment

Andrew Taslitz (Howard University) has posted two articles about the Fourth Amendment on SSRN. The first is What is Probable Cause, and Why Should We Care? The Costs, Benefits, and Meaning of Individualized Suspicion (Law & Contemporary Problems, Forthcoming). Here is the abstract:

The United States Supreme Court has often declared individualized suspicion to be at the heart of probable cause. Yet critics see this as a commitment in word more than deed.Other critics, primarily philosophers, so no real conceptual difference between generalized and individualized suspicion. Moreover, no one has seriously tried to define the term. This article seeks first to fill this definitional gap, second to argue that the philosophers are wrong, and third to catalogue the social benefits and costs of an individualized suspicion requirement, suggesting a more structured way to choose among types of individualized suspicion and when, if ever, to jettison all those types entirely. The article draws on philosophy, psychology, and a branch of behavioral economics – fair price theory – to make its point.

The second is The Happy Fourth Amendment: History and the People’s Quest for Constitutional Meaning (Texas Tech Law Review, Vol. 43, 2010). Here is the syllabus:

Read more here:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1549898

James J. Tomkovicz (University of Iowa – College of Law) has posted  Sacrificing Massiah: Confusion Over Exclusion and Erosion of the Right to Counsel on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

“Sacrificing Massiah” examines the legitimacy and impacts of Kansas v. Ventris’s explanation of the Massiah “exclusionary rule.” It first traces the cryptic development of Massiah’s right to counsel-based suppression doctrine through a series of post-Massiah opinions. It then discusses Ventris – the first definitive explanation of the justifications for barring admissions deliberately elicited from uncounseled defendants. The Ventris Court classified Massiah suppression as a mere deterrent safeguard designed to prevent pretrial counsel deprivations and denied that defendants have the personal right not to be convicted based on uncounseled admissions. This understanding of Massiah is contrary to the original conception of exclusion. More important, it is irreconcilable with the nature of the pretrial assistance guarantee that is Massiah’s foundation. It ignores the core reasons for a right to pretrial assistance – to preserve a fair adversarial process and guard the accused against courtroom consequences of imbalanced clashes. Ventris rests on the indefensible premises that pretrial assistance exists for its own sake, that constitutional harm is inflicted only before trial, and that damage to an accused’s chances for acquittal at trial is not the constitutional concern. The article proffers reasons why the Court might have arrived at this entirely misguided conception, including: uncritical, monolithic thinking about “exclusionary rules;” palpable, abiding hostility toward constitutional suppression doctrines that defeat the search for truth; and dissatisfaction with Massiah’s extension of the right to counsel’s assistance. Finally, the article discusses the pragmatic consequences of Ventris’s vision, concluding that constraints imposed on Fourth Amendment exclusion will surely be imposed on Sixth Amendment suppression. As a result, the right to counsel “exclusionary rule” will be hobbled in ways that would be impossible were the true “constitutional right” character of Massiah’s evidentiary bar acknowledged. Ventris’s legacy – an array of “exclusionary rule” restrictions – will, in fact, threaten the vitality of the fundamental right to counsel itself.

April 1, 2011 | Permalink

Montré Denise Carodine (University of Alabama – School of Law) has posted Keeping it Real: Reforming the ‘Untried Conviction’ Impeachment Rule(Maryland Law Review, Vol. 69, p. 501, 2010) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

There is a growing call for a “New Legal Realism,” that, among other things, takes a “bottom-up” approach to studying the effects of rules of law on the people to whom they actually apply on a day-to-day basis. The New Legal Realism movement spans across various fields and disciplines related to law. The movement is particularly evident in the area of criminal law where there is an increasing effort to ensure reliability and accuracy in the system’s results. The recent move of some states to require racial impact statements for pending legislation as well as the advocacy and findings of the innocence movement exemplify this effort. Even more compelling are the recent lawsuits filed by public defenders in several states, citing their inability to represent their clients in a constitutionally effective manner and demanding to have their caseloads reduced until they can be adequately funded. This Article aids in the effort to improve our justice system’s reliability, taking a New Legal Realist approach to the area of evidence law as applied in the criminal setting.

I explore the interrelationship between plea bargaining and the use of prior convictions to impeach criminal defendants at trial, two of the most controversial practices in the criminal justice system. The prior conviction impeachment rule is a classic and deeply entrenched evidentiary rule. In this Article, I rename the Rule, dubbing it the “untried conviction” impeachment rule, to reflect the reality of its application. Indeed, the reality – overlooked by evidence and criminal law scholars – is that prior convictions used in later proceedings to “impeach” criminal defendants are most often untried convictions, having resulted from the plea bargaining system. I propose a fundamental shift in the application of Rule 609 to reflect this reality. Plea bargaining has rightly come under much scrutiny of late and is considered a prominent feature of our current system that processes defendants in an assembly-line fashion. I propose that, as long as we continue to impeach defendants with their untried convictions, Congress and state legislatures should act to exclude from Rule 609’s applicability the use of untried convictions. Alternatively, until lawmakers act, courts, who are charged with protecting the fundamental rights of criminal defendants, must vigilantly scrutinize the practice of impeaching criminal defendants with untried convictions, thus utilizing Rule 609 as an additional check on plea bargaining instead of as a rubber stamp.

“Illinois Governor Signs Capital Punishment Ban”

From The New York Times:

Illinois became the 16th state to ban capital punishment as Gov. Pat Quinn on Wednesday signed an abolition bill that the state legislature passed in January.

“Since our experience has shown that there is no way to design a perfect death penalty system, free from the numerous flaws that can lead to wrongful convictions or discriminatory treatment, I have concluded that the proper course of action is to abolish it,” Mr. Quinn said in a statement.