FACULTY PUBLICATIONS: Timothy P. O'Neill

Welcome!

For the past 14 years I have written a monthly column on criminal law and procedure for the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin. Over the years I have periodically sent out an Index of columns to judges and lawyers involved in criminal law in Illinois.

This website will eliminate the need to send out an Index. Instead, each new column will now immediately be placed on the website under "Recent Columns", before it is eventually filed as part of the permanent Index.

I will regularly update this page both to tell you briefly about the topics of the last few columns and to keep you posted on new cases and developments in criminal law. I also have included a complete index of my law review articles. Bookmark it at www.jmls.edu/oneill.

The new September column discusses two important 4th Amendment cases that will soon be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. The August column deals with a pair of recent cases that show how careful trial judges must be in guaranteeing that non-indigent criminal defendants are represented by their retained counsel of choice. The July column looks at a recent U.S. Supreme Court case that should cause the Illinois Supreme Court to reconsider its 2005 decision in People v Willis on suppression of confessions. The June column looks at a recent Second District case that finds that a Class X defendant was guilty despite the absence of mens rea; the column explains why the court may have been wrong. The May column compares racial profiling in traffic cases to the use of "vagrancy laws" that were used to control newly-freed slaves in the post-Civil War South. April column discusses various aspects of the "anticipatory search warrant." The March column talks about a major new U.S. Supreme Court case that reminds us of the powers of state courts in our federal system. The February column discusses some of the problems that arise in determining exactly what constitutes "effective assistance" of criminal defense counsel. The January column deals with the odd rules that govern federal habeas review of state court convictions. The December column discusses a dissenting opinion that actually tells the truth about so-called "consent searches." The November column discusses an important new case from the First District Appellate Court that orders trial judges to give serious consideration to a defendant's request to bring in an expert witness to discuss the problems involved in evaluating eyewitness testimony. The October column discusses a significant new opinion by a federal judge concerning problems with sentencing under the guidelines.       

I also invite you to take a look at a law review article of mine that will soon be published in Constitutional Commentary, the faculty-edited journal of the University of Minnesota Law School. It is entitled Scalia's Poker: Puzzles and Mysteries in Constitutional Interpretation. It can be downloaded free at the Social Science Research Network website, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1004613.

I have also written "The Stepford Justices: The Need for Experiential Diversity on the Roberts Court." The citation is 60 Oklahoma Law Review 701 (2007). It is available for free downloading at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1021598.

All of my work on SSRN may be accessed at http://ssrn.com/author=375173.

Your feedback is always welcome! You can reach me at 7oneill@jmls.edu.

Tim O’Neill