Law Commons^™

Reflections On Motion Picture Evidence, Brian L. Frye

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Courts have long admitted motion pictures as evidence. But until recently, making motion pictures was expensive and cumbersome. Today, making motion pictures is cheap and easy. And as a result, people make so many of them. As Cocteau predicted, the democratization of motion pictures has enabled people to create new forms of motion picture art. But it has also enabled people to create new forms of motion picture evidence. This article offers a brief history of motion picture evidence in the United States, and reflects on the use of motion picture evidence by the Supreme Court.

Data Beyond Borders: Mutual Legal Assistance In The Internet Era, Andrew K. Woods

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The global nature of today’s Internet services presents a unique challenge to international law enforcement cooperation. On a daily basis, law enforcement agents in one country seek access to data that is beyond their jurisdictional reach; as one industry analyst put it, there has been, “an internationalization of evidence.” In order to gain lawful access to data that is subject to another state’s jurisdiction, law enforcement agents must request mutual legal assistance (MLA) from the country that can legally compel the data’s disclosure. But the MLA regime has not been updated to manage the enormous rise of requests for MLA. …

Ringers Revisited, Richard H. Underwood

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In this short essay, Professor Underwood addresses an important development in the law dealing with eyewitness testimony and the New Jersey case of State v. Henderson. He gets at the subject by looking back to a 1950s television play starring fellow Kentucky resident, William Shatner. However, in this particular instance, William Shatner would not change the world.

Stella Kenney: A Little Problem In Evidence, Richard H. Underwood

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In this article, Professor Richard H. Underwood explores the murder ballad entitled Stella Kenney. Stella Kenney (whose real name was Kinney) was from Carter County, Kentucky.

Child Witness Policy: Law Interfacing With Social Science, Louise E. Graham, Dorothy F. Marsil, Jean Montoya, David Ross

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The number of children testifying in court has posed serious practical and legal problems for the judicial system. One problem confronting the courts is how to protect children from experiencing the psychological trauma resulting from a face-to-face confrontation with a defendant who may have physically harmed the child or threatened future harm to the child. Another concern is that this trauma may impair children's memory performance and their willingness to disclose the truth. In response to these concerns, child witness innovations proliferated throughout the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. Among the innovations were: placing a screen between child …

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

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

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.

The Limits Of Cross-Examination, Richard H. Underwood

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In this article, the author compiles the history and methodology of cross-examination from ancient Greece to the modern era. The reality and ethics of cross-examination are explored through anecdotes and detailed histories.

Currency Contamination And Drug-Sniffing Canines: Should Any Evidentiary Value Be Attached To A Dog's Alert On Cash?, Andy G. Rickman

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

"X-Spurt" Witnesses, Richard H. Underwood

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In this article the author pulls together a history of expert witnesses in common law systems. Various issues are explored regarding expert witness testimony, including: the historical underpinnings of the practice, how Daubert controls that issue in modern times, rules of evidence, psychological science, and professional ethics.

"Show And Tell": An Analysis Of The Scope Of The Attorney-Client Waiver Standards, Roberta M. Harding

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

As today's society becomes increasingly litigious, document productions, a major discovery tool, are growing larger. One inevitable consequence of this phenomenon is the increased risk that communications protected by the attorney-client privilege may be inadvertently disclosed. Privileged communications may also be disclosed to an adversary under more questionable circumstances: specifically, the intentional, strategic disclosure of privileged information favorable to the disclosing party's position.

In any case involving the disclosure of privileged information, the court must initially decide whether the privilege is waived. To resolve this threshold issue courts apply one of the three waiver tests. If a court decides that …

Admissibility Of Expert Testimony On Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation Syndrome In Kentucky, Michele Meyer Mccarthy

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Should A Motion In Limine Or Similar Preliminary Motion Made In The Federal Court System Preserve Error On Appeal Without A Contemporaneous Objection?, Catherine Murr Young

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Fit To Be Fryed: Frye V. United States And The Admissibility Of Novel Scientific Evidence, John D. Borders Jr.

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Seminar On Evidence And Trial Practice, Office Of Continuing Legal Education At The University Of Kentucky College Of Law, Robert G. Lawson, William H. Fortune, Thomas L. Osborne, William R. Garmer, Richard H. Underwood, Robert L. Elliott, Peggy E. Purdom, Andre E. Busald, William J. Kathman

Continuing Legal Education Materials

Outlines of speaker presentations offered during a series of one day seminars on evidence and trial practice offered by UK/CLE in late 1987-early 1988.

On The Exclusivity Of The Hague Evidence Convention, John M. Rogers

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

As the world grows smaller and nations become more interdependent, the likelihood that litigation will involve foreign property, parties, or activities increases tremendously. To prepare and conduct such litigation, the lawyer may need to obtain information "located" in a foreign jurisdiction: a person located abroad may know the information; documents located abroad may contain the information; or the information may describe conditions or property located abroad. The question of when relatively burdensome, internationally-approved methods of obtaining such information must be used thus becomes more and more important.

Consider a product liability suit for damages in the United States arising from …

Pleading And Practice In Commercial Paper Cases: Burdens Of Proof, Harold R. Weinberg

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Money debts are frequently paid by checks and evidenced by notes subject to Article Three of the Uniform Commercial Code. Financial institutions and other creditors ordinarily take these instruments with the expectation that they will be paid on time without resort to litigation. This expectation fails when the debtor or some other obligor on the instrument claims that its signature was unauthorized or that there is a defense against payment. This Article analyzes the Uniform Commercial Code rules concerning burdens of proof that apply to these disputes and gives consideration to related procedural and evidentiary questions. It concludes with some …

Jackson V. Virginia: Reopening The Pandora's Box Of The Legal Sufficiency Of Drug Identification Evidence, Edward J. Imwinkelried

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Discovery In Kentucky: An Overview, Richard H. Underwood

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

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.

Discovery Of Government Attorney Work Product Under The Foia, Richard Allen Vance

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Kentucky Law Survey: Criminal Rules, William H. Fortune

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In May 1978 the Kentucky Supreme Court set up a Criminal Rules Revision Committee (Advisory Committee) to study Kentucky's Rules of Criminal Procedure. The purpose of the Advisory Committee was to make recommendations to the Judicial Council. The committee met sixteen times between July 1978 and July 1980, and at the conclusion of its study, submitted a comprehensive revision of the rules of criminal procedure to the judicial council. These proposed revisions went beyond mere amendment of the existing rules. The Advisory Committee drew heavily from the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, and ultimately proposed extensive changes in plea bargaining, …

The Abolition Of The Party-Witness Disqualification: An Historical Survey, Joel N. Bodansky

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Admissibility Of Hypnotically Induced Recollection, R. Eberley Davis

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Admissibility Of Evaluative Reports Under Federal Rule Of Evidence 803(8), Kimberly K. Greene

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

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 …

The Kentucky Rape Shield Law: One Step Too Far, Jennifer Burcham Coffman

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Credibility And Character: A Different Look At An Interminable Problem, Robert G. Lawson

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The problems of character evidence "resolved" by the new Federal Rules are problems that involve the structure of human personality. The judgmental processing by jurors of character information involves a behavioral transaction called interpersonal perception. Each of these psychological problems has been intensively investigated for nearly 40 years. As the character problems of the law now take on the appearance of having been solved, there is not the slightest indication that the results of this scientific endeavor influenced the choices made by the law. The solutions to these problems composed by the Judicial Conference and embraced by the Supreme Court …

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.