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Eliminating Rule 609 To Provide A Fair Opportunity To Defend Against Criminal Charges: A Proposal To The Advisory Committee On The Federal Rules Of Evidence, Jeffrey Bellin

Faculty Publications

Federal Rule of Evidence 609 authorizes the admission of prior convictions to impeach criminal defendants who testify. And in this important and uniquely damaging application, the [r]ule’s logic fails, distorting American trials and depriving defendants of a fair opportunity to defend against the charges. The Advisory Committee [on Evidence Rules (the “Advisory Committee”)] should propose the elimination of Rule 609 and prohibit cross-examination with specific instances of a criminal defendant’s past conduct when those instances are unrelated to the defendant’s testimony and unconnected to the case.

This short essay begins by setting out the proposed rule change alongside a proposed …

Ai-Based Evidence In Criminal Trials?, Sabine Gless, Fredric I. Lederer, Thomas Weigend

Faculty Publications

Smart devices are increasingly the origin of critical criminal case data. The importance of such data, especially data generated when using modern automobiles, is likely to become even more important as increasingly complex methods of machine learning lead to AI-based evidence being autonomously generated by devices. This article reviews the admissibility of such evidence from both American and German perspectives. As a result of this comparative approach, the authors conclude that American evidence law could be improved by borrowing aspects of the expert testimony approaches used in Germany’s “inquisitorial” court system.

Write Before You Watch: Policies For Police Body-Worn Cameras That Advance Accountability And Accuracy, Hillary B. Farber

Faculty Publications

In the wake of high-profile killings and abuse by police officers over the past few years, the public has come to expect that officers will be equipped with body-worn cameras (BWCs). These cameras capture and preserve encounters between police and civilians, and the footage they record often becomes critical evidence in criminal, civil, or administrative proceedings. Reformers believe BWCs can improve police accountability, build public trust in police, and potentially reform police behavior.

Considering the reliance on BWCs, a key question has emerged: should officers be allowed to review BWC footage before preparing a report or giving a statement, or …

The Modest Impact Of The Modern Confrontation Clause, Jeffrey Bellin, Diana Bibb

Faculty Publications

The Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause grants criminal defendants the right "to be confronted with the witnesses against" them. A strict reading of this text would transform the criminal justice landscape by prohibiting the prosecution's use of hearsay at trial. But until recently, the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Clause was closer to the opposite. By tying the confrontation right to traditional hearsay exceptions, the Court's longstanding precedents granted prosecutors broad freedom to use out-of-court statements to convict criminal defendants.

The Supreme Court's 2004 decision in Crawford v. Washington was supposed to change all that. By severing the link between the …

The Evidence Rules That Convict The Innocent, Jeffrey Bellin

Faculty Publications

Over the past decades, DNA testing has uncovered hundreds of examples of the most important type of trial errors: innocent defendants convicted of serious crimes like rape and murder. The resulting Innocence Movement spurred reforms to police practices, forensic science, and criminal procedure. This Article explores the lessons of the Innocence Movement for American evidence law.

Commentators often overlook the connection between the growing body of research on convictions of the innocent and the evidence rules. Of the commonly identified causes of false convictions, only flawed forensic testimony has received sustained attention as a matter of evidence law. But other …

The Challenge Of Convincing Ethical Prosecutors That Their Profession Has A Brady Problem, Adam M. Gershowitz

Faculty Publications

In recent decades, both the media and legal scholars have documented the widespread problem of prosecutors failing to disclose favorable evidence to the defense – so called Brady violations. Despite all of this documentation however, many ethical prosecutors reject the notion that the criminal justice system has a Brady problem. These prosecutors – ethical lawyers who themselves have not been accused of misconduct – believe that the scope of the Brady problem is exaggerated. Why do ethical prosecutors downplay the evidence that some of their colleagues have committed serious errors?

This essay, in honor of Professor Bennett Gershman, points to …

Policing The Admissibility Of Body Camera Evidence, Jeffrey Bellin, Shevarma Pemberton

Faculty Publications

Body cameras are sweeping the nation and becoming, along with the badge and gun, standard issue for police officers. These cameras are intended to ensure accountability for abusive police officers. But, if history is any guide, the videos they produce will more commonly be used to prosecute civilians than to document abuse. Further, knowing that the footage will be available as evidence, police officers have an incentive to narrate body camera videos with descriptive oral statements that support a later prosecution. Captured on an official record that exclusively documents the police officer’s perspective, these statements—for example, “he just threw something …

Deconstructing The Epistemic Challenges To Mass Atrocity Prosecutions, Nancy Amoury Combs

Faculty Publications

Mass atrocity prosecutions are credited with advancing a host of praiseworthy objectives. They are believed to impose much-needed retribution, deter future atrocities, and affirm the rule of law in previously lawless societies. However, mass atrocity prosecutions will accomplish none of these laudable ends unless they are able to find accurate facts. Convicting the appropriate individuals of the appropriate crimes is a necessary and foundational condition for the success of mass atrocity prosecutions. But it is a condition that is frequently difficult to meet, as mass atrocity prosecutions are often bedeviled by pervasive and invidious obstacles to accurate fact-finding. This Article …

What Do I Do With The Porn On My Computer: How A Lawyer Should Counsel Clients About Physical Evidence, Rodney J. Uphoff, Peter A. Joy

Faculty Publications

For years, criminal defense lawyers and commentators have wrestled with thorny ethical and legal issues surrounding defense counsel's obligations with respect to handling items of physical evidence. Commentators have usually focused on the question of whether the lawyer should take possession of physical evidence of a crime as well as on counsel's obligations and options once the lawyer purposively or inadvertently comes into possession of such evidence. After discussing what the ethics rules and the law require concerning handling physical evidence, commentators have generally cautioned lawyers not to take possession of suspected contraband or possible evidence of a crime, except …

Grave Crimes And Weak Evidence: Fact-Finding Evolution In International Criminal Law, Nancy Amoury Combs

Faculty Publications

International criminal courts carry out some of the most important work that a legal system can conduct: prosecuting those who have visited death and destruction on millions. Despite the significance of their work--or perhaps because of it--international courts face tremendous challenges. Chief among them is accurate fact-finding. With alarming regularity, international criminal trials feature inconsistent, vague, and sometimes false testimony that renders judges unable to assess with any measure of certainty who did what to whom in the context of a mass atrocity. This Article provides the first-ever empirical study quantifying fact-finding in an international criminal court. The study shines …

Dangerous Diagnoses, Risky Assumptions, And The Failed Experiment Of "Sexually Violent Predator" Commitment, Deirdre M. Smith

Faculty Publications

In its 1997 opinion, Kansas v. Hendricks, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a law that reflected a new model of civil commitment. The targets of this new commitment law were dubbed “Sexually Violent Predators” (SVPs), and the Court upheld indefinite detention of these individuals on the assumption that there is a psychiatrically distinct class of individuals who, unlike typical recidivists, have a mental condition that impairs their ability to refrain from violent sexual behavior. And, more specifically, the Court assumed that the justice system could reliably identify the true “predators,” those for whom this unusual and extraordinary deprivation of liberty …

The Case For Ehearsay, Jeffrey Bellin

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Promising Protection: 911 Call Records As Foundation For Family Violence Intervention, James G. Dwyer

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Ehearsay, Jeffrey Bellin

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Voir Dire, Eric R. Carpenter

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The 2009 Nas Forensic Science Report: A Literature Review, Paul C. Giannelli

Faculty Publications

In February 29, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) released its report on forensic science: Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward (29). The popular press immediately trumpeted the report’s release, with headlines such as (1) “Report Urges Overhaul of Crime Lab System,” (2) “Real-life Police Forensics Don’t Resemble ‘CSI’: Reliability is ‘Low or Non-existent,’ Report Finds” and (3) “Science Found Wanting in Nation’s Crime Labs.”

Within three months of its publication, Justice Scalia cited the report in a Supreme Court decision, writing: “Forensic evidence is not uniquely immune from the risk of manipulation. . . Serious …

An Overview Of The Capital Jury Project For Military Practitioners: Aggravation, Mitigation, And Admission Defenses, Eric R. Carpenter

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Discourse On The Aba's Criminal Justice Standards: Prosecution And Defense Functions: The Physical Evidence Dilemma: Does Aba Standard 4-4.6 Offer Appropriate Guidance?, Rodney J. Uphoff

Faculty Publications

Since 1966, when criminal defense lawyer Richard Ryder was disciplined for retaining physical evidence that connected his client to a bank robbery, lawyers and courts have struggled with the ethical dilemma of how defense lawyers should deal with physical evidence that potentially incriminates one of their clients. When a lawyer takes possession of an evidentiary item, must she always turn it over to the authorities, as required by most courts that have addressed this dilemma? Or, can defense counsel return the evidence to the source from whom counsel received it as recommended by Standard 4-4.6 of the ABA Criminal Justice …

An Overview Of The Capital Jury Project For Military Practitioners: Jury Dynamics, Juror Confusion, And Juror Responsibility, Eric R. Carpenter

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Book Review Of Fact Finding Without Facts: The Uncertain Evidentiary Foundations Of International Criminal Convictions, Linda A. Malone

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Evidence, Nancy Amoury Combs

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Coconspirators, “Coventurers,” And The Exception Swallowing The Hearsay Rule, Ben L. Trachtenberg

Faculty Publications

In recent years, prosecutors - sometimes with the blessing of courts - have argued that when proving the existence of a “conspiracy” to justify admission of evidence under the Coconspirator Exception to the Hearsay Rule, they need show only that the declarant and the defendant were “coventurers” with a common purpose, not coconspirators with an illegal purpose. Indeed, government briefs and court decisions specifically disclaim the need to show any wrongful goal whatsoever. This Article contends that such a reading of the Exception is mistaken and undesirable. Conducted for this article, a survey of thousands of court decisions, including the …

Forensic Science: Why No Research?, Paul C. Giannelli

Faculty Publications

The National Academy of Sciences ground-breaking report on forensic science – Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward – raised numerous issues. One dominant theme that runs throughout the Report is the failure of some forensic science disciplines to comport with fundamental scientific principles – in particular, to support claims with empirical research. The Report observed that “some forensic science disciplines are supported by little rigorous systematic research to validate the discipline’s basic premises and techniques. There is no evident reason why such research cannot be conducted.”

The Report went on to identify fingerprint examinations, firearms (ballistics) …

Scientific Evidence In Criminal Prosecutions - A Retrospective, Paul C. Giannelli

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Independent Crime Laboratories: The Problem Of Motivational And Cognitive Bias, Paul C. Giannelli

Faculty Publications

One of the most controversial recommendations in the National Academy of Sciences report on forensic science — Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: The Path Forward — concerns the removal of crime laboratories from the administrative control of law enforcement agencies. For decades scholars have commented on the “inbred bias of crime laboratories affiliated with law enforcement agencies.” Some commentators have proposed independent laboratories as the remedy for this problem, and in 22, the Illinois Governor’s Commission on Capital Punishment proposed the establishment of an independent state crime laboratory. This essay documents the problems that triggered the NAS Report’s …

C.S.I. Bulls#!T: The National Academy Of Sciences, Melendedez-Diaz V. Massachusetts, And Future Challenges To Forensic Science And Forensic Evidence,, Joelle A. Moreno

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Adverse Inference About Adverse Inferences: Restructuring Juridical Roles For Responding To Evidence Tampering By Parties To Litigation, Dale A. Nance

Faculty Publications

For at least two centuries, Anglo-American courts have responded to a party's evidence tampering by allowing the opponent to argue to jurors that they should draw an adverse inference against the offending party in deciding the merits of the case. This Article argues that the use of such inferences, and invitations to draw them, should be radically curtailed, not only because of the ambiguities and risks of prejudice that such inferences entail, but more importantly because they reflect and contribute to a confusion of roles in which the jury is enlisted to participate in the management of the pre-trial conduct …

Scientific Fraud, Paul C. Giannelli

Faculty Publications

Although scientific fraud is rare, when it occurs, it needs to be identified and documented. This article discusses two of the most notorious cases in forensic science. Part I focuses on the misconduct of Fred Zain, a serologist with the West Virginia State Police crime laboratory and later with the County Medical Examiner’s laboratory in San Antonio, Texas. Part II examines the misconduct of Joyce Gilchrist, a forensic examiner with the Oklahoma City Police Department.

Testimonial Deficiencies And Evidentiary Uncertainties In International Criminal Trials, Nancy Amoury Combs

Faculty Publications

In this article, the author describes the flaws inherent in the process of international criminal tribunals which seek to punish the inhumane actions of dictators. The author first describes how international criminal trials confront severe impediments to accurate factfinding. It continues on to discuss the failure of witnesses in these tribunals to accurately convey the information needed to make a fully- informed decision. This problem is compounded by the fact that what clear information is provided during witness testimony often is inconsistent with the information that the witness previously provided in a pre-trial statement. The author also explores the causes …

The Nrc Report And Its Implications For Criminal Litigation, Paul C. Giannelli

Faculty Publications

The National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, issued a landmark report on forensic science in February 2009. In the long run, the report’s recommendations, if adopted, would benefit law enforcement and prosecutors. The recommendations would allow forensic science to develop a strong scientific basis and limit evidentiary challenges regarding the reliability of forensic evidence. In keeping with its congressional charge, however, the NRC Committee did not directly address admissibility issues. Nevertheless, given its content, the report will inevitably be cited in criminal cases. Indeed, within months, the United States Supreme Court cited the report, noting …