Law Commons^™

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 …

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 …

The Case For Ehearsay, Jeffrey Bellin

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Ehearsay, Jeffrey Bellin

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Facebook, Twitter, And The Uncertain Future Of Present Sense Impressions, Jeffrey Bellin

Faculty Publications

The intricate legal framework governing the admission of out-of-court statements in American trials is premised on increasingly outdated communication norms. Nowhere is this more apparent than with the hearsay exception for “present sense impressions.” Changing communication practices typified by interactions on social media websites like Facebook and Twitter herald the arrival of a previously uncontemplated—and uniquely unreliable—breed of present sense impressions. This Article contends that the indiscriminate admission of these electronic present sense impressions (e-PSIs) is both normatively undesirable and inconsistent with the traditional rationale for the present sense impression exception. It proposes a reform to the exception that would …

The Significance (If Any) For The Federal Criminal Justice System Of Advances In Lie Detector Technology, Jeffrey Bellin

Faculty Publications

Against a backdrop of accelerating developments in the science of lie detection certain to reopen the debate on the reliability and therefore admissibility of lie detector evidence in the federal courts, this Article examines whether the prohibition on hearsay evidence (or other evidentiary objections) will preclude admissibility of even scientifically reliable lie detector evidence. The Article concludes that the hearsay prohibition, which has been largely ignored by courts and commentators, is the primary obstacle to the future admission of scientifically valid lie detector evidence. The Article also suggests a potential solution to the hearsay problem that may allow admission of …