Law Commons^™

Judging Genes: Implications Of The Second Generation Of Genetic Tests In The Courtroom, Diane E. Hoffmann, Karen H. Rothenberg

Karen H. Rothenberg

The use of DNA tests for identification has revolutionized court proceedings in criminal and paternity cases. Now, requests by litigants to admit or compel a second generation of genetic tests – tests to confirm or predict genetic diseases and conditions – threaten to affect judicial decision-making in many more contexts. Unlike DNA tests for identification, these second generation tests may provide highly personal health and behavioral information about individuals and their relatives and will pose new challenges for trial court judges. This article reports on an original empirical study of how judges analyze these requests and uses the study results …

Evidence In International Criminal Trials: Lessons And Contributions From The Special Court For Sierra Leone, Patrick Matthew Hassan-Morlai

Patrick Matthew Hassan-Morlai

The general aim of this paper is to contribute to the discourse on the development of a system of international criminal justice. In so doing, this paper will pay attention to one aspect – rules of evidence – and examine its role in ensuring the rights to fair trial. The examination is limited to discussing offences relating to the jurisdiction ratione materiae of the SCSL contained in Articles 2-5 of the SCSL Statute.

Truth Or Consequences: Self-Incriminating Statements And Informant Veracity, Mary Bowman

Mary N. Bowman

Courts treat self-incriminating statements by criminal informants as a significant factor favoring the reliability of the informant’s information when making probable cause determinations for the issuance of search warrants. Courts do so even though admissions of criminal activity usually undercut, rather than support, credibility. In using self-incriminating statements to support the informant’s reliability, courts tend to rely on a theory with significant theoretical flaws. Furthermore, recent United States Supreme Court jurisprudence in other contexts undercuts the reliability of using self-incriminating statements to support the veracity of other information. If courts adequately scrutinize the informant’s self-incriminating statements and the circumstances surrounding …

Examining The "Csi-Effect" In The Cases Of Circumstantial Evidence And Eyewitness Testimony: Multivariate And Path Analyses, Hon. Donald E. Shelton, Young S. Kim, Gregg Barak

Hon. Donald E. Shelton

As part of a larger investigation of the changing nature of juror behavior in the context of technology development, this study examined important questions unanswered by previous studies on the “CSI-effect.” In answering such questions, the present study applied multivariate and path analyses for the first time. The results showed that (a) watching CSI dramas had no independent effect on jurors' verdicts, (b) the exposure to CSI dramas did not interact with individual characteristics, (c) different individual characteristics were significantly associated with different types of evidence, and (d) CSI watching had no direct effect on jurors' decisions, and it had …

Adverse Inferences About Adverse Inferences: Restructuring Juridical Roles For Responding To Evidence Tampering By Parties To Litigation, Dale A. Nance

Dale A. Nance

For at least two centuries, Anglo-American courts have responded to a party’s evidence tampering by allowing the opponent to argue to jurors that they should draw an adverse inference against the offending party in deciding the merits of the case. This Article argues that it is time that the use of such inferences, and invitations to draw them, be radically curtailed, not only because of the ambiguities and risks of prejudice that such inferences entail, which have long been noted, but more importantly because they involve a confusion of roles in which the jury is enlisted to participate in the …

High-Tech View: The Use Of Immersive Virtual Environments In Jury Trials, Carrie Leonetti, Jeremy Bailenson

Carrie Leonetti

This Article makes both empirical and normative claims about the admissibility of immersive-virtual-environment evidence during a jury trial. The empirical claim is that IVE evidence will inevitably enter the American courtroom; the normative one is that this inevitable entrance is a positive development for the jury’s search for truth.

It argues that, while the digital projections created by an IVE are not perfectly realistic representations of the objects that they seek to recreate, an IVE can, nonetheless, be a fair and accurate representation of the scene that it represents, as long as an expert witness could lay the appropriate foundation …

High-Tech View: The Use Of Immersive Virtual Environments In Jury Trials, Carrie Leonetti

Carrie Leonetti

This Article makes both empirical and normative claims about the admissibility of immersive-virtual-environment evidence during a jury trial. The empirical claim is that IVE evidence will inevitably enter the American courtroom; the normative one is that this inevitable entrance is a positive development for the jury’s search for truth.

It argues that, while the digital projections created by an IVE are not perfectly realistic representations of the objects that they seek to recreate, an IVE can, nonetheless, be a fair and accurate representation of the scene that it represents, as long as an expert witness could lay the appropriate foundation …

High-Tech View: The Use Of Immersive Virtual Environments In Jury Trials, Carrie Leonetti, Jeremy Bailenson

Carrie Leonetti

This Article makes both empirical and normative claims about the admissibility of immersive-virtual-environment evidence during a jury trial. The empirical claim is that IVE evidence will inevitably enter the American courtroom; the normative one is that this inevitable entrance is a positive development for the jury’s search for truth.

It argues that, while the digital projections created by an IVE are not perfectly realistic representations of the objects that they seek to recreate, an IVE can, nonetheless, be a fair and accurate representation of the scene that it represents, as long as an expert witness could lay the appropriate foundation …

Safety In Numbers?: Deciding When Dna Alone Is Enough To Convict, Andrea L. Roth

Andrea L Roth

Fueled by police reliance on offender databases and advances in crime scene recovery, a new type of prosecution has emerged in which the government's case turns on a match statistic explaining the significance of a “cold hit” between the defendant’s DNA profile and the crime-scene evidence. Such cases are unique in that the strength of the match depends on evidence that is nearly entirely quantifiable. Despite the growing number of these cases, the critical jurisprudential questions they raise about the proper role of probabilistic evidence, and courts’ routine misapprehension of match statistics, no framework currently exists – including a workable …

Safety In Numbers?: Deciding When Dna Alone Is Enough To Convict, Andrea L. Roth

Andrea L Roth

Fueled by police reliance on offender databases and advances in crime scene recovery, a new type of prosecution has emerged in which the government's case turns on a match statistic explaining the significance of a “cold hit” between the defendant’s DNA profile and the crime-scene evidence. Such cases are unique in that the strength of the match depends on evidence that is nearly entirely quantifiable. Despite the growing number of these cases, the critical jurisprudential questions they raise about the proper role of probabilistic evidence, and courts’ routine misapprehension of match statistics, no framework currently exists – including a workable …

Safety In Numbers?: Deciding When Dna Alone Is Enough To Convict, Andrea L. Roth

Andrea L Roth

Fueled by police reliance on offender databases and advances in crime scene recovery, a new type of prosecution has emerged in which the government's case turns on a match statistic explaining the significance of a “cold hit” between the defendant’s DNA profile and the crime-scene evidence. Such cases are unique in that the strength of the match depends on evidence that is nearly entirely quantifiable. Despite the growing number of these cases, the critical jurisprudential questions they raise about the proper role of probabilistic evidence, and courts’ routine misapprehension of match statistics, no framework currently exists – including a workable …

Stranger Than Dictum: Why Arizona V. Gant Compels The Conclusion That Suspicionless Buie Searches Incident To Lawful Arrests Are Unconstitutional, Colin Miller

Colin Miller

In its 1990 opinion in Maryland v. Buie, the Supreme Court held that as an incident to a lawful (home) arrest, officers can “as a precautionary matter and without probable cause or reasonable suspicion, look in closets and other spaces immediately adjoining the place of arrest from which an attack could be immediately launched.” While this holding was actually dictum, thereafter courts categorically concluded that Buie authorizes suspicionless searches of sufficiently large spaces not only in arrest rooms, but also in rooms immediately abutting arrest rooms and connected to arrest rooms by hallways. Buie was one of three Supreme Court …

High-Tech View: The Use Of Immersive Virtual Environments In Jury Trials, Carrie Leonetti, Jeremy Bailenson

Carrie Leonetti

This Article makes both empirical and normative claims about the admissibility of immersive-virtual-environment evidence during a jury trial. The empirical claim is that IVE evidence will inevitably enter the American courtroom; the normative one is that this inevitable entrance is a positive development for the jury’s search for truth.

It argues that, while the digital projections created by an IVE are not perfectly realistic representations of the objects that they seek to recreate, an IVE can, nonetheless, be a fair and accurate representation of the scene that it represents, as long as an expert witness could lay the appropriate foundation …

High-Tech View: The Use Of Immersive Virtual Environments In Jury Trials, Carrie Leonetti, Jeremy Bailenson

Carrie Leonetti

This Article makes both empirical and normative claims about the admissibility of immersive-virtual-environment evidence during a jury trial. The empirical claim is that IVE evidence will inevitably enter the American courtroom; the normative one is that this inevitable entrance is a positive development for the jury’s search for truth.

It argues that, while the digital projections created by an IVE are not perfectly realistic representations of the objects that they seek to recreate, an IVE can, nonetheless, be a fair and accurate representation of the scene that it represents, as long as an expert witness could lay the appropriate foundation …

Safety In Numbers?: Deciding When Dna Alone Is Enough To Convict, Andrea L. Roth

Andrea L Roth

Fueled by police reliance on offender databases and advances in crime scene recovery, a new type of prosecution has emerged in which the government's case turns on a match statistic explaining the significance of a “cold hit” between the defendant’s DNA profile and the crime-scene evidence. Such cases are unique in that the strength of the match depends on evidence that is nearly entirely quantifiable. Despite the growing number of these cases, the critical jurisprudential questions they raise about the proper role of probabilistic evidence, and courts’ routine misapprehension of match statistics, no framework currently exists – including a workable …

Her Last Words: Dying Declarations And Modern Confrontation Jurisprudence, Aviva A. Orenstein

Aviva A. Orenstein

Dying declarations have taken on increased importance since the Supreme Court indicated that even if testimonial, they may present a unique exception to its new confrontation jurisprudence. Starting with Crawford v. Washington in 2004, the Court has developed strict rules concerning the use of testimonial statements made by unavailable declarants. Generally, testimonial statements (those made with the expectation that they will be used to prosecute the accused) may be admitted only if they were previously subject to cross examination. The only exceptions appear to be dying declarations and forfeiture by wrongdoing if the accused intentionally rendered the declarant unavailable.

This …

Probability, Policy And The Problem Of Reference Class, Robert J. Rhee

Robert Rhee

This short paper focuses on the problem of reference class in evidentiary assessment as it relates to probability and weight of evidence. The reluctance to inject mathematical formalism into the factfinding function is justified. Objective probability requires a reference class from which a proportion is derived. Probability assessments change with the reference class. If a proposition is subject to proportional comparison against two or more different references, their selection is often an inductive process. The advantage of objectivity and methodological rigor is illusory. A legal dispute is the search for a plausible understanding of the truth, and an overtly mathematized …

“I’M Dying To Tell You What Happened”: The Admissibility Of Testimonial Dying Declarations Post-Crawford, Peter Nicolas

Peter Nicolas

In Crawford v. Washington and its progeny, the U.S. Supreme Court has re-theorized the relationship between hearsay evidence and the Confrontation Clause. Post-Crawford, hearsay statements that are “testimonial” in nature are, as a general rule, inadmissible when offered against the accused in a criminal case. Yet in footnote 6 of Crawford, the Supreme Court suggested that an exception to the general rule may exist for dying declarations. This manuscript builds on the dictum set forth in footnote 6 of Crawford, the meaning of which the lower courts are just beginning to explore. In the manuscript, I first demonstrate that the …

The Admissibility Of Social Science Evidence In Criminal Cases, Hon. Donald E. Shelton

Hon. Donald E. Shelton

The rapid development of emerging scientific methods, especially the increased understanding of deoxyribonucleic acid ("DNA"), has had, and will undoubtedly continue to have, an almost stunning impact on our justice system, particularly at the trial level. The forensic applications of these new scientific discoveries have been most dramatically seen in the criminal trial court. They have also caused us to re-examine other forms of forensic evidence that have been rather routinely admitted in our courts. Forensic evidence from social scientists is certainly one of those forms. Which of these forms of scientific forensic evidence have sufficient validity to be used …

The Politics Of Law And Film: Introduction To Symposium On Legal Outsiders In American Film, Jessica M. Silbey

Jessica Silbey

The articles collected in this Symposium Issue on Legal Outsiders in American Film are examples of a turn in legal scholarship toward the analysis of culture. The cultural turn in law takes as a premise that law and culture are inextricably intertwined. Common to the project of law and culture is how legal and cultural discourse challenge or sustain communities, identities and relations of power. In this vein, each of the articles in this Symposium Issue look closely at a film or a set of films as cultural objects which, when engaged critically, help us think about law as an …

Goodbye Forfeiture, Hello Waiver: The Effect Of Giles V. California, Monica J. Smith

Monica J Smith

In cases where a defendant’s actions caused a victim to be unavailable to testify, it had become common practice for courts to apply the doctrine of forfeiture by wrongdoing as an equitable principle. In 2008, the Supreme Court decided Giles v. California, and altered that exercise by adding a requirement that a defendant must actually intend to prevent a witness from testifying in order for forfeiture by wrongdoing to apply. The effect of the Supreme Court’s decision in Giles is a move from the doctrine of forfeiture by wrongdoing to a waiver of the confrontation right by misconduct, thereby aligning …

An Economic Justification For The Attoney-Client Privilege, Keith A. Kendall

Keith A Kendall

The attorney-client privilege is one of the oldest doctrines affecting legal practise. Notwithstanding its longevity, there have been regular calls for its abolition over the years. This paper reviews the literature calling for abolition and that favoring retention that utilize economic reasoning. Weaknesses on both sides are identified, with a new justification for retention put forward that addresses these weaknesses.

Dismissed With Prejudice: Why Application Of The Anti-Jury Impeachment Rule To Allegations Of Racial, Religious, Or Other Bias Violates The Right To Present A Defense, Colin Miller

Colin Miller

It is well established that the presence of a biased juror is a structural defect not subject to a harmless error analysis; however, courts repeatedly have precluded criminal defendants from proving such bias by applying Rule of Evidence 606(b) to prevent jurors from impeaching their verdicts through allegations of racial, religious, or other prejudice by jurors. Court also routinely have held that application of the Rule in such cases does not violate the Sixth Amendment right to an impartial jury based upon the Supreme Court’s conclusion in Tanner v. United States that the Rule did not violate the right to …

Neuroscientific Evidence In The Law: Fascinating Science, But To Laymen It's Still Phrenology, John M. Mccarthy

John M McCarthy

ABSTRACT

Neuroscientific Evidence in the Law: Fascinating Science, But to Laymen It's Still Phrenology by John M. McCarthy J.D. Yale, 1977

Cognitive neuroscience is one of biology's most exciting specialties, but outside of laboratories, "neuroscience" is not "science" but something else. The article examines what it is. This bears on today's burgeoning "neuro-" applications in the law, including "neuroethics". The article argues that neuroscientific findings should be excluded today from legal contexts, because valid scientific findings do not exist concerning the complex mental performances pertinent to adjudication.

Laymen and neuroscientists embrace a theoretical paradigm that is over two centuries old: …

Flipping Daubert: Putting Climate Change Defendants In The Hot Seat, Ryan A. Hackney

Ryan A Hackney

Can climate change plaintiffs use Daubert challenges to exclude defense expert testimony? Although Daubert challenges have traditionally favored defendants, the strong evidence for climate change may allow plaintiffs to exclude or restrict defense testimony. My paper considers actual claims put forth by climate change skeptics to see how climate change plaintiffs can use Daubert challenges in four ways: challenge the witness, challenge reliability, challenge relevance, and challenge conclusions. The paper suggests that Daubert challenges can be an effective tool for plaintiffs in climate change litigation, and that challenges in this context may provide a blueprint for plaintiffs to follow in …

Broken Principle: Solving The Corporate Privilege Waiver Dilemma, Don R. Berthiaume

Don R Berthiaume

How can corporations cooperate in white collar criminal investigations by providing “just the facts” without waiving the attorney client privilege and work product protection? This article provides a unique solution to this vexing problem. This article argues that Rule 30(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which allows civil litigants to issue a subpoena to an organization and cause them to “designate one or more officers, directors, or managing agents, or designate other persons who consent to testify on its behalf... about information known or reasonably available to the organization,” provides a template for the creation of a similar …

Teaching The “Portraits, Mosaics And Themes” Of The Federal Rules Of Evidence, Lee D. Schinasi

Lee D. Schinasi

Teaching the “Portraits, Mosaics and Themes” of The Federal Rules of Evidence: This article discusses an approach to teaching, learning, and applying the Federal Rules of Evidence – the “portraits and mosaics regime.” It is designed to accomplish four things: First, for professors new to teaching evidence, the “portraits and mosaics regime” is a macro level introductory overview of the statute and is aimed at providing perspective and insight. It introduces the statutes’s most significant concepts, how they interrelate, and how they can be applied. Second, it can be used as a teaching outline for new evidence professors approaching their …

Criminal Responsibility For Uspecified Offences, Alon Harel, Ariel Porat

Alon Harel

Should a court convict a defendant for unspecified offenses if there is no reasonable doubt that he committed an offence, even though no particular offence has been proven beyond reasonable doubt? Suppose a defendant is charged with two unrelated offenses, for example, pick-pocketing and rape, allegedly committed at different times and places. The probability that he committed each one of the offenses is .9. Assume that the minimum threshold required for conviction is .95. Under prevailing evidence law, the defendant would be acquitted of both charges since no offense can be specifically attributed to him. However, a simple calculation of …

Electronically Stored Information: A Primer For Litigators, Jules Epstein

Jules Epstein

No abstract provided.

Counsel And Confrontation, Todd E. Pettys

Todd E. Pettys

Responding to the Court’s recent reworking of its confrontation jurisprudence, I argue that, under the Anglo-American common-law principles that the Confrontation Clause now incorporates, defendants are not entitled to an attorney’s assistance when interrogating witnesses prior to trial. Although the Assistance of Counsel Clause and the Due Process Clauses will pick up the slack in many cases, I contend that there are other instances in which the Constitution now leaves unrepresented defendants responsible for cross-examining witnesses on their own. I suggest that legislative reform may be necessary to ameliorate the new constitutional landscape’s deficiencies.