Law Commons^™

A competent United States Attorney should easily win any federal drug case. The elements of federal drug crimes are easy to prove, easy to explain, and easy for juries to comprehend. Why then does the government need members of law enforcement to testify as experts in federal drug prosecutions? The answer: they do not. Yet district courts routinely admit (and appellate courts uphold) expert agent and officer testimony on a wide array of drug topics—including when officers testify both as expert and lay witnesses. Were the examples of law enforcement expert testimony few, perhaps no problem would arise. But this …

Nearly all confessions obtained by interrogators nationwide are inadmissible, but nonetheless admitted. In the process, police arrest the wrong suspect and allow the guilty to go free. An unshakeable addiction to pseudo-scientific interrogation methods – initially created in the 1940s – is to blame. The so-called “Reid technique” of interrogation was initially a welcome and revolutionary change from the violent “third degree” method it replaced. But, we no longer live in the 1940s and, not surprisingly, we no longer drive 1940s automobiles, practice early twentieth century medicine, or dial rotary phones. Why, then, are police still using 1940s methods of …

No Arkansas appellate court has examined the constitutionality of the recently enacted House Bill 1473 – better known as “Juli’s Law” – which allows officers to take DNA samples from suspects arrested for capital murder, murder in the first degree, kidnapping, sexual assault in the first degree, and sexual assault in the second degree. This brief essay contends that Juli’s Law violates the Fourth Amendment of the federal constitution.