Law Commons^™

Professor Jeffrey Bellin: Reflections On The Fall 2020 Semester, Jeffrey Bellin

Law School Personal Reflections on COVID-19

No abstract provided.

Unbuckling The Seat Belt Defense In Arkansas, Spencer G. Dougherty

Arkansas Law Review

The “seat belt defense” has been hotly litigated over the decades in numerous jurisdictions across the United States. It is an affirmative defense that, when allowed, reduces a plaintiff’s recovery for personal injuries resulting from an automobile collision where the defendant can establish that those injuries would have been less severe or avoided entirely had the plaintiff been wearing an available seat belt. This is an unsettled legal issue in Arkansas, despite the growing number of cases in which the seat belt defense is raised as an issue. Most jurisdictions, including Arkansas, initially rejected the defense, but the basis for …

The Acquisition Of Scientific Evidence Between Frye And Daubert. From Ad Hominem Arguments To Cross-Examination Among Experts, Lorenzo Zoppellari

OSSA Conference Archive

The Frye and Daubert rulings give us two very different ways to intend the relation between law and science. Through the contributions of Wellman and Walton, we will see how the main method to question the expert’s testimony before a judge deferent to science is to question her personal integrity by using ad hominem arguments. Otherwise, using Alvin Goldman’s novice/expert problem, we will investigate if other manners of argumentative cross-examinations are possible.

The Incomplete Rule Of Completeness: Taking A Stand On Federal Rule Of Evidence 106, Louisa Heiny, Emily Nuvan

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

The common law Rule of Completeness served an important role in Anglo-American jurisprudence for centuries. Historically, it was a rule guided by principles of fundamental fairness and was designed to prevent parties from introducing incomplete and misleading statements at trial.

What was once a simple rule has been muddled by Federal Rule of Evidence 106. The common law rule language was lost when Rule 106 was drafted, and there is no agreement as to what portion of the common law survived and what was left behind. Particularly problematic are the issues of whether Rule 106 applies to oral as well …

Confronting Memory Loss, Paul F. Rothstein, Ronald J. Coleman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment grants “the accused” in “all criminal prosecutions” a right “to be confronted with the witnesses against him.” A particular problem occurs when there is a gap in time between the testimony that is offered, and the cross-examination of it, as where, pursuant to a hearsay exception or exemption, evidence of a current witness’s prior statement is offered and for some intervening reason her current memory is impaired. Does this fatally affect the opportunity to “confront” the witness? The Supreme Court has, to date, left unclear the extent to which a memory-impaired witness can …

Confession Obsession: How To Protect Minors In Interrogations, Cindy Chau

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

As Pertains To The Criminal Justice System, Is Hindsight 20/20?, Syndie G. E. Molina, Cristina Negrillo

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

The Methodology Of Social Adaptation Following The Liberation Of A Wrongful Conviction, Ashantwa Jackman

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Lie To Me: Examining Specific Intent Under 18 U.S.C. §§ 1001, 1035

Florida A & M University Law Review

One court notes that the Supreme Court of the United States (“SCOTUS”) has previously not found specific intent to be required under similar language within Section 1001.9 While there are many similarities between Sections 1001 and 1035, there are salient differences. Notwithstanding the differences, this Article argues that Sections 1001 and 1035 should be interpreted without “intent to deceive” and rather be interpreted as a strict liability offense. This argument began with Part I, which provided a brief introduction regarding specific intent under Sections 1001 and 1035. Part II examines the purpose of criminalizing false statements, which identifies why the …

The Fourth Amendment Inventory As A Check On Digital Searches, Laurent Sacharoff

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Police and federal agents generally must obtain a warrant to search the tens of thousands of devices they seize each year. But once they have a warrant, courts afford these officers broad leeway to search the entire device, every file and folder, all metadata and deleted data, even if in search of only one incriminating file. Courts avow great reverence for the privacy of personal information under the Fourth Amendment but then claim there is no way to limit where an officer might find the target files, or know where the suspect may have hidden them.

These courts have a …

Race And Reasonableness In Police Killings, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Alexis D. Campbell

Faculty Scholarship

Police officers in the United States have killed over 1000 civilians each year since 2013. The constitutional landscape that regulates these encounters defaults to the judgments of the reasonable police officer at the time of a civilian encounter based on the officer’s assessment of whether threats to their safety or the safety of others requires deadly force. As many of these killings have begun to occur under similar circumstances, scholars have renewed a contentious debate on whether police disproportionately use deadly force against African Americans and other nonwhite civilians and whether such killings reflect racial bias. We analyze data on …

See No Evil: A Look At Florida's Legislative Response To Holding Hotels Civilly Liable For "Turning A Blind Eye" To The Sex Trafficking Monster Hiding Behind Closed Doors, Lori N. Ross

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Mr. Big And The New Common Law Confessions Rule: Five Years In Review, Adelina Iftene, Vanessa Kinnear

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The Supreme Court of Canada released its decision of R v Hart in July of 2014. The decision provided a two-prong framework for assessing the admissibility of confessions obtained through the undercover police tactic known as “Mr. Big”. The goal of the framework was to address reliability concerns, to protect suspects from state abuse, and to reduce the risk of wrongful convictions. The first prong of the test created a new common law evidentiary rule, under which Mr. Big obtained confessions are now presumptively inadmissible. The second prong revamped the existing abuse of process doctrine.

In this article, the authors …