Kay L. Levine

CNN

Fulton DA and Emory Law alumna Fani Willis 96L has announced she will investigate solicitation of election fraud, false statements, conspiracy and racketeering charges that stem from former President Donald Trump's post-election phone call to Georgia’s Secretary of State, asking him to find 11,780 votes—one more than he needed to beat Joe Biden. A conspiracy charge is a felony, Emory Law Professor Kay Levine told Bloomberg. Also, Trump's call seems to be evidence of solicitation.

The death of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT killed by Louisville police in March, has created a nationwide push to stop no-knock warrants, Center Square reports. Professor Kay Levine says empirical data shows judges who review requests for those warrants typically don't invest a lot of time before granting them. "There is a very common perception, and it is empirically supported that magistrates take about two or three minutes to review warrant applications before signing off," Levine said.

This term the Supreme Court held that a trial court may properly consider a prosecutor's past history of Batson violations when evaluating that prosecutor's reason for striking a juror in a current case. The challenge arose from a murder case that originated in the small town of Winona, Mississippi, more than two decades ago.

Professor Kay Levine is interviewed by 11Alive's Andy Pierrotti for The Reveal about the case of a Georgia mayor and his daughter escaping prosecution for missing city funds. "Eight years ago, a grand jury believed a former mayor and his daughter deserved to stand trial after an audit discovered more than $500,000 went missing from a small town. It never went to trial," the story reads.

Marsy's Law was originally passed in California in 2008, and other states have adopted it, WABE reports. What does the language mean for both victims and the accused? Emory Law Professor Kay Levine was interviewed about what passing the amendment would mean for Georgians. Georgia already has some of the strongest victims rights laws in the country, and changing the law through constitutional amendment is "the most significant and the hardest to accomplish, and it's also the hardest to reverse," Levine says. So such changes should be made cautiously. Also, the language voters see doesn't reflect the entire amendment. Ballot draft text "has become too brief and too simple, and it is insulting to voters to assume that they couldn't handle a bit more complexity," Levine says.

Associate Dean Kay Levine was interviewed on WXIA-TV about the impact of social media in legal matters. "In the beginning stages of the case, attorneys and the judge are allowed to ask questions of prospective jurors. We trust that jurors will be honest," she said. But they rely on other jurors to report improper conduct. "We do not know what a juror is doing, when she goes home at night. or when he is on a lunch break. We do not know if they are accessing a cell phone or talking to friends. It is almost impossible to prove."

On June 23, 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court once again applied the Sixth Amendment ineffective assistance of counsel doctrine to attorney errors during plea negotiations. In Lee v. United States, a six-member majority led by Chief Justice Roberts found a Sixth Amendment violation where an attorney incorrectly advised a noncitizen defendant that guilty pleas do not trigger deportation, and the defendant established "by substantial and uncontroverted evidence" that he would not have pled guilty but for this advice.

On June 1, 2015, the Supreme Court decided that negligence cannot sustain a conviction under the federal threats statute, 18 U.S.C. section 875(c). Elonis v. United States was the Supreme Court's first interpretation of section 875(c)'s mental state requirement; most of the federal circuits had addressed this question years earlier, and all but two reached a contrary conclusion about the sufficiency of negligence as a state of mind.

Emory University School of Law authors played a significant role in the second edition of the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, which was officially published by Elsevier on April 2.

In its coverage of recent DeKalb County corruption cases, public radio station WABE-FM consulted legal experts on the ramifications of witness credibility issues. "It's always easy to Monday morning quarterback," said Emory University School of Law professor Kay Levine. "When it falls apart it's very easy to look back and say, 'you should have thought this through more.'"

Chinese judges participated in a new partnership between Emory Law, City University of Hong Kong, and Supreme People's Court.

Kay Levine addresses drug-free zone laws put in place since the 1980s.