Acevedo on Crime Fantasies

John Acevedo, University of Alabama Law School, is publishing Crime Fantasies, in volume 46 of the American Journal of Criminal Law (2019). Here is the abstract.

Throughout American history the public has been gripped by fantasies of criminal activity. These crime fantasies manifest in two distinct but related typologies: witch-hunts and crime panics. On the one hand, witch-hunts target individuals based on their beliefs and are exemplified by the two Red Scares of the early and mid-twentieth century and the persecution of the Quakers in seventeenth century Massachusetts Bay. These are fundamentally distinct from crime panics, which target activity that was already classified as criminal but do so in a way that exacerbate deep procedural deficiencies in the criminal justice system. Crime panics are exemplified by the Salem witchcraft trials and the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s and 1990s. President Trump’s relentless focus on undocumented immigration can be seen as a partially successful attempt to create a crime panic, while, perhaps surprisingly, the investigation by Robert Mueller is neither a witch-hunt nor a crime panic. By bringing ongoing criminal law issues into conversation with legal history scholarship, this article clarifies our understanding of the relationship between politics and large-scale criminal investigations and highlights areas for future reform.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

True Crime Series and the "CSI Effect"

Kenny Herzog for Slate (via Vulture) on the "CSI" effects of Making a Murderer and other true crime series. He notes that many experts are doubtful that such series will have much impact on juror thinking.

When it comes to Serial, The Jinx, or Making a Murderer, it’s more likely they merely confirmed viewers’ skeptical tendencies rather than awakened them. After all, jurors—like all people—are encoded with a lifetime of stimuli that have shaped their worldview, minimizing the likelihood that recently ingested media would directly radicalize their biases. So by the time a trial’s commenced, even the most cynical juries will likely allow a measure of deference to the ensuing process.

Interesting reading.

Mining the Trial Reports of the Connecticut Colony

Jon C. Blue, a New Haven District Superior Court Judge, has published The Case of the Piglet's Paternity: Trials from the New Haven Colony, 1639-1663 (Wesleyan University Press) (Driftless Connecticut Series & Garnet Books). Here is a description of the contents from the publisher's website.

In the middle of the seventeenth century, judges in the short-lived New Haven Colony presided over a remarkable series of trials ranging from murder and bestiality, to drunken sailors, frisky couples, faulty shoes, and shipwrecks. The cases were reported in an unusually vivid manner, allowing readers to witness the twists and turns of fortune as the participants battled with life and liberty at stake. When the records were eventually published in the 1850s, they were both difficult to read and heavily edited to delete sexual matters. Rendered here in modernized English and with insightful commentary by eminent Judge Jon C. Blue, the New Haven trials allow readers to immerse themselves in the exciting legal battles of America’s earliest days. The Case of the Piglet’s Paternity assembles thirty-three of the most significant and intriguing trials of the period. As a book that examines a distinctive judicial system from a modern legal perspective, it is sure to be of interest to readers in law and legal history. For less litigious readers, Blue offers a worm’s eye view of the full spectrum of early colonial society—political leaders and religious dissidents, farmhands and apprentices, women and children.

Shakespeare As Therapist?

Herschel Prins, Loughborough University & University of Birmingham, has published Mental Disorder, Criminality and the Literary Imagination at 53 Howard Journal of Criminal Justice 290 (2014).

This contribution attempts to explore the use of a variety of literary sources as aids or ‘prompts’ to understanding those offenders and offender‐patients whose mental states often raise considerable anxieties in those charged with their management. The word ‘prompt’ is borrowed from the work of my friend, the late doctor Murray Cox, and his co‐worker Alice Theilgaard in their seminal work Shakespeare as Prompter (1994). The author of the present article hopes that its content will enable readers to focus more clearly on why we sometimes fail our offenders and offender‐patients; in particular, through the mechanism of denial. The use of dramatic presentation when proffered with a unique blend of force and sensitivity can permit us to view puzzlement and horror from a safe distance and, at the same time, encourage us to increase our empathic understanding and professional practice. Most of the examples cited are brief allusions but, because her history is so compellingly applicable to our concerns in the present contribution, the ‘case’ of Lady Macbeth is considered in more detail. Finally, I would note some very wise words by Cox and Theilgaard (1994) in a caveat note to the reader: ‘Should the focus on therapy ever become occluded by preoccupation with poetic association, clinical skills would be diminished, distraction ensue and therapeutic contact deteriorate’ (not numbered). In the material that follows readers should bear such a cautionary note in mind.

The full text is not available from SSRN. 

Legal History and Criminal Law

Markus D. Dubber, University of Toronto Faculty of Law, is publishing Histories of Crime and Criminal Justice and the Historical Analysis of Criminal Law in the Oxford Handbook of the History of Crime and Criminal Justice (Paul Knepper & Anja Johansen eds.; Forthcoming). Here is the abstract.

This essay reflects on the relationship between the history of crime, the history of criminal justice, and the history of criminal law. It suggests an account of the historical analysis of criminal law that locates it within the general project of critical analysis of law (CAL).

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.