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Full-Text Articles in Law
Identifying And Preventing Improper Prosecutorial Comment In Closing Argument, Robert W. Clifford
Identifying And Preventing Improper Prosecutorial Comment In Closing Argument, Robert W. Clifford
Maine Law Review
In recent years, several decisions of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court sitting as the Law Court have addressed the comments of prosecutors in final argument before criminal juries. Three of those decisions in particular have caused concern among prosecutors and have stirred discussion in the Maine legal community. In vacating convictions in State v. Steen, State v. Casella, and State v. Tripp, the Law Court focused on the language used by the prosecutors during closing argument and concluded that those prosecutors impermissibly expressed personal opinion concerning the credibility of the defendants, or witnesses called by the defendants. This Article examines …
Revisiting The Voluntariness Of Confessions After State V. Sawyer, Michael Theodore Bigos
Revisiting The Voluntariness Of Confessions After State V. Sawyer, Michael Theodore Bigos
Maine Law Review
Every individual in our society needs confidence in our criminal justice system to know that one cannot be convicted of a crime unless a fact finder is convinced of every necessary element with the highest assurances of the truth. The process of establishing facts in a criminal trial is highly dependent upon how decision-making power is allocated between the judge and the jury and upon the fairness of that allocation. This Note discusses the areas of confession law and burdens of proof in the context of how federal criminal constitutional doctrines that affect the fact-finding process offer less than clear …
Too Low A Price: Waiver And The Right To Counsel, Zachary L. Heiden
Too Low A Price: Waiver And The Right To Counsel, Zachary L. Heiden
Maine Law Review
Easy waiver of the right to counsel is at the heart of the problem with inadequate funding for criminal defense counsel for the indigent: without freely granted waiver of the right to counsel, the crisis in funding for indigent defense would, in the short term, be greatly magnified. But, the ready acceptance of the waivability of the right to counsel devalues and diminishes the significance of the assistance of counsel in criminal matters.