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Rights for crime victims have been decried as myths; entitlements that have little enforceability. At the same time, they have been criticised as undermining the legal rights of the accused person....

Recently, major cities across the country have suffered dramatic spikes in homicides. These sudden spikes are remarkably large and widespread. At this rate, 2020 will easily be the deadliest year in America for gun-related homicides since at least 1999, while most other major crime categories are trending stable or slightly downward. This article attempts to explain why so many cities have seen extraordinary increases in murder during the summer of 2020. A close analysis of the emerging crime patterns suggests that American cities may be witnessing significant declines in some forms of policing, which in turn are producing the homicide spikes. Crime rates are increasing only for a few specific categories—namely homicides and shootings. These crime categories are particularly responsive to reductions in proactive policing. The data also pinpoint the timing of the spikes to late May 2020, which corresponds with the death of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis and subsequent antipolice protests—protests that likely led to declines in law enforcement. The thesis of this article is that the recent spikes in homicides have been caused by a “Minneapolis Effect,” similar to the earlier “Ferguson Effect.” Specifically, law enforcement agencies have been forced to divert resources from normal policing to patrolling demonstrations. And even as the antipolice protests have abated, police officers have scaled back on proactive or officer-initiated law enforcement, such as street stops and other forms of policing designed to prevent firearm crimes. If this thesis is correct, it is reasonable to estimate that, as a result of de-policing during June and July 2020, approximately 710 additional victims were murdered and more than 2,800 victims were shot. Of course, this estimate relies on various assumptions, and further research on the issues surrounding the homicide spikes should be an urgent priority. If this article’s thesis about a Minneapolis Effect is correct, an important implication is that policy makers in major cities should proceed cautiously before taking steps to “defund” the police in ways that might reduce the proactive policing that is important in preventing gun violence.

This amicus brief was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in support of Dr. Carter Page’s motion to be recognized as a “victim” under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act (CVRA) in U.S. v. Clinesmith. The brief discusses the important issue who qualifies as a “victim” for purposes of obtaining CVRA protections and concludes that Dr. Page is a “victim” in the case. In the underlying criminal case, Page argues that he is a “victim” of Clinesmith’s false statement, made in connection with FISA warrant renewal application by the Government to surveil Dr. Page’s communications. The amicus brief provides background on the CVRA’s expansive protections, which cover any individual who is “directly and proximately harmed” as the result of a crime. In this case, because Clinesmith’s false statement subverted the FISA process by providing false information to the FISA Court, the false statement alone created sufficient harm to trigger CVRA “victim” status. The amicus organizations on this brief are the National Crime Victim Law Institute, The National Organization for Victim Assistance, The National Center for Victims of Crime, Arizona Voice for Crime Victims, The Network for Victim Recovery of the District Of Columbia, Ohio Crime Victim Justice Center, Rocky Mountain Victim Law Center, South Carolina Victim Assistance Network, And Utah Crime Victims Legal Clinic as Amici Curiae In Support of Motion for Relief Under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act

Recently bail reform issues have been in the news across the country, as concerns about fair treatment of defendants and possible public safety risks from expanding pretrial release have collided. These issues involve important empirical questions, including whether releasing more defendants before trial leads to additional crimes. An opportunity to investigate this public safety issue has developed in Chicago, our nation’s third largest city. There, the Office of the Chief Judge of the Cook County Courts adopted new bail reform measures in September 2017 and reviewed them empirically in May 2019. Cook County’s Bail Reform Study concluded that the new procedures had released many more defendants before trial without any concomitant increase in crime. This article disputes the Study’s conclusions. This article explains that, contrary to the Study’s assertions, the new changes to pretrial release procedures appear to have led to a substantial increase in crimes committed by pretrial releasees in Cook County. Properly measured and estimated, after more generous release procedures were put in place, the number of released defendants charged with committing new crimes increased by 45%. And, more concerning, the number of pretrial releasees charged with committing new violent crimes increased by an estimated 33%. In addition, as reported by the Chicago Tribune, the Study’s data appears to undercount the number of releasees charged with new violent crimes; and a substantial number of aggravated domestic violence prosecutions prosecutors dropped after the changes, presumably because batterers were able to more frequently obtain release and intimidate their victims into not pursuing charges. These public safety concerns call into question whether the bail “reform” measures implemented in Cook County were cost-beneficial. And because Cook County’s procedures are state-of-the-art and track those being implemented in many parts of the country, Cook County’s experience suggests that other jurisdictions may similarly be suffering increases in crime due to bail reform.

This amicus brief in Bucklew v. Precythe discusses how undue delay in capital cases can harm crime victims’ families. After reviewing the facts of the cases, the brief draws on the available scholarship to show how extended delays in criminal cases – and particularly death penalty cases – can compound the harms and exacerbate the trauma that victims’ families suffer. The brief concludes that the important interests of victims should be vindicated by affirming the judgment reached below.

A growing body of academic literature discusses the problem of wrongful convictions — i.e., convictions of factually innocent defendants for crimes they did not commit. But how often do such miscarriages of justice actually occur? Justice Scalia cited a figure of 0.027% as a possible error rate. But the conventional view in the literature is that, for violent crimes, the error rate is much higher — at least 1%, and perhaps as high as 4% or even more. This Article disputes that conventional wisdom. Based on a careful review of the available empirical literature, it is possible to assemble the component parts of a wrongful conviction rate calculation by looking at error rates at trial, the ratio of wrongful convictions obtained through trials versus plea bargains, and the percentage of cases resolved through pleas. Combining empirically based estimates for each of these three factors, a reasonable (and possibly overstated) calculation of the wrongful conviction rate appears, tentatively, to be somewhere in the range of 0.016%–0.062% — a range that comfortably embraces Justice Scalia’s oftencriticized figure. If this Article’s tentative error-rate range is correct, it means that previous scholarship has significantly overstated the risk of wrongful conviction. Moreover, it is possible to compare the lifetime risk of being wrongfully convicted to the risk of being a victim of a violent crime. The relative risk ratio appears to be about 30,000 to 1. This decidedly skewed ratio suggests that reform measures for protecting the innocent may need to be cautiously assessed to ensure that they do not interfere with the important goal of prosecuting the guilty.

Homicides increased dramatically in Chicago in 2016. In 2015, 480 Chicago residents were killed. The next year, 754 were killed–274 more homicide victims, tragically producing an extraordinary 58% increase in a single year. This article attempts to unravel what happened. This article provides empirical evidence that the reduction in stop and frisks by the Chicago Police Department beginning around December 2015 was responsible for the homicide spike that started immediately thereafter. The sharp decline in the number of stop and frisks is a strong candidate for the causal factor, particularly since the timing of the homicide spike so perfectly coincides with the spike. Regression analysis of the homicide spike and related shooting crimes identifies the stop and frisk variable as the likely cause. The results are highly statistically significant and robust over a large number of alternative specifications. And a qualitative review for possible “omitted variables” in the regression equations fails to identify any other plausible candidates that fit the data as well as the decline in stop and frisks. Our regression equations permit quantification of the costs of the decline in stop and frisks. Because of fewer stop and frisks in 2016, it appears that (conservatively calculating) approximately 239 additional victims were killed and 1129 additional shootings occurred in that year alone. And these tremendous costs are not evenly distributed, but rather are concentrated among Chicago’s African-American and Hispanic communities. The most likely explanation for the fall in stop and frisks that appears to have triggered the homicide spike is a consent decree entered into by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) with the Chicago Police Department (CPD). Accordingly, modifications to that consent decree may be appropriate. More broadly, these findings shed important light on the on-going national debate about stop and frisk policies. The fact that America’s “Second City” suffered so badly from a decline in stop and frisks suggests that the arguably contrary experience in New York City may be an anomaly. The costs of crime — and particularly gun crimes — are too significant to avoid considering every possible measure for reducing the toll. The evidence gathered here suggests that stop and frisk policies may be truly lifesaving measures that have to be considered as part of any effective law enforcement response to gun violence.

Over the last 40 years, advocates for crime victims have succeeded in enshrining victims’ rights in state constitutions and other enactments. These provisions show that a consensus has developed around the country on certain core victims’ rights. Included in the core are, among other things, the right to notice of court hearings, to attend court hearings, to be heard at appropriate court hearings, to proceedings free from unreasonable delay, to consideration of the victims’ safety during the process, and to restitution. The current challenge for the country is ensuring that these core rights are fully and effectively implemented and that victims have a means for enforcing these rights. Strengthened enforcement language in state constitutions and, ultimately, perhaps placing victims’ rights in the United States Constitution offer the best prospects for fully protecting crime victims’ interests in the criminal justice system.

Recent claims have been made that police have obtained "false" confessions from innocent persons and that these false confessions have even led to the conviction of innocent persons. This article scrutinizes these claims, examining in detail a number of alleged false confessions collected in a recent paper by Professors Richard Leo and Richard Ofshe. After close examination of trial court records and other similar sources, the article concludes that these allegedly false confessions were in all likelihood actually true confessions given by guilty criminals. The article concludes by exploring the lessons that might be drawn from the high proportion of guilty criminals in the collection of "innocent" false confessors. Academic research on miscarriages of justice should not rely on mass media descriptions of the evidence against criminal defendants. The media too often slants its coverage in the direction of discovering "news" by finding that an innocent person has been wrongfully convicted. Moreover, reliance on second-hand media accounts overgeneralizes the false confession problem, obscuring the fact that the false confession problem is apparently concentrated among a narrow and vulnerable population: the mentally retarded.

After the Supreme Court's 1966 decision in Miranda v. Arizona, critics charged that it would "handcuff the cops." In this article, Professors Cassell and Fowles find this claim to be supported by FBI data on crime clearance rates. National crime clearance rates fell precipitously in the two years immediately after Miranda and have remained at lower levels in the decades since. Multiple regression analysis reveals that other possibly confounding factors-such as the rising crime rate and baby boom children reaching crime prone-years in the 1960s-do not account for much of the post-Miranda decline in clearance rates. Rather, the cause of the decline was most likely the Supreme Court's broad new restrictions on police questioning. The authors conclude that Miranda has in fact "handcuffed" the police and that society should begin to explore ways of loosening these shackles. Language: en

Criminal procedure scholarship has spent little time discussing the guiltless and much discussing the guilty. Recent attempts to correct this problem have led to discussions of the plight of an innocent person who confessed to a crime he did not commit. These discussions call for still more regulation of police interrogations without attempting to quantify the problem. Such a focus is incomplete because the innocent are at risk not only when police extract untruthful confessions but also when police fail to obtain truthful confessions from criminals. It is possible that more regulation aimed at reducing false confessions may produce such a substantial drop in truthful confessions as to pose a greater risk to the innocent. The aim of this empirical essay is to think more carefully about “the numbers” – that is, to try and place the risk to the innocent from false confessions, lost confessions, and lost convictions into some perspective. Part I attempts to quantify the dimensions of the false confession problem. Part II then turns to an assessment of the relative risk to the innocent from false confessions versus lost confessions. False confessions are a relatively infrequent cause of wrongful convictions while truthful confessions are perhaps the most frequent way in which miscarriages of justice are uncovered. Finally, Part III provides an escape from these tradeoffs by suggesting videotaping of police interrogation as a substitute for the restrictive Miranda rules.