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Articles 1 - 5 of 5
Full-Text Articles in Law
Shifting The Male Gaze Of Evidence, Teneille R. Brown
Shifting The Male Gaze Of Evidence, Teneille R. Brown
Utah Law Faculty Scholarship
In this article I target the altar at which many of us worship—the pursuit of rationality. For evidence purposes, rationality is defined as decisions that are reasonable, objective, inductive, and free from the bias of emotion. This view of rationality is deeply embedded in evidence scholarship and practice. It is also reflected in evidence rules like FRE 403, which treat emotional testimony as unfairly prejudicial simply because it is emotional. The anti-emotion view of rationality reflects the thinking of Western philosophical giants. Plato, Hobbes, Descartes, and Bacon all thought that men should strive for rationality by suppressing their emotions, because …
Demystifying Mindreading For The Law, Teneille R. Brown
Demystifying Mindreading For The Law, Teneille R. Brown
Utah Law Faculty Scholarship
To lawyers, mindreading conjures up flamboyant images of crystal balls or charlatans. However, it is a deeply serious endeavor for the law. The primary role of fact-finders in civil, criminal, and administrative trials in the United States is to serve as highly-regulated mind readers—to listen to the testimony and decide whether the witnesses are credible and telling the truth. Because it can be so easily biased, we must directly acknowledge how jurors and judges (in addition to voters and employers) automatically and imperfectly read minds. We must remove the “mystique of mindreading,” and see how ordinary assessments of mental states …
Minding Accidents, Teneille R. Brown
Minding Accidents, Teneille R. Brown
Utah Law Faculty Scholarship
Tort doctrine states that breach is all about conduct. Unlike in the criminal law, where jurors must engage in an amateur form of mindreading to evaluate mens rea, jurors are told that they can assess civil negligence by looking only at how the defendant behaved. But this is false. Foreseeability is at the heart of negligence—appearing as the primary tests for duty, breach, and proximate cause. And yet, we cannot ask whether a defendant should have foreseen a risk without interrogating what he subjectively knew, remembered, perceived, or realized at the time. In fact, the focus on actions in negligence …
Do You See What I See? The Science Behind Utah Rule Of Evidence 617, Louisa Heiny
Do You See What I See? The Science Behind Utah Rule Of Evidence 617, Louisa Heiny
Utah Law Faculty Scholarship
Eyewitness identifications play a key role in many investigations and are often central to a prosecutor’s case. At the same time, eyewitness identifications can be tainted, accidentally or purposely, thus tainting the justice system as well. There are myriad reasons for this phenomenon, but the primary responsibility lies not with the witness, but rather a system that fails to recognize, and often amplifies, mistakes and assumptions in the identification process.
Brain Images As Legal Evidence, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Adina Roskies, Teneille R. Brown, Emily Murphy
Brain Images As Legal Evidence, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Adina Roskies, Teneille R. Brown, Emily Murphy
Utah Law Faculty Scholarship
This paper explores whether brain images may be admitted as evidence in criminal trials under Federal Rule of Evidence 403, which weighs probative value against the danger of being prejudicial, confusing, or misleading to fact finders. The paper summarizes and evaluates recent empirical research relevant to these issues. We argue that currently the probative value of neuroimages for criminal responsibility is minimal, and there is some evidence of their potential to be prejudicial or misleading. We also propose experiments that will directly assess how jurors are influenced by brain images.