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Russell Gold

@profrgold.bsky.social
582 followers 225 following 38 posts

Bainbridge-Mims Professor of Law, University of Alabama. I write about Criminal Law and Procedure, sometimes by drawing comparisons to Civil Procedure. I also write about prosecutors. law.ua.edu/faculty_staff/russell-go…

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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
I’m humbled and honored to receive an award for Outstanding Contribution to Teaching Development from the University of Alabama Teaching Academy. I’m extraordinarily grateful for my time as a Faculty Fellow there over the past two years. I have learned a ton and met so many amazing teachers.
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
I’m humbled and honored to receive the Dean Thomas Christopher Award for service to Alabama Law School. It’s an incredible privilege to get to work with amazing students and colleagues.
Award plaque
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 02/02/2026
Yes!
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 30/01/2026
Fiscally Restraining Criminal Lawmaking is under submission to law journals now. Please send it to your favorite journal editors. Or your least favorite😁. We examine how legislative process could make costs more salient in criminal law, hopefully prompting greater deliberation about benefits too.
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
Forcing defendants to tell a false tale about their own crime is troubling in its own right. More broadly, stifling counterstories about the role of systemic forces underlying crime and wildly divergent opportunities impedes potential public safety reform.
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
My article Look What You Made Me Do is now published in Washington & Lee Law Review: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers..... I argue that criminal process flattens the narrative of crime into one of solely individual actors making bad choices, and it coerces defendants into telling that story.
papers.ssrn.com
Look What You Made Me Do
<p>We have understood for centuries that crime is both the product of social forces and individual choice. We know now that crime is affected by economic depriv
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 21/11/2025
Agree. It was a nice place to live.
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 17/09/2025
Definitely wish our law school offered state con law.
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Cortney Lollar @clollar.bsky.social · 17/09/2025
Hot off the presses! In conjunction with @nacdl.org, I’ve written a report that examines criminal restitution in the federal system. The report debunks prevailing myths about restitution & presents recommendations for reform. www.nacdl.org/Document/Emp... 1/2
nacdl.org
NACDL - Empty Pockets and Empty Promises: How Federal Restitution Law Fails Everyone
Criminal restitution is intended to have dual goals: victim compensation and offender punishment. The way criminal restitution operates in practice gives short shrift to compensating the average victi...
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 08/08/2025
I’m not one of them. But don’t inchoate crimes already do that?
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Steve Vladeck @stevevladeck.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
Even *if* you accept Stephen Miller’s (textually, historically, and morally indefensible) claim that undocumented immigrants are not entitled to due process, you’d *still* need due process to ensure that the individuals at issue are, in fact, undocumented. His argument fails even on its own terms.
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
It ignores that systemic factors make it much harder for some people to comply with the law than others. It entrenches the status quo of more cages to threaten punishment by suppressing counternarratives about root causes of crime. It prioritizes feeling safe over being safe.
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
I posted a draft of Look What You Made Me Do to SSRN: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers..... I argue that criminal procedure coerces defendants into embracing the narrative that their crime was solely their bad choice. That narrative obscures important systemic factors like trauma, addiction, and poverty.
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
I’m excited to report that Look What You Made Me Do is now forthcoming in Washington & Lee Law Review.
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Alabama Reflector @alabamareflector.com · 21/03/2025
Via @annabjournalist.bsky.social: The Alabama House of Representatives Thursday gave final approval to a bill extending paid parental leave to all state and education employees staring July 1, sending the bill to Gov. Kay Ivey.
alabamareflector.com
Gov. Kay Ivey says she will sign parental leave bill for state employees, educators • Alabama Reflector
The bill would give eight weeks of paid leave to a woman who gives birth or suffers a miscarriage, and two weeks to a father.
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
A really interesting project that’s currently under submission, for the journal editors out there.
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
Usually they say it more metaphorically.
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
It felt like deep engagement with the work from folks who read and are trying to improve the piece. What more could a guest ask for?
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
What a great conversation with a thoughtful group! Thanks for reading and for your helpful comments, Corey.
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 03/03/2025
BTW, feel free to highlight this submission for your favorite law review editors. Or even your least favorite. It has been 2.5 weeks and no offers yet. Is this cycle moving slowly for others too?
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 03/03/2025
I’m not a business law person, but Andrew Verstein has a real knack for letting the rest of us in to complex topics in business law.
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 03/03/2025
Interesting. Thanks!
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 03/03/2025
It’s not, but I’m happy to share a draft. I’ll email you.
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 02/03/2025
If I can get title help from my daughter or perhaps my students then it might be. At the moment I’m pondering a new paper about legislative exceptionalism for criminal law bills. Miss Americana? All Too Well? Not seeing it. If I were writing about habeas or accomplice liability that would be easier.
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 02/03/2025
In this article I examine how criminal process flattens the complex narratives of crime into a simple story of defendants making bad choices. It sometimes coerces defendants into reciting this narrative too.
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 02/03/2025
Look What You Made Me Do is currently under submission to law journals. Here’s the abstract.
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
Congratulations! Send them out by snail mail. That’s my vote.
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 27/12/2024
This looks like a fantastic event, and I think it’s especially well-timed for folks getting early feedback on their summer projects that they haven’t written yet.
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 24/12/2024
Building a large langauge model trained on the Alabama Code is a great resource, but we ought to be careful to understand that it still won’t tell us everything about Alabama law. news.ua.edu/2024/11/arti...
news.ua.edu
Positioning UA for an AI Future
The University of Alabama is taking steps to ensure The University and its students are positioned at the forefront of the AI wave.
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
Alice Ristroph’s open-source book is fantastic and does cover property crimes. Happy to discuss that or anything else about teaching Crim if I can be helpful.
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Steven Mazie @stevenmazie.bsky.social · 03/12/2024
Re-reading Bostock on the eve of tomorrow's big trans healthcare case at SCOTUS, I think the law's defenders have their work cut out to explain why Gorsuch's reasoning there doesn't apply to TN's ban on puberty blockers & cross-sex hormones for trans youth. Three points...
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Kimberly Atkins Stohr @kimberlyeatkins.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
I hope President Biden also uses his clemency power to aid those who also faced a criminal justice system unfairly stacked against them - but do not have the name recognition, connections or privilege of his son (or even of those two turkeys). theappeal.org/biden-commut...
theappeal.org
U.S. Reps Urge Biden to Use Clemency to Correct “Extreme Use of Incarceration”
U.S. Congressmembers, including Ayanna Pressley, say Joe Biden should grand pardons and commutations before Donald Trump takes office.
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christopher-lau.bsky.social @christopher-lau.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
Thrilled to share that our client, Manuel Cucuta, was released yesterday after serving nearly three decades in prison. Just in time for his first Thanksgiving with family in 27 years. law.wisc.edu/newsletter/F...
law.wisc.edu
Wisconsin Innocence Project Client Manuel Cucuta Released After 27 Years in Prison | University of Wisconsin Law SchoolSite iconsUniversity logo that links to main university websitefacebooktwitteryo...
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Eve Brensike Primus @primuseve.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
Do you know about social science that you think criminal defense attorneys should be incorporating into their arguments? Have you written a criminal defense motion incorporating social science? If so, please help us create a national network. Upload your studies and motions to datafordefenders.org
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 15/11/2024
I’m growing a bit tired of hearing about the Republican “trifecta.” It overlooks Republican control of the federal courts and the Supreme Court in particular. “Quadfecta” seems clumsier but more apt.
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 14/11/2024
Coverage of the really important law reform work my fantastic colleague Fred Vars has been doing. www.thetrace.org/2024/11/donn...
thetrace.org
To Prevent Suicide, States Want to Let People Ban Themselves From Buying Guns
The suicide prevention measure is one of the few areas of gun policy where Republicans and Democrats can agree.
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 13/11/2024
I feel very fortunate that I got to work with Ted O. on a couple of very high-profile cases. This is also where I admit that I was quite junior and we had many layers of lawyers between us on those teams.
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 13/11/2024
As crazy as it sounds to create a new agency to rein in agencies, if you had to pick one guy to destroy an organization, Musk was a sensible choice.
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Raffi Melkonian @rmfifthcircuit.bsky.social · 13/11/2024
This is a disaster.
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 13/11/2024
Making defendants pay for the privileges of being arrested, processed, and even for their housing in jails and prisons is perverse. If it's worth it to us as a society to deprive people of their liberty and make them and their loved ones suffer, we ought to pay for it.
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 13/11/2024
Would my fellow Alabamians be willing to pay much more in taxes to meaningfully fund the right to counsel and prisons that are not overcrowded? This state is harsh on crime, but it hates taxes too. We ought to face these questions instead of getting criminal law on the cheap.
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 13/11/2024
The basic idea underlying this article is that we shouldn't get more criminal enforcement than we're willing to pay for. We should be able to choose, at a local level, how much enforcement we want, but we shouldn't be able to do it on the cheap.
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 13/11/2024
The Price of Criminal Law is my latest full-length article: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers..... I argue that budget discipline provides a critically important constraint on criminal law and consider what democratically accountable budgeting would look like in criminal law.
papers.ssrn.com
The Price of Criminal Law
<div> Should tax dollars pay for more criminal law, better public schools, or a <span>new community center? Different counties will answer the question&nb
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 13/11/2024
The essay that Kay Levine and I wrote, Exoneration Finance, is now published: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf… in NYU Law Review Online. We explain how litigation finance can improve access to counsel for wrongful conviction proceedings.
papers.ssrn.com
Exoneration Finance
The path to financial compensation for the wrongfully convicted can be complex and time-consuming. Exonerees often struggle to make ends meet and function in fr
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 13/11/2024
The basic idea underlying this article is that we shouldn't get more criminal enforcement than we're willing to pay for. We should be able to choose, at a local level, how much enforcement we want, but we shouldn't be able to do it on the cheap.
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Russell Gold @profrgold.bsky.social · 13/11/2024
Can you please add me too? Thanks for doing this, @maybell.bsky.social
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