Cultural Issues in Criminal Defense discusses approaches to defending cultural issues. The cultural issues are not limited to differences between people of different countries, however. Cultural issues can arise within a country and amongst its people, within a means of collecting and investigating information, and within the way the society perceives the information. All of these factors affect how criminal defense practitioners prepare their cases - from consulting with their clients, to reviewing the investigation by law enforcement, anticipating what information may need to be suppressed, minimized, or emphasized, selecting the jury, attempting to manage how the media reports the information, the direct and cross-examination of witnesses, admission of evidence, and potentially appeal and post-conviction. Special features of this new edition include chapters on: --“Interviewing Immigrant Clients and Special Immigrant Relief for Crime Victims” --“Immigration Consequences of Criminal Convictions” --“Digital Defense: Meeting the Challenges that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act Poses” --“A General Discussion of Some Cultural Issues from State of Florida v George Zimmerman.” This book is a helpful tool for any practitioner whether they have a criminal defendant in a case abroad, a case involving an immigrant defendant in the U.S., or a criminal case within the U.S. with a unique cultural issue.

The one essential treatise for representing immigrant and diverse clients, up to date with Padilla v Kentucky, with jurisprudence and practice tips relevant to all stages of representation, from interviewing clients to handling post conviction and relief. This treatise will be of interest to public defender offices as well as private practitioners.Keeping pace with the rapidly changing face of America, Cultural Issues in Criminal Defense -3rd edition is the complete reference guide to one of the most challenging and topical subjects in contemporary criminal law. Cultural Issues in Criminal Defense is an indispensable book for the criminal defense lawyer representing people from other cultures, nationalities or ethnic backgrounds. Lawyers defending these individuals face a host of characteristic concerns that include cultural barriers to communication, the need for qualified interpreters, unique Fourth and Fifth Amendment issues, cultural defenses, issues involving Native Americans, the immigration consequences of a conviction, and distinctive sentencing issues. Packed with practice tips and helpful precedent cases, Cultural Issues in Criminal Defense is the only book on the market that walks the practitioner through these issues in a clear, comprehensive and systematic way. Extensively updated and expanded for its third edition, the guide now includes chapters on stimulating new subjects such as consular assistance issues, gathering evidence abroad, language proficiency concerns and international prisoner transfers.

American legal scholars have debated for some time the need for a cultural defense in criminal proceedings where minority cultural information seems perti nent to a finding of criminal responsibility in situations where a minority cultural defendant has violated a valid criminal statute. This work presents a systematic analysis of this issue. Drawing from sociological, anthropological, and philosophical materials, as well as traditional legal discussions, the authors develop a scheme that indicates when cultural factors can be used as the basis for such a defense and when they are irrelevant to a finding of criminal responsibility. The argument moves from general concerns of social justice that apply under conditions of social and cultural pluralism to practical policy recommendations for the operation of American criminal justice. It thus connects more theoretical materials with the practical concerns of jurisprudence. The justification for legal recognition of a cultural defense in American criminal law is anchored firmly in American constitutional law.

The idea of a cultural defense in criminal law is often ridiculed as "multiculturalism run amok ". To allow someone charged with a crime to say "this is my culture " as an excuse for their action seems to open the door to cultural relativism, to jeopardize the protection of fundamental rights, and to undermine norms of individual responsibility. Many scholars, however, insist that cultural evidence is appropriate, indeed essential, for the fair operation of the criminal law. The criminal law is society's most powerful tool for regulating behaviour, and just for that reason we apply strong safeguards to ensure that criminal sanctions are applied in a fair way. When it comes to individuals, we want our rules for judging responsibility and punishment to track the actual blameworthiness of the specific individual being prosecuted for a specific action in the past. Cultural evidence may help improve our judgements of individual blameworthiness and desert; indeed, cultural evidence might even be necessary if the practice of punishing individuals is to be legitimate and equitable. According to its proponents, the use of cultural evidence when judging individual blameworthiness is a natural extension of the logic of existing criminal law doctrines regarding defences, and of the logic of current philosophical theories of responsibility and agency. This volume brings together scholars of both criminal law and philosophy to rigorously assess these ideas. Each of the chapters addresses a different dimension of the issue, from a range of perspectives, with varying degrees of sympathy or scepticism regarding cultural defences. The result is an important and original contribution to the literature. It explores why cultural diversity raises distinctive challenges in the criminal law context, not found in other domains of the multiculturalism debate, while also exploring how this particular context raises fundamental issues of agency and responsibility that are at the heart of broader debates in legal, social and political philosophy.