Evidence Commons^™

The Right To Silence Helps The Innocent: A Response To Critics, Alex Stein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Toward Ethical Plea Bargaining, Erica J. Hashimoto

Scholarly Works

Defendants in criminal cases are overwhelmingly more likely to plead guilty than to go to trial. Presumably, at least a part of the reason that most of them do so is that it is in their interest to plead guilty, i.e., they will receive a more favorable outcome if they plead guilty than if they go to trial. The extent to which pleas reflect fair or rational compromises in practice, however, depends upon a variety of factors, including the amount of information each of the parties has about the case. Some level of informational symmetry therefore is critical to the …

Prosecutors' New Ethical Duty Relating To Wrongful Convictions, Niki Kuckes

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Significance (If Any) For The Federal Criminal Justice System Of Advances In Lie Detector Technology, Jeffrey Bellin

Faculty Publications

Against a backdrop of accelerating developments in the science of lie detection certain to reopen the debate on the reliability and therefore admissibility of lie detector evidence in the federal courts, this Article examines whether the prohibition on hearsay evidence (or other evidentiary objections) will preclude admissibility of even scientifically reliable lie detector evidence. The Article concludes that the hearsay prohibition, which has been largely ignored by courts and commentators, is the primary obstacle to the future admission of scientifically valid lie detector evidence. The Article also suggests a potential solution to the hearsay problem that may allow admission of …

Dna – Intimate Information Or Trash For Public Consumption?, Melanie D. Wilson

Scholarly Articles

“Surreptitious sampling” may be police officers’ trump card in cracking otherwise unsolvable crimes as serious as murder, arson and rape. Law enforcement officers engage in surreptitious sampling when they covertly collect DNAsamples from unsuspecting people, who inadvertently leave behind hair, skin cells, saliva or other biological materials.Surreptitious sampling is a terrific crime-resolution tool. It allows diligent law enforcement officers to collect proof-positive evidence of guilt or innocence without the hassle of obtaining a warrant and absent probable cause or reasonable suspicion to believe that the contributor of the biological evidence committed a crime. Provided an officer has the energy and …

Summary Of Hallmark V. Eldridge, 124 Nev. Adv. Op. 48, Barbra E. Zess

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

Appeal from a district court judgment on a jury verdict in a personal injury action and an order denying a motion for a new trial. Plaintiff seeks a more favorable damage award alleging that the district court abused its discretion in allowing prejudicial expert testimony under NRS 50.275.

Vol. Xx, Tab 57 - Ex. 16 - Plaintiff's Opposition To Defendant's Motion For Clarification And Brief In Support (American Airlines V. Google), American Airlines

Rosetta Stone v. Google (Joint Appendix)

Exhibits from the un-sealed joint appendix for Rosetta Stone Ltd., v. Google Inc., No. 10-2007, on appeal to the 4th Circuit. Issue presented: Under the Lanham Act, does the use of trademarked terms in keyword advertising result in infringement when there is evidence of actual confusion?

Eyewitness Identification Reform In Massachusetts, Stanley Z. Fisher

Faculty Scholarship

This article traces the impact of the new scientific learning upon police eyewitness identification procedures in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Over the past 25 years, experimental psychologists have devised more reliable techniques for gathering eyewitness identification evidence than have been traditionally used by police. Massachusetts has over 350 autonomous municipal police departments, plus approximately 39 college campus police departments, the state police, and the MBTA (transit) Police Department. The decision how to investigate crime rests principally with the police chief responsible for each department. How does such a system of policing absorb new, scientifically superior methods of investigation?

A Return To The Grand Jury To Promote A Zen Zeal In Prosecutors, Melanie D. Wilson

Scholarly Articles

DNA evidence has freed at least 209 convicted people. Sometimes DNA evidence exonerates a person. Other times, it does not. When it does not exonerate, a prosecutor must decide whether to persist in further prosecution of the defendant. I propose a fresh, but simple, solution for prosecutors who face such choices. To protect the interests of defendants and victims, and to assuage society’s need for fair and accurate outcomes, prosecutors should represent these cases to a grand jury. The grand jury is an easily convened neutral party that can dispassionately evaluate the evidence, old and new, and determine whether a …

Improving The Reliability Of Criminal Trials Through Legal Rules That Encourage Defendants To Testify, Jeffrey Bellin

Faculty Publications

Reflecting a traditional bias against defendants' trial testimony, the modern American criminal justice system, which now recognizes a constitutional right to testify at trial, unabashedly encourages defendants to waive that right and remain silent. As a result, a large percentage of criminal defendants decline to testify, forcing juries to decide the question of the defendant's guilt without ever hearing from the person most knowledgeable on the subject.

This Article contends that the inflated percentage of silent defendants in the American criminal trial system is a needless, self-inflected wound, neither required by the Constitution nor beneficial to the search for truth. …

Science On Trial, Valerie P. Hans

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The increasing complexity of both criminal and civil jury trials raises a host of issues for lawyers and judges. For the litigator, the first question is whether a jury can be trusted with a case that turns on highly technical evidence. For the trial judge, there are decisions about the admissibility of expert testimony, whether it is based on sound science, and whether a jury is likely to be misled by scientific claims. Should the judge permit jury innovations such as note taking, question asking, and juror discussions of evidence during the trial, hoping to increase jury comprehension of the …

The 'Double Feature' Of Hearsay And The Confrontation Clause, Plus Coming Attractions, Lynn Mclain

All Faculty Scholarship

Class handout outlining the interaction between the evidence rule of hearsay and the Confrontation Clause of the Constitution.

Softening The Formality And Formalism Of The “Testimonial” Statement Concept, Robert P. Mosteller

Faculty Scholarship

In Crawford v. Washington (2004), the United States Supreme Court ruled that “testimonial” statements are the core, perhaps exclusive, concern of the Confrontation Clause. The Court began a process of defining the testimonial-statement concept but did not develop a comprehensive definition. In Crawford, the Court concluded that a statement was testimonial, which was tape recorded and obtained from a criminal suspect who was in police custody, had been given warnings under Miranda v. Arizona (1966), and was being interrogated by known governmental agents using what the Court termed “structured” questioning. One of the definitions the Court explicitly presented as a …

Juror Comprehension And The Hard Case: Making Forensic Evidence Simpler, Mark Findlay

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The complexity/comprehension nexus as it impacts on juror decision-making is addressed in the particular context of prosecution-led DNA evidence. Such evidence is for jurors the subject of pre-trial preconceptions, and is notoriously difficult to present and argue before a jury. The article looks at the comprehension of forensic evidence by jurors, a task qualified by the opinion of legal professionals whose responsibility it is to present and interpret such evidence in adversarial contexts.Jurors were surveyed post-verdict in trials where forensic evidence featured in circumstantial cases. These insights into comprehension were qualified by contesting views of legal professionals, and critical reflections …

Discovery, Judicial Assistance And Arbitration: A New Tool For Cases Involving U.S. Entities?, Peter B. Rutledge

Scholarly Works

Limited discovery is one of the regularly cited advantages of international arbitration, as opposed to international litigation, particularly in contrast to litigation in the US. courts. Recent decisions by US. courts, however, have threatened to upend this comparative advantage. Invoking a little known US. law, 28 U.S.C. section 1782, these courts have permitted parties in an arbitration to petition for subpoenas issued by US. courts against their adversaries or third parties. Bucking the trend in the academic literature, which largely supports this development, this article opposes reading section 1782 to authorize subpoenas in support of an arbitration. Not only does …

Cross Dressing And The Criminal, Bennett Capers

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Signature Identification In The Light Of Science And Experience, Roger C. Park

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Fixing The Fatal Flaws In Oui Implied Consent Laws, Tina Wescott Cafaro

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores the use of implied consent laws as a method of deterring and punishing alcohol-impaired driving. Part I introduces the history and purpose of implied consent laws. Part II discusses the inadequacies of current statutory implied consent provisions and their failure to effectively attain their designed purpose. This section also highlights two particularly detrimental aspects of the law as currently implemented: (1) the lack of uniformity in the application of the laws by individual states; and (2) the disparate treatment of persons who refuse to submit to BAC testing, both in terms of consequences of refusal to submit …

Hedonic Adaptation And The Settlement Of Civil Lawsuits (With J. Bronsteen & J. Masur), Christopher J. Buccafusco

All Faculty Scholarship

This paper examines the burgeoning psychological literature on happiness and hedonic adaptation (a person's capacity to preserve or recapture her level of happiness by adjusting to changed circumstances), bringing this literature to bear on a previously overlooked aspect of the civil litigation process: the probability of pre-trial settlement. The glacial pace of civil litigation is commonly thought of as a regrettable source of costs to the relevant parties. Even relatively straightforward personal injury lawsuits can last for as long as two years, delaying the arrival of necessary redress to the tort victim and forcing the litigants to expend ever greater …

Bosnia V. Serbia: Lessons From The Encounter Of The International Court Of Justice With The International Criminal Tribunal For The Former Yugoslavia, Rebecca Hamilton, Richard J. Goldstone

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This article uses the recent judgment of the ICJ in Bosnia v. Serbia to highlight the potential problems that arise when international courts have to adjudicate on overlapping situations. It describes the dispute between the ICJ and the ICTY on the appropriate legal standard for the attribution of state responsibility, and finds that the ICJ’s approach in this case suggests that those keen to minimize the fragmentation of international law between adjudicative bodies should not overlook the need for consistency within those bodies.With regard to fact finding, this article raises serious concerns about the manner in which the ICJ relied …

The 'High Crime Area' Question: Requiring Verifiable And Quantifiable Evidence For Fourth Amendment Reasonable Suspicion Analysis, Andrew Ferguson, Damien Bernache

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This article proposes a legal framework to analyze the "high crime area" concept in Fourth Amendment reasonable suspicion challenges.Under existing Supreme Court precedent, reviewing courts are allowed to consider that an area is a "high crime area" as a factor to evaluate the reasonableness of a Fourth Amendment stop. See Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119 (2000). However, the Supreme Court has never defined a "high crime area" and lower courts have not reached consensus on a definition. There is no agreement on what a "high-crime area" is, whether it has geographic boundaries, whether it changes over time, whether it …

More Views From The Ivory Tower: The Kiss Principle - Keep It Simple, Solicitor, David Spratt

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

When Do Facts Persuade? Some Thoughts On The Market For “Empirical Legal Studies”, Elizabeth Chambliss

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Case Comment - People V. Nelson: A Tale Of Two Statistics, David H. Kaye

Journal Articles

In recent years, defendants who were identified as a result of a search through a database of DNA profiles have argued that the probability that a randomly selected person would match a crime-scene stain overstates the probative value of the match. The statistical literature is divided, with most statisticians who have written on the subject rejecting this claim. In People v. Nelson, the Supreme Court of California held that when the random-match probability is so small as to make it exceedingly unlikely that any unrelated individual has the incriminating DNA profile, this statistic is admissible in a database-search case. …

Ethical Issues In Collaborative Lawyering, Barbara Glesner Fines

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Impeachment With Evidence Of Prior Convictions, Roger C. Park

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Experts, Mental States, And Acts, Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article, written for a symposium on "Guilt v. Guiltiness: Are the Right Rules for Trying Factual Innocence Inevitably the Wrong Rules for Trying Culpability?," argues that the definition of expertise in the criminal justice system, derived in the federal courts and in most states from Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Co., should vary depending on whether the issue involved is past mental state or past conduct. While expert psychological testimony about past acts ought to be based on scientifically verifiable assertions, expert psychological testimony about subjective mental states relevant to criminal responsibility need not meet the same threshold. This …

What's Wrong With Litigation-Driven Science? An Essay In Legal Epistemology, Susan Haack

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Constable Blunders But Isnt Punished Does Hudson V Michigans Abolition Of The Exclusionary Rule Extend Beyond Knockandannounce Violations, Mark A. Summers

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Beyond Manson And Lukolongo: A Critique Of American And Zambian Eyewitness Law With Recommendations For Reform In The Developing World, Nicholas A. Kahn-Fogel

Faculty Scholarship

This article is a comparative analysis of U.S. and Zambian eyewitness law. I analyze the two countries' approaches to eyewitness law in the context of the longstanding debate on whether rules or standards best effectuate underlying social values. With regard to the United States, I conclude that either a rule or a standard for admission of eyewitness evidence could provide effective protection of defendants' due process rights while also promoting the societal interest in admitting reliable proof of guilt. I then conduct the first comprehensive analysis of Zambian eyewitness cases and conclude that Zambian eyewitness law is, in some ways, …