There's been lots of interesting criminal law news in the last week or so. 1. Duke University researchers are all over the death penalty debate. According to this News and Observer story, Duke economist Philip Cook has concluded that North Carolina would save $11 million per year by eliminating the death penalty. Meanwhile, Duke sociologists Kenneth Land and Hui Zheng believe that each execution in Texas results in, on average, one or two homicides being deterred, as explained in this AP article about their work. 2. The News and Observer also reports that Cary software giant SAS has developed software to modernize the process of reviewing criminal records. It's being tested in Wake County, and the article makes it sound like a quantum leap from the archaic DOS-based system that many of us know, and, um, love. 3. Professor Orin Kerr has an interesting post here about whether thermal imagers have become so widely available that their use no longer amounts to a Fourth Amendment search. (The Supreme Court held that it was a search in Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001), just nine years ago, but the court's ruling was based in part on the fact that the technology was not in common use.) 4. The Ninth Circuit decided a significant Taser case recently. The first paragraph of Bryan v. McPherson sums it up: "Officer Brian McPherson deployed his taser against Carl Bryan during a traffic stop for a seatbelt infraction. Bryan filed this action under 42 U.S.C. [...]
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