Presumption of Guilt analyses criminal prosecutions that spawned the notorious “kids for cash” scandal. Although a juvenile judge freely admitted committing fraud in failing to properly account for millions of dollars, prosecutors insisted he had accepted that money in exchange for jailing juveniles. These heinous allegations were presumed to be true, resulting in widespread hysteria. Incredibly, after creating the scandal, prosecutors failed to produce evidence it had ever happened at the judge’s trial. Unfortunately for the judge, by that time “kids for cash” was so ingrained in the public’s conscience that the lack of its proof was meaningless.

Presumption of Guilt analyses the genesis and aftermath of the notorious "kids for cash" scandal. Mark A. Ciavarella, Jr. was an unethical juvenile court county judge who was willing to plead guilty to federal crimes as a result of his failure to properly account for millions of dollars he and his colleague received. However, he vehemently denied government allegations that he accepted that money as a quid pro quo for jailing juvenile delinquents. Nonetheless, media dubbed Ciavarella the "kids for cash judge" and relentlessly covered the ensuing scandal. Pennsylvania officials presumed his guilt and enacted a commission to investigate how to remove the scandal's taint from the Commonwealth's juvenile court system. Crimes committed by juvenile delinquents during the period the scandal supposedly occurred were summarily erased, regardless of the severity of those crimes, leaving thousands of innocent victims devoid of justice. Yet, prosecutors never proved the scandal ever happened. Although the lead prosecutor continued to give it lip service, no evidence was provided. Instead, prosecutors quietly removed the very allegations that had spawned "kids for cash" from the Superseding Indictment at the end of Ciavarella's trial. Ignoring the utter lack of proof of the scandal's existence, media falsely reported that Ciavarella was convicted for his participation in a scheme to jail juveniles for profit. Afterwards prosecutors continued to insist that the scandal was real, referring to those redacted allegations as if they were proven facts. The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit adopted those same unproven, redacted allegations as part of its precedential opinion on the matter. This book demonstrates that fake news is real and the Presumption of Innocence is in jeopardy, especially when heinous allegations are presented. It is a reminder to make the government prove its case before accepting what it alleges. That is something neither the media nor public officials did for Ciavarella.

Reprint of the fourth edition, which contains an additional text attributed to Voltaire. Originally published anonymously in 1764, Dei Delitti e Delle Pene was the first systematic study of the principles of crime and punishment. Infused with the spirit of the Enlightenment, its advocacy of crime prevention and the abolition of torture and capital punishment marked a significant advance in criminological thought, which had changed little since the Middle Ages. It had a profound influence on the development of criminal law in Europe and the United States.

An exquisite examination of a sexual culture in crisis What if we took sex out of the box marked “special,” either the worst or best thing that a human person can experience, and considered it within the complexity of reality? In this extraordinary book, despite longstanding tabloid-style sexual preoccupations with monsters and victims, shame and virtue, JoAnn Wypijewski does exactly that. From the HIV crisis to the paedophile priest panic, Woody Allen to Brett Kavanaugh, child pornography to Abu Ghraib, Wypijewski takes the most famous sex panics of the last decades and turns them inside out, weaving what together becomes a searing indictment of modern sexual politics, exposing the myriad ways sex panics and the expansion of the punitive state are intertwined. What emerges is an examination of the multiple ways in which the ever-expanding default language of monsters and victims has contributed to the repressive power of the state. Politics exists in the mess of life. Sex does too, Wypijewski insists, and so must sexual politics, to make any sense at all.

Explores the role of criminal intent in constituting felony in the first two centuries of the English criminal trial jury.

Unquestionably the most radical treatise ever written on the American jury, examining Magna Carta and a host of other historical sources to sustain the claim that jurors should be chosen from the entire population and be judges of both fact and law . One of the earliest treatises on the subject. Spooner's powerful argument for reform of the jury system holds that jurors should be drawn by lot from the whole body of citizens, and that they should be judges of law as well as of the fact in question. Spooner [1808-1887] was well known for his controversial arguments on political and legal subjects. Spooner maintained that jurors should be drawn by lot from the whole body of citizens, and that they should be judges of law as well as of fact. Contents: The Right of Juries to Judge of the Justice of Laws The Trial by Jury, As Defined by Magna Carta 1. The History of Magna Carta. 2. The Language of Magna Carta Additional Proofs of the Rights and Duties of Juries 1. Weakness of the Regal Authority 2. The Ancient Common Law Juries Were Mere Courts of Conscience 3. The Oaths of Juror. 4. The Right of Jurors to Fix the Sentence 5. The Oaths of Judges 6. The Coronation Oath The Rights and Duties of Juries in Civil Suits Objections Answered Juries of the Present Day Illegal Illegal Judges The Free Administration of Justice The Criminal Intent Moral Considerations for Jurors Authority of Magna Carta Limitations Imposed Upon the Majority by the Trial by Jury Appendix Taxation