Criminal Law Course @ Moritz College of Law

Grades likely to be distributed this week... and...

I hope you all realize that neither your personal worth nor your professional future is determined by how you did on your first set of law school exams.  For a whole bunch of reasons, I encourage all of you not to worry too much about your grades either before or after they get distributed.

I will set up a few specific times for one-on-one exam review in LATE February and LATE March, in part because I think you should review your specific exam performance only when you are in serious gear-up mode for another set of exams.  But before that time I will be available and eager to meet with folks one-on-one to discuss exam performance in general and to explain more fully why your first set of grades have so little to say about either your personal worth or your professional future.

In addition, even for those of you who did not do as well as you hoped or planned, remember that you still have an open invitation to do research work for me this summer if such an opportunity appeals to you.   Further, in these final few days before grades get distributed, I encourage you to use the comments to this post to express your views on the whole exam/grading experience and/or early thoughts about your second semester experiences.

Congrats and some advice for moving on...

Congratulations on formally finishing the exam for this course AND don't give another thought to the substance of the exam or your substantive performance for (at least) the next few days.  After ALL your exams are complete, I will have an open thread for comments on the whole exam season, but right now you should keep in mind the reality that your most important exam is your next one. 

Given that your next exam is not until Friday, I also have a few recommendations for moving on:

1.  Catch up on sleep and/or time with family ASAP before going back into deep exam mode

2.  Go out to see or rent a movie that is either a good comedy that helps you forget serious stuff or a moving drama that helps you remember your current worries are pretty minor.   Since I mentioned the The Blues Brothers in one review session, that's a good possibility for the comedy.  The last few winners of the Oscar for best picture, The Hurt Locker and Slumdog Millionaire, should fit the bill on the drama front.  And, if you want a great movie that will make you think really hard about something other that law, I always love to recommend Momento.

3.  Please let me know either through comments here or via e-mail or in person whether and how you would like me to keep this blog going in the weeks and months ahead.  I would be happy to keep providing snippets of interesting real substantive criminal law cases, though I would also be happy and eager to use this space for student support as well (e.g., posting notices/links about job opportunities and advice columns like this one).

Congrats again and good luck finishing your last two exams (which I hope will both seem easy after you have no survived mine)!

Open thread concerning research assignment, memo comments and grading concerns

As I promised in class this past week, I am creating this post in order to enable and encourage everyone to share comments on the research assignment.  I would be especially eager to hear:

(1) if you learned useful stuff (and liked learning useful stuff) from doing the assignment,

(2) if you liked (and learned useful stuff from) getting a chance to see how your classmates completed the assignment,

(3) if you are especially grumpy that I have not (yet) given any set of memos a check-minus or a check-plus,

(4) if you genuinely believe that any set of memos should have been given a check-minus or a check-plus.

As a matter of improving your educational experience, I care most about your response to matters (1) and (2).  But if the whole grading thing really drives you crazy, please feel free to tell me this via comments to matters (3) and (4).

What do you like and/or dislike most about the MPC and Ohio approaches to homicide?

A number of top-notch students have started a top-notch discussion of felony murder and other homicide issues in this prior comment thread.  In addition to wanting to praise those students for their efforts, I wanted to provide this new post to urge additional class discussion and debate over these homicide topics (especially in the context of discussing/debating some key difference between how homicides are treated in Ohio and Oliwood).

Especially because the Model Penal Code lacks any true form of felony murder (or its JV version, misdemeanor-manslaughter), perhaps I can jump-start a discussion and debate by asserting that the MPC's drafters made a mistake in not including a traditional FM provision.  Alternatively, because the Ohio Revised Code lacks any true form "extreme recklessness" murder, perhaps I should focus discussion and debate by urging our class to urge the Ohio General Assembly to amend its murder provisions to enable extremely reckless killers like Mayes and Malone to be branded (and sentenced) as murderers.

On the first issue, consider the fact that some modern commentators have suggested that a key reason the MPC's approach to homicide has been rejected by most states is the absence of any true form of felony murder.  With the benefit of hindsight, do others agree with my supposition that MPC drafters could have been more effective by drafting a very limited and targeted form of felony murder to cover, for example, causing the death of an innocent person in the commission of a rape or with deadly weapon during the commission of serious violent felony?  In other words, should the MPC have included an FM provision akin to the one to be found in the Ohio Revised Code?

UPDATE:  It dawns on me that folks might also be interested in how the federal criminal code approaches these issues, so here are links to the federal homicide basics, including:

• 18 U.S.C. sec. 1111 (Murder)
• 18 U.S.C. sec. 1112 (Manslaughter)

For a variety of reasons, federal homicide prosecutions are relatively rare.  But, as evidenced by this Ninth Circuit ruling handed down just today, they are not that uncommon in response to killing on Native American lands.

ANOTHER UPDATE:  Kudos to Luke for spotlighting the first-degree murder charges that have been brought against the "Hiccup Girl" in Florida as a result of her role in a botched robbery.  Here is a link to Florida's murder provisions, which are elaborate to a fault and showcase how some states approach the codification of felony murder in modern times.  In addition, as this local news article about the case highlights, there may be a lot of interesting aspects to the "Hiccup Girl" case as it moves forward.  The article is headlined "Tourette's syndrome may play into Jennifer Mee's defense, attorney says."

Eager for a running start on our discussion of the death penalty

As previewed in class, there are soooooo many topics on which our Friday death penalty discussion can focus.  For that reason (and others), I am eager to get a running start of the death penalty dialogue vie this blog.  Specifically, I hope students will use the flag specific issue concerning the modern administration of the death penalty that they want us to discuss during Friday's class.  

To provide some background, I encourage everyone to check out some of the materials at the Death Penalty Information Center's website.  Though the DPIC site is a bit biased because of the organization's disaffinity for capital punishment, the site provides a lot of fascinating basic information about executions and death row and death penalty history and lots of other topics.  And this DPIC fact sheet provides everything you need to know about the reality of the modern death penalty in four simple pages.

Test yourself on mens rea issues using a question from my first exam

Below you will find the full text of one of the questions I asked students on the very first exam I gave the very first time I taught our class (way back in 1997):

Oliwood Criminal Code § 555.21. No person shall sell beer or any other intoxicating liquor to any person under 21 years of age. Violators of this statute, upon a first offense, shall be fined not more than $1000, and/or be required to do not more than 50 hours of community service.

Joseph Merchant, who operates a liquor store near the local university, has a reputation for selling alcohol to underage persons. Beau Younger, a large and mature looking 19-year-old student at Oliwood State, enters Merchant’s store seeking a bottle of rum. Based on Younger’s appearance, Merchant believes that Younger is in his mid 20s. But, knowing that the police are watching his every move, Merchant asks Younger for some identification. Younger reacts by shouting, “Damn, I’m 25 years old, and I’m sick and tired of getting carded. You just better give me the booze or else I may have to rough you and this joint up.” Not wanting any trouble, Merchant sells Younger the rum. The police find out Younger’s true age as he leave the store, and they arrest Merchant for violating Oliwood Criminal Code § 555.21.

Joseph Merchant has retained you to defend him. Prepare a brief memorandum discussing and assessing the issues you expect to raise in your defense of Mr. Merchant.

I do not plan to discuss this question in class, though I will be happy to do so if there is student interest in using class time to go over this question.

Why should a legislator focused on public safety worry much about mental states?

As I will try to explain in class, the abstract question in the title of this post is lurking deep within many of the issues and debates we will be having in the next few weeks as we turn to an exploration of the critical and complicated concept of mens rea in the interpretation and application of criminal law. In addition to thinking about this question in public policy terms, you should also seek to connect this question with the punishment theory topics that occupied us during the first few weeks of class.

To provide some specificity as you begin reflecting on these issues, consider how legislators in Ohio and elsewhere ought to respond to this notable article from Monday's Columbus Dispatch, which is headlined "CDC: Beef up traffic laws," and starts this way:

Traffic deaths and injuries are a preventable scourge that cost the nation about $99 billion a year in medical bills and lost productivity, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

That's about $500 for each licensed driver in America, according to a study by the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.  Researchers tallied the costs nationally using hospital, insurance and other data from 2005, when there were 3.7 million deaths and injuries from crashes.

They hope the cost information will persuade states and communities to take action to prevent traffic crashes, said Rebecca Naumann, a CDC epidemiologist and lead researcher on the study.

Does (or should) Ohio have a "duty to aid" statute like Wisconsin?

Here is a research (or advocacy) assignment/question for the long weekend:

Does (or should) Ohio have a "duty to aid" statute like Wisconsin?

Here is a related question to consider: If you were to be tasked with drafting such a statute for a state's legislature to consider, what provisions of the Wisconsin approach would you preserve and what provisions might you want to tweak?

For anyone eager to do some more (totally optional) reading on this interesting topic, consider checking out an article in the Spring 2010 issue of the Georgia Law Review by Ken Levy, which is titled "Killing, Letting Die, and the Case for Mildly Punishing Bad Samaritanism."

UPDATE:  Here is a sad story via CNN about what sounds like a case like a New York version of the Jones case in 2010.  The piece is headlined "Girl, 4, weighed 15 pounds at death," and starts this way:

The mother of a 4-year-old girl found dead in her Brooklyn home Thursday morning was charged Friday with second-degree assault, reckless endangerment and endangering the welfare of a child, according to police.

Marchella Pierce weighed just 15 pounds and had marks on her hands and ankles when police found her unconscious in her family's apartment, according to CNN affiliate WABC-TV.

Any concluding thoughts/reflections/ideas on punishment theories and types?

Though we will return to a discussion of real cases this Thursday (and remember we now start at 2pm at 2:30pm for the foreseeable future), I wanted to do a concluding post to provide a forum for concluding thoughts about punishment theories and punishment types in the wake of our first set of class discussions and the sentencing role-play. 

As always, students should feel free to comment on any issues, and perhaps these recent posts from my main blog (which have produced lots of comments there) on these topics will stimulate some commentary here:

 

• Putting the punishment of stoning in some context

• Can one be a committed retributivist without some deep belief in a higher power?

• "Prison is too good for Blago"

• Is community service really a punishment?  Should it be ordered more?

 

Feeling well oriented? Have any pre-class questions or concerns?

I am eager for this blog to be an opportunity and forum for discussion of "meta-issues" relating to what's going on at Moritz and the entire first-year law school experience.  Consequently, I may often create posts like this one posing general questions about recent Moritz events and how 1Ls students are feeling.  I hope folks feel free to express candid (and, when appropriate, critical) thoughts in response to my questions in the comments of these posts.  So, without further ado, here are my questions today:

1.  What did you think about the orientation program?  What parts of the program did you find most (or least) helpful?

2.  Do you have any final questions or concerns about the whole law school experience now that we are on the eve of 1L classes getting off to a flying start?

UPDATE at 11am on 8/19 (with pre-class advice):  Thanks to Luke (and Kristin), I know you all have now survived your first law-school class, and I trust it went well.  Relatedly, I would be grateful if somebody reports in the comments if anyone from our small-section got called on by Professor Cole so I can make sure to leave that student alone today.  (It is bad enough to be called on in your very first law school class; it is likely a bad omen to be called on in your first two classes.) 

If you are reading this update before our time together in our first class, you are already following the advice I wanted to give in this update.  Specifically, I encourage you to make a habit of checking this blog sometime before each of our class sessions.  You are, of course, encouraged to check (and comment) on this blog frequently.  But, I like to use this space to provide brief pre-class reminders, it is especially important that you check this space for new posts as part of your standard pre-class routine.