In honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the Gideon decision, this article guides the rhetorical study of the party briefs as a strategy for cultivating individual voice in legal writing. It is a rhetorical study of the party briefs filed in Gideon v. Wainwright, a 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision establishing the constitutional right to counsel in state criminal proceedings and provides specific lessons to be used in the classroom setting to enhance students’ understanding of advanced persuasive techniques such as logos, ethos, pathos, and storytelling. Each lesson has been created through the lens of cognitive theory, in particular the concept of categories as organizers of perception. This article proposes that categories can either be reinforced or redefined to accomplish rhetorical purposes, and having a meta-cognitive understanding of that power is essential effective advocacy.

This Article establishes that over-criminalization serves to marginalize unwanted groups of society, and particularly regarding the sex offender registry, it results in social death. The author relies upon the notion of crime as a social construct to establish that the concept of “sex offense” changes over time as society and culture evolve. From there, the author incorporates the work of Michele Foucault involving the relationship of power, knowledge, and sexuality to show how the trend toward more repressive social controls over sex-related activity is related to a shift in this relationship. The Author identifies three characteristics and the associated traits which arise when over-criminalization exists, and further shows how these characteristics and traits are present with respect to the sex offender registry. This Article offers critical insight into the relationship between over-criminalization and repressive control systems and concludes that over-criminalization exists when repressive governmental controls seize power and render non-existent informal social controls. It follows that the sex offender registry is a repressive governmental control that has concentrated power in the government and criminal laws while shifting power away from informal social controls to result in the social death of those unwanted, those labeled sex offender.

This article surveys the requirement of registration as a sex offender and ultimately concludes that the registry fails to protect children and society from individuals who commit sex-related crimes; furthermore, it concludes that the registry fails to prevent sex crimes from occurring. The author studies the legislative history of various Acts related to sex crimes as well as statistics on sex crimes to surmise that Congress in large part relied on myths about sex offenders in enacting legislation like the Adam Walsh Act. As a result, the registry is incapable of preventing the commission of sex offenses. The author further resolves that the registry endorses and perpetuates hatred toward sex offenders by creating a stigma whereby sex offenders are unable to reintegrate into society and lead productive lives. The article concludes by proposing that the registry is counterproductive as it causes great harm to individuals without offering a greater positive benefit to society as a whole.

This Article identifies as problematic the intersection of Florida’s Immunity Statute and its current Castle Doctrine, which presumes reasonable fear where one acts in self-defense in the “castle.” The coupling together of immunity and the presumption of reasonable fear creates a bar to prosecution in Castle self-defense cases. The Article addresses problems associated with the lack of guidelines to ensure the equal application of the law to self-defense cases, and the lack of procedural tools available for the assertion of immunity arising from a self-defense act.