In criminal cases, evidence about psychological syndromes is typically introduced by the defense in support of insanity, self-defense, or imperfect self-defense claims and by the prosecution to show that a criminal act occurred. The admissibility of defense-proffered testimony about phenomena...

Among modern-day legal academics determinate sentencing and limiting retributivism tend to be preferred over indeterminate sentencing, at least in part because the latter option is viewed as immoral. This Article contends to the contrary that, properly constituted, indeterminate sentencing is...

Risk assessment — measuring an individual's potential for offending — has long been an important aspect of criminal justice, especially in connection with sentencing, pretrial detention and police decision-making. To aid in the risk assessment inquiry, a number of states have recently begun...

Neuroscientists are rapidly adding to our understanding of human behavior. This article argues that if the law wants the full benefits of neuro-scientific knowledge, it should attempt to develop a lingua franca — a method of communication understandable to both scientists and lawyers — based...

Police agencies should be governed by the same administrative principles that govern other agencies. This simple precept would have significant implications for regulation of police work, in particular the type of suspicionless, group searches and seizures that have been the subject of the...

Statistically-derived algorithms, adopted by many jurisdictions in an effort to identify the risk of reoffending posed by criminal defendants, have been lambasted as racist, de-humanizing, and antithetical to the foundational tenets of criminal justice. Just Algorithms argues that these attacks...

The government's ability to obtain and analyze recorded information about its citizens through the process known as data mining has expanded enormously over the past decade. Although the best-known government data mining operation (Total Information Awareness, more recently dubbed Terrorism...

This article summarizes the findings and recommendations of the ABA Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project's Florida Assessment Team, which I chaired. Relying on an analysis of caselaw, studies, news reports, and interviews, the article describes significant flaws in Florida's death...

This article argues that mental illness should no longer be the basis for a special defense of insanity. Instead, mental disorder should be considered in criminal cases only if relevant to other excuse doctrines, such as lack of mens rea, self-defense and duress, as those defenses have been...

This essay outlines three reasons why the death penalty, even if generally a valid exercise of state authority, should never or rarely be imposed on those who are mentally ill. The first argument is the most global: execution of those who suffer from mental illness violates equal protection of...