Evidence Commons^™

The Procurement And Presentation Of Evidence In Courts-Martial: Compulsory Process And Confrontation, Fredric I. Lederer, Francis A. Gilligan

Fredric I. Lederer

Although pretrial litigation often seems to render trial on the merits something of an anti-climax, adversarial adjudication is of course the focus of the criminal justice system, military or civilian. Once trial on the merits has begun, trial and defense counsel naturally utilize the rules of evidence in the fashion most likely to make the most of the evidence available to them. Yet, as all lawyers are aware, the period since the enactment of the Uniform Code of Military Justice has brought sweeping changes not only in military criminal law, but also in the "constitutionalization" of the law of evidence. …

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

Jeffrey Bellin

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. …

Forensic Science Evidence And The Limits Of Cross-Examination, Gary Edmond, Emma Cunliffe, Kristy Martire, Mehera San Roque

All Faculty Publications

The ability to confront witnesses through cross-examination is conventionally understood as the most powerful means of testing evidence, and one of the most important features of the adversarial trial. Popularly feted, cross-examination was immortalised in John Henry Wigmore’s (1863–1943) famous dictum that it is ‘the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth’. Through a detailed review of the cross-examination of a forensic scientist, in the first scientifically-informed challenge to latent fingerprint evidence in Australia, this article offers a more modest assessment of its value. Drawing upon mainstream scientific research and advice, and contrasting scientific knowledge with answers …