Category: Uncategorized

By Scott Limmer

An attorneys blog about criminal law and procedure, college discipline, Title IX and cases of Interest

Education Department Proposes New Rules for Title IX Cases

The Department of Education (DOE), in November of last year, released its proposed new regulations spelling out how schools and universities should handle complaints of sexual harassment or assault.   If adopted, the new rules will replace much-criticized Obama administration guidelines in a “Dear Colleague” letter sent to schools in 2011, but never proposed for public comment. Again without notice and comment, DOE issued additional […]

Read

States Weigh Actions on Life without Parole for Young Crimes

The landmark 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roper v. Simmons banned capital punishment for juveniles as unconstitutionally cruel and unusual. At the time, 12 states banned capital punishment in all cases, and 18 more prohibited it for juveniles, while 72 juveniles were on Death Row in 12 states. In 2010, the high court in Graham v. Florida further restricted juvenile sentencing, […]

Read

Widespread COVID-19 Threats Faced by Jails and Prisons Across the Country

As the global pandemic affects daily life worldwide, both national and state governments are trying to come to terms with COVID-19 threats and its effects of inmates and corrections staff in America’s jails and prisons. The Bureau of Prisons (BOP), which runs the 122 federal corrections facilities nationwide last year holding about 220,000 inmates, or […]

Read

Most College Students Back Due Process in Sex Misconduct Cases

A non-profit, non-partisan group, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which advocates for free-speech and due process rights in higher education, last year surveyed 53 top-ranked U.S. colleges and universities and found major deficiencies in how those rights are protected in campus investigations of alleged sexual misconduct. That leads to a related question: […]

Read

Student Interrogations at a Long Island High School

I recently wrote about “The Reid Technique,” an interrogation methodology taught to over a half million law enforcement and security employees, including those in the CIA, the DEA, and every U.S. military branch. I noted it’s now being taught to groups of secondary school administrators in New York and elsewhere. In this post, I’ll outline a case I […]

Read

Making Campus Disciplinary Hearings Fairer and Less Arbitrary

Previous articles 1 & 2 have spelled out why college or graduate schools often do a seriously bad job handling investigations, hearings and decisions on disciplinary charges against students. They’ve detailed how students are often denied due process in many campus disciplinary hearings that, for example, forbid students from having legal representation during hearings, fail to […]

Read

Disciplinary Hearings: Many Colleges and Universities Do Them Very Poorly

The failure of schools to fairly handle student disciplinary proceedings is no longer a well-hidden secret, as recent court decisions are spelling out in some detail. Take, for instance, the decision handed down in July this year by a state court in California in the case of Doe v. Regents of the University of California, […]

Read

A Real Nightmare That May Surprise College and Grad School Students

How’s this for a nightmare? You’re getting a post-secondary education at a public college or grad school, doing well enough in your studies, in which you have invested years of your time and from which you have accumulated tens of thousands of dollars or more in student debt. Then one day, out of the blue, […]

Read
Contact Call