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Modifying The Kentucky Rules Of Evidence—A Separation Of Powers Issue, Robert G. Lawson
Modifying The Kentucky Rules Of Evidence—A Separation Of Powers Issue, Robert G. Lawson
Law Faculty Scholarly Articles
How do you modify laws that simultaneously exist as statutes and rules of court? For reasons that are described elsewhere and need not be repeated here, the Kentucky Rules of Evidence (K.R.E.) came into existence through concurrent enactment by the General Assembly and Kentucky Supreme Court and thus are endowed with all the attributes of both statutes and rules of court. So, how do you change them when the inevitable need to do so arises, a question made both interesting and difficult by the fact that there is no institutional mechanism for concurrent lawmaking by the General Assembly and supreme …
Interpretation Of The Kentucky Rules Of Evidence—What Happened To The Common Law?, Robert G. Lawson
Interpretation Of The Kentucky Rules Of Evidence—What Happened To The Common Law?, Robert G. Lawson
Law Faculty Scholarly Articles
The Kentucky Rules of Evidence, which became effective on July 1, 1992, dramatically transformed the method by which lawyers and judges address evidence issues. Before the adoption of the Rules, the law of evidence consisted mostly of a vast collection of common law rulings, accumulated over two centuries and inaccessible to lawyers and judges for all practical purposes. In addressing an evidence issue, participants had to first deal with the problem of "finding" the law-distilling from a morass of conflicting common law precedents the ones applicable to the issue at hand, a task regularly producing contention rather than agreement and, …
Kentucky Law Survey: Evidence, Robert G. Lawson
Kentucky Law Survey: Evidence, Robert G. Lawson
Law Faculty Scholarly Articles
This Article is a survey of recent developments in evidence law. It focuses on specific issues, including statements for medical treatment or diagnosis, tape recordings, "probativeness" versus "prejudice," and others.
Kentucky Law Survey: Evidence, Richard H. Underwood
Kentucky Law Survey: Evidence, Richard H. Underwood
Law Faculty Scholarly Articles
Kentucky courts faced a number of significant issues in evidence law during the Survey period. Several decisions dealt with character evidence and problems arising from the admission of evidence of prior criminal acts of the accused, either as substantive evidence or for impeachment. This Survey will highlight these cases and to a lesser degree discuss cases on hearsay admissions, opinion, the Kentucky Dead Man Statute and privilege, which also were decided during the Survey period.
Kentucky Law Survey: Evidence, Robert G. Lawson
Kentucky Law Survey: Evidence, Robert G. Lawson
Law Faculty Scholarly Articles
This article is a survey of Kentucky law on evidence. Almost as often as not the government's case in criminal litigation will contain evidence indicating that the accused committed some offense other than the one for which he is being tried. Consequently a set of rules to control the use of evidence of "other crimes" has evolved. In most jurisdictions it consists of a single rule that prohibits the use of such evidence against a defendant along with a group of exceptions that virtually engulfs the prohibition against admissibility. Kentucky law is so structured. As all lawyers who engage in …
Kentucky Law Survey: Evidence, Robert G. Lawson
Kentucky Law Survey: Evidence, Robert G. Lawson
Law Faculty Scholarly Articles
This article provides a survey of Kentucky case law on evidence. The author discusses: the “Cotton” doctrine, hearsay and the reported testimony exception, learned treatises, and the best evidence rule.
Kentucky Law Survey: Evidence, Robert G. Lawson
Kentucky Law Survey: Evidence, Robert G. Lawson
Law Faculty Scholarly Articles
This article provides a survey of Kentucky case law on evidence. The author discusses: impeachment of an accused by felony convictions, the “Cotton” doctrine, vehicular accidents and expert opinions, and the burden of proof in criminal cases.
The Law Of Presumptions: A Look At Confusion, Kentucky Style, Robert G. Lawson
The Law Of Presumptions: A Look At Confusion, Kentucky Style, Robert G. Lawson
Law Faculty Scholarly Articles
Over the years the term “presumption” has been used by virtually all courts to “designate what are more accurately termed inferences or substantive rules of law.” It has also been used as a “loose synonym for presumption of fact, presumption of law, rebuttable presumption, and irrebuttable presumption.” To this list the Kentucky Court of Appeals had added mandatory presumption, presumptive evidence, and prima facie case. Perhaps of more significance than the indiscriminate use of terminology is the extent to which courts have used “presumptions” to describe judicial reasoning of various kinds and to perform chores more appropriate to unrelated procedural …