Does character matter?

If you're charged with a crime, it's very possible that the prosecutor will find some way to use -- either directly or indirectly -- your prior criminal record as evidence of your bad character.  This, of course, is likely to make you look guilty in the eyes of the jury.  But what if you've got a squeaky-clean record and have never even been accused of -- let alone arrested for, charged with, or convicted of -- a crime?  Can you use your clean record as evidence of your good, law-abiding character?  The law actually (generally) prohibits you from doing so.  Talk about double standards!  In my new article, I debunk the prosecutorial and judicial justifications for hiding your clean record from the jury, argue for legal reform, and provide defense lawyers with a possible strategy under the existing rules: A Clean Record as Character Evidence, 90 Mississippi Law Journal __ (forthcoming, 2021).  Or read the abstract after the jump.

That's Absurd!

Assume you're a sheriff's deputy and you arrest a mail-carrier pursuant to an outstanding murder warrant.  Can you be charged criminally for "interfering with the delivery of the mail"?  What if you rescue a baby squirrel from certain death by giving it food and water -- are you guilty of a crime for "keeping a game quadruped" in your home?  What if you are convicted of a crime that has nothing to do with sex and isn't related to sex in any imaginable way -- can the government still make you register as a sex offender?  Technically, yes.  But a legal principle called "the absurdity doctrine" is supposed to protect you when statutes would otherwise produce an absurd result, like the ones discussed above.  Unfortunately, the doctrine doesn't always work.  Read about my proposed legal reform in The New Absurdity Doctrine, 125 Penn State Law Review __ (forthcoming, 2021).  Or read the abstract after the jump.

Wordplay

In Wisconsin, you could be a "domestic abuse repeater" if you have been convicted, "on 2 or more separate occasions," of domestic abuse crimes.  Yet prosecutors are branding defendants as repeaters, thus transforming misdemeanors into felonies and increasing jail sentences to prison sentences, whenever defendants have been convicted only on ONE prior occasion.  How is this possible?  Read my new article explaining this governmental wordplay, Criminal Repeater Statutes: Occasions, Convictions, and Absurd Results, 11 Hous. L. Rev. Online 1 (2020).  Or read the abstract after the jump.