Lahny R. Silva has posted Clean Slate: Expanding Expungements; Pardons For Non-Violent Federal Offenders (University of Cincinnati Law Review, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Over the past forty years, the United States Congress has passed legislation expanding the federal criminal code intruding into an area typically reserved to the states. The “tough on crime” rhetoric of the 80s and 90s brought with it the enactment of various legislative initiatives: harsh mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent federal offenders, “truth in sentencing” laws that restricted or abolished parole and early release, and strict liability disqualifications from employment and federal benefits based solely on the fact of conviction. The effect of this legislation was the creation of a new criminal class: a federal prison population. Unlike the states however, the federal government does not have a legal mechanism in place that adequately reintegrates federal offenders back into the American polity. This has contributed to soaring federal incarceration rates, rising government costs for corrections, and a historically high rate of criminal recidivism. This is a price tag the United States can no longer afford to pay.

This article argues that individuals who have served their sentences and abided by the law for some period afterward should be given the opportunity to clear their slates of their criminal histories. Such expungement of criminal convictions for individuals who demonstrate that they will abide by the law are likely to reduce the costs of the criminal justice system and improve the lives of ex-offenders. The first parts of this article examine post-conviction penalties and contemporary recidivism trends. Second, this article investigates the law governing federal pardons and judicial expungements, finding that the doctrines and their applications lack consistency, making it difficult for non-violent offenders to re-enter mainstream society. This article argues that simply eliminating post-conviction disabilities would be extremely complex and perhaps not feasible practically or politically. Moreover, the two existing federal post-conviction remedies-pardons and judicial expungements are not designed to, and cannot as a practical matter, provide systematic relief from post-conviction disabilities. Using state post-conviction mechanisms as examples, this article argues that congressionally sanctioned expungements are an attractive alternative to relieve non-violent offenders of the effects of post-conviction disabilities. I propose that the United States Sentencing Commission (hereinafter “U.S.S.C.”) create a Second Chance Advisory Group to determine how best to ameliorate the collateral consequences of federal convictions. With a Second Chance Advisory group, the U.S.S.C. may be used as a vehicle for researching and recommending legislative policy initiatives that will effectively slash incarceration, recidivism, and opportunity costs.
May 25, 2010 | Permalink

Pillsbury on Doubt in Criminal Judgment

Samuel H. Pillsbury (Loyola Law School Los Angeles) has posted Fear and Trembling in Criminal Judgment (Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, Vol. 2, 2010) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

This review describes James Whitman’s argument that the beyond a reasonable doubt standard for conviction in Anglo-American criminal law was developed to solve a moral and theological dilemma arising from the medieval change from clergy-directed trials by ordeals to the secular jury trial. Whitman writes that the beyond a reasonable doubt standard, like the jury unanimity rule, was designed primarily to assuage what he calls moral doubt, the concern that a decision-maker might condemn himself in the eyes of God by wrongfully convicting an accused of a capital offense. Whitman contends that this concern with decision-maker salvation was greater than any concern with an erroneous determination of the facts and that the greatest challenge for early modern decision-makers was not resolving contested facts but overcoming fear of the spiritual consequences of condemning another human being to death. Whitman contends that this makes the beyond a reasonable doubt standard ill-suited to the challenges of modern litigation, where the hard cases involve fact-finding and decision-makers generally do not fear for their souls in rendering a legal verdict. After considering this argument in both legal and theological terms, the reviewer develops a suggestion of the book’s author, that the early juror experience of “fear and trembling” in judging the most serious crimes might have a useful application to contemporary American criminal justice with its predilection for long terms of incarceration, especially by mandatory sentencing laws.