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Full-Text Articles in Law
Plea Bargaining And Disclosure In Germany And The United States: Comparative Lessons, Jenia I. Turner
Plea Bargaining And Disclosure In Germany And The United States: Comparative Lessons, Jenia I. Turner
Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
This article analyzes recent trends in plea bargaining and disclosure of evidence in Germany and the United States. Over the last two decades, a number of U.S. jurisdictions have adopted rules requiring broader and earlier discovery in criminal cases. This development reflects a growing consensus that, in a system that resolves most of its cases through guilty pleas, early and extensive disclosure is necessary to ensure fair and informed outcomes.
The introduction of broader discovery in criminal cases in the United States aligns our rules more closely with German rules on access to the investigative file. At the same time, …
Evidence Laundering In A Post-Herring World, Kay L. Levine, Jenia I. Turner, Ronald F. Wright
Evidence Laundering In A Post-Herring World, Kay L. Levine, Jenia I. Turner, Ronald F. Wright
Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters
The Supreme Court’s decision in Herring v. United States authorizes police to defeat the Fourth Amendment’s protections through a process we call evidence laundering. Evidence laundering occurs when one police officer makes a constitutional mistake when gathering evidence and then passes that evidence along to a second officer, who develops it further and then delivers it to prosecutors for use in a criminal case. When courts admit the evidence based on the good faith of the second officer, the original constitutional taint disappears in the wash.
In the years since Herring was decided, courts have allowed evidence laundering in a …