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Full-Text Articles in Law

Decision-Making In The Dark: How Pre-Trial Errors Change The Narrative In Criminal Jury Trials, Kara Mackillop, Neil Vidmar Jan 2015

Decision-Making In The Dark: How Pre-Trial Errors Change The Narrative In Criminal Jury Trials, Kara Mackillop, Neil Vidmar

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past decade and a half, a great deal of attention has rightfully been given to the issue of wrongful convictions. In 2003, Jim Dwyer, Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck published Actual Innocence, an eyeopening treatise on the reality of wrongful convictions in the United States. In the years since, more than 1400 innocent persons have been exonerated, and a very diverse research community of attorneys, academics, social scientists, and activists has developed in response to the realization offlaws in our criminal justice system. In 2012, Brandon Garrett's Convicting the Innocent quantitatively evaluated the first 250 DNA exonerations and …


Putting The Microscope On Crime Labs: The Effects Of Evidence Complexity And Laboratory Type On Jurors' Perceptions Of Forensic Evidence, Miliaikeala S.J. Heen Aug 2014

Putting The Microscope On Crime Labs: The Effects Of Evidence Complexity And Laboratory Type On Jurors' Perceptions Of Forensic Evidence, Miliaikeala S.J. Heen

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

An experiment was conducted to test the effects of evidence complexity and laboratory type on jurors' perceptions of forensic evidence. The study specifically focused on three types of labs: public labs, private labs, and "corporate labs." Public labs are managed by a federal, state, or local law enforcement agency, where evidence is usually analyzed internally at an agency. Private labs are those that have been formed as private businesses to provide services to federal, state, and local crime labs with overflow work. Corporate labs are managed by major retail corporations, and primarily service the needs of their store businesses, but …


An Empirical Study Of Appointed Counsel Effectiveness In Jury Trials, James Patrick Hall Jan 2014

An Empirical Study Of Appointed Counsel Effectiveness In Jury Trials, James Patrick Hall

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Anecdotal evidence supports the belief among indigent individuals who are assigned defense counsel that they would be better represented by privately retained counsel. This perspective jeopardizes attorney effectiveness by reducing communication and trust between the attorney and client. Research on the effectiveness of counsel is sparse. The purpose of this quantitative study was to bridge this gap in knowledge by comparing the effectiveness of privately retained and publicly appointed counsel between 2008 and 2013, both before and after the imposition of state-wide compensation limitations on publicly appointed defense counsel. The theoretical framework was Stuntz's theory, which stresses that one part …


The North Carolina Racial Justice Act: An Essay On Substantive And Procedural Fairness In Death Penalty Litigation, Neil Vidmar Jan 2012

The North Carolina Racial Justice Act: An Essay On Substantive And Procedural Fairness In Death Penalty Litigation, Neil Vidmar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Machinery Of Criminal Justice, Stephanos Bibas Jan 2012

The Machinery Of Criminal Justice, Stephanos Bibas

All Faculty Scholarship

Two centuries ago, the American criminal justice was run primarily by laymen. Jury trials passed moral judgment on crimes, vindicated victims and innocent defendants, and denounced the guilty. But over the last two centuries, lawyers have taken over the process, silencing victims and defendants and, in many cases, substituting a plea-bargaining system for the voice of the jury. The public sees little of how this assembly-line justice works, and victims and defendants have largely lost their day in court. As a result, victims rarely hear defendants express remorse and apologize, and defendants rarely receive forgiveness. This lawyerized machinery has purchased …


Examining The "Csi-Effect" In The Cases Of Circumstantial Evidence And Eyewitness Testimony: Multivariate And Path Analyses, Hon. Donald E. Shelton, Young S. Kim, Gregg Barak Sep 2009

Examining The "Csi-Effect" In The Cases Of Circumstantial Evidence And Eyewitness Testimony: Multivariate And Path Analyses, Hon. Donald E. Shelton, Young S. Kim, Gregg Barak

Hon. Donald E. Shelton

As part of a larger investigation of the changing nature of juror behavior in the context of technology development, this study examined important questions unanswered by previous studies on the “CSI-effect.” In answering such questions, the present study applied multivariate and path analyses for the first time. The results showed that (a) watching CSI dramas had no independent effect on jurors' verdicts, (b) the exposure to CSI dramas did not interact with individual characteristics, (c) different individual characteristics were significantly associated with different types of evidence, and (d) CSI watching had no direct effect on jurors' decisions, and it had …


An Indirect-Effects Model Of Mediated Adjudication: The Csi Myth, The Tech Effect, And Metropolitan Jurors' Expectations For Scientific Evidence, Hon. Donald E. Shelton, Young S. Kim, Gregg Barak Jan 2009

An Indirect-Effects Model Of Mediated Adjudication: The Csi Myth, The Tech Effect, And Metropolitan Jurors' Expectations For Scientific Evidence, Hon. Donald E. Shelton, Young S. Kim, Gregg Barak

Hon. Donald E. Shelton

Part I of this article defines the "CSI effect", given that the phrase has come to have many different meanings ascribed to it. It emphasizes the epistemological importance of first describing the effect of the “CSI effect” as observed in juror behavior documented in a new study conducted in Wayne County (Detroit), Michigan, and then looking at causative factors that may be related to an explanation of those observed effects. Part II describes the methodology of the Wayne County study, provides a descriptive analysis of Wayne County jurors, and compares the jurors demographically to the Washtenaw County jurors who were …


The American Criminal Jury, Nancy J. King Jan 1999

The American Criminal Jury, Nancy J. King

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

As juries become both less common and more expensive, some have questioned the wisdom of preserving the criminal jury in its present form. The benefits of the jury are difficult to quantify, but jury verdicts continue to earn widespread acceptance by the public and trial by jury remains a cherished right of most Americans. In any event, many basic features of the criminal jury in the United States cannot be modified without either constitutional amendment or radical reinterpretations of the Bill of Rights. Judges and legislators continue to tinker within constitutional confines, some hoping to improve the jury trial by …