Letter from the Editor, Volume XV, Issue I

Dear Readers,

Thank you for your interest in The Criminal Law Practitioner! On behalf of our Editorial Board and Staff, I am proud to share Volume 15, Issue 1 with you. This issue continues CLP’s mission of producing interesting and timely criminal law content. For this issue, we have authors Alena Johnston and Dr. Amelia Shooter, Dr. Paraic Scanlon, and Sarah L. Cooper provide their unique insights on important issues for criminal law practitioners.

In “Fraud in Feeding Our Future: An Analysis of ‘The Largest Pandemic Relief Fraud Scheme Yet,’” Johnston provides her in-depth analysis of the pending case of United States v. Bock, No. 0:22-cr-00223, 2022 WL 4547235 (D. Minn. 2022). Johnston uses her knowledge of the criminal legal system to analyze the current counts and their likelihood of success as the case proceeds. Johnston also specifically analyzes this case with the lens of the Federal Sentencing Commission Guidelines, making her piece pertinent for practitioners and scholars alike.

Shooter, Scanlon, and Cooper use an original data set in “Juror Certainty about Firearms Evidence: Examination Effects” to analyze how both cross and redirectexamination affected potential U.S. jurors’ certainty about expert firearms evidence. Using a group of 114 participants, Shooter, Scanlon, and Cooper found results suggesting that firearm experts conveying high certainty create higher certainty in jurors and that crossexamination has a detrimental effect on this certainty, but redirect-examination does not reduce this detrimental effect. This article highlights the use of statistical data in analyzing issues facing criminal law practitioners and has useful insights to takeaways for criminal law professionals.

We would like to thank the authors for the time and effort they committed to producing their articles. On a personal note, I would like to offer my heartfelt appreciation for the hard work of the Editorial Board and Staff in not only spading and editing these articles, but supporting me through my tenure as Editor-in-Chief. I especially want to thank the outgoing Executive Editor, Equity & Inclusion Editor, Managing Publications Editor, Managing Design Editor, and Articles Editors for their care and time in preparing these articles for publication.

Finally, I would like to encourage you to visit our website, CrimLawPractitioner.org, to read our latest blog posts, criminal law practitioner profiles, and previous publications. If you are interested in publishing with The Criminal Law Practitioner or if you would like to be featured in our practitioner profiles, please reach out to us at clp@wcl.american.edu.

Sincerely,

Siena Roberts

Editor-in-Chief