Bill Pizzi
The Supreme Court’s Role in Mass Incarceration
Routledge, 2020
In a new book, Professor Emeritus Bill Pizzi illuminates the role of the U.S. Supreme Court’s criminal procedure revolution as a contributing factor in the rise in U.S. incarceration rates.
Noting that the increase in mass incarceration began climbing just after the Warren Court years (1953–69) and continued to climb for the next four decades—despite the substantial decline in the crime rate—Pizzi contends that part of the explanation is the Court’s failure to understand that a trial system with robust rights for defendants is not a strong trial system unless it is also reliable and efficient.
The result is a criminal justice system so complicated and expensive that it no longer serves to protect defendants. For example, Pizzi points to Anders v. California, which effectively mandates full appellate review after all criminal trials, and Baldwin v. New York, which extended the right to jury trials to misdemeanor cases.
"Our criminal justice system is badly broken. We can put some of the blame on police and law enforcement policies, we can blame politicians who enact harsh laws—like the war on drugs—and we can put some blame on aggressive prosecutors," Pizzi said. "But we will never lower our incarceration rate by even half until we understand that not all pieces of the criminal procedure revolution worked well."
Pizzi contrasts the trial and pretrial systems of other common law countries, such as Canada and England, with those of the U.S., and demonstrates how those systems help keep incarceration rates much lower. The incentives in those countries are to keep charges low if possible, while the incentives in the U.S. are to charge as much as possible, Pizzi explained.
"In the case of Canada, whose crime rates are similar to those of the U.S., their incarceration rate has been stable for decades, while ours has quintupled since the late 1970s," he said.
The publisher describes the book as essential reading for both graduate and undergraduate students in corrections and criminal justice courses, as well as judges, attorneys, and others working in the criminal justice system.
Pizzi, who joined the Colorado Law faculty in 1975 and took emeritus status in 2010, is one of the nation’s foremost scholars on comparative criminal issues.
T. Markus Funk
Rethinking Self-Defence: The 'Ancient Right's' Rationale Disentangled
Hart/Bloomsbury 2021
Adjunct professor T. Markus Funk, a former federal prosecutor and chair of Perkins Coie LLP’s white collar and investigations practice, offers a comprehensive value-centric approach to thinking about the defense’s deeper rationale.
Written in the midst of a searing national debate on this core criminal law and civil rights topic and drawn from Funk’s Oxford University doctoral dissertation, the book tackles core issues such as the relative importance of the state’s claimed monopoly on force, procedural justice and the need to shore up the justice system’s legitimacy and creditworthiness, everyone’s presumptive “right to life,” and the importance of ensuring equal standing among citizens. In so doing, the book breaks ground by addressing public perceptions of "just" and "right" outcomes, as well as the emphasis legal systems place (and should place) on state power.
An adjunct faculty member at Colorado Law for more than six years, Funk teaches a course titled Foreign Corrupt Practices, Anti-Bribery and Anti-Trafficking.
Before joining Perkins Coie LLP, Funk served as a decorated Chicago federal prosecutor, section chief in the U.S. State Department-Balkans, clerk in a federal court of appeals and district court, and law professor.
During his time in public service, Funk and his team prosecuted "Operation Family Secrets," which National Public Radio lauded as "one of the most important criminal investigations . . . in American history," and whose charged criminal activities served as the basis for the 1995 movie Casino.