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Evidence Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Evidence

The Truthsayer And The Court: Expert Testimony On Credibility, Michael W. Mullane Apr 2020

The Truthsayer And The Court: Expert Testimony On Credibility, Michael W. Mullane

Maine Law Review

The purpose of this Article is to analyze the admissibility of expert testimony on credibility. State v. Woodburn serves as a lens to focus on the broader issues. The primary issue is an examination of expert testimony on credibility in light of the Federal Rules of Evidence and their progeny. The Rules of Evidence mandate admission or exclusion of expert testimony based on certain criteria. How are these criteria applied to expert testimony on credibility? How should they be applied? The surprising survivability of other criteria discarded by the Rules is also considered.


Life After Daubert V. Merrell Dow: Maine As A Case Law Laboratory For Evidence Rule 702 Without Frye, Leigh Stephens Mccarthy Apr 2018

Life After Daubert V. Merrell Dow: Maine As A Case Law Laboratory For Evidence Rule 702 Without Frye, Leigh Stephens Mccarthy

Maine Law Review

In reaching its recent decision in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., the United States Supreme Court grappled not with case law but with fundamental questions about the nature of science and its role in law. The court in Daubert addressed the problematic issue of admissibility of expert scientific testimony. In the end the Court rejected as an exclusionary rule the venerable standard set in 1923 by Frye v. United States. Frye held that scientific testimony was to be excluded unless it had gained “general acceptance” in its field. Daubert held that Rule 702 of the Federal Rules of Evidence …


A Call For Consistency: State V. Caouette Is No Longer Viable In Light Of Colorado V. Connelly And State V. Eastman, Donald W. Macomber Mar 2018

A Call For Consistency: State V. Caouette Is No Longer Viable In Light Of Colorado V. Connelly And State V. Eastman, Donald W. Macomber

Maine Law Review

This Article challenges the Law Court's expansive interpretation in State v. Caouette of the scope of the privilege against self-incrimination embodied in Article I, section 6 of the Maine Constitution in the context of reviewing claims of the involuntariness of a confession. The court's declaration that a reliable confession must be suppressed on state constitutional grounds based solely on a suspect's internal factors, and in the absence of any police overreaching in obtaining the confession, contradicted two centuries of constitutional jurisprudence requiring some form of government action to implicate the protections of the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of …