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Home / Academics / Areas of Study / Criminal Law

Criminal Law

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Criminal Law

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Requirements:

15 credits from the following courses and additional experiential credits:

Required:

  • Title
  • Credits
​
  • Criminal Procedure: Adjudication
    Credits: 3

    Examines major steps in a criminal case from commencement of the criminal action through verdict. Focus is upon federal and New York procedure concerning: the decision to prosecute, including diversion; securing orders and pretrial detention; preliminary hearings; grand jury proceedings; subpoenas, immunity and contempt; accusatory instruments; discovery; speedy trial requirements; venue and venue change; pleas and plea bargaining; jury selection, voir dire and challenges; trial procedures; jury charges; and related practice.

    This course and Criminal Procedure Under the 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments are designed to complement each other in a six-credit study of criminal procedure. Student may elect either course without taking the other.​

    Sprotbery, Kent, Esq.

  • Criminal Procedure: Investigation
    Credits: 3

    Examines basic constitutional constraints imposed on law enforcement in the investigation of crime. Primary topics include search and seizure, interrogation and confessions, right to counsel, fair trial, and self incrimination. 

    Professor Breger's class: This course examines - via extensive analysis of landmark federal constitutional cases - the federal regulation of law enforcement investigatory practices including searching and seizing under the Fourth Amendment, compelling confessions under the Fifth Amendment, and deliberately eliciting incriminating statements under the Sixth Amendment. Course themes include controlling police discretion, criminal procedure as Evidence law, class, ethnicity, race, the roles of the lawyers, and the use of social science research.

    Professor Farley's class: This course examines - via close readings of landmark federal constitutional cases - the regulation of law enforcement investigatory practices including searching and seizing under the Fourth Amendment, compelling confessions under the Fifth Amendment, and deliberately eliciting incriminating statements under the Sixth Amendment. Course themes will include discretion and ambiguity in the various roles that judges, defense lawyers, prosecutors, police, legal scholars, social science researchers and others play in the production of criminal procedure. Class power and racism will also be topics of discussion. There will be no final examination. In lieu of a final examination, each participant will keep a weekly journal and write a term paper.

    Professor Bonventre's class: The course examines the constitutional principles governing law enforcement in the United States through the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court and of American State Supreme Courts. The course will emphasize the competing arguments, interests, and concerns involved in the various issues and in the different ways in which those issues are resolved by federal and state high courts. Students will be encouraged to understand the evolution, fluidity, and necessarily ideological character of constitutional criminal procedure law, and the importance of studying courts, judges, policy and politics, both to understand the case law and to be competent criminal law advocates. ​

    Professor Sundquist's class will include: The intersection of criminal procedure law with evidentiary rules, the impact of bias on the administration of justice, and the role of technological advancements (including DNA data-banking, facial recognition software, digital surveillance, and the use of artificial intelligence software for predictive policing and sentencing purposes) on legal conceptions of privacy and individual rights.

    Breger, Melissa

    Bonventre, Vincent M.

    Farley, Anthony Paul

    Sundquist, Christian B.

    Jim, Louis

Electives:

  • Cyber War, Intelligence and National Security
    Credits: 3

    This graduate-level course focuses on U.S. and international law governing offensive and defensive cyber effect operations, including those that constitute espionage, sabotage and subversion, as well as those that could lead to physical destruction of property and the loss of human life. In addition, this course addresses the role of various military and intelligence apparatuses in different countries in conducting cyber operations in opposing nations. In addition, this class will examine the interplay between the laws and the practices and policies of the United States Intelligence Community and national security system, both foreign and domestic. While discussion of the history of intelligence activities and laws dating from the origins of our colonial days will necessarily shape the framework of the class, the focus shall particularly be on current debates and challenges faced by the United States in the 21st Century.

    Haynes, Antony

    Wingo, Harry, Esq.

  • Cybercrime
    Credits: 3

    This course is designed to provide students with an overview of the legal, social, and technical impact of global "cybercrime." Cybercrime is loosely defined as a set of illegal activities that are facilitated through the use of computers or other technology devices. Examples of cybercrime include not only "traditional" crimes (e.g. identity theft or stalking) being carried out in a new medium, but a new set of activities in which the computer or computer network itself is a target of the attack. Topics will include the various state, federal and international laws, investigative measures and techniques used to identify, investigate, arrest and prosecute cybercriminals and cyberattacks, and the preventive measures that can be utilized to provide a secure environment for computer hardware and software. Active elements of the cyber underworld, including organized crime, terrorists and state sponsored activity, will be discussed. Students will become familiar with legal processes they may find themselves a part of, litigation, depositions and expert reporting. In addition, this course will address issues impacting the Fourth Amendment, forensics, electronic surveillance, computer hacking and cracking, intellectual property crimes, espionage, cyberterrorism, privacy, "forced disclosure," and the challenge of cross-jurisdiction enforcement.

    Deyo, Michael W., Esq.

    Skiba, Michael J.

  • Domestic Violence Seminar
    Credits: 3

    Explores in depth the legal issues and discrete phenomena of domestic violence. Topics generally include intimate partner violence, criminal prosecution of batterers, child abuse and neglect, gay and lesbian battering, elder abuse, and the basis for intervention of the state. ​

    Lynch, Mary A.

  • International Law of War and Crime
    Credits: 3

    ​An understanding of the fundamental principles and doctrines of international law that govern the use of force and the responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Among the topics covered are the limitations on the use of force and the resort to force, both nation-state and collective action, the treatment of combatants and civilians, and the recognition and prosecution of international criminal law including war crimes and crimes against humanity, as well as international cooperation, institutions and criminal liability.​

    Bonventre, Vincent M.

  • National Security Law
    Credits: 2

    Studies the Constitutional, statutory, and international law framework within which the U.S. conducts foreign relations and international law enforcement. Considers allocation of authority over foreign affairs and national security among the agencies of government, and selected contemporary issues such as responses to terrorism, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the USA PATRIOT Act, the Classified Information Procedures Act, and the legal relationship between law enforcement, the intelligence community and the military. JD students cannot receive credit for this class and Cyberwar, Intelligence and National Security

    Spina, Thomas, Jr., Esq. '85

  • Trial Practice I: Criminal Pretrial Skills
    Credits: 3

    ​Exposes students to a progression of pretrial skills necessary to the defense and prosecution of a criminal case.  Students are assigned to represent either the prosecution or the defendant in a simulated criminal case and take the case through every stage of the pretrial process. Students conduct a client/victim interview, perform fact investigation and legal research, draft and respond to criminal charges, demands to produce, motions for discovery, and requests for suppression of evidence.  Students will draft a memorandum of law based on their legal and factual  investigation. Students may also draft and respond to demands for inspection of Grand Jury Minutes, engage in plea negotiations, conduct oral advocacy on arraignment and bail issues, and perform other pretrial matters as time and the selected problem allows. Students are required to attend a weekly one-hour lecture and participate in a two-hour lab where pretrial skills are practiced.

  • Trial Practice II: Criminal Trial Skills
    Credits: 3

    Using the same simulated case from the fall semester Trial Practice I: Criminal Pretrial Skills class, students learn the trial skills necessary to conduct the trial of the case.  During the weekly two hour labs each student will prepare and conduct the following: introduction and use of exhibits, making and responding to objections, direct and cross-examination of lay witnesses, impeachment, refreshing recollection and past recollection recorded, direct and cross of an expert, opening statements, and summation.  At the end of the semester, the students team up to conduct a trial of the case in which each side presents at least two lay witnesses and an expert witness.  Students are required to attend a weekly one-hour lecture and participate in a two-hour lab where trial skills are practiced.

    Recommended:  Evidence & Trial Practice I: Criminal Pretrial Procedure ​

    Alpern, Matthew, Esq.

Experiential Requirement:

Participation in at least one of the​ following experiential programs:​

Related Clinic, Field Placement or Summer/Semester in Practice (approval by concentration advisor).

Writing Requirement:

Students are required to complete one significant piece of writing in the concentration area. The writing requirement does not require that students earn any credits beyond the required credits described above. The topic and the arrangement for fulfilling the writing requirement, however, must be approved in advance by the Concentration Advisor. The paper could be written to fulfill the requirements of a course, an independent study, or a law journal note and comment. It may also be possible to fulfill this requirement by completing a substantial piece of writing in conjunction with an experiential course, clinic, or Field Placement, such as a brief, a series of Motions, or a significant legal memorandum. It could also be fulfilled by writing a paper independently, such as a submission to a writing competition or an article for publication. In all of these arrangements, the prior approval of the Concentration Advisor is required.

(Effective December 18, 2018)

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