Law Commons^™

Do Rules Of Evidence Apply (Only) In The Courtroom? Deceptive Interrogations In The United States And Germany, Jacqueline E. Ross

Jacqueline E Ross

Scholars who compare common law and civil law countries have long argued that civil law legal systems like Germany do not employ formal rules of evidence comparable to those which govern American courtrooms. The complex and restrictive nature of American evidentiary rules is said to be an artifact of the adversarial process and lay juries, which the legal system does not trust to evaluate evidence dispassionately. Civil law systems that commit fact-finding to mixed panels of lay and professional judges are said to have less need for formal rules of evidence that withhold information from decision-makers.

My essay challenges this …

Research And Expert Testimony On Interrogations And Confessions, Mark Costanzo, Richard Leo

Richard A. Leo

In this chapter, the authors summarize the scholarly literature on false confessions and propose possible solutions to the problem of false confessions. The chapter begins by discussing some of the characteristics and major categories of false confessions. Next, the authors review risk factors that increase the likelihood of false confessions, including youth, cognitive impairment, mental illness, or certain vulnerable personalities. The authors also identify characteristics of the interrogation process that may raise the risk of false confessions and some of the cognitive and emotional factors that may enter into a suspect's decision to make a false confession. The authors describe …