Overturning Override: Why Executing a Person Sentenced to Death By Judicial Override Violates the Eighth Amendment

INTRODUCTION

Judicial override is a practice by which a judge overrules a sentence decided by a jury. Perhaps the most alarming, infamous, and controversial form of judicial override occurs when a judge overrules a jury’s recommendation for life imprisonment and replaces it with the death penalty. The use of judicial override in capital punishment cases has only ever been allowed in four states: Alabama, Delaware, Florida, and Indiana.[1] As of 2017, all four of these states have officially abandoned the practice. However, thirty-five individuals who were sentenced to death via judicial override remain on death row awaiting execution.[2] Today, their lives hang in the balance as the following constitutional question remains: Does the execution of a person sentenced to death by judicial override violate the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution?

This Note argues that executing these thirty-five individuals who were sentenced to death by judicial override would, in fact, be a “cruel and unusual” punishment under the Eighth Amendment and thus unconstitutional. Importantly, this Note is not arguing that the death penalty itself is unconstitutional; rather, the Note’s argument is centered around the specific constitutional issue of execution as the direct result of the pre-2017 practice of judicial override.

This Note’s argument proceeds in the following stages. Part I provides background information regarding the history of judicial override in four different states, a summary of relevant United States Supreme Court precedent, an overview of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and the Court’s previous interpretations of the meaning of “cruel and unusual punishments.” Part II asserts that a punishment of death by judicial override is more objectionable than the death penalty itself, emphasizes the importance of jury sentencing, and calls attention to the presence of racial bias in judicial override. Additionally, Part II argues that the execution of a person sentenced to death by judicial override violates the Eighth Amendment under multiple constitutional theories, including living constitutionalism, the moral reading of the Constitution, and originalism. Part III briefly addresses counterarguments concerning adherence to Supreme Court precedent and federalism, and Part V concludes this Note by suggesting two potential solutions to the issue at bar.

          [1].      Michael L. Radelet, Overriding Jury Sentencing Recommendations in Florida Capital Cases: An Update and Possible Half-Requiem, 2011 Mich. St. L. Rev. 793, 794 (2011); Petition for Writ of Certiorari at 5, McMillan v. Alabama, 141 S. Ct. 876 (2020) (No. 20-193).

          [2].      Petition for Writ of Certiorari, supra note 1, at 6.

* Executive Senior Editor, Southern California Law Review, Volume 95; J.D. Candidate 2022, University of Southern California Gould School of Law; B.A. Political Science 2018, University of California, Los Angeles. Thank you to Gonzo for your unwavering support throughout my law school journey. I am also grateful to Professor Rebecca Brown for her guidance during this Note’s development. Finally, thank you to all of the Southern California Law Review editors for spending countless hours on the publication process.

 

Crack Taxes and The Dangers of Insidious Regulatory Taxes

An unheralded weapon in the War on Drugs can be found in state tax codes: many states impose targeted taxes on individuals for the possession and sale of controlled substances. These “crack taxes” provide state officials with a powerful means of sanctioning individuals without providing those individuals the protections of the criminal law. Further, these taxes largely escape public scrutiny, which can contribute to overregulation and uneven enforcement.

The controlled substance taxes highlight the allure to lawmakers of using tax law to regulate behavior, but also the potential dangers of doing so. Surprisingly, the judiciary has an underappreciated role in creating the allure of regulatory taxes. Because courts apply less scrutiny to taxes than to other types of laws, regulatory taxes get a blank check when challenged, incentivizing their use. Courts must reconfigure the way they approach regulatory taxes to remove the judicially created incentive for insidious regulatory taxes like controlled substance taxes.

Introduction

“ ‘It was going through the mail and the mail lady smelled it and called the police . . . . I’m not ever gonna get out from underneath this, ever, not unless I win the lottery and become a millionaire’ . . . .”[1] The North Carolina woman offering these statements was troubled not by her arrest and charge of attempted drug trafficking, but by the twenty-thousand-dollar tax assessment she received for possessing controlled substances (that is, illegal drugs). North Carolina brings in millions of dollars from its so-called “crack tax”[2] or “Al Capone law”[3] each year,[4] and several other states use similar taxes on the possession and sale of controlled substances to further regulate already criminalized activities.[5]

The idea of taxes as a weapon in the War on Drugs may seem surprising, but perhaps it is predictable that lawmakers wanting to look tough on drugs would co-opt tax law in this way. More surprising though is the underappreciated role courts have in incentivizing lawmakers to enact controlled substance taxes and other regulatory taxes to achieve their goals.

How do courts incentivize the enactment of regulatory taxes? At its core, the answer to this question is a story of veiled consequences of elevating form over substance. Courts have habitually treated tax laws with the utmost respect,[6] resulting in a privileged regime of relaxed judicial scrutiny for taxes.[7] Governments must raise revenue, and taxation is a powerful tool to raise that revenue from whatever members of society lawmakers see fit. Unelected judges, the line of thinking goes, should be hesitant to upset these fundamentally political decisions.[8] This hesitancy has pushed courts to be exceedingly cautious when examining laws labeled “taxes.”

In addition to their revenue-raising role, taxes have also long been recognized as legitimate and powerful tools to regulate behavior.[9] One might expect courts to heighten their scrutiny of taxes with intentional regulatory goals (as opposed to mere revenue-raising taxes) to ensure that the interests of regulated individuals are appropriately considered. However, this is rarely the case, even when the taxes’ revenue goals are insignificant compared with their regulatory goals.[10]

In short, as critics of “tax exceptionalism”—the idea that tax law is categorically different from other areas of law and should be treated so—have long observed and frequently lamented, courts often employ a unique approach to analyzing tax laws.[11] Once a court determines that laws are tax laws, those laws become privileged before the judiciary, even when the laws have intentional regulatory effects.[12] This subtle elevation of form (tax law) over substance (regulatory effects) results in the judicially created incentive for lawmakers to pursue their regulatory goals through taxation rather than through direct regulation: taxes will not face as much scrutiny from courts.[13]

Lawmakers have noticed and responded, using taxes to achieve regulatory goals where other laws might receive more scrutiny from courts.[14] Though this phenomenon may appear benign, it can generate serious harms for individuals, as controlled substance taxes illustrate.[15] By adopting the taxes rather than increasing existing criminal sanctions, lawmakers impose punishment on those possessing and selling controlled substances without running up against legal protections for criminal defendants.[16] Even those people who would be acquitted under the criminal law can still be sanctioned for their behavior through these insidious regulatory taxes.[17] Thus, controlled substance taxes are a potentially powerful and unchecked weapon in the War on Drugs. Given the biased manner in which the War on Drugs has been carried out,[18] skirting protections for individuals is particularly concerning, as tax law becomes a tool of state oppression of overpoliced communities.[19]

The harms of these taxes do not stop with those cavalierly imposed on individuals. Regulatory taxes like controlled substance taxes also impose stealth costs on society because they are less effective than their direct regulation alternatives.[20] For example, controlled substance taxes are often burdensome laws for tax authorities to administer, making the taxes a costly alternative to laws directly regulating controlled substances, which are enforced by those more familiar with the substances.[21] Further highlighting the insidious nature of these taxes, they also obscure the total amount of regulation that an activity is subject to by remaining out of public view, leading to harmful overregulation that is difficult to address.[22]

Despite the dangers of regulatory taxes like controlled substance taxes, these insidious taxes have gone largely unnoticed in the tax literature. Rather, tax scholars have focused on the relative substantive strengths of taxation versus direct regulation when analyzing the best options for achieving regulatory goals.[23] Literature regarding the related phenomena of fines and civil forfeiture laws has not considered the unique situation of tax laws before the courts.[24] In short, the role of judicial deference regimes in tilting the scales toward regulatory taxes and the resulting consequences for individuals and society are underappreciated. This Article is the first to home in on these issues,[25] analyzing them and demonstrating how courts should take them into account to correct for the inadvertent judicial incentive for lawmakers to enact insidious regulatory taxes.

Courts can remove this incentive and head off future insidious regulatory taxes by recognizing the potential for these taxes to exist and placing such taxes under more scrutiny when exposed.[26] This Article builds on scholarly developments in modern tax expenditure analysis—which explores the role of taxes as a tool for achieving regulatory goals[27]—to propose an analytical framework for uncovering insidious regulatory taxes. A comparatively weak tax law passed to take advantage of the privileged judicial scrutiny regime for taxes is an insidious regulatory tax, and, once that tax is uncovered through the proposed analysis, a court should scrutinize the tax as it would a similar direct regulation.

Controlled substance taxes offer a prime example of insidious regulatory taxes and their dangers, but not all regulatory taxes are insidious. Regulatory taxes like carbon taxes that are more effective than their direct regulation counterparts are substantively justified and do not raise the concerns associated with insidious regulatory taxes.[28] However, as regulatory taxes continue to become more prevalent,[29] the proposed framework will become more crucial to aid courts in separating the insidious regulatory taxes in need of heightened scrutiny from the unobjectionable ones.

The Article proceeds in three parts. Part I provides background on controlled substance taxes and the judicial privilege granted to all types of taxes. The resulting allure of regulatory taxes can be too much for lawmakers to ignore, resulting in the enactment of insidious regulatory taxes like controlled substance taxes. Part II then details the dangers of insidious regulatory taxes in more depth, exposing the problems created by the judiciary’s current approach to taxes. Finally, Part III fleshes out the proposed framework for analyzing tax laws to remove the judicially created incentive for insidious regulatory taxes, using the controlled substance taxes as a case study to illustrate the framework’s operation.

          [1].      Michael Hennessey, Inside the North Carolina Law Requiring Drug Dealers to Pay Taxes, myfox8.com (May 10, 2019, 10:21 AM), https://myfox8.com/news/inside-the-north-carolina-law-requiring-drug-dealers-to-pay-taxes [https://perma.cc/DT5B-NDPS].

          [2].      See Jeremy M. Vaida, The Altered State of American Drug Taxes, 68 Tax Law. 761, 787 (2015).

          [3].      See Anne Barnard, In Taxing Illegal Drugs, the Trouble Comes in Collecting, N.Y. Times (Jan. 24, 2008), https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/24/nyregion/24drugs.html [https://perma.cc/PMS5-YBU
7] (quoting an associate of the Federation of Tax Administrators describing the taxes as hearkening to “the Al Capone model”); Christopher Paul Sorrow, The New Al Capone Laws and the Double Jeopardy Implications of Taxing Illegal Drugs, 4 S. Cal. Interdisc. L.J. 323, 323 (1995); Christina Joyce, Expanding the War Against Drugs: Taxing Marijuana and Controlled Substances, 12 Hamline J. Pub. L. & Pol’y 231, 239 (1991).

          [4].      See N.C. Dep’t of Revenue, Statistical Abstract of North Carolina Taxes 2019 tbl. 15 (2019) (showing tax revenues ranging from approximately $6.5 million to approximately $11.5 million for fiscal years 2005 through 2019 from the state’s controlled substance tax, which includes taxes on illicit liquors in addition to illicit drugs).

          [5].      See infra note 34.

          [6].      See infra Section I.B.

          [7].      See, e.g., Eric Kades, Drawing the Line Between Taxes and Takings: The Continuous Burdens Principle, and Its Broader Application, 97 Nw. U. L. Rev. 189, 192 (2002) (“At times, judges and legal commentators have declared that Congress’ power to tax is beyond constitutional review.”).

          [8].      See Nat’l Fed’n of Indep. Bus. v. Sebelius, 567 U.S. 519, 531-32 (2012) (“We do not consider whether the Act embodies sound policies. That judgment is entrusted to the Nation’s elected leaders.”). As Justice Felix Frankfurter articulated,

[Governments] need the amplest scope for energy and individuality in dealing with the myriad problems created by our complex industrial civilization. They need wide latitude in devising ways and means for paying the bills of society and in using taxation as an instrument of social policy. Taxation is never palatable, and its exercise should not be subjected to finicky or pedantic arguments based on abstractions.

Felix Frankfurter, The Public and Its Government 48-49 (1930).

          [9].      See infra note 30.

        [10].      See infra Section I.B.

        [11].      See, e.g., Alice G. Abreu & Richard K. Greenstein, Tax: Different, Not Exceptional, 71 Admin. L. Rev. 663, 663-64 (2019) (surveying tax exceptionalism scholarship and arguing that tax is not different in kind from other types of law and should not be analyzed as though it were); Paul L. Caron, Tax Myopia, or Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Tax Lawyers, 13 Va. Tax Rev. 517, 518-31 (1994) (highlighting and criticizing the perception that tax law is different from other areas of law).

        [12].      See, e.g., Gillian E. Metzger, To Tax, to Spend, to Regulate, 126 Harv. L. Rev. 83, 90 (2012). Part of the opinion from Department of Revenue of Montana v. Kurth Ranch illuminates this claim. While observing that taxes are subject to constitutional constraints, as are criminal fines and civil penalties, the Court notes demanding constraints for criminal sanctions and relatively trivial constraints for taxes, even if those taxes fall on the same criminal activities as the criminal sanctions do. Dep’t of Revenue of Mont. v. Kurth Ranch, 511 U.S. 767, 778 (1994).

        [13].      See infra Section I.B.

        [14].      See Michael S. Kirsch, Alternative Sanctions and the Federal Tax Law: Symbols, Shaming, and Social Norm Management as a Substitute for Effective Tax Policy, 89 Iowa L. Rev. 863, 865–66 (2004) (describing how federal tax laws are used for regulatory goals); Stanley S. Surrey & Paul R. McDaniel, The Tax Expenditure Concept: Current Developments and Emerging Issues, 20 B.C. L. Rev. 225, 247 (1979) (describing how taxes have been used when direct regulations might be unconstitutional or difficult to enact). See generally R.A. Lee, A History of Regulatory Taxation (1973). Lee examines a number of federal taxes with regulatory effects in his work. In describing the historical context and creation of each tax, Lee uncovers the statements of many members of Congress demonstrating their understanding that they could achieve their goals in a less constitutionally suspect manner by using the taxes instead of direct regulations. For example, in detailing a proposed federal tax on grain futures in 1921, Lee describes a discussion in which Congressman Marvin Jones opined that “if that approach [of direct regulation] were used . . . ‘a constitutional question might arise’ but the Supreme Court had ‘allowed us to go a long ways in the taxing power,’ so he believed this was the ‘wiser method.’ ” Id. at 73. In a later passage, Lee describes a 1937 House Ways and Means Committee Report as finding that “ ‘the law is well settled’ that a regulatory tax, although controlling a subject reserved to state jurisdiction, would be valid ‘if it appears on its face to be a revenue measure.’ ” Id. at 182.

        [15].      See infra Part II.

        [16].      See infra notes 117-22 and accompanying text.

        [17].      See, e.g., Barnard, supra note 3 (reporting comments of a tax administrator recognizing the potential for the taxes to impose punishment when criminal sanctions cannot); Robert E. Tomasson, 21 States Imposing Drug Tax and Then Fining the Evaders, N.Y. Times (Dec. 23, 1990), https://www.
nytimes.com/1990/12/23/us/21-states-imposing-drug-tax-and-then-fining-the-evaders.html [https://per
ma.cc/VD68-HAJF] (reporting on controlled substance taxes as effective tools in combatting illegal drug sales because of their ability to avoid the protections afforded to criminal defendants).

        [18].      See authorities cited infra note 125.

        [19].      Indeed, the taxes are often enforced only against individuals charged with violations of criminal controlled substance laws. See authorities cited infra note 57.

        [20].      See infra Section II.B.

        [21].      See infra Section III.A.2.

        [22].      See infra Section II.C.

        [23].      See, e.g., Stanley S. Surrey, Pathways to Tax Reform: The Concept of Tax Expenditures 148-54 (1973) (discussing tax expenditures and the choice between taxation and spending programs); Surrey & McDaniel, supra note 14, at 227-28 (same); David A. Weisbach & Jacob Nussim, The Integration of Tax and Spending Programs, 113 Yale L.J. 955, 959-64 (2004) (same); Eric J. Toder, Tax Cuts or Spending—Does It Make a Difference?, 53 Nat’l Tax J. 361, 361-63 (2000) (same); Edward A. Zelinsky, James Madison and Public Choice at Gucci Gulch: A Procedural Defense of Tax Expenditures and Tax Institutions, 102 Yale L.J. 1165, 1165-67 (1993) (same); Eric M. Zolt, Deterrence Via Taxation: A Critical Analysis of Tax Penalty Provisions, 37 UCLA L. Rev. 343, 348 (1989) (same).

        [24].      See, e.g., Ariel Jurow Kleiman, Nonmarket Criminal Justice Fees, 72 Hastings L.J. 517, 520 (2021) (detailing similar issues surrounding criminal fees); Beth A. Colgan, Fines, Fees, and Forfeitures, 18 Criminology, Crim. Just., L. & Soc’y 22, 28 (2017) (detailing the use of fines, fees, and forfeitures as sanctions for criminalized activities); Suellen M. Wolfe, Recovery from Halper: The Pain from Additions to Tax Is Not the Sting of Punishment, 25 Hofstra L. Rev. 161, 197 (1996) (detailing similar issues surrounding civil forfeiture laws); Kenneth Mann, Punitive Civil Sanctions: The Middleground Between Criminal and Civil Law, 101 Yale L.J. 1795, 1799-1800, 1802, 1870 (1992) (observing the harms of failing to provide protections for individuals subject to civil state sanctions); Marc B. Stahl, Asset Forfeiture, Burdens of Proof and the War on Drugs, 83 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 274, 274-79 (1992) (critiquing civil forfeiture laws).

        [25].      As far back as 1979, Stanley Surrey, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Tax Policy, predicted that “Congress, by inserting spending programs in the tax law, essentially has forced the courts to apply to tax law the legal provisions hitherto imposed on direct spending.” Stanley S. Surrey, Tax Expenditure Analysis: The Concept and Its Uses, 1 Can. Tax’n 3, 9 (1979) [hereinafter Surrey, Tax Expenditure Analysis]; see also Surrey, supra note 23, at 46-47; Surrey & McDaniel, supra note 14, at 246. Though this prediction seemed based on Surrey’s conclusion that “tax expenditures”—the normatively unnecessary provisions of tax law designed to achieve regulatory results—should not be entitled to the privilege given to revenue-raising tax provisions, Surrey and others since have not fully analyzed the issue of judicial scrutiny of regulatory taxes and its implications. This Article fills that void.

                   As an aside, Surrey’s prediction may have come true in some cases regarding special tax breaks offered in lieu of direct spending. See, e.g., Espinoza v. Mont. Dep’t of Revenue, 140 S. Ct. 2246, 2260-61 (2020) (holding tax credits for education to the same level of scrutiny under the Free Exercise Clause as direct spending measures); Mueller v. Allen, 463 U.S. 388, 393-404 (1983) (holding tax breaks to the same level of scrutiny under the Establishment Clause as direct spending measures). However, surely Surrey would be surprised to find that his prediction has largely failed to materialize in the case of tax laws used in lieu of direct regulations. Rather, courts have continued to privilege tax laws regardless of the regulatory effects those taxes might have.

        [26].      See infra Section III.A.4.

        [27].      See generally Weisbach & Nussim, supra note 23 (laying the foundation for modern tax expenditure analysis, which focuses on the comparative institutional competencies of taxes and direct spending measures); see also infra notes 151-62 and accompanying text.

        [28].      See generally Shi-Ling Hsu, The Case for a Carbon Tax: Getting past Our Hang-Ups to Effective Climate Policy (2011) (comparing economic, social, administrative, and political merits of carbon taxes versus direct regulations and concluding that a tax would be the most effective policy); Reuven S. Avi-Yonah & David M. Uhlmann, Combating Global Climate Change: Why a Carbon Tax Is a Better Response to Global Warming than Cap and Trade, 28 Stan. Envtl. L.J. 3, 6-8 (2009) (similar).

        [29].      See, e.g., Lucy Dadayan, Tax Pol’y Ctr., Are States Betting on Sin? The Murky Future of State Taxation 3-4 (2019), https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publications/are-states-betting-sin-murky-future-state-taxation/full [https://perma.cc/K6AX-5D4C] (reporting upward trends in the imposition of “sin taxes” on unwanted behaviors); Rachelle Holmes Perkins, Salience and Sin: Designing Taxes in the New Sin Era, 2014 BYU L. Rev. 143, 145 (2014) (describing increasing use of sin taxes).

*      Associate Professor, University of Richmond School of Law. For their helpful thoughts and comments, I would like to thank my outstanding colleagues at the University of Richmond and the participants in the 2019 Junior Tax Scholars Workshop, the 2019 Junior Faculty Forum, and the 2021 AALS New Voices in Taxation program. I owe specific thanks to Aravind Boddupalli, Beth Colgan, Erin Collins, Jim Gibson, Ari Glogower, Mary Heen, Dick Kaplan, Ariel Jurow Kleiman, Corinna Lain, Sarah Lawsky, Ruth Mason, Lukely Norris, Tracey Roberts, Erin Scharff, and Allison Tait. I am indebted to Chris Marple, Tyler Moses, and Whitney Nelson for their excellent assistance with research.     

Civil vs. Criminal Legal Aid

The past few decades have highlighted the insidious effects of poverty, particularly for poor people who lack access to legal representation. Accordingly, there have been longstanding calls for “Civil Gideon,” which refers to a right to counsel in civil cases that would address issues tied to housing, public benefits, family issues, and various areas of law that poor people are often disadvantaged by due to their lack of attorneys. This civil right to counsel would complement the analogous criminal right that has been constitutionalized. Notwithstanding the persuasive arguments made for and against Civil Gideon, it is less clear why there is such a sharp distinction between civil and criminal legal aid. This Article re-examines longstanding assumptions about the civil-criminal legal aid divide and highlights some underexamined explanations: the legal profession’s historical implication in this division; courts’ unwillingness to use their inherent powers to appoint counsel; and courts’ enduringly narrow understandings of when poor people should be provided with lawyers. These insights prompt alternative reflections on how to best deliver legal services to poor people.

*                Presidential Assistant Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School. J.D., University of California, Berkeley, School of Law; Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley; M.L.A., University of Pennsylvania; B.S. Northwestern University. This Article benefitted from feedback and conversations with Guy-Uriel Charles, Scott Cummings, Anne Fleming, Trevor Gardner, Myriam Gilles, Helen Hershkoff, Olati Johnson, Steve Koh, Seth Kreimer, Serena Mayeri, K-Sue Park, Clare Pastore, Portia Pedro, Dave Pozen, Dan Richman, Louis Rulli, Kathryn Sabbeth, Matt Shapiro, Emily Stolzenberg, and Catherine Struve. Special thanks to Megan Russo and Madeline Verniero for editorial support and Alexa Nakamura, Amy Lutfi, and the Southern California Law Review staff for their overall assistance with the Article. All errors are mine.

Prosecutors and Mass Incarceration by

Article | Criminal Law
Prosecutors and Mass Incarceration
by Shima Baradaran Baughman* & Megan S. Wright†

From Vol. 94, No. 5 (2020)
94 S. Cal. L. Rev. 1123 (2020)

Keywords: Prosecutor Discretion, Charging

 

It has long been postulated that America’s mass incarceration phenomenon is driven by increased drug arrests, draconian sentencing, and the growth of the prison industry. Yet among the major players—legislators, judges, police, and prosecutors—one of these is shrouded in mystery. While laws on the books, judicial sentencing, and police arrests are all public and transparent, prosecutorial charging decisions are made behind closed doors with little oversight or public accountability. Indeed, without notice by commentators, during the last ten years or more, crime has fallen, and police have cut arrests accordingly, but prosecutors have actually increased the ratio of criminal court filings per arrest. Why? This Article presents quantitative and qualitative data from the first randomized controlled experiment studying how prosecutors nationally decide whether to charge a defendant. We find rampant variation and multiple charges for a single crime along with the lowest rates of declination in a national study. Crosscutting this empirical analysis is an exploration of Supreme Court and prosecutor standards that help guide prosecutorial decisions. This novel approach makes important discoveries about prosecutorial charging that are critical to understanding mass incarceration.

 

 

          *     Associate Dean of Faculty Research and Development, Presidential Scholar and Professor of Law, University of Utah College of Law. We thank the Yale University Institution for Social and Policy Studies for their support of this project (Yale ISPS ID P20-001). Christopher Robertson was critical to the underlying empirical work discussed in this Article. We appreciate the feedback received at the Annual Center for Empirical Legal Studies Conference hosted at the University of Michigan. Special thanks to John Rappaport, Sonja Starr, Rachel Barkow, Carissa Hessick, Darryl Brown, Sim Gill, Andrew Ferguson, Jeffrey Bellin, L. Song Richardson, Cathy Hwang, Andy Hessick, Christopher Griffin, Ron Wright, and John Pfaff. We appreciate the comments of the Rocky Mountain Junior Conference, and the University of Utah faculty research grant for making this research possible. I am grateful for research assistance from Jacqueline Rosen, Alyssa Campbell, Amylia Brown, Carley Herrick, Tyler Hubbard, Emily Mabey, Olivia Ortiz, Haden Gobel, Hope Collins, Rebekah Watts, Melissa Bernstein, Alicia Brillon, Kerry Lohmeier and Ross McPhail. I am grateful for the careful editing from the Southern California Law Review staff and editors, especially Caleb Downs, Tia Kerkhof, Mindy Vo, and Samuel Clark-Clough. I am especially thankful for empirical support from Jessica Morrill. We are thankful to all of the prosecutors who nationally participated in this experiment. IRB 69654 (University of Utah).

   †        Assistant Professor of Law, Medicine, and Sociology, Penn State Law and Penn State College of Medicine; Adjunct Assistant Professor of Medical Ethics in Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College. Thanks to Laureen O’Brien, Ellen Hill, Leann Jones, Danielle Curtin, and Joseph Radochonski for research assistance during data collection. Thanks to Veronica Rosenberger for assistance with qualitative data analysis.

 

 

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A Dose of Dignity: Equitable Vaccination Policies for Incarcerated People and Correctional Staff During the COVID-19 Pandemic by Itay Ravid, Jordan M. Hyatt, and Steven L. Chanenson

Postscript | Government
A Dose of Dignity: Equitable Vaccination Policies for Incarcerated People and Correctional Staff During the Covid-19 Pandemic
by Itay Ravid*, Jordan M. Hyatt†, and Steven L. Chanenson‡

Vol. 95, Postscript (September 2021)
95 S. Cal. L. Rev. Postscript 1 (2021)

Keywords: Criminal Law, Public Health, Government

Since its emergence in early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has altered the lives of millions of Americans. As it so often is during times of crisis, our most vulnerable communities have disproportionately suffered and were overlooked. Among these myriad communities, incarcerated people became a particularly potent symbol of our failure to handle the spread of the virus. In December 2020, a beacon of hope emerged with the introduction of new cutting-edge vaccines which promised to bring the world back to where it was just a year-and-a-half ago. Here again, however, policy and politics have led states to adopt different distribution plans that, broadly speaking, deprioritized incarcerated populations and in some cases correctional staff as well. While vaccinations are now much more widespread, things were dramatically different not too long ago. The first goal of this Essay is to ensure we memorialize how society, once again, failed to protect our incarcerated communities when they needed it the most. To illustrate this, we offer a data-driven analysis of the early state-level policies regarding vaccinations of people who live and work in prisons. Our findings show that vaccination policies tended to systematically ignore or disadvantage incarcerated individuals. We argue that by adopting such policies, states have neglected to comply with their legal obligations, grounded in existing and emerging Eighth Amendment jurisprudence and long-standing ethical responsibilities to proactively vaccinate this population. This is particularly true given that prisons are among the high-risk “congregate settings” that are widely recognized by health experts, and often by the states themselves, as deserving of immediate distribution of vaccines. Based on these obligations, and given recent new virus outbreaks and the realization that some form of COVID-19 is here to stay (and other pandemics may be around the corner), this Essay concludes with recommendations for the future.

____________________

*. Assistant Professor of Law, Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law.
†. Associate Professor of Criminology and Justice Studies, Director, Center for Public Policy,

Drexel University.
‡. Professor of Law, Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law. The authors would

like to thank Kristi Arty and Michael Slights for their terrific research assistance, and the SCLR editorial team for their careful and diligent work. Research for this Article was conducted with support provided to Dr. Hyatt (Drexel University) by Arnold Ventures. The views expressed in this Article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the funder or any of the authors’ respective academic institutions.

 

 

A Criminal Law Based on Harm Alone: The Story Of California Criminal Justice Reform by Joshua Kleinfeld & Thomas Hoyt

Article | Criminal Law
A Criminal Law Based On Harm Alone: The Story of California Criminal Justice Reform

by Joshua Kleinfeld* & Thomas Hoyt

From Vol. 94, No. 1
94 S. Cal. L. Rev. 35 (2020)

Keywords: Criminal Law, California Law, State Law

 

For many criminal justice reformers, the Holy Grail of change would be a criminal system that ends the war on drugs; punishes minor property and public order offenses without incarceration (or does not handle them criminally at all); and reserves prison mainly for violent offenders. What few appreciate is that California over the last nine years has done exactly that, and the results are breathtaking in their magnitude and suddenness: from 2011 to 2019, California released 55,000 people convicted mostly of nonviolent offenses (a quarter to a third of all California prisoners) and has been declining imprisonment—which often means declining arrest and prosecution altogether—for tens of thousands more who likely would have been imprisoned a decade ago. The changes happened piecemeal; this Article is the first to put the whole picture together. But we are now in a position to describe and evaluate the whole.

We come to three conclusions. First, California criminal justice reform reduced incarceration without increasing violence, but in so doing increased property crime, public drug use, street-level disorder, and likely homelessness to such an extent as to change the texture of everyday life in some California cities, including Los Angeles and San Francisco. Second, these changes alter the relationship between individual and state substantially enough to constitute a new social contract: California has gone farther than any other American state toward a society based on John Stuart Mill’s harm principle.

Third, this array of costs and benefits is complex and nuanced enough that it is not irrational or otherwise normatively illegitimate for someone to think them either justice-enhancing or -diminishing, good for human welfare or bad for it. But what unequivocally redeems California’s new policies for California are their democratic credentials: they were accomplished through a series of elections over multiple years at multiple levels of government with a high degree of public deliberation. Criminal justice democratizers and strong proponents of federalism should endorse what California has done as a matter of political self-determination. But they might rationally not want the same thing for their own states.

*. Professor of Law and (by courtesy) Philosophy, Northwestern University. †. JD Candidate, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law.

 

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Prosecution or Forced Transport: Manhattan Beach’s Unconstitutional Banishment of the Homeless

Postscript | Constitutional Law
Prosecution or Forced Transport: Manhattan Beach’s Unconstitutional Banishment of the Homeless
by Jared Osborne*

Vol. 93, Postscript (April 2020)
93 S. Cal. L. Rev. Postscript 70 (2020)

Keywords: Constitutional Law, Ordinance No. 18-0020, Manhattan Beach 

 

It is apparent that an individual’s decision to remain in a public place of his choice is as much a part of his liberty as the freedom of movement inside frontiers that is a part of our heritage. – City of Chicago v. Morales[1]

  Introduction

On September 4, 2018, the Manhattan Beach City Council unanimously passed Ordinance No. 18-0020.[2] The ordinance states, in relevant part: “It shall be unlawful and a public nuisance for any person to camp” on public property.[3] Its stated purposes, among other things, are to keep all public areas “readily accessible and available . . . for their intended purposes”[4] and to promote the “health, safety, environment and general welfare of the community.”[5] Violating the ordinance may be punished as either a misdemeanor or an infraction at the city attorney or city prosecutor’s discretion.[6]

Coincidentally, on the same day the ordinance was passed, the Ninth Circuit held in Martin v. City of Boise that “as long as there is no option of sleeping indoors, the government cannot criminalize indigent, homeless people for sleeping outdoors, on public property, on the false premise they had a choice in the matter.”[7] The court concluded, “a municipality cannot criminalize such behavior consistently with the Eighth Amendment when no sleeping space is practically available in any shelter.”[8]

In turn, Manhattan Beach announced that it would only enforce the ordinance if an individual refused shelter.[9] However, the city failed to mention that Manhattan Beach lacks homeless shelters and that the city planned to have police transport individuals to shelters in other municipalities.[10] Further, many of its neighboring cities also lack homeless shelters,[11] and those that do are over ten miles away.[12] It is unclear what enforcement actions the city has taken pursuant to the ordinance since it has passed.[13] However, the city did join thirty-two other California counties and cities in an amicus brief petitioning the Supreme Court for review of the Ninth Circuit’s Martin decision, which was denied.[14]

Nonetheless, should Manhattan Beach choose to enforce its anti-camping ordinance as planned, this paper argues that doing so would unconstitutionally force individuals to choose between criminal prosecution or banishment. Part I of this paper will briefly provide an overview of homelessness in the United States, particularly in California, and place the Manhattan Beach ordinance within the various laws and practices localities have implemented in response to the rise of homelessness. Part II will examine the use of banishment in criminal law and explore various challenges to such conditions. Finally, Part III will demonstrate that Manhattan Beach’s ordinance and planned enforcement constitute banishment and are invalid for many of the same reasons courts have used to invalidate conditions of banishment imposed in criminal law.

I.  Background

Manhattan Beach’s potential transportation of the homeless out of its jurisdiction should not be viewed in isolation. Instead, it should be evaluated within the current state of homelessness and the laws and practices used to criminalize and control the homeless.

A.  Current State of Homelessness

Before discussing homelessness in America, it is important to understand the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (“HUD”) definitions of homelessness and its Point-In-Time Count. According to HUD, “homeless describes a person who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence,” “sheltered homelessness refers to people who are staying in emergency shelters, transitional housing programs, or safe havens,” “unsheltered homelessness refers to people whose primary nighttime location is a public or private place not designated for, or ordinarily used as, a regular sleeping accommodation for people,” and “Point-in-Time Counts” (“PIT”)  “are unduplicated [one]-night estimates of both sheltered and unsheltered homeless populations” done every year by local planning bodies during the last week of January.[15]

In 2019, HUD’s PIT counted 567,715 people experiencing homelessness.[16] Approximately 62 percent (356,422) were sheltered while the other 38 percent (211,293) were unsheltered.[17] In California, the PIT counted 151,278 individuals experiencing homelessness,[18] but only 136,839 year-round beds.[19]

HUD’s numbers most likely undercount the homeless population. First, the PIT count of unsheltered individuals uses visual counting, resulting in a sizeable portion of the homeless population being excluded from the statistics on account of being unseen.[20] Second, HUD’s measures do not include either those living with others in temporary “doubled up” situations or those who are currently incarcerated or institutionalized but were homeless prior to arrest.[21] Therefore, it is unsurprising that the population has been estimated to be between 2.5 to 10.2 times greater than the PIT count.[22]

Certain localities have seen dramatic growth in not just the numbers of homeless but also the visibility and awareness of such individuals. For instance, the number of unique homeless encampments reported in the media from 2007 to 2016 has increased by 1,342 percent.[23] While some of these encampments are temporary, many others became at least semi-permanent if not fully permanent fixtures within cities.[24]

B.  Punitive Response to Rise of Homeless Population

In response to these overwhelming numbers, cities have largely favored punitive measures over less costly rehabilitative ones.[25] These measures roughly fit into four categories[26]: (1) ordinances prohibiting sitting, lying down, sleeping, or camping in public places; (2) anti-panhandling laws; (3) trespass admonishments and exclusionary orders; (4) homeless encampment sweeps.

Many cities—like Manhattan Beach—have enacted ordinances banning or limiting a citizen’s ability to sit, sleep, or camp in public places. According to the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty’s (“NLCHP”) 2016 survey of 187 cities across the country, 18.2 percent of cities banned sleeping in public city-wide and 26.7 percent prohibited sleeping in particular public places. Moreover, the same survey found that 32.6 percent of cities surveyed restricted camping in public city-wide and 49.7 percent did so in particular areas.

Boise, Idaho’s ordinances on sitting, lying, and sleeping in public places—challenged by plaintiffs in Martin—are illustrative of such laws. One law makes “standing, lying, or sitting down on any of the sidewalks, streets, alleys or public places” in an obstructive manner a misdemeanor upon refusal of an authority’s request to “immediately move on.”[27] Sleeping and camping are also covered:

It shall be unlawful for any person to use any of the streets, sidewalks, parks or public places as a camping place at any time . . . . The term “camp” or “camping” shall mean the use of public property as a temporary or permanent place of dwelling, lodging or residence, or as a living accommodation at any time between sunset and sunrise, or as a sojourn.[28]

As NLCHP’s survey demonstrates, Boise is not an anomaly.[29] Consequently, a 2016 survey found that 75 percent of homeless people do not know a place where it is safe and legal for them to sleep.[30] These laws collectively punish the homeless for engaging in the elementary human need for rest and sleep.

Panhandling and loitering laws further allow the state to exert control over the homeless.[31] The following example from the Los Angeles Municipal Code exemplifies this approach:

No person shall stand in or upon any street, sidewalk or other public way open for pedestrian travel or otherwise occupy any portion thereof in such a manner as to annoy or molest any pedestrian thereon or so as to obstruct or unreasonably interfere with the free passage of pedestrians.[32]

 Other localities, such as Bakersfield, California, more specifically target panhandling, by making “aggressive” panhandling a crime in any public place and placing time and manner restrictions on non-aggressive forms of soliciting.[33] Critics contend that cities have used the wide-ranging latitude such ordinances offer to “target and harass” the homeless for the simple and involuntary act of being in public.[34]

Trespass admonishments are different from previously discussed measures in that they involve private business interests using the power of the state to ban unwanted individuals from private, semi-public, and public locations, including “the public transportation system, hospitals and religious institutions, libraries and recreation centers, neighborhood stores, and social service agencies.”[35] In these arrangements, private businesses band together and deputize local police officers to banish “unauthorized” individuals from places for up to one year under threat of arrest, prosecution, and conviction for violating the trespass admonishment.[36] Likewise, exclusion orders provide localities with another method to keep out homeless individuals from certain areas. For example, in Seattle, any individual violating one of the many rules governing behavior in public parks can be subject to an exclusion order prohibiting entry into the park—and possibly all city owned parks—for up to a year.[37]

Finally, in response to the rise of homeless encampments, cities have resorted to forcibly removing and clearing out these campsites.[38] These sweeps frequently result in the destruction or confiscation of people’s only property, including important items such as tents, sleeping bags, valuables, documents, and even medications.[39] Cities argue that these sweeps are necessary to limit crime, prevent environmental degradation, and promote public health.[40] While these sweeps do allow a city to clean areas,[41] they do so at a steep budgetary and human cost.[42] Even worse, there is evidence that these sweeps are an ineffective means to clear out areas[43] or induce individuals to seek out shelters.[44]

II.  Banishment Overview

A.  Banishment in the Criminal Context

Historically, banishment was a form of punishment whereby an individual was deported and exiled from a specific area, typically a state or country.[45] As others have noted,[46] perhaps the most famous banishment known to Western culture occurred when God banished Adam and Eve from Eden.[47] The Greeks, Romans, Chinese and Russians applied such punishment throughout the world.[48] Furthermore, this tradition was prevalent during colonial times as England “transported” criminals to the colonies.[49]

While it is often viewed as an outdated and primitive mode of punishment, banishment is not unheard of in the United States.[50] Today, banishment conditions are generally encountered as a condition imposed on parole, probation, or suspended sentence.[51] It has been theorized that banishment promotes rehabilitation, deterrence, and public safety.[52] Banishment conditions vary in degree and scope, ranging from state exile[53] to banishment from smaller delineated geographic areas within cities.[54]

Despite the continued use of banishment in the United States, the majority of jurisdictions have found at least some forms of banishment to be void, especially in cases involving interstate banishment and banishment by deportation.[55] In fact, twenty-seven of the thirty-six state courts that have evaluated the legality of banishment orders have held that at least some forms of banishment are illegal.[56] Generally, the larger the area a banishment order covers, the increased likelihood a court will find that the condition is void.[57] Each of the seven state courts that have reviewed banishment conditions requiring a defendant to self-deport from the United States as a condition of probation or suspended sentence have overturned such conditions because they violated the Supremacy Clause and exceeded the trial court’s judicial authority.[58] Further, all fifteen state courts that have ruled on state banishment as a condition of probation or suspension of a sentence have found it illegal.[59] However, at least five states distinguish conditions of parole or pardon from conditions of probation or suspension of a sentence, primarily arguing that banishment is a valid condition of parole and pardon because both involve an individual voluntarily agreeing to the banishment condition.[60]

As for multi-county, county, and city banishments, the results are more mixed. No court has held they are per se illegal, though seven of the ten appellate state courts that have reviewed such conditions have refused to uphold a county or city-wide banishment order.[61]

More limited banishment restrictions—specific areas within a city—have been viewed less suspiciously by courts. In five states, such narrower restrictions have been upheld in every instance these types of banishments were challenged.[62] On the other hand, Alaska and Illinois have both invalidated and upheld intracity restrictions dependent on the attendant circumstances,[63] while California, Florida, and Minnesota have voided intracity banishment conditions each time they have been challenged.[64]

At the state constitutional level, fifteen state constitutions explicitly prohibit interstate banishment,[65] and another six state constitutions forbid banishment without some form of due process.[66]

Federal courts have largely followed the same pattern as state courts—exhibiting a decreasing reluctance to void banishment orders the more limited their scope. The two federal district courts to have ruled on the legality of state banishments as conditions of probation each determined that banishment from an entire state is unconstitutional.[67] On the other hand, in 1983, the Ninth Circuit upheld a parole condition requiring a defendant—a resident of Washington prior to incarceration—to complete parole in Iowa, and not enter Washington without the parole commissioner’s permission.[68] There, the court reasoned that the constitutional right to travel is not “revived by the change in status from prisoner to parolee.”[69] In 1982, an Ohio district court held, under the “very peculiar circumstances” of the case, that a convict’s commutation granted by the governor—conditioned upon state banishment—was valid because the defendant waived his constitutional rights when accepting the commutation, and moreover, the government may impose certain conditions of liberty on individuals released early.[70]

Like state courts, federal courts are much more likely to uphold conditions of banishment from a county or specific area within a state than those banishing an offender from an entire state. The First,[71] Third,[72] Sixth,[73] Ninth,[74] and Eleventh Circuits[75] as well as the Southern District of Mississippi[76] have all upheld conditions banishing an individual from a particular county on grounds that such conditions were authorized by Federal statute, reasonably related to rehabilitation, not contrary to public policy, or some combination of these factors.[77]

Federal and state courts, in addition to various legal authorities, disagree on what constitutes banishment.[78] For example, an Oregon court held:

Banishment, however, has traditionally been “synonymous with exilement or deportation, importing a compulsory loss of one’s country.” The 90-day exclusion at issue here differs from traditional banishment in two important respects. First, it is of limited duration. Second, it does not involve loss of one’s country or even one’s place of residence or one’s ability to carry out lawful business within the drug free zones. As noted, variances are available for those who live within the drug free zones or have legitimate business there.[79]

On the other hand, the Supreme Court of Arkansas defined banishment “as an order which compels a person ‘to quit a city, place, or county for a specific period of time, or for life.’ ”[80] Generally, courts, like the Oregon court cited above, that apply a more extreme definition of banishment—an absolute, unqualified, and long-term ban from a large geographical area—are more likely to uphold banishment orders on a limited scale, whereas courts, like the Arkansas court cited above, that apply a less extreme definition of banishment, are less likely to uphold banishment orders.[81]

Johnson v. City of Cincinnati presents a unique example of generalized banishment. In Johnson, the Sixth Circuit held that an ordinance mandating banishment from all “public streets, sidewalks, and other public ways” within a city’s drug-exclusion zones for anyone arrested or taken into custody on certain drug-related offenses in these zones was unconstitutional.[82] Specifically, the court took issue with the ordinance’s lack of individualized consideration prior to exclusion,[83] and its infringement on the right to intrastate travel.[84]

Ketchum v. West Memphis also involved an individual being banished without a conviction or judicial order. In Ketchum, a man sufficiently stated a claim supporting a violation of his federal constitutional right to travel when he alleged police officers arrested him for loitering in West Memphis, Arkansas, drove him across the Mississippi River, and then “dumped” him in Memphis, Tennessee.[85]

B.  Challenges to Banishment Conditions

Banishments have been invalidated for: (1) infringing the constitutional right to travel,[86] (2) lacking a reasonable relation to rehabilitation,[87] (3) violating public policy,[88] and (4) exceeding the statutorily authorized range of punishment.[89]

Banishment conditions have been found to unconstitutionally infringe on an individual’s right to travel.[90] The Supreme Court has recognized a right to “be free to travel throughout the length and breadth of our land uninhibited by statutes, rules, or regulations which unreasonably burden or restrict this movement.”[91] While the right to interstate travel is a fundamental freedom, not all courts apply a strict scrutiny analysis to banishment as a condition of parole, probation, suspended sentence, or pardon.[92] Some apply rational review[93] and others strict scrutiny.[94] Further, parolees may be subject to harsher travel restrictions than what could be imposed on a citizen not on parole.[95]

One potential reason why courts are more likely to uphold county or city banishment orders over state banishment orders could be a reluctance to explicitly recognize a constitutional intrastate right to travel.[96] The Supreme Court has not ruled on whether there is an implicit right to intrastate travel inherent from the right to interstate travel.[97] However, multiple state and federal courts have expressly found such a right, including California,[98] Washington, Wyoming, Wisconsin, Hawaii, Minnesota, and New York at the state level and the Sixth Circuit[99] at the federal level.[100] “[T]he right to intrastate travel (which includes intramunicipal travel) is a basic human right protected by the United States and California Constitutions as a whole. Such a right is implicit in the concept of a democratic society and is one of the attributes of personal liberty under common law.”[101] Moreover, “[i]t would be meaningless to describe the right to travel between states as a fundamental precept of personal liberty and not to acknowledge a correlative constitutional right to travel within a state.”[102]

Given that many courts do not recognize a fundamental right to travel, or have held that probationers and parolees are subject to stricter restrictions on their constitutional rights, banishment orders have also been challenged as not being reasonably related to states’ dual goals to rehabilitate convicts and protect the public at large.[103] Generally, such challenges are roughly analyzed via an application of the attendant facts and circumstances of the underlying criminal offense, banishment, and the connection between the two. However, some courts, such as Washington[104] and Mississippi,[105] apply a specific set of factors to aid in this analysis. A Texas court held that “banishing appellant from the county . . . when he is broke and unemployed is not reasonably related to his rehabilitation,” especially considering the appellant was a resident of the area prior to his conviction for the unauthorized use of a vehicle.[106] On the other hand, a Wisconsin court upheld a banishment condition prohibiting a convicted stalker from entering a city where his victim resided because it was reasonably related to rehabilitation and the defendant had no reason to enter the city, making the banishment a mere “inconvenience.”[107]

In addition to challenging the penological purposes of a banishment order, courts have held that such orders violate public policy.[108] In 1930, the Michigan Supreme Court, in People v. Baum, articulated how interstate banishment violates public policy:

To permit one State to dump its convict criminals into another would entitle the State believing itself injured thereby to exercise its police and military power in the interest of its own peace, safety, and welfare, to repel such an invasion. It would tend to incite dissension, provoke retaliation, and disturb that fundamental equality of political rights among the several States which is the basis of the Union itself. Such a method of punishment . . . is impliedly prohibited by public policy.[109]

Baum is often cited when courts invalidate a banishment order on public policy grounds.[110] In 1946, a California court applied the same reasoning to invalidate county or city banishments on public policy grounds.[111] Conversely, state courts in Mississippi and Georgia have held that intrastate banishments do not violate public policy.[112]

Finally, banishments have been challenged for exceeding the range of punishment authorized by statute. “A common tenet of criminal law . . . is that the judge can only sentence the defendant to that which the legislature has deemed within the permissible range of punishment . . . .”[113] Thus, absent statutory authorization, a judge may not impose a condition of banishment on probation or suspension of a sentence.[114]

III.  Manhattan Beach’s Ordinance and Practices as an Illegal Form of Banishment

The Manhattan Beach Ordinance and its planned enforcement protocol is unconstitutional because it is a form of banishment, burdens the right to travel, is not reasonably related to rehabilitation or public safety, and violates public policy. This is true regardless of whether the city only enforces it when an individual in violation of the ordinance refuses transportation to a shelter arranged for by the city.

A.  The Manhattan Beach Ordinance and Enforcement Protocol Constitute Banishment

Banishment should be understood as “an order which compels a person ‘to quit a city, place, or county for a specific period of time, or for life.’ ”[115] By forcing a homeless individual to leave Manhattan Beach, the ordinance and its enforcement plan undoubtedly “compels” an individual to quit the city. Further, by arranging mandatory shelter services for the individual, the city has specified a period of time—at minimum overnight—the person may not return given that Manhattan Beach lacks homeless shelters. Despite the seemingly fleeting nature of the banishment involved—one might argue a homeless individual can return to Manhattan Beach after spending the night in a shelter—the realities of being homeless make the banishment substantial. By virtue of being impoverished and homeless, an individual forced to acquiesce to a police officer’s offer of relocation under threat of fine or imprisonment most likely lacks the resources to return in a timely manner. Furthermore, the homeless often have jobs they must return to,[116] nearby families or loved ones that require care or visitation, and vital social services close to where they live, albeit without shelter.[117] As researchers Katherine Beckett and Steve Herbert have documented in their interviews with homeless individuals in Seattle banished from certain city zones, ostensibly temporary and limited forms of banishment have a profound impact on the homeless akin to more traditional forms of banishment[118]

Furthermore, it should make no difference whether or not a person “chooses” to accept Manhattan Beach’s offer to accept shelter under threat of prosecution. Just as courts have ruled that a defendant’s “agreement” to a banishment condition on probation does not make it valid,[119] consent given by a homeless person—who unlike a probationer has not just been convicted of a crime—to accept shelter elsewhere does not make the forced transportation out of Manhattan Beach legal. Therefore, the relocation under threat of prosecution should be categorized as a form of banishment.

B.  The Ordinance and Mandated Shelter Beyond Manhattan Beach’s Jurisdiction is Invalid

California has recognized not only an intrastate but also an intra-municipal right to travel under the United States and California constitutions.[120] Therefore, one is precluded from arguing that the forced relocation to a nearby shelter is too geographically narrow to run afoul of the constitutionally provided right to travel. Moreover, while probationers, parolees and prisoners may be subject to “limitations on liberty from which ordinary persons are free,”[121] homeless individuals—like housed individuals—not convicted of a crime may not be. Given the Martin decision, Manhattan Beach cannot prosecute an individual for sleeping outside if the city lacks shelter beds. Therefore, homeless individuals in Manhattan Beach have not relinquished their full constitutional right to travel and the city would violate this right by mandating an individual leave a municipality where a person wants to remain.

While judges are often legally bound by sentencing guidelines requiring punishment to be reasonably related to rehabilitation and public safety at large, the Manhattan Beach City Council is generally not under such constraints when enacting ordinances and city practices. Nonetheless, the city should apply this type of analysis to its anti-camping ordinance. In this case, the homeless individual is not an incarcerated or supervised criminal, so the city should not be concerned with a criminal rehabilitation, but rather a more holistic rehabilitation aiming to help an individual obtain safe and stable housing. Unfortunately, Manhattan Beach’s plan as currently constructed will most likely fail to achieve this aim. As previously discussed, homeless people live in areas where they have social, familial, and employment ties. Thus, forcing someone to immediately accept shelter at a city determined location—potentially with no input from the homeless individual—seems to bear little relation to the goal of getting a person off the streets. At best it might be a temporary and shortsighted fix for the city at the expense of the individual. At worst, a person will refuse the offer and be arrested by the police, requiring the city to use its resources to house the individual in jail, waste administrative capacity on processing, and most likely end up with the individual back living unsheltered in its jurisdiction.[122] Instead of forcing an individual to choose between prosecution and forced relocation, the city should proactively apply city services, including its newly hired homeless liaison, to homeless prevention, not criminalization or banishment.

Additionally, Manhattan Beach’s planned policies are void for public policy for the same reasons criminal banishment orders violate public policy. It invokes the same problems identified by the Baum court in its critique of banishing criminals: sending one’s homeless to neighboring jurisdictions would most definitely “tend to incite dissension, provoke retaliation, and disturb that fundamental equality of political rights among the several States [or municipalities] which is the basis of the Union itself. Such a method of punishment . . . is impliedly prohibited by public policy.”[123]

Finally, Manhattan Beach’s planned enforcement exceeds the range of punishment provided by statutory authority. A violation of the ordinance is punishable “as a misdemeanor or an infraction at the discretion of the City Attorney or City Prosecutor.”[124] The ordinance does not authorize the forced relocation of an individual upon pain of punishment. Similar to how judicial banishment orders were found to exceed the court’s authority,[125] the city’s planned enforcement exceeds the city’s statutory authority. Further, a potential unlawful seizure could result should a person “accept” transportation to an area shelter.[126]

In conclusion, Manhattan Beach’s plan constitutes banishment because it impermissibly compels an individual to quit Manhattan Beach for a period of time. Furthermore, the planned practices are illegal because they unduly burden the constitutional rights of interstate and intrastate travel, are void for public policy, and exceed the statutorily authorized range of punishment. Finally, the city council should alter its practices given how its plan is not reasonably related to achieving a long-term decrease in the homeless population or increasing public safety.

 


[*] *.. Executive Senior Editor, Southern California Law Review, Volume 93; J.D. Candidate 2020, University of Southern California Gould School of Law; B.A. Art History 2009, New York University. Thank you to my wife, Allison, and my family and friends for all of their support. In addition, thank you to Professor Clare Pastore for her guidance not just during the drafting of this Note but throughout my time in law school. Finally, thank you to the talented Southern California Law Review editors for their excellent work.

 [1]. City of Chicago v. Morales, 527 U.S. 41, 54 (1999) (plurality opinion) (quoting Kent v. Dulles, 357 U.S. 116, 126 (1958)) (holding that an ordinance prohibiting a gang member from loitering in any public place with one or more people to be unconstitutionally vague).

 [2]. Manhattan Beach, Cal., Municipal Code ch. 4.140 (2019).

 [3]. Id. § 4.140.030.

 [4]. Id. § 4.140.010.

 [5]. Id.

 [6]. Id. § 4.140.130.

 [7]. Martin v. City of Boise, 920 F.3d 584, 617 (9th Cir. 2019).

 [8]. Id. at 618.

 [9]. Homelessness, Manhattan Beach, https://www.citymb.info/government/city-manager/
homelessness [https://perma.cc/78KC-XQ6U] (“If the City has arranged for adequate and available shelter, and an individual chooses not to use it, the City will enforce the new Ordinance.”). The city steadfastly maintained its ability to enforce the ordinance. Emily Holland, Manhattan Beach Makes it Illegal to Live On the Street, Patch (Sept. 13, 2018, 10:10 AM), https://patch.com/california/manhattan
beach/anti-camping-ordinance-adopted-manhattan-beach [https://perma.cc/4F8J-3FAZ] (“The City still retains the authority to arrest any individual who has committed a crime, regardless of his or her status, and will continue to exercise that authority . . . .”).

 [10]. Mark McDermott, Anti-Camping Ordinances Aimed at Homeless under Scrutiny, Easy Reader News (Sept. 21, 2018), https://easyreadernews.com/anti-camping-ordinances-aimed-at-home
less-under-scrutiny [https://perma.cc/ZV8W-33UK] (“[T]here are no homeless shelters in Manhattan Beach. MBPD offers homeless transport to regional homeless shelters.”).

 [11]. This author’s search could not locate any homeless shelters in the nearby cities of El Segundo, Redondo Beach, Hermosa Beach, or Gardena.

 [12]. For example, the Doors of Hope Women’s Shelter in Wilmington, California, is a 15.9 mile drive from Manhattan Beach’s city center; the Beacon Light Mission, also in Wilmington, is a 16.5 mile drive; and Jordan’s Disciples Community Service is 16.9 miles from Manhattan Beach.

 [13]. The author’s email to the city’s homeless liaison went unanswered.

 [14]. For this brief, see generally Brief for Cal. State Ass’n of Counties & 33 Cal. Counties & Cities as Amici Curiae Supporting Petitioner, 140 S. Ct. 674 (2019) (No. 19-247) (mem.).

 [15]. U.S. Dep’t of Hous. & Urban Dev., Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress pt. 1, at 2–3 (2017), https://files.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/2017-AHAR-Part-1.pdf [https://perma.cc/EG3Q-DYRM].

 [16]. U.S. Dep’t of Hous. & Urban Dev., HUD 2019 Continuum of Care Homeless Assistance Programs Homeless Populations and Subpopulations: All States, Territories, Puerto Rico and District of Columbia 1 (2019), https://files.hudexchange.info/reports/published/
CoC_PopSub_NatlTerrDC_2019.pdf [https://perma.cc/HB2V-EJEM].

 [17]. Id.

 [18]. U.S. Dep’t of Hous. and Urban Dev., HUD 2019 Continuum of Care Homeless Assistance Programs Homeless Populations and Subpopulations: California 1 (2019), https://files.hudexchange.info/reports/published/CoC_PopSub_State_CA_2019.pdf [https://perma.cc/M
9N8-FHF6].

 [19]. U.S. Dep’t of Hous. and Urban Dev., HUD 2019 Continuum of Care Homeless Assistance Programs Homeless Housing Inventory Count Report: California 1 (2019), https://files.hudexchange.info/reports/published/CoC_HIC_State_CA_2019.pdf [https://perma.cc/727M
-ERDB].

 [20]. Nat’l Law Ctr. on Homelessness & Poverty, Don’t Count on It: How the HUD Point-in-Time Count Underestimates the Homeless Crisis 6 (2017), https://nlchp.org/wp-content/
uploads/2018/10/HUD-PIT-report2017.pdf [https://perma.cc/RE4P-ACTM] [hereinafter Don’t Count on It]. One New York study found that 31 percent of the homeless slept in areas “not visible” at the time of the count. Kim Hopper et al., Estimating Numbers of Unsheltered Homeless People Through Plant-Capture and Postcount Survey Methods, 98 Am. J. Pub. Health 1438, 1440 (2008).

 [21]. Don’t Count on It, supra note 20, at 6. Such exclusions are not trivial as Houston’s 2017 PIT count increased 57 percent when including individuals in county jails who reported being homeless at the time of arrest. Id.

 [22]. Id.

 [23]. Natl Law Ctr. on Homelessness & Poverty, Tent City, USA: The Growth of Americas Homeless Encampments and How Communities are Responding 7 (2017), https://nlchp.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Tent_City_USA_2017.pdf [https://perma.cc/K9N5-Y2D8] [hereinafter Tent City]; see also Phil Willon & Taryn Luna, Californias Homelessness Crisis Is ‘A Disgrace,Newsom Says in State of the State Address, L.A. Times (Feb. 19, 2020), https://www.latimes.com/homeless-housing/story/2020-02-19/governor-gavin-newsom-state-of-state-california-speech-homelessness [https://perma.cc/T84S-XNWX].

 [24]. See Tent City, supra note 23, at 7 (“Close to two-thirds of reports which recorded the time in existence of the encampments showed they had been there for more than one year, and more than one-quarter had been there for more than five years.”).

 [25]. See Natl Law Ctr. on Homelessness & Poverty, Housing Not Handcuffs 2019: Ending the Criminalization of Homelessness in U.S. Cities 71–73 (2019), https://nlchp.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/HOUSING-NOT-HANDCUFFS-2019-FINAL.pdf [https://perma.cc/U6EH-L5AS] (estimating that the annual cost per homeless person of arrests, jail stays, ER visits, and hospital stays costs Central Florida $31,000 in comparison to $10,000 per year to provide permanent housing and a case manager).

 [26]. Cf. Farida Ali, Note, Limiting the Poors Right to Public Space: Criminalizing Homelessness in California, 21 Geo. J. on Poverty L. & Poly 197, 212–16 (2014) (categorizing criminalization of homelessness into the following: (1) sleeping ordinances, (2) loitering ordinances, (3) panhandling ordinances, (4) sanitation ordinances).

 [27]. Boise, Idaho, City Code § 7-3A-1 (2019).

 [28]. Id. § 7-3A-2.

 [29]. See, e.g., Durango, Colo., Code of Ordinances § 17-60(c) (2019) (outlawing—with only limited exceptions—sitting, kneeling, reclining, or lying down “in the downtown business area upon any surface of any public right-of-way, or upon any bedding, chair, stool, or any other object placed upon the surface of any public right-of-way between the hours of 7:00 a.m. and 2:30 a.m. of the next day”); see also Santa Monica, Cal., Municipal Code § 4.08.095 (2020); Beverly Hills, Cal., City Code § 5-6-1501–5-6-1502 (2019); Seattle, Wash., Municipal Code § 18.12.250 (2020).

 [30]. W. Reg’l Advocacy Project, National Civil Rights Outreach Fact Sheet 2 (2016), https://wraphome.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/NationalCivilRightsFactSheetOctober2016.pdf [https://perma.cc/KLC8-2GJ4].

 [31]. Terry Skolnik, Homelessness and the Impossibility to Obey the Law, 43 Fordham Urb. L.J. 741, 759–61 (2016) (noting that while not all persons who panhandle are homeless, studies have shown that many panhandlers are).

 [32]. L.A., Cal., Municipal Code  § 41.18(a) (2019).

 [33]. Bakersfield, Cal., Municipal Code § 9.32.020 (2019).

 [34]. Ali, supra note 26, at 212–213.

 [35]. ABA Comm’n on Homelessness & Poverty, No Such Place as “Away:” Why Banishment is a Wrong Turn on the Path to Better and Safer Cities 1–2 (2010), https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/migrated/homeless/PublicDocuments/ABA_CHP_Banishment_White_Paper_February_2010.pdf [https://perma.cc/4TYY-GWGU].

 [36]. Id. at 1.

 [37]. Id. at 2.

 [38]. Natl Coal. for the Homeless, Swept Away: Reporting on the Encampment Closure Crisis 2 (2016), http://nationalhomeless.org/publication/view/swept-away-2016 [https://perm
a.cc/7FEQ-HGTX
].

 [39]. Id.; see also Jennifer Wadsworth, San Jose Dramatically Increases Sweeps of Homeless Camps, San Jose Inside, (Nov. 2, 2018), http://www.sanjoseinside.com/2018/11/02/san-jose-dramatically-increases-sweeps-of-homeless-camps [https://perma.cc/PV6N-W75X].

 [40]. Natl Coal. for the Homeless, supra note 38, at 5.

 [41]. Dakota Smith, L.A. Wants More Money for Homeless Encampment Sweeps, L.A. Times (Feb. 21, 2018, 4:00 AM), http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-homeless-clean-backlog-20180221-story.html [https://perma.cc/7QC3-5WQ6].

 [42]. Office of the City Auditor, Report to the City Council City of San Jose, Audit of the City’s Homeless Assistance Programs 41 (2018), https://www.sanjoseca.gov/Home/Show
Document?id=33914 [https://perma.cc/TT3P-QZQK]. The City of San Jose spent over two million dollars during the 2017–2018 fiscal year. Id. at 37.

 [43]. Laura Waxmann, Homeless Advocates Claim April Sweeps Led to More Encampment Complaints, S.F. Examr (May 25, 2018, 12:00 AM), http://www.sfexaminer.com/homeless-advocates-claim-april-sweeps-led-encampment-complaints [https://perma.cc/59KD-BHNC] (noting that an analysis of homeless encampment complaints in an area affected by a major sweep actually increased 8 percent the month after tents were removed).

 [44]. See Natl Coal. for the Homeless, supra note 38, at 7 (“Seattle’s Human Services Department admitted that the majority of campers displaced in sweeps did not end up in city shelters, and a Honolulu survey revealed that more encampment residents stated that sweeps made them less likely or able to seek shelter than the reverse.” (footnote omitted)).

 [45]. 1 Shirelle Phelps & Jeffrey Lehman, Wests Encyclopedia of American Law 462 (2d ed. 2005).

 [46]. Jason S. Alloy, Note, “158-County Banishment in Georgia: Constitutional Implications Under the State Constitution and the Federal Right to Travel, 36 Ga. L. Rev. 1083, 1085 (2002).

 [47]. Genesis 3:22–23 (New International Version).

 [48]. Phelps & Lehman, supra note 45, at 462.

 [49]. Id.

 [50]. See Brian McGinnis, This Is Why Some U.S. Judges Banish Convicts From Their Home Communities, Wash. Post (Mar. 16, 2017, 4:00 AM), https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/03/16/this-is-why-some-u-s-judges-banish-convicts-from-their-home-communities/?no
redirect=on&utm_term=.1b630b8931b2 [https://perma.cc/6TET-JPVD] (“Houston County, for instance, has banished more than 500 people since 1998.”).

 [51]. Robert E. Haffke, Note, Intrastate Banishment: An Examination and Argument for Strict Scrutiny of Judicially and Executively Imposed Banishment Orders, 57 Case W. Res. L. Rev. 896, 903 (2007).

 [52]. Id. at 903–08.

 [53]. Reeves v. State, 5 S.W.3d 41, 42 (Ark. 1999) (reviewing an appeal of a seven-year exile from the state of Arkansas as a probation condition imposed on a defendant convicted of stalking).

 [54]. State v. Morgan, 389 So. 2d 364, 366 (La. 1980) (affirming a special probation condition that banned a defendant convicted of prostitution from the French Quarter neighborhood for the length of the defendant’s probation).

 [55]. Wm. Garth Snider, Banishment: The History of Its Use and a Proposal for Its Abolition Under the First Amendment, 24 New Eng. J. on Crim. & Civ. Confinement 455, 466 (1998) (“The majority of courts, both federal and state, which have addressed the legality of banishment, have held that banishment is illegal.”).

 [56]. See Brown v. State, 660 So. 2d 235, 236 (Ala. Crim. App. 1995); Jones v. State, 727 P.2d 6, 7–9 (Alaska Ct. App. 1986); Reeves, 5 S.W.3d at 44–45; Alhusainy v. Super. Ct., 48 Cal. Rptr. 3d 914, 919 (Ct. App. 2006); State ex rel. Baldwin v. Alsbury, 223 So. 2d 546, 547 (Fla. 1969); People v. Harris, 606 N.E.2d 392, 397 (Ill. App. Ct. 1992); Burnstein ex rel. Burnstein v Jennings, 4 N.W.2d 428, 429 (Iowa 1942); Weigand v. Commonwealth, 397 S.W.2d 780, 781 (Ky. Ct. App. 1965); State v. Sanchez, 462 So. 2d 1304,1309–10 (La. Ct. App. 1985); Howard v. State, No. 1909, 2016 Md. App. LEXIS 1370, at *37–38 (Md. Ct. Spec. App. Oct. 12, 2016) (unpublished); Commonwealth v. Pike, 701 N.E.2d 951, 960–61 (Mass. 1998); People v. Baum, 231 N.W. 95, 96 (Mich. 1930); State ex rel. Halverson v. Young, 154 N.W.2d 699, 701–02 (Minn. 1967); Mackey v. State, 37 So. 3d 1161, 1166–67 (Miss. 2010); State v. Muhammad, 43 P.3d 318, 324 (Mont. 2002); Ex parte Thornberry, 254 S.W. 1087, 1089–1090 (Mo. 1923); State v. J. F., 621 A.2d 520, 522 (N.J. Super. Ct. App. Div. 1993); State v. Charlton, 846 P.2d 341, 344 (N.M. Ct. App. 1992); People v. Marcial, 577 N.Y.S.2d 316, 317 (App. Div. 1991); State v. Doughtie, 74 S.E.2d 922, 924 (N.C. 1953); State v. Mose, No. 11CA0083-M, 2013 Ohio App. LEXIS 562, at *7 (Ohio Ct. App. Feb. 25, 2013); State v. Jacobs, 692 P.2d 1387, 1389 (Or. Ct. App. 1984); State v. Karan, 525 A.2d 933, 934 (R.I. 1987); State v. Baker, 36 S.E. 501, 502 (S.C. 1900); Johnson v. State, 672 S.W.2d 621, 623 (Tex. Ct. App. 1984); State v. Schimelpfenig, 115 P.3d 338, 339 (Wash. Ct. App. 2005): Crabtree v. State, 112 P.3d 618, 622 (Wyo. 2005).

 [57]. See, e.g., Schimelpfenig, 115 P.3d at 339 (“An order banishing an individual from a large geographical area is bound to raise both societal and legal concerns.”).

 [58]. See In re Babak S., 22 Cal. Rptr. 2d 893, 898 (Ct. App. 1993); Weigand, 397 S.W.2d at 781; Sanchez, 462 So. 2d at 1309–1310; State v. Pando, 921 P.2d 1285, 1286–87 (N.M. Ct. App. 1996); Commonwealth v. Nava, 966 A.2d 630, 635–36 (Pa. Super. Ct. 2009); State v. Karan, 525 A.2d 933, 934 (R.I. 1987); Gutierrez v. State, 354 S.W.3d 1, 7 (Tex. Ct. App. 2011).

 [59]. Warren v. State, 706 So. 2d 1316, 1318 (Ala. Crim. App. 1997); Reeves,  5 S.W.3d at 44–45; Alhusainy, 48 Cal. Rptr. at 919; Burnstein, 4 N.W. 2d at 429; Harris, 606 N.E.2d at 397; Q.M. v. Commonwealth, 459 S.W.3d 360, 370 (Ky. 2015); Pike, 701 N.E.2d at 960–61; Baum, 231 N.W. at 96; Halverson, 154 N.W.2d at 701; J. F., 621 A.2d at 522; Charlton, 846 P.2d at 344; Marcial, 577 N.Y.S.2d at 317; Doughtie, 74 S.E.2d at 924; Mose, 2013 Ohio App. LEXIS 562l at *7; Baker, 36 S.E. at 502; Snider, supra note 55, at 466 (“Almost without exception, courts reviewing a plan of probation requiring a person to leave the state or a large geographical subdivision of the state, have found the plan to be illegal.”).

 [60]. Beavers v. State, 666 So. 2d 868, 871–72 (Ala. Crim. App. 1995) (holding county banishment was valid because there was no statutory or constitutional authority proscribing banishment as a condition of parole, the parole board had statutory authority to set parole rules, and had defendant turned down parole he would have faced banishment anyways, so there was no loss of liberty); Dougan v. Ford, No. 04-623, 2005 Ark. LEXIS 519, at *3–4 (Ark. Sept. 29, 2005) (holding a parole condition requiring defendant not return to a specific county valid because there was no constitutional right or entitlement to parole, the parole board was provided statutorily authorized discretion to set parole conditions, and defendant was free to decline and serve out his sentence instead); In re Petition for Cammarata, 67 N.W.2d 677, 682–83 (Mich. 1954); Ex parte Snyder, 159 P.2d 752, 754 (Okla. Crim. App. 1945); Mansell v. Turner, 384 P.2d 394, 395 (Utah 1963) (“If the conditional termination were void, petitioner has no complaint as to recommitment to prison, since the compact was nudum pactum.”); see also Snider, supra note 55, 466 (1998) (“[A] number of states have drawn a distinction between banishment as a condition of probation or suspension of sentence, and banishment as a condition of a pardon or parole.”).

 [61]. Alabama, California, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Washington and Wyoming have all rejected each county and city banishment reviewed. See Brown, 660 So. 2d at 236 (“Our statutes do not permit courts to impose sentences of banishment. Such an agreement is beyond the jurisdiction of the court and is void.”); Ex parte Scarborough, 173 P.2d 825, 827 (Cal. Ct. App. 1946); Howard, 2016 Md. App. LEXIS 1370, at *37–38; Thornberry, 254 S.W. at 1089–90; Muhammad, 43 P.3d at 324; State v. Jerido, No. 1997CA00265, 1998 Ohio App. LEXIS 2482, at *2–3 (Ohio Ct. App. May 26, 1998); State v. Schimelpfenig, 115 P.3d 338, 341 (Wash. Ct. App. 2005); Crabtree, 112 P.3d at 622. On the other hand, Mississippi has both upheld and invalidated such banishments dependent on the circumstances of the case. See Mackey v. State, 37 So. 3d 1161, 1166­–67 (Miss. 2010) (holding that a condition prohibiting defendant from coming within 100 miles of a city for 30 years was invalid because the trial court’s order lacked factual findings in support of banishment); Cobb v. State, 437 So. 2d 1218, 1221 (Miss. 1983) (upholding banishment condition requiring defendant to stay at least 125 miles away from a county). Georgia and Wisconsin have upheld city or county banishments each time they have been reviewed.   De Terry v. Hamrick, 663 S.E.2d 256, 258–59 (Ga. 2008); State v. Nienhardt, 537 N.W.2d 123, 125–26 (Wis. Ct. App. 1995); State v. Johnson, No. 02-2793-CR, 2003 Wis. LEXIS App 188 (Wis. Ct. App. July 15, 2003) (unpublished), aff’d 681 N.W.2d 901 (Wis. 2004).

 [62]. People v. Brockelman, 933 P.2d 1315, 1320–21 (Colo. 1997); Tyson v. State, 687 S.E.2d 284, 287 (Ga. Ct. App. 2009); State v. Morgan, 389 So. 2d 364, 366 (La. 1980); State v. James, 978 P.2d 415, 419 (Or. Ct. App 1999); State v. McBride, 873 P.2d 589, 592–94 (Wash. Ct. App. 1994).

 [63]. For Alaska, compare Oyoghok v. Anchorage, 641 P.2d 1267, 1270–71(Alaska Ct. App. 1982) (holding that a two-block radius restriction as condition of probation for prostitution conviction was not overbroad as applied, was reasonably related to rehabilitation, and did not unduly impinge upon probationer’s liberty), with Jones v. State, 727 P.2d 6, 7–9 (Alaska Ct. App. 1986) (holding that a forty-five block restriction was invalid as there was no nexus between location and defendant’s crime and the banishment was unnecessarily severe and restrictive). For Illinois, compare People v. Pickens, 542 N.E.2d 1253, 1257 (Ill. App. Ct. 1989) (holding that banishment from a fifty-block area of downtown absent written permission from a probation officer was not invalid and was reasonable), with In re J.G., 692 N.E.2d 1226, 1229 (Ill. App. Ct. 1998) (holding that banishment was invalid because it was not reasonably related to rehabilitation).

 [64]. In re White, 158 Cal. Rptr. 562, 555–57 (Cal. Ct. App. 1979) (holding that a probation restricting a convicted prostitute from known areas of prostitution too broad and unrelated to rehabilitation, and thus unreasonable and unconstitutional); State ex rel. Baldwin v. Alsbury, 223 So. 2d 546, 547 (“[O]ut-of-town or informal banishment . . . from the city is cruel and unusual punishment and is prohibited by the Federal and Florida Constitutions.”); State v. Holiday, 585 N.W.2d 68, 71 (Minn. Ct. App. 1998) (holding that an order banning defendant from reentering all public housing within the city after a charge of minor trespass was an unconstitutional violation of defendant’s right of association).

 [65]. Snider, supra note 55, at 465; see also Ala. Const. art I, § 30 (“[N]o citizen shall be exiled.”); Ark. Const. art. II, § 21 (“[N]or shall any person, under any circumstances, be exiled from the State.”); Ga. Const. art. I, § 1, para. XXI (“Neither banishment beyond the limits of the state nor whipping shall be allowed as a punishment for crime.”); Ill. Const. art I, § 11 (“No person shall be transported out of the State for an offense committed within the State.”); Neb. Const. art. I, § 15 (“[N]or shall any person be transported out of the state for any offense committed within the state.”); Ohio Const. art. I, § 12 (“No person shall be transported out of the state, for any offense committed within the same.”); Tex. Const. art. I, § 20 (“No person shall be transported out of the State for any offense committed within the same.”); Vt. Const. ch. I, art. XXI (“[N]o person shall be liable to be transported out of this state for trial for any offence committed within the same.”); W. Va. Const. art. III, § 5 (“No person shall be transported out of, or forced to leave the State for any offence committed within the same.”).

 [66]. Snider, supra note 55, at 465. Md. Const. art. XXIV (“[N]o man ought to be . . . exiled . . . but by the judgment of his peers, or by the Law of the land.”); Mass. Const. pt. 1, art. XII (“No subject shall be . . . exiled . . . but by the judgment of his peers, or the law of the land.”); N.H. Const. pt. 1, art. XV (“No subject shall be . . . exiled . . . but by the judgment of his peers, or the law of the land.”); N.C. Const. art. I, § 19 (“No person shall be . . . exiled . . . but by the law of the land.”); Okla. Const. art. II, § 29 (“No person shall be transported out of the State for any offense committed within the State, nor shall any person be transported out of the state for any purpose, without his consent, except by due process of law.”); Tenn. Const. art I, § 8 (“[N]o man shall be . . . exiled . . . but by the judgment of his peers, or the law of the land.”).

 [67]. Rutherford v. Blankenship, 468 F. Supp. 1357, 1360 (W.D. Va. 1979) (holding that a ten-year banishment from Virginia was void on both public policy and cruel and unusual punishment grounds); Naked City, Inc. v. Aregood, 667 F. Supp. 1246, 1261 (S.D. Ind. 1987) (holding—without any reasoning provided—that a ten-year banishment from the state was in violation of the Constitution).

 [68]. Bagley v. Harvey, 718 F.2d 921, 924–25 (9th Cir. 1983).

 [69]. Id. The court also relied on the fact that the parolee suggested he complete parole in Iowa, and he was free to return to Washington after parole concluded.

 [70]. Carchedi v. Rhodes, 560 F. Supp. 1010, 1017–19 (S.D. Ohio 1982).

 [71]. United States v. Garrasteguy, 559 F.3d 34, 43–44 (1st. Cir. 2009) (upholding a condition of supervised release requiring defendants to not enter the county—without any exceptions­—where they distributed cocaine for eight and twelve years, respectively, despite the breadth of the banishment giving the court “pause”).

 [72]. United States v. Sicher, 239 F.3d 289, 292 (3d Cir. 2000) (upholding prohibition from two counties, with limited ability to enter with a probation officer’s permission, because it was reasonably related to the rehabilitative goal of keeping defendant away from influences that would engage her in further criminal activity).

 [73]. United States v. Alexander, 509 F.3d 253, 256–58 (6th Cir. 2007) (approving a requirement that defendant live hundreds of miles away from the city where his child and other family members reside after defendant had committed five supervised-release violations); United States v. Rantanen, 684 Fed. Appx. 517, 520–22 (6th Cir. 2017) (mem.) (upholding a special banishment condition from a county because geographic restrictions are expressly authorized by federal sentencing guidelines set out in 18 U.S.C. § 3563(b)(13) and the county restriction was not plain error despite the court’s discomfort with the nine-year length of banishment and lack of exceptions, such as obtaining permission to enter the county).

 [74]. United States v. Watson, 582 F.3d 974, 985 (9th Cir. 2009) (holding that a condition of supervised release to not return to San Francisco or a county for the entirety of defendant’s supervised release without permission of the probation officer was reasonably related to goals of rehabilitation and deterrence and was no broader than reasonably necessary to serve those purposes).

 [75]. United States v. Cothran, 855 F.2d 749, 753 (11th Cir. 1988) (upholding a banishment from a county because it was expressly authorized by statute and “simply not contrary to public policy”).

 [76]. Watts v. Brewer, No. 2:09cv122-KS-MTP, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 52775, at *26 (S.D. Miss. Mar. 16, 2012) (upholding a sentence suspended on condition defendant remain outside a hundred-mile radius from the courthouse because such a condition did not violate any constitutional rights).

 [77]. See infra notes 7176.

 [78]. See Peter Edgerton, Comment, Banishment and the Right to Live Where You Want, 74 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1023, 1039–40 (2007) (listing various definitions of banishment found in multiple legal dictionaries); Matthew D. Borrelli, Note, Banishment: The Constitutional and Public Policy Arguments Against This Revived Ancient Punishment, 36 Suffolk U. L. Rev. 469, 480–81 (2002–2003) (“The broadened definition of probation allows states to avoid calling punishment ‘banishment’ and escape the regulations that the courts set as precedent. This creates potential confusion over what banishment entails . . . .” (footnote omitted)).

 [79]. State v. James, 978 P.2d 415, 419 (Or. Ct. App 1999) (quoting Black’s Law Dictionary 131 (5th ed. 1979)).

 [80]. Reeves v. State, 5 S.W.3d 41, 45 (Ark. 1999) (quoting State v. Culp, 226 S.E.2d 841, 842 (N.C. Ct. App. 1976)).

 [81]. Key v. State, No. 01-01-01051-CR, 2002 Tex. App. LEXIS 7980, at *7 (Tex. Ct. App. Nov. 7, 2002) (unpublished) (holding that conditions requiring defendant to serve community supervision in a particular county and obtain permission to enter a separate county do not constitute banishment and are therefore valid).

 [82]. Johnson v. City of Cincinnati, 310 F.3d 484, 506 (6th Cir. 2002).

 [83]. Id. at 503.

 [84]. Id. at 498.

 [85]. Ketchum v. West Memphis, 974 F.2d 81, 83 (8th Cir. 1992).

 [86]. See, e.g., State v. Schimelpfenig, 115 P.3d 338, 339 (Wash. Ct. App. 2005) (“At the most, banishment orders encroach on an individual’s constitutional right to travel, which includes the right to travel within a state.”).

 [87]. Reeves v. State, 5 S.W.3d 41, 45 (Ark. 1999) (holding a seven-year exile from the state as a condition of probation is, among other things, “repugnant to the underlying policy of the probation law, which is to rehabilitate offenders without compromising public safety” (quoting State v. Young, 154 N.W.2d 699, 702 (1967)).

 [88]. See, e.g., People v. Baum, 231 N.W. 95, 96 (Mich. 1930) (“[Banishment] is impliedly prohibited by public policy.”).

 [89]. See e.g., People v. Blakeman, 339 P.2d 202, 202–03 (Cal. Ct. App. 1959) (“It was beyond the power of the court to impose banishment as a condition of probation. The provision therefor was a void and separable part of the order granting probation.”).

 [90]. In re Babak S., 22 Cal. Rptr. 2d 893, 898 (Ct. App. 1993); State v. Schimelpfenig, 115 P.3d 338, 339 (Wash. Ct. App. 2005).

 [91]. Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618, 629 (1969).

 [92]. Borrelli, supra note 78, 473; see also United States v. Soltero, 510 F.3d 858, 866 (9th Cir. 2007) (“A restriction on a defendant’s [constitutional right] is nonetheless valid if it: (1) ‘is reasonably related’ to the goals of deterrence, protection of the public, and/or defendant rehabilitation; (2) ‘involves no greater deprivation of liberty than is reasonably necessary’ to achieve these goals; and (3) ‘is consistent with any pertinent policy statements issued by the Sentencing Commission . . . .’ ” (citations omitted)).

 [93]. See, e.g., State v. Morgan, 389 So. 2d 364, 366 (La. 1980) (“[T]he condition of probation [of banishment from French Quarter neighborhood] is reasonably related to Ms. Morgan’s rehabilitation.”).

 [94]. See, e.g., Schimelpfenig, 115 P.3d at 339 (Wash. Ct. App. 2005) (“Because of its constitutional implications, we apply strict scrutiny in reviewing a banishment order.”).

 [95]. Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U.S. 471, 478 (1972).

 [96]. Haffke, supra note 51, at 919.

 [97]. Id. at 921; see also Johnson v. City of Cincinnati, 310 F.3d 484, 496 (6th Cir. 2002) (“The Supreme Court has not yet addressed whether the Constitution also protects a right to intrastate travel.”).

 [98]. In re White, 158 Cal. Rptr. 562, 567 (Ct. App. 1979) (holding that the intrastate right to travel, including an intramunicipal right to travel, are protected by the United States and California Constitutions).

 [99]. Johnson, 310 F.3d at 498 (“In view of the historical endorsement of a right to intrastate travel and the practical necessity of such a right, we hold that the Constitution protects a right to travel locally through public spaces and roadways.”).

 [100]. Haffke, supra note 51, at 922.

 [101]. In re White, 158 Cal. Rptr. at 567 (emphasis added).

 [102]. King v. New Rochelle Mun. Hous. Auth., 442 F.2d 646, 648 (2d Cir. 1971).

 [103]. See, e.g., State v. Nienhardt, 537 N.W.2d 123, 125–26 (Wis. Ct. App. 1995).

 [104]. State v. Schimelpfenig, 115 P.3d 338, 340–41 (Wash. Ct. App. 2005) (citing the following factors: “(1) whether the restriction is related to protecting the safety of the victim or witness of the underlying offense; (2) whether the restriction is punitive and unrelated to rehabilitation; (3) whether the restriction is unduly severe and restrictive because the defendant resides or is employed in the area from which he is banished; (4) whether the defendant may petition the court to temporarily lift the restriction if necessary; and (5) whether less restrictive means are available to satisfy the State’s compelling interest”).

 [105]. Mackey v. State, 37 So. 3d 1161, 1165 (Miss. 2010) (“[T]he banishment provision herein bears a reasonable relationship to the purposes of the suspended sentence or probation, that the ends of justice and the best interest of the public and the Defendant will be served by such banishment during the period of the suspended sentence, that the banishment provision of the suspended sentence does not violate the public policy of the State of Mississippi, that the banishment provision of the suspended sentence herein does not defeat the rehabilitative purpose of the probation and/or suspended sentence, and such provision does not violate the Defendant’s rights under the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution.” (citation omitted)).

 [106]. Johnson v. State, 672 S.W.2d 621, 623 (Tex. Ct. App. 1984).

 [107]. State v. Nienhardt, 537 N.W.2d 123, 125–26 (Wis. Ct. App. 1995).

 [108]. Borrelli, supra note 78, at 478–79; Haffke, supra note 51, at 910.

 [109]. People v. Baum, 231 N.W. 95, 96 (Mich. 1930); see also State v. Sanchez, 462 So. 2d 1304, 1310 (La. Ct. App. 1985) (“[T]he portion of trial judge’s sentence in the instant case which imposes banishment as a special condition of probation is unconstitutional.”); State v. Doughtie, 74 S.E.2d 922, 924 (N.C. 1922) (holding that a suspended sentence conditioned upon a two-year exile from the state for was void because it was effectively a banishment and such punishment is “not sound public policy to make other states a dumping ground for our criminals”).

 [110]. Snider, supra note 55, at 467–68; see also Rutherford v. Blankenship, 468 F. Supp. 1357, 1360 (W.D. Va. 1979) (“[Banishment] is impliedly prohibited by public policy.” (citing People v. Baum, 231 N.W. 95 (Mich. 1930))); Doughtie, 74 S.E.2d at 924 (N.C. 1953); State v. Charlton, 846 P.2d 341, 344 (N.M. Ct. App. 1992) (quoting Baum to support holding that state banishment violates public policy); State v. Gilliam, 262 S.E.2d 923, 924 (S.C. 1980) (holding a suspension of sentence conditioned on indefinite banishment from the state was invalid because it was beyond the power of a circuit judge and “such a sentence is impliedly prohibited by public policy”).

 [111]. Ex parte Scarborough, 173 P.2d 825, 827 (Cal. Dist. Ct. App. 1946) (“The same principle which prohibits the banishment of a criminal from a state or from the United States applies with equal force to a county or city.”).

 [112]. State v. Collett, 208 S.E.2d 472, 474 (Ga. 1974); Cobb v. State, 437 So. 2d 1218, 1221 (Miss. 1983).

 [113]. Snider, supra note 55, at 466.

 [114]. Brown v. State, 660 So. 2d 235, 236 (Ala. Crim. App. 1998) (“No. Our statutes do not permit courts to impose sentences of banishment. Such an agreement is beyond the jurisdiction of the court and is void.”); Ex parte Scarborough, 173 P.2d at 826; see also State ex rel. Baldwin v. Alsbury, 223 So. 2d 546, 547 (Fla. 1969) (“The court was without power to indefinitely suspend a sentence in return for petitioner’s promise to stay out of town.”); Weigand v Kentucky, 397 S.W.2d 780, 781 (Ky. 1965) (“The Commonwealth concedes it is beyond the power of a court to inflict banishment as an alternative to imprisonment.”); Bird v. State, 190 A.2d 804, 438 (Md. Ct. App. 1963) (“We hold therefore that the suspension of sentence conditioned on banishment was beyond the power of the trial court and void . . . .”).

 [115]. Reeves v. State, 5 S.W.3d 41, 45 (Ark. 1999) (quoting State v. Culp, 226 S.E.2d 841, 842 (N.C. Ct. App. 1976)).

 [116]. See, e.g., Metro. Wash. Council of Gov’ts, Homelessness in Metropolitan Washington 21–22 (2017) (noting that 22 percent of single homeless adults and 32 percent of adults in homeless families are employed).

 [117]. Katherine Beckett & Steve Herbert, Banished: The New Social Control in Urban America 115–16 (2010) (“For many others, though, the fear of going to jail was simply not enough to compel compliance [with exclusion orders]. This was not because they particularly enjoyed jail, but rather that the locales from which they were excluded housed many important amenities, including social networks, contacts, and relationships; social services; a sense of safety and security; and a place they called home.”).

 [118]. Id. “[The judge] said, ‘Oh, there are other places.’ I said, ‘Your Honor, I don’t know how, understand? This is my home.’” Id. at 115 (alteration in original). “I mean as far as being homeless, that’s the only area you know.” Id.

 [119]. Warren v. State, 706 So. 2d 1316, 1318 (Ala. Crim. App. 1997) (holding that it made no difference that the defendant had agreed to this condition as a term of his negotiated plea agreement because the defendant could not consent to a sentence that was beyond the authority of the trial court).

 [120]. In re White, 158 Cal. Rptr. 562, 556–57 (Ct. App. 1979).

 [121]. United States v. Consuelo-Gonzalez, 521 F.2d 259, 265 (9th Cir. 1975).

 [122]. See Beckett & Herbert, supra note 117, at 114. (“Many reported that they resisted their banishment order because they needed access to important services. In particular, both parks and [exclusionary] zones housed services that rendered compliance with an exclusion order impractical . . . .”).

 [123]. People v. Baum, 231 N.W. 95, 96 (Mich. 1930).

 [124]. Manhattan Beach, Cal., Municipal Code § 4.140.130 (2019).

 [125]. Warren v. State, 706 So. 2d 1316,  1318 (Ala. Crim. App. 1997) (holding that it made no difference that the defendant had agreed to this condition as a term of his negotiated plea agreement because the defendant could not consent to a sentence that was beyond the authority of the trial court).

 [126]. “[A] person has been ‘seized’ within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment only if, in view of all of the circumstances surrounding the incident, a reasonable person would have believed that he was not free to leave . . . .” United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U.S. 544, 554 (1980). In this case a reasonable person would not have believed he was free to leave. Moreover, under Martin, a homeless individual caught sleeping outside may not be prosecuted in Manhattan Beach because it has no shelter beds. Therefore, an arrest is improper and transportation to a nearby shelter would constitute a seizure.

Protectors of Predators or Prey: Bystanders and Upstanders Amid Sexual Crimes – Article by Zachary D. Kaufman

Article | Criminal Law
Protectors of Predators or Prey: Bystanders and Upstanders amid Sexual Crimes
by Zachary D. Kaufman*

From Vol. 92, No. 6 (September 2019)
92 S. Cal. L. Rev. 1317 (2019)

Keywords: Bad Samaritan Laws, Bystanders, Sexual Violence Prevention

 

Abstract

In the wake of widespread revelations about sexual abuse by Harvey Weinstein, Larry Nassar, and others, the United States is reckoning with the past and present and searching for the means to prevent and punish such offenses in the future. The scourge of sexual crimes goes far beyond instances perpetrated by powerful men; this misconduct is rampant throughout the country. In some of these cases, third parties knew about the abuse and did not try to intervene. Scrutiny of—and the response to—such bystanderism is increasing, including in the legal world.

In order to align law and society more closely with morality, this Article proposes a more holistic, aggressive approach to prompt involvement by third parties who are aware of specific instances of sexual crimes in the United States. This Article begins by documenting the contemporary scope of sexual crimes in the United States and the crucial role bystanders play in facilitating them.

The Article next provides an overview and assessment of “Bad Samaritan laws”: statutes that impose a legal duty to assist others in peril through intervening directly (also known as the “duty to rescue”) or notifying authorities (also known as the “duty to report”). Such laws exist in dozens of foreign countries and, to varying degrees, in twenty-nine U.S. states, Puerto Rico, U.S. federal law, and international law. The author has assembled the most comprehensive global database of Bad Samaritan laws, which provides an important corrective to other scholars’ mistaken claims about the rarity of such statutes, particularly in the United States. Despite how widespread these laws are in the United States, violations are seldom, if ever, charged or successfully prosecuted.

Drawing on historical research, trial transcripts, and interviews with prosecutors, judges, investigators, and “upstanders” (people who intervene to help others in need), the Article then describes four prominent cases in the United States involving witnesses to sexual crimes. Each case provides insight into the range of conduct of both bystanders and upstanders.

Because not all such actors are equal, grouping them together under the general categories of “bystanders” and “upstanders” obscures distinct roles, duties, and culpability for violating those duties. Drawing on the case studies, this Article thus presents original typologies of bystanders (including eleven categories or sub-categories), upstanders (including seven categories), and both kinds of actors (including four categories), which introduce greater nuance into these classifications and this Article’s proposed range of legal (and moral) responsibilities. These typologies are designed to maximize generalizability to crimes and crises beyond sexual abuse.

Finally, the Article prescribes a new approach to the duty to report on sexual abuse and possibly other crimes and crises through implementing a combination of negative incentives (“sticks”) and positive incentives (“carrots”) for third parties. These recommendations benefit from interviews with sexual violence prevention professionals, police, legislators, and social media policy counsel. Legal prescriptions draw on this Article’s typologies and concern strengthening, spreading, and standardizing duty-to-report laws at the state and territory levels; introducing the first general legal duty to report sexual crimes and possibly other offenses (such as human trafficking) at the federal level; exempting from liability one of the two main bystander categories the Article proposes (“excused bystanders”) and each of its six sub-categories (survivors, “confidants,” “unaware bystanders,” children, “endangered bystanders,” and “self-incriminators”); actually charging the other main bystander category the Article proposes (“unexcused bystanders”) and each of its three sub-categories (“abstainers,” “engagers,” and “enablers”) with violations of duty-to-report laws or leveraging these statutes to obtain testimony from such actors; and more consistently charging “enablers” with alternative or additional crimes, such as accomplice liability. Social prescriptions draw on models and lessons from domestic and foreign contexts and also this Article’s typologies to recommend, among other initiatives, raising public awareness of duty-to-report laws and creating what the Article calls “upstander commissions” to identify and “upstander prizes” to honor a category of upstanders the Article proposes (“corroborated upstanders”), including for their efforts to mitigate sexual crimes. A combination of these carrots and sticks could prompt would-be bystanders to act instead as upstanders and help stem the sexual crime epidemic.

*. Associate Professor of Law and Political Science, University of Houston Law Center, with additional appointments in the University of Houston’s Department of Political Science and Hobby School of Public Affairs. J.D., Yale Law School; D.Phil. (Ph.D.) and M.Phil., both in International Relations, Oxford University (Marshall Scholar); B.A. in Political Science, Yale University. Research for this Article, including fieldwork, was generously facilitated by a grant from Harvard University as well as institutional support from Stanford Law School (where the author was a Lecturer from 2017 to 2019) and the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government (where the author was a Senior Fellow from 2016 to 2019).

The author primarily thanks the following individuals for helpful comments and conversations: Will Baude; Frank Rudy Cooper; John Donohue; Doron Dorfman; George Fisher; Richard Ford; Jeannie Suk Gersen; Hank Greely; Chris Griffin; Oona Hathaway; Elizabeth D. Katz; Amalia Kessler; Tracey Meares; Michelle Mello; Dinsha Mistree; Mahmood Monshipouri; Joan Petersilia; Camille Gear Rich; Mathias Risse; Peter Schuck; Kathryn Sikkink; David Sklansky; Kate Stith; Mark Storslee; Allen Weiner; Robert Weisberg; Lesley Wexler; Alex Whiting; Rebecca Wolitz; Gideon Yaffe; audiences at Yale Law School, Stanford Law School, Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, Stanford University Center for International Security & Cooperation, University of Virginia School of Law, University of Southern California Gould School of Law, Louisiana State University Paul M. Hebert Law Center, Penn State Law, University of Hawai’i Richardson School of Law, West Virginia University College of Law, University of Sydney Law School, University of Western Australia Law School, South Texas College of Law, University of Houston Department of Political Science and Hobby School of Public Affairs, and Colorado College; audiences at the 2018 conferences of the Harvard Law School Institute for Global Law & Policy, Law & Society Association, American Political Science Association, International Studies Association, and Policy History Association; and audiences at the 2019 conferences of the Law & Society Association, International Studies Association, CrimFest (at Brooklyn Law School), and the Southeastern Association of Law Schools. The author is especially indebted to his students in the reading group at Stanford Law School on “The Law of Bystanders and Upstanders” he led in spring 2019: Jamie Fine, Katherine Giordano, Bonnie Henry, Jeremy Hutton, Allison Ivey, Andrew Jones, Azucena Marquez, Camden McRae, Sergio Sanchez Lopez, and Spencer Michael Schmider. The author also thanks the following individuals for their valuable feedback: Fahim Ahmed, Matthew Axtell, Maria Banda, Adrienne Bernhard, Isra Bhatty, Charles Bosvieux-Onyekwelu, Sara Brown, Ben Daus-Haberle, Brendon Graeber, Melisa Handl, Janhavi Hardas, Elliot Higgins, Hilary Hurd, Howard Kaufman, Linda Kinstler, Chris Klimmek, Tisana Kunjara, Gabrielle Amber McKenzie, Noemí Pérez Vásquez, Tanusri Prasanna, and Noam Schimmel.

The author is grateful to the following individuals for granting interviews for this Article: an anonymous attorney involved in the Steubenville case; an anonymous employee of the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office; an anonymous employee of the Massachusetts Sentencing Commission; Jake Wark of the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office in Massachusetts; Manal Abazeed, Jehad Mahameed, Mounir Mustafa, and Raed Saleh of the White Helmets/Syria Civil Defense; Naphtal Ahishakiye of IBUKA in Rwanda; Holocaust survivors Isaac and Rosa Blum; Gili Diamant and Irena Steinfeldt of Yad Vashem in Israel; Alexandria Goddard; Martin Niwenshuti of Aegis Trust in Rwanda; Lindsay Nykoluk of the Calgary Police Service in Canada; Ruchika Budhraja, Gavin Corn, Neil Potts, and Marcy Scott Lynn of Facebook; Jessica Mason of Google; and Regina Yau of the Pixel Project.

For thorough, thoughtful research assistance, the author thanks Chelsea Carlton, Michelle Katherine Erickson, Jana Everett, Thomas Ewing, Matthew Hines, Ivana Mariles Toledo, and Allison Wettstein O’Neill. The author also thanks the following individuals for research assistance on particular topics: Kathleen Fallon, Alexandria Goddard, Josh Goldman, Farouq Habib, Naomi Kikoler, Mariam Klait, Shari Lowin, Riana Pfefferkorn, Kenan Rahmani, Yong Suh, Paul Williams, Regina Yau, and library staff at Harvard Law School (including Aslihan Bulut and Stephen Wiles), Stanford Law School (including Sonia Moss and Alex Zhang), and the University of Houston Law Center (including Katy Badeaux, Christopher Dykes, and Amanda Watson). Of these individuals, the author owes the most gratitude to Katy Badeaux.

Finally, the author thanks the editors of the Southern California Law Review (“SCLR”)—particularly Editor-in-Chief Kevin Ganley, Managing Editor Christine Cheung, Executive Senior Editor Rosie Frihart, Executive Editor Celia Lown, and Senior Editor Evan Forbes—for their excellent editorial assistance. The author was honored that SCLR selected this Article as the subject of its annual symposium held at the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law on March 21, 2019.

The author’s public engagement on this topic has drawn on the research and recommendations contained in this Article. Those activities include advising policymakers on drafting or amending Bad Samaritan laws and other legislation (including the federal Harassment and Abuse Response and Prevention at State (HARPS) Act sponsored by Congressperson Jackie Speier) and publishing op-eds in the Boston Globe (When Speaking Up is a Civic Duty, on August 5, 2018) and the San Francisco Chronicle (No Cover for Abusers; California Must Close Gap in its Duty-to-Report Law, on June 23, 2019).

This Article is current as of September 27, 2019. Any errors are the author’s alone.

 

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