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Books > Law > Laws of other jurisdictions & general law > Criminal law
Treat yourself to Second Helpings and more choice cuts in the style
of Simon Brown's much lauded first volume of memoirs, Playing off
the Roof & Other Stories. Exuberantly revisiting his early
years in National Service, at Oxford and as a young barrister, Lord
Brown recalls matters grave and trivial from his time at the Bar
and on the Bench, along the way regaling us with tales of
Paddington Bear, Nigel Lawson and Mozart at the Warsaw opera. He
also has something to say about the current legal scene and
considers such thorny problems as the 2019 prorogation judgment and
whether trial by jury might be dispensed with in order to clear a
mounting backlog of criminal cases. Drawing witty lessons from a
life of trials, Lord Brown finds time to muse on when a judge might
choose to change a sentence already imposed, what to say after
dinner and why the game of golf is strictly for the birds!
Essentials of Medicolegal Death Investigation uses a unique
approach by combining medical issues, injury patterns, and
investigative procedures to provide the reader with the basic
fundamentals for a death investigation. The text introduces the
reader to death investigation, common causes of death, and very
specific types of death, including blunt-force injuries, gunshot
wounds, and toxicology deaths. Each section includes case studies
with written and visual descriptions. Written by a well-known and
experienced medicolegal death investigator, the book fills a void
in medicolegal literature for both students and professionals
alike.
John Rebus stands accused: on trial for a crime that could put him
behind bars for the rest of his life. Although it's not the first
time the legendary detective has taken the law into his own hands,
it might be the last. What drove a good man to cross the line? Or
have times changed, and the rules with them? Detective Inspector
Siobhan Clarke faces Edinburgh's most explosive case in years, as a
corrupt cop goes missing after claiming to harbour secrets that
could sink the city's police force. But in this investigation, it
seems all roads lead to Rebus - and Clarke's twin loyalties to the
public and the police will be tested to their limit. A reckoning is
coming - and John Rebus may be hearing the call for last orders...
Today, EU criminal law and justice constitutes a significant body
of law potentially affecting most aspects of criminal justice. This
book provides a comprehensive, accessible yet analytically
challenging account of the institutional and legal developments in
this field to date. It also includes full consideration of the
prospective changes to EU criminal law contained in the recent
'Lisbon Treaty'. While, broadly speaking, the authors welcome the
objectives of EU criminal law, they call for a profound rethinking
of how the good of criminal justice - however defined - is to be
delivered to those living in the EU. At present, despite sometimes
commendable initiatives from the institutions responsible, the
actual framing and implementation of the Area of Freedom, Security
and Justice (AFSJ) suffers from a failure to properly consider the
theoretical implications of providing the good of criminal justice
at the EU level. Written shortly before the recent entry into force
of the Lisbon Treaty, EU Criminal Law and Justice comprises a full
overview of the key legal developments and debates and includes a
user-friendly guide to the institutional changes contained in the
Treaty. This timely book will be of interest to both undergraduate
and postgraduate students, as well as to legal practitioners and
policy makers at national and EU levels.
Criminal proceedings, it is often now said, ought to be conducted
with integrity. But what, exactly, does it mean for criminal
process to have, or to lack, 'integrity'? Is integrity in this
sense merely an aspirational normative ideal, with possibly diffuse
influence on conceptions of professional responsibility? Or is it
also a juridical concept with robust institutional purchase and
enforceable practical consequences in criminal litigation? The 16
new essays contained in this collection, written by prominent legal
scholars and criminologists from Australia, Hong Kong, the UK and
the USA, engage systematically with - and seek to generate further
debate about - the theoretical and practical significance of
'integrity' at all stages of the criminal process. Reflecting the
flexibility and scope of a putative 'integrity principle', the
essays range widely over many of the most hotly contested issues in
contemporary criminal justice theory, policy and practice,
including: the ethics of police investigations, charging practice
and discretionary enforcement; prosecutorial independence, policy
and operational decision-making; plea bargaining; the perils of
witness coaching and accomplice testimony; expert evidence;
doctrines of admissibility and abuse of process; lay participation
in criminal adjudication; the role of remorse in criminal trials;
the ethics of appellate judgment writing; innocence projects; and
state compensation for miscarriages of justice.
Despite 15 years of reform efforts, the incarceration rate in the
United States remains at an unprecedented high level. This book
provides the first comprehensive survey of these reforms and
explains why they have proven to be ineffective. After many decades
of stability, the imprisonment rate in the United States quintupled
between 1973 and 2003. Since then, nearly all states have adopted
multiple reforms intended to reduce imprisonment, but the U.S.
imprisonment rate has only decreased by a paltry two percent. Why
are American sentencing reforms since 2000 been largely
ineffective? Are tough mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent
drug offenders the primary reason our prisons are always full? This
book offers a fascinating assessment of the wave of sentencing
reforms adopted by dozens of states as well as changes at the
federal level since 2000, identifying common themes among seemingly
disparate changes in sentencing policy and highlighting recent
reform efforts that have been more successful and may point the way
forward for the nation as a whole. In The Failed Promise of
Sentencing Reform, author Michael O'Hear exposes the myths that
American prison sentencing reforms enacted in the 21st century have
failed to have the expected effect because U.S. prisons are filled
to capacity with nonviolent drug offenders as a result of the "war
on drugs," and because of new laws that took away the discretion of
judges and corrections officials. O'Hear then makes a convincing
case for the real reason sentencing reforms have come up short:
because they exclude violent and sexual offenders, and because they
rely on the discretion of officials who still have every incentive
to be highly risk-averse. He also highlights how overlooking the
well-being of offenders and their families in our consideration of
sentencing reform has undermined efforts to effect real change.
Clearly identifies the real reasons that the wave of post-2000
sentencing reform has had minimal impact on reducing national
imprisonment rates Explains why reforms must target the excessive
sentences imposed on violent and sexual offenders, even though the
members of these offender groups are considered "justifiably
punished" by long prison terms in the public eye Enables readers to
understand why increased consideration for the well-being of
offenders and their families is likely a prerequisite to the
acceptance of more fundamental changes to the U.S. sentencing
system
Winner, 2019 Outstanding Book Award, given by the American Society
of Criminology's Division of Policing Section The first in-depth
history and analysis of a much-abused policing policy No policing
tactic has been more controversial than "stop and frisk," whereby
police officers stop, question and frisk ordinary citizens, who
they may view as potential suspects, on the streets. As Michael
White and Hank Fradella show in Stop and Frisk, the first
authoritative history and analysis of this tactic, there is a
disconnect between our everyday understanding and the historical
and legal foundations for this policing strategy. First ruled
constitutional in 1968, stop and frisk would go on to become a
central tactic of modern day policing, particularly by the New York
City Police Department. By 2011 the NYPD recorded 685,000
'stop-question-and-frisk' interactions with citizens; yet, in 2013,
a landmark decision ruled that the police had over- and mis-used
this tactic. Stop and Frisk tells the story of how and why this
happened, and offers ways that police departments can better serve
their citizens. They also offer a convincing argument that stop and
frisk did not contribute as greatly to the drop in New York's crime
rates as many proponents, like former NYPD Police Commissioner Ray
Kelly and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, have argued. While much of the
book focuses on the NYPD's use of stop and frisk, examples are also
shown from police departments around the country, including
Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, Newark and Detroit. White and
Fradella argue that not only does stop and frisk have a legal place
in 21st-century policing but also that it can be judiciously used
to help deter crime in a way that respects the rights and needs of
citizens. They also offer insight into the history of racial
injustice that has all too often been a feature of American
policing's history and propose concrete strategies that every
police department can follow to improve the way they police. A
hard-hitting yet nuanced analysis, Stop and Frisk shows how the
tactic can be a just act of policing and, in turn, shows how to
police in the best interest of citizens.
This handbook presents cutting-edge research that compares
different criminal procedure systems by focusing on the mechanisms
by which legal systems seek to avoid error, protect rights, ground
their legitimacy, expand lay participation in the criminal process,
and develop alternatives to criminal trials, such as plea
bargaining, as well as alternatives to the criminal process as a
whole, such as intelligence operations. The criminal procedures
examined in this book include those of the United States, Germany,
France, Spain, Russia, India, Latin America, Taiwan, and Japan,
among others. This book explores a number of key topics in the
field of criminal procedure: the role of screening mechanisms in
weeding out weak cases before trial; the willingness of different
legal systems to suppress illegally obtained evidence; the ways
legal systems set meaningful evidentiary thresholds for arrest and
pretrial detention; the problem of wrongful convictions; the way
legal systems balance the search for truth against other values,
such as protections for fundamental rights; emerging legal
protections for criminal defendants, including new safeguards
against custodial questioning in the European Union, limitations on
covert operations in post-Soviet states, and the Indian system of
anticipatory bail; as well as the mechanisms by which legal systems
avoid trials altogether. A number of contributors also examine the
impact of legal reforms that have newly introduced lay jurors into
the fact-finding process or that now require juries to give reasons
for verdicts. The ideal readership for this handbook includes law
students, scholars of criminal procedure and comparative law, as
well as civil liberties lawyers. Scholars of national security, the
European Union, transitional justice, and privacy will also be
interested in the volume's contributions to their fields.
Contributors include: S.M. Boyne, M. Cohen, S. Fouladvand, E.
Grande, J.S. Hodgson, D.T. Johnson, V. Khanna, N. Kovalev, M.
Langer, A.D. Leipold, K. Mahajan, J. Mazzone, J.E. Ross, C.
Slobogin, S.C. Thaman, J.I. Turner, R. Vogler, T. Wen
The Ouija board jury incident of 1994 is one of the most
disconcerting in English legal history, possibly (says the author)
'the nadir of reported juror misbehaviour in the 20th-century'.
But, as Professor Jeremy Gans shows, in an era of soundbites it has
been distorted by the media whilst even eminent lawyers have
sometimes got the story wrong. In this first full-length treatment
he emphasises the known facts, the constitutional dilemma of
investigating even bizarre jury misbehaviour and how the trial
involved one of the most serious murder cases of the decade in
which two people were shot in cold blood. Stephen Young's
conviction after a re-trial is still claimed to be a miscarriage of
justice by some people, as to which Gans puts forward his own
ingenious solution. But quite apart from analysing the facts of R v
Young, this book is a tour de force on jury misbehaviour in which
the author also examines the implications for example of winks and
nods, research by jurors, speaking or listening out of turn, going
to sleep during the hearing or falling in love with one of the
advocates. Amusing at first sight, such events involve deep
questions of law, practice and democratic involvement in the
Criminal Justice process. Far from being a mere anecdote, the case
of the Ouija board jurors, the misconceptions about it and the
issues it leads to deserve close study by anyone who is even
remotely interested in jury trial. The first full length treatment
of an iconic case. Dispels the myths that have built-up around it.
Looks at other instances of jury misbehaviour. Shows how the courts
and Parliament have wrestled with problems of this kind. A
first-rate analysis of a baffling double murder.
Free Market Criminal Justice offers a critique of the ideology
behind the US criminal justice system. It argues that the
distinctive ideology shaping American criminal processes is a
commitment to a set of values in institutional design as divided
into two categories - "democracy" and "markets". Here, democracy
describes the ideas and practices of politically responsive,
popularly accountable governance. Markets refers to norms, premises
and mechanisms of private ordering in contrast to public
management; competition between private agents acting for
self-interest. Arguing against recent attempts to re-invigorate
democratic processes in criminal justice, this book claims that
there are significant downsides to a criminal justice system that
favors democratic processes over legal regulation. The commitment
to democracy has undermined the rule of law in American criminal
justice resulting in mass incarceration and wrongful convictions,
particularly as institutional democracy goes hand in hand with the
development of market-inspired mechanisms. This book concludes with
proposals for reforms to rebuild the rule of law in the criminal
process.
Ai Kihara-Hunt's Holding UNPOL to Account: Individual Criminal
Accountability of United Nations Police Personnel analyzes whether
the mechanisms that address criminal accountability of United
Nations police personnel serving in peace operations are effective,
and if there is a problem, how it can be mitigated. The volume
reviews the obligations of States and the UN to investigate and
prosecute criminal acts committed by UN police, and examines the
jurisdictional and immunity issues involved. It concludes that
these do not constitute legal barriers to accountability, although
immunity poses some problems in practice. The principal problem
appears to be the lack of political will to bring prosecutions, as
well as a lack of transparency, which makes it difficult accurately
to determine the scale of the problem.
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