The Downside of Being a Celebrity Prisoner: Protective Custody and its Relation to Solitary Confinement

Aaron Hernandez

On June 27, 2013, former Patriots tight-end Aaron Hernandez was denied bail in his upcoming trial for the murder of Odin Lloyd.  Until his verdict and sentencing, or alternatively a lower bail order from the judge, Hernandez will be confined in a Massachusetts state prison.  For the everyday citizen, this may seem purely procedural.  The accused is taken from the court room to the holding center, where he is then processed and booked.  Most prisoners are then entered into the general population where they await trial.  For Hernandez, a well-known football player with the New England Patriot, the situation is very different.

No Money? No Freedom

On July 16, 2013, nineteen year-old Justin Carter will have his day in court.  But roughly five months ago, the teen was arrested and charged with making a terroristic threat on his Facebook page. He has been in jail ever since.  Carter’s nightmare started when another player in the Facebook game “League of Legends” called Carter “crazy.”  Carter responded with what he believed to be a humorous and witty retort, “I’m f***ed in the head alright.  I think I’ma [sic] shoot up a kindergarten and watch the blood of the innocent rain down and eat the beating heart of one of them.”  Just two months after the horrific shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, a Canadian woman who saw the post did not find it humorous or witty.  In what some might consider “Facebook stalking,” the woman discovered Carter’s address and noticed that it was close to an elementary school.  She promptly notified police, who then arrested the young teen.  Apparently, Carter’s humor was also lost on the Texas judge who set bond at an astronomical $500,000, which Carter’s family could not afford.

UDC School of Law Professor Andrew Ferguson Weighs in on the Role of Juries and Their Verdicts

On Saturday, July 13, 2013, the jury in the State of Florida v. George Zimmerman returned a verdict of not guilty for second-degree murder and manslaughter for the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin.  After the jury returned the verdict, an expected flurry of news and social media erupted, some in support of the verdict and many others criticizing it.  Given the contentious issues surrounding the case, a vast amount of media attention has honed into the jury and what occurred during the jury's deliberation.  One can hope that the jury deliberation of the Zimmerman trial was similar to the one that took place in the famous stage play and movie, Twelve Angry Men, where the jurors carefully examined all the evidence in their quest for the truth and banished personal prejudices from their deliberation.  On the other hand, many fear that racial biases may have affected the deliberation of the Zimmerman jury that was made up of five Caucasian women and one Hispanic woman.  Whether the deliberation was similar to that of Twelve Angry Men or corrupted by racial bias, many questions remain.

In his article, "The Zimmerman Trial and the Meaning of Verdicts," Professor Andrew Ferguson of the University of the District of Columbia, discusses the Zimmerman jury, the (at the time undelivered) verdict, as well as juries and their verdicts in general.  

Due Process in the Context of Jones-Farmer Hearings: Implications of Kaley v. United States

On March 18, 2013, the United State Supreme Court granted certiorari in Kaley v. United States.  Docket No. 12-464.  The case represents a complicated but narrow legal issue regarding the scope of a defendant’s right to challenge an order seizing property that the government claims is subject to forfeiture when the defendant asserts that the property is necessary to pay legal fees.  Typically, these seizure orders come during an ex-parte hearing where the government needs to show property is subject to forfeiture based on probable cause.  Those assets are then frozen until the conclusion of an underlying criminal proceeding.  The Federal Circuits permit defendants to challenge the traceability of those assets in post-indictment, pretrial Jones-Farmer hearings.  The Circuits are split, though, as to whether a defendant may challenge the evidentiary support and legal theory of the underlying charges or only the traceability of the property the government claims is subject to forfeiture.  

We Live in This Society, Lets at Least Be Real About It

In 2009, North Carolina enacted the Racial Justice Act (RJA) in an effort to combat implicit racial bias through the use of several possible measures, most significantly, statistical evidence. Later in 2012, the legislature amended the Act aiming to address what appeared to be only explicit bias, in contrast to its original purpose. Under the RJA, courts were permitted to commute the sentences of death row inmates to life in prison without the possibility of parole, upon a showing of racial discrimination.[1]

Murder or Manslaughter: California’s Standard for Provocation

What kind of provocation will suffice to constitute heat of passion and reduce a murder charge to manslaughter in California?  This is the question the Supreme Court of California answered on June 3, 2013, in People v. Beltran.  The government argued that the provocation must be of the sort that would cause an ordinary person of average disposition to kill.  However, the court rejected this argument, relying on the same rationale it adopted nearly one hundred years ago in People v. Logan[1].  The court held that provocation into the heat of passion is sufficient to constitute manslaughter only when an ordinary person of average disposition “would be induced to react from passion and not from judgment.”

Jerry Lee Jenkins: Wrongfully Convicted, Never Gave Up

June 7, 2013 is a day Jerry Lee Jenkins will always remember.  It was the day he joined over three hundred other men and women who were exonerated with the use of post-conviction DNA testing.  Mr. Jenkins had been fighting to prove his innocence since he was wrongfully convicted in 1987 for the brutal rape of a young woman in Waldorf, Maryland.  On the evening of February 6, 1986 the woman, a real estate agent, was at a model home when a man came in, concealed his face with a stocking and pulled a knife on her.  The man covered the woman’s face and proceeded to rape her.  The woman was able to get a partial glance at his face.  The woman would later admit at a photo lineup with Mr. Jenkins and to the jury that Mr. Jenkins looked like the man who attacked her but she was not sure it was him.  An expert from the FBI testified at trial that Mr. Jenkins was within four percent of the population that could have contributed to the biological material left at the crime, which is still a large pool of possible offenders.  Mr. Jenkins was convicted regardless. 

DNA Testing the Next Chapter - The Supreme Court's Ruling in Maryland v. King

On June 3, 2013 the Supreme Court issued its 5-4 opinion in Maryland v. King, holding that when a suspect is arrested with probable cause for a serious offense it is a reasonable search for the officers to collect a DNA swab from the suspect.  Writing for the majority, Justice Kennedy analogized the DNA swab to fingerprinting and photographing as legitimate and routine police booking procedures.  The case before the Court involved Mr. King who, in 2009, was arrested for first and second-degree assault  and had a DNA sample taken as part of the routine booking procedures for serious offenses in Maryland.  Maryland law allows DNA samples to be taken from arrestees charged with violent crimes, burglaries, and attempts to commit either a violent crime or burglary. Md. Pub. Saf. Code Ann § 504(a)(3)(i) (Lexis 2011).  The DNA sample was matched to an unsolved rape case from 2003, and Mr. King was subsequently charged and convicted for the 2003 rape.  Mr. King moved to suppress the DNA evidence as it violated his Fourth Amendment rights, and the Maryland Court of Appeals agreed with Mr. King finding that the DNA swab, in this context, was an unreasonable search.  The Supreme Court reversed the Maryland Court of Appeals’ decision.