CrimProf Blog

Crim. Prof. Gerard Lynch May be Heading to Second Circuit

The New York Times reported on Tuesday:  "For the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, based in New York, [Obama administration] officials said the White House had settled on elevating Judge Gerard E. Lynch, a Columbia law professor, from the District Court."  Judge Lynch currently serves as U.S. District Judge for the S.D.N.Y. and continues to teach criminal law and related courses at Columbia Law School.  If appointed to the Second Circuit, he would join Columbia Law crim. prof. Debra Livingston, appointed by the second President Bush [Mike Mannheimer].

ROBERT BADINTER in conversation with NEAL KATYAL

Robert Badinter, the French Minister of Justice between 1981 and 1986, led the battle to abolish the death penalty in France. He became a militant abolitionist after watching one of his clients unjustly guillotined in 1972. Over the next decade, he fought the death penalty in the courts and saved six men from the guillotine. After the election of François Mitterrand in 1981, Badinter was named Minister of Justice and pushed through the legislation that abolished the death penalty.

Badinter's book, Abolition: One Man's Battle Against the Death Penalty, serves as a guidebook on the various legal and political strategies that can be used in the quest for abolition. With U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, Badinter recently co-authored a book on the role of judges.

In a discussion about the death penalty, Badinter will be joined by Neal Katyal who recently won Hamdan v. Rumsfeld in the United States Supreme Court and who in July of this year agreed to serve as lead counsel for the State of Louisiana in asking the United States Supreme Court to reconsider its June decision abolishing the use of the death penalty for child rapists. Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, will introduce the evening. He has written the forward for Badinter's book, Abolition.

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Education In A Crime Control Frame

Framing matters, especially when it comes to news.  And today we witnessed a very interesting framing strategy on the education front.  A national organization called Fight Crime: Invest in Kids is pushing a new study showing that a ten percent increase in the number of high schoolers earning their degrees will cut 3,000 murders and 175,000 murders in the United States.   And how do we spike those graduation rates?  Bigger investments in pre-K programs, of course.  There isn't much news here - except perhaps the sophisticated political tactics which yielded "local" coverage of the story in Philly, Knoxville, Birmingham, and Lansing, among other places.  (The organization seems to have a state-by-state approach to both research and advocacy.)

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Petition for certiorari in U.S. v. Joseph Hirko raises important double jeopardy and criminal collateral estoppel issues

[Max Huffman]

This is a copy of the petition for certiorari in U.S. v. Joseph Hirko,  which raises important double jeopardy and criminal collateral estoppel issues.  The petition asks the Court to review a 5th Circuit decision holding that after a mixed verdict of acquittals and hung counts (no guilty verdicts) after trial on a multi-count indictment, the existence of the hung counts creates the specter of jury irrationality and precludes the application of collateral estoppel principles to issues necessarily decided in the acquittals.  These questions lie at the intersection of Ashe v. Swenson and U.S. v. Powell, have split the circuits deeply, and have not been meaningfully addressed by the Court in decades.   One of petitioner's counsel is Mark Stancil, who also runs the Supreme Court clinic at Virginia.  (That clinic has no involvement in this petition.)

There is an amicus effort supporting certiorari underway.  The brief -- due August 6 -- is being drafted by pro bono counsel.  We are seeking academic signatories.  If you are interested in principle in joining a brief, please let Elizabeth Zilberberg know at this e-mail address: [email protected].  She will forward get your name placed on a list of tentatively interested signatories.  As soon as a draft of the brief is ready to share we will get it to you.

Download Petition for Certiorari_in_U.S. v. Joseph Hirko.pdf

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CrimProf Kevin Washburn to Arizona from Minnesota

From the Press Release: "Kevin K. Washburn will join the Arizona Law faculty, teaching and working in the areas of American Indian law and criminal law.  “Professor Washburn’s extensive work in American Indian law and gaming law will consolidate strengths in our Indigenous Peoples Law & Policy program (IPLP), which is known worldwide,” Dean Toni Massaro said, “and his expertise in criminal law will advance our multidisciplinary Program in Criminal Law & Policy (PCLP).” 

Currently the Oneida Indian Nation Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, Professor Washburn previously taught at the University of Minnesota. He has written widely (SSRN page here) on areas at the intersection of Federal Indian law and criminal law. Professor Washburn is also an expert in gaming law, and has been a frequent commentator on issues in the media, in the legal community, and before Congressional panels examining gaming policy. He has also served as a principal investigator for a $1.4 million federal grant to examine the state of the criminal justice system on Indian reservations and has extensive law practice experience as a former Assistant U.S. Attorney and trial attorney for the Department of Justice, as well as general counsel of the National Indian Gaming Commission. He will begin teaching in the fall of 2008, holding the position of Rosenstiel Distinguished Professor of Law."

My former Cincinnati colleague Jack Chin is on the Arizona faculty; he told me that in addition to snagging Kevin, Arizona recently hired Katherine Barnes from Wash U (SSRN page here), a J.D./Ph.D. in statistics who is an expert in racial disparity, and Marc Miller from Emory (SSRN page here), known for his Criminal Procedure and Sentencing casebooks, and his empirical work on prosecutorial charging decisions.  Marc and Jack appear in Brian Leiter's study of highly cited CrimProfs.  Arizona has a criminal law speaker every week, a Criminal Law and Policy Certificate Program just graduated its first class, and a new White Collar prosecution clinic with the Arizona Attorney General's Office, in addition to the traditional prosecution and defense clinics.  Jack told me that he and his colleagues have been especially pleased with the interest and participation of the criminal bar--both sides, and up and down the ranks--in the research and policy and discussions at the U of A.  It looks like Arizona is building quite a strong criminal program.  [Mark Godsey]

CrimProf Carol Henderson is Now the President of the American Academy for Forensic Science

Stetson University College of Law CrimProf Carol Henderson officially took the gavel as president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences on Feb. 21 at the Academy’s 60th annual scientific meeting in Washington, D.C.

Henderson directs the National Clearinghouse for Science, Technology and the Law at Stetson University College of Law in Gulfport, Fla.

"I look forward to the exciting challenges and possibilities of leading the AAFS in its mission to promote worldwide excellence in forensic science, education and research," Henderson said.

Henderson discussed the future of forensics and announced a new mission statement for the academy at the meeting, attended by thousands of forensic specialists from around the globe. The AAFS includes members from the United States, Canada and more than 50 other countries worldwide.

Under Henderson’s direction, the National Clearinghouse, a program of the National Institute of Justice, was formed at Stetson in 2003 to advance the use of science and technology in the law. The Clearinghouse is funded as part of the Forensic Technology Center of Excellence established by the NIJ.

With more than 6,000 members, the American Academy of Forensic Sciences is a multidisciplinary professional organization that provides leadership to advance science and its application to the legal system. The objectives of the Academy are to promote education, foster research, improve practice, and encourage collaboration in the forensic sciences. [Mark Godsey]

CrimProf Daniel Richman Joins Columbia University's Faculty

Columbia University Law School recently hired seven mew full time professors including CrimProf Daniel Richman.

“The addition of these distinguished scholars to our faculty in areas of our traditional strengths solidify the school’s leadership position for innovative thinking about the most fluid and pressing issues of the moment, which are changing the face of domestic and international law,’’ said David Schizer, dean of Columbia Law School. “It underscores Columbia’s reputation as a school that drives new thinking and influences policy on a global scale."

CrimProf Richman is a criminal law expert who sat on New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s Homeland Security Policy Advisory Committee in the past. [Mark Godsey]

Crimprof Darryl Brown Joins Virginia Law Faculty

An experienced former public defender and current Class of 1958 Alumni CrimProf at the Washington and Lee University School of Law Darryl Brown will join the Virginia Law faculty as a professor this fall. CrimProf Brown, who visited the Law School during the 2004-2005 school year, teaches criminal law, criminal adjudication, and evidence.

“I have a great fondness for Virginia because it’s my alma mater and I had a wonderful visit there two years ago,” Brown said. “My family’s looking forward to getting back to Charlottesville.”

After earning his law degree at Virginia, where he served as executive editor of the Virginia Law Review, Brown clerked for Delores K. Sloviter, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He was an associate at the law firm Kilpatrick & Cody in Atlanta from 1991-92 before working as an assistant public defender in Clarke County, Ga., and as a staff attorney at the University of Georgia School of Law Legal Aid Clinic from 1992-94. After teaching at Mercer University and Rutgers law schools, he became an assistant professor at the University of Dayton School of Law, where he served until joining Washington and Lee in 1999.

Brown received his master’s degree in American Studies from the College of William and Mary after earning his B.A. at East Carolina University. Before pursuing graduate work he briefly explored journalism, working as a copy aide at the Washington Post.

In the Public Defender’s Office of Clarke County in Athens, he also supervised University of Georgia law students and began working as an adjunct professor at Mercer University School of Law.

“Once I started practicing it, I really enjoyed both the scale of the litigation, in the sense that I could handle my own cases, and [that] the cases didn’t drag on for months or years, so I could see a lot of cases through,” Brown said, “and I liked being a double-check on the government.

“Every now and then you get one of those cases that you feel good about—actually correcting the system and keeping someone from getting wrongfully convicted. Much more often what you’re doing is dealing with people who are guilty of something and making sure that the system convicts them appropriately,” he added.

The Raleigh, N.C., native was also exposed to a new perspective on the indigent.

“Being in a public defender office, all of our clients were poor. I developed close working relationships with the kind of people I’d largely never met before,” he said. “It was an eye-opening experience to see what the lives of a lot of my clients were like.” Rest of Story. . . [Mark Godsey]

Brown’s research almost exclusively

Congratulations CrimProf Kevin Cole, New Dean of San Diego Law

Congratulations to CrimProf Kevin Cole who was named the new Dean of San Diego Law School.  Dean Cole, who has served San Diego Law for nearly twenty years, will step into his new position straight from his interim deanship at the law school. 

Before joining the San Diego Law faculty in 1987, Dean Cole was executive editor of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and practiced law in Philadelphia. He teaches and writes primarily in the areas of evidence, and criminal law and procedure. He served as reporter for the Committee on Forfeiture in Drug Offense Cases of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. He is the co-author of both the Federal Sentencing Guidelines Handbook (Shepard's/McGraw-Hill) and the Federal Sentencing and Forfeiture Guide (Del Mar Legal Publishers).

Congratulations to Dean/CrimProf Cole on his new position! [Mark Godsey]      

Congratulations to CrimProf Laura Appleman

Congratulations to CrimProf Laura I. Appleman on her new position with Williamette University College of Law.  She will join the faculty of Willamette in the fall as an assistant professor. 

Professor Appleman is currently a visiting assistant professor at Hofstra University School of Law, where she teaches criminal law, legal ethics, law and race, and sentencing. Before entering academia, she was a criminal appellate public defender at the Center for Appellate Litigation, where she briefed and argued roughly 50 appeals in front of the New York appellate courts, including the New York Court of Appeals.  Professor Appleman's scholarship examines the fundamental values and normative archiecture of the criminal law, sentencing and the legal profession, particularly within the context of the role of the jury and changing philosophies of punishment.  Her writing appears in Temple Law Review, New England Law Review, The Green Bag and The Professional Lawyer, and she recently debated Professor Dan Solove in the Legal Affairs Debate Club about abolishing the third year of law school.  She currently blogs at The Legal Ethics Forum and is an occasional guest-blogger at Prawfsblawg. Professor Appleman also serves on the Criminal Advocacy Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, has worked with the Brennan Center for Justice on issues of indigent defense and criminal procedure, and servies on the Board of Advisors for the Green Bag's annual book of good legal writing.  As an undergraduate, Appleman studied English at the University of Pennsylvania, where she also received her Master's in English.  She received her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she was book-review editor for The Journal of Law & Humanities, researched for a variety of professors, and took as many cross-disciplinary courses as possible.  For links to some of Professor Appleman's publictions, click here.

Track Lateral LawProf Moves with Dan Filler of Concurring Opinions

Congratulations to Alabama CrimProf Dan Filler on becoming a permanent blogger with Concurring Opinions.  As part of his services on the blog, he will be tracking ALL law school lateral movements, a service similar to but more expansive than Brian Leiter's Law School Reports, who limits his tracking services to faculty moving to/from schools that figure in his faculty rankings.

So please submit your news about law school lateral movement including the following information to [email protected]:

Current School
Future School
Teaching Areas
Current Law School Webpage Address
Any Other Details (chair or administrative titles, etc.)

He calls the new service "hazing" to the "new kid on the blog."  We call it helpful.  Thanks to Professor Filler! [Mark Godsey]

CrimProf Ellen Podgor Accepts Associate Dean Position at Stetson

Georgia State CrimProf Ellen Podgor has accepted an appointment at Stetson University in Florida, where she will be Associate Dean of Faculty Development and Distance Education.

A former deputy prosecutor and defense attorney, Professor Ellen S. Podgor teaches in the areas of international criminal law, white collar crime, criminal law and procedure, and professional responsibility. She has also shared coaching responsibilities for several trial teams at Georgia State that have been finalists and semi-finalists in competitions.

Professor Podgor is the co-author of books on white collar crime and international criminal law, and has authored articles on computer crime, international criminal law, lawyer's ethics, criminal discovery, prosecutorial discretion, corporate criminality, and other white collar crime topics. Podgor's op-ed pieces have appeared in numerous newspapers, including The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Houston Chronicle, and a co-authored piece in The Washington Times. She has been interviewed by NPR, Atlanta radio and television stations and newspapers throughout the U.S.  She also co-edits the White Collar Crime Prof Blog.

In addition to her law degree, Professor Podgor earned an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago and an L.L.M. from Temple University. In the fall of 1998, she was a Visiting Scholar at Yale Law School. She has been a visiting professor at University of Georgia School of Law and George Washington University Law School and held a visiting endowed chair position at University of Alabama School of Law. She is member of the Board of Directors of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL), the International Society for the Reform of Criminal Law (ISRCL) and a member of the American Law Institute (ALI). She is an honorary member of the American Board of Criminal Lawyers.

Congratulations to Ellen Podgor on her new appointment. [Mark Godsey]

BREAKING NEWS: CrimProf Marc Miller Joins the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law

Emory CrimProf Marc Miller has accepted an offer to join the faculty at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, where he will be the Ralph Bilby Professor.  Marc, a visitor at Arizona in the 2005-06 academic year, is an expert in sentencing, and is the co-author of a Criminal Procedure casebook and a Sentencing casebook.  A graduate of the University of Chicago law school, he was at the Office of Legal Counsel before joining Emory law school in 1988. Carol Rose, a longtime Yale faculty member, also joined the Arizona faculty this year as the Lohse Chair in Water Law and Natural Resources.  A warm CrimProfBlog welcome to both. [Jack Chin]

Chicago CrimProf Alschuler to Move to Northwestern

Leiter reports that Alschuler will take early retirement at Chicago at the end of this coming school year, and then move to NU.  Details here.  [Mark Godsey]

UNC CrimProf Bilionis Named Dean at Cincinnati

We at Cincinnati are thrilled that Lou Bilionis, Samuel Ashe Distinguished Professor of Constitutional Law at North Carolina, has been named our next dean (subject to approval by the university's board of trustees).  From the provost's memo announcing Lou's appointment:

Professor Bilionis has amassed a distinguished publication record as a noted scholar and teacher in the fields of constitutional and criminal law and theory. As noted by his former dean of ten years, Professor Bilionis is "a scholar's scholar and a teacher's teacher."  The College of Law and the University are at an important juncture. Professor Bilionis will bring to the deanship a keen vision of the College's abundant opportunities for advancement especially as the University pursues the UC|21 agenda. The quality of the College's faculty and its deep, abiding commitment to scholarly excellence and quality instruction were highly attractive to him. He will work tirelessly to promote the College's advancement.

We are also excited that Lou's wife, Ann Hubbard, will be joining the faculty as Professor of Law.  Ann, a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun and D.C. Circuit Judge Patricia M Wald, is a distinguished legal scholar and teacher in the areas of disability law, employment discrimination, and contracts.  [Mark Godsey, via TaxProf Blog]

CrimProf Frank Bowman from Indy to Missouri

CrimProf Frank Bowman, a specialist in sentencing, will leave his position as M. Dale Palmer Professor of Law at IU-Indianapolis as of June 15 to become Floyd R. Gibson Missouri Endowed Professor of Law at the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law. [Jack Chin]

Cleveland-Marshall Names Criminal Defense Attorney as New Dean

From a press release:  "Cleveland State University has selected local attorney Geoffrey S. Mearns as Dean of the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, effective July 11.  Over the past four years, Mearns, of Shaker Heights, has been a partner in the Cleveland offices of two major law firms – Thompson Hine LLP from 1998 to 2001 and Baker & Hostetler LLP since 2002. He heads Baker & Hostetler’s national business crimes and corporate investigations team, focusing on white-collar and corporate criminal defense and representing individuals and businesses in investigations conducted by federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. His practice also includes internal corporate investigations and complex commercial litigation.  From 1989 to 1998, Mearns worked for the U.S. Department of Justice.  As Special Attorney to the U.S. Attorney General, he assisted in the prosecution of Terry Nichols, one of two defendants convicted of the Oklahoma City bombing. As First Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, he supervised a long-term political corruption grand jury investigation and had management responsibility for all legal matters – criminal, civil and appellate.  As Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Mearns was chief of the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section and chief of the General Crimes Section.  He investigated and prosecuted several major organized crime cases.  Mearns earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Yale University and a JD from the University of Virginia.  His teaching experience includes serving as an adjunct professor of law at Case Western Reserve University Law School and New York Law School."  [Mark Godsey]

BU CrimProf Named Dean at GW

Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, president of The George Washington University, has announced the appointment of Frederick M. Lawrence, Boston University CrimProf, as the new dean of The George Washington University Law School. Lawrence was selected after an extensive search and will assume his post August 1.  "Frederick Lawrence comes to the position of Law School dean from a terrific field of candidates," said Trachtenberg. "He brings to the school a perfect blend of scholarship and experience, and we look forward to welcoming him as the leader of the next generation of GW-educated legal professionals."  A graduate of Yale Law School, Lawrence is one of the nation's leading civil rights experts. He is the author of five books, including Punishing Hate: Bias Crimes Under American Law, which examines bias-motivated violence and how the United States deals with such crimes. Lawrence has lectured nationally and internationally about bias crime law, and testified before Congress in support of federal hate crimes legislation and concerning Justice Department misconduct in Boston. In 2004, he was a member of the American delegation to the meeting of the Organization and Cooperation in Europe on Enactment and Enforcement of Legislation to Combat Hate-Motivated Crimes. Since 2003, Lawrence has served as chair of the National Legal Affairs Committee of the Anti-Defamation League.  Press release here.  [Mark Godsey]

Loyola Chicago's New CrimProf Hire

Loyola Chicago announced the hiring of John Bronsteen, who will start in the fall.  The press release says:  "Professor Bronsteen is currently a Bigelow Teaching Fellow and Lecturer at The University of Chicago Law School. He received his undergraduate degree in Government magna cum laude from Harvard, and his law degree from Yale, where he was the Senior Editor of the Yale Law Journal. He served as a law clerk for the Honorable Douglas Ginsburg, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and then practiced for a year with Goldstein & Howe in Washington, DC.  He will teach criminal law and procedure at Loyola, in addition to a seminar on class actions, a subject on which he has published two law review articles."  [Mark Godsey]

Fordham's New CrimProf Hires: Part II

Fordham recently hired two new CrimProfs to start in the fall.  John Pfaff was previously spotlighted here.    Here is the bio for Fordham's second hire, Youngjae Lee:

I was born in Seoul, Korea and grew up there until my family immigrated to the United States when I was fourteen. After spending my high school days in the Seattle area, I went to Swarthmore College, where I studied philosophy and economics. It was there, while studying philosophical controversies surrounding the concept of desert, that I first became interested in punishment.

After graduating from Swarthmore, I went back to Korea to study more philosophy at Seoul National University as a Fulbright Scholar. While I was in Korea, two ex-Presidents of South Korea were arrested and tried for treason, which further deepened my interest in the institution of punishment. There were various constitutional challenges against the prosecutions, and watching the legal process unfold also piqued my interest in Korean constitutional law and constitutional regulation of criminal procedure there.

I then returned here and attended Harvard Law School, and while I was a 2L, United States v. Bajakajian was decided, which was the first case in which a criminal fine was declared unconstitutional for being “excessive” under the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment. I wrote a student comment about the case, focusing on the concept of proportionality in punishment and revisiting the topic of desert.

After law school, I moved to Washington, D.C. and stayed there for a few years, first as a law clerk for Judge Judith Rogers on the D.C. Circuit, and later as a litigator at the Justice Department and at Jenner & Block.

Then I moved to New York to take up my current position as an Alexander Fellow at NYU School of Law. While here, I’ve pursued my academic interests in criminal law, criminal law theory, and comparative constitutional law in both my teaching and writing. I wrote two articles, “The Constitutional Right Against Excessive Punishment,” 91 Virginia Law Review (forthcoming May 2005), and “Law, Politics, and Impeachment: The Impeachment of Roh Moo-hyun from a Comparative Constitutional Perspective,” 53 American Journal of Comparative Law (forthcoming Spring 2005), and this semester I taught a seminar on criminal law theory, which I very much enjoyed.

I am very excited about teaching and joining the Fordham faculty. I will be teaching Criminal Law and Torts and will continue to write in the areas of criminal law, criminal law theory, and comparative constitutional law.

Send us info on your school's new CrimProf hires, and we'll introduce them to the profession.  [Mark Godsey]