In January 2017, Anthony Montwheeler kidnapped his second ex-wife, attacking her with a knife and fleeing with her in his car. The following police chase ended in a high-speed collision with another car, and Montwheeler was finally arrested. His ex-wife and the driver of the other vehicle were pronounced dead at the scene. However, this was not the beginning of Montwheeler’s story.
Continue reading “Saving the Insanity Defense: Insight into Personality Disorders and the Necessary Elements of the Test”Month: January 2022
The Illusion of the Public Policy Exception: Arbitration, Law Enforcement Discipline, and the Need to Reform Minnesota’s Approach to the Public Policy Exception
In November of 2012, after a car chase, Cleveland police officers fired 137 shots at the suspects’ vehicle. An investigation revealed that thirteen officers fired more than 100 shots in the span of eight seconds. One officer, Michael Brelo, stood on the hood of the suspects’ vehicle and fired at least fifteen shots through the windshield at close range. Both individuals in the vehicle, Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, were killed. Russell and Williams “were both homeless with a history of mental illness and drug use,” and fled after an officer attempted to pull them over for a turn signal violation. Brelo, who allegedly fired a total of forty-nine of the shots in the incident, said that he thought he and his partner were in danger. The source of this belief, according to prosecutors, was a backfiring engine that officers mistook for gunshots. Russell and Williams were both unarmed.
Continue reading “The Illusion of the Public Policy Exception: Arbitration, Law Enforcement Discipline, and the Need to Reform Minnesota’s Approach to the Public Policy Exception”Inefficient Mercy: The Procedural, Constitutional, and Prudential Issues that Plague Minnesota’s Pardoning Process
The process for granting pardons in Minnesota is in dire need of reform and the Minnesota Legislature needs to make an active effort in the upcoming legislative session to solve some of these problems. Pardons and pardons extraordinary play an incredibly important role in our criminal justice system, and especially in the lives of those that are granted clemency. It is in the best interest of the State of Minnesota that this process is fair and unburdened.
Continue reading “Inefficient Mercy: The Procedural, Constitutional, and Prudential Issues that Plague Minnesota’s Pardoning Process”From Langdell to Lab: The Opportunities and Challenges of Experiential Learning in the First Semester
In 2019, the University of New Mexico School of Law (“UNM”) inaugurated Lab, a new three-credit experiential course as part of the required first-semester curriculum. The course has many goals, but its over-arching purposes are to “enhanc[e] student readiness to practice,” to “create opportunities for ‘near transfer’ of clinic lawyering skills,” and to “address student concerns that they are prepared to work in the roles of lawyers, introduce students to the challenge of lawyering, and incorporate and inculcate students in lawyer professional roles early and often.” Lab has been successful in capitalizing on the opportunities experiential learning creates for teaching and learning these things; however, it has also confronted the challenges entailed in such a course—especially the challenges of such a course in the first semester.
Continue reading “From Langdell to Lab: The Opportunities and Challenges of Experiential Learning in the First Semester”Barring Methadone Behind Bars: How Prisons Err When Denying Methadone Treatment to Inmates with Opioid Use Disorder
As the opioid epidemic continues to ravage the United States for a third decade, communities look for new solutions. For the 200,000 heroin-addicted individuals who pass through correctional facilities each year, prison may be the opportunity for change.
Incarceration pauses access to illicit drugs and presents a chance for intervention. For individuals with Opioid Use Disorder (“OUD”), the most effective treatment option involves opioid agonist medication, such as methadone or buprenorphine. Allowing inmates with OUD to receive these medications while incarcerated improves outcomes for the individual inmate and yields public health benefits by reducing costs associated with poor health, disease transmission, criminality, and recidivism. Despite these significant benefits to individuals and society, most prisons do not treat inmates’ OUD with methadone or buprenorphine.
Continue reading “Barring Methadone Behind Bars: How Prisons Err When Denying Methadone Treatment to Inmates with Opioid Use Disorder”A New Reality: Deepfake Technology and the World Around Us
You are bickering with your significant other during the height of an argument as your partner begins to hurl corrosive, malicious, and fraudulent accusations your way. You seemingly become more and more confused as your significant other asserts you have done the unthinkable: cheated. As thoughts and concerns swirl around your baffled mind, you offer yourself some comfort as you know it is not true, and hopefully a thorough explanation can clear the air. As you begin defending your chastity, your significant other pulls out their cell phone and shows you something you cannot fathom. There, right there, in physical, audio, and video form, on the six-inch screen of their phone, a video plays of you engaging in salacious acts with another person who is clearly not your significant other. The video is crisp, clear, and undoubtedly looks, acts, and talks like you. But is it me?
You then realize that the confidence you held minutes ago in your own candor is useless. Somehow, someway, there is video proof of you committing an act you are positive you did not do. Was I drugged? Did I blackout and not remember my actions? Your brain is trying to comprehend and protect itself from the trauma and deceit presented to it, but you realize that this video—this horrifying, false, and life-changing video is real, at least to the beholder. You know that the video bears a resemblance to your likeness, but you also know it is not real.
Nevertheless, the video is real, and that is all your significant other needs to know. The damage is done, and now it appears there is irrefutable proof you have committed the abominable act of adultery that you know you did not do. You begin to question your own reality and the world around you. If this false video exists but appears to be genuine in every way, what else in our world is simply a distortion of the truth? What other forms of false media dwell in the world that will swindle and deceive even the most intelligent minds?
This Article explains deepfake technology and reviews deepfakes in modern society.3 Next, this Article discusses the evidentiary implications of deepfakes and how they are analyzed and authenticated within the courtroom.4 Finally, this Article discusses potential methods of combatting deepfakes, their effect on the courtroom, and prospective avenues of redress for deepfake victims.
Was Justice Ginsburg Roe-Ght?: Reimagining U.S. Abortion Discourse in the Wake of Argentina’s Marea Verde
Although she died a stalwart progressive icon, during her 1993 United States Supreme Court confirmation hearings, many liberals were initially skeptical of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s commitment to upholding Roe. The cause for concern originated in comments that then-Circuit Judge Ginsburg made on April 6, 1984, during the William T. Joyner Lecture on Constitutional Law at University of North Carolina School of Law. Without a doubt, Justice Ginsburg strongly supported the right to abortion, but even after she was confirmed to the high court, she repeatedly provided critical commentary about the decision in Roe and the impact it had on the abortion debate in the United States.
Continue reading “Was Justice Ginsburg Roe-Ght?: Reimagining U.S. Abortion Discourse in the Wake of Argentina’s Marea Verde”Anatomical Diagrams and Dolls: Guidelines for Their Usage in Forensic Interviews and Courts of Law
A guest speaker at school discusses personal safety and the sensitive subject of child maltreatment, informing the group of second-graders that some secrets do not need to be kept. Impacted by the lesson, a student approaches his instructor and asks, “if my friend told me a really bad secret, should I tell?” After a handful of follow-up questions, the child shares that his best friend, Billy, told him that Billy’s father was touching his butt with his “private part.”
Having a reasonable suspicion that Billy is being sexually abused, the teacher makes a mandated report to social services. The case is screened in, and Billy is brought to a Children’s Advocacy Center (CAC)—one of hundreds of facilities accredited by the National Children’s Alliance to assess child maltreatment allegations.
Billy is questioned by a forensic interviewer, someone specially trained to speak with children about abuse, and the interview is audio and videorecorded. The interviewer spends time building rapport with Billy and practices getting the child to speak in a narrative style6 by asking for details about a neutral event from beginning to end. The interviewer also asks the child about family, people the child lives with, and things they may do with the family and other people in their lives.
How the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 Continues to Fail the Deaf and Hard of Hearing
Over 30 years have gone by since President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990. Since its passage, many Americans might find it difficult to imagine a world in which an individual with a disability is still denied equal access to day-to-day activities, opportunities, information, leisure activities, and communication. What might be even more difficult for people to imagine is a world where said person is also ineligible to be granted relief under the ADA. This, unfortunately, is the reality individuals in the Deaf and hard of hearing community continue to face today.
Continue reading “How the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 Continues to Fail the Deaf and Hard of Hearing”A Reverent Homage to David Fulton Herr
David, we miss you dearly. We loved your friendship, your passion for the law, your affection for
your family, your curiosity about life, your charisma and virtues, and the joy you brought to our lives. You
were easy to admire, although we did have to struggle with your occasional sarcasm, overly helpful advice,
and wry attempts at humor. You were a delightful character, for all ages.