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Full-Text Articles in Law

Authenticity And Admissibility Of Social Media Website Printouts, Wendy Angus-Anderson Nov 2015

Authenticity And Admissibility Of Social Media Website Printouts, Wendy Angus-Anderson

Duke Law & Technology Review

Social media posts and photographs are increasingly denied admission as evidence in criminal trials. Courts often cite issues with authentication when refusing to admit social media evidence. Cases and academic writings separate recent case law into two approaches: The Maryland Approach and the Texas Approach. The first method is often seen as overly skeptical of social media evidence, setting the bar too high for admissibility. The second approach is viewed as more lenient, declaring that any reasonable evidence should be admitted in order for a jury to weigh its sufficiency. This Brief addresses the supposed differences between the two sets …


Reasonable Expectations Of Privacy Settings: Social Media And The Stored Communications Act, Christopher J. Borchert, Fernando M. Pinguelo, David Thaw Jan 2015

Reasonable Expectations Of Privacy Settings: Social Media And The Stored Communications Act, Christopher J. Borchert, Fernando M. Pinguelo, David Thaw

Duke Law & Technology Review

In 1986, Congress passed the Stored Communications Act (“SCA”) to provide additional protections for individuals’ private communications content held in electronic storage by third parties. Acting out of direct concern for the implications of the Third-Party Records Doctrine—a judicially created doctrine that generally eliminates Fourth Amendment protections for information entrusted to third parties—Congress sought to tailor the SCA to electronic communications sent via and stored by third parties. Yet, because Congress crafted the SCA with language specific to the technology of 1986, courts today have struggled to apply the SCA consistently with regard to similar private content sent using different …


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 …