Evidence Commons^™

Reviving “Dead Letters”: Reimagining Federal Rule Of Evidence 410 As A Conditional Privilege, Peter G. Cornick

Vanderbilt Law Review

Though understudied relative to its fellow specialized relevance rules, Federal Rule of Evidence 410 protects a crucial element of the criminal justice system: plea negotiations. As written, the rule prevents the admission of evidence gathered during plea discussions, which helps assure criminal defendants that their candid discussions with prosecutors will not harm them in any future proceeding. But the Supreme Court has greatly weakened Rule 410, permitting broad waiver of the rule’s protections that run afoul of Congress’s purpose in creating the rule and its plain language. In light of these developments, the Note argues that Rule 410 should be …

Confidences Worth Keeping: Rebalancing Legitimate Interests In Litigants' Private Information In An Era Of Open-Access Courts, Jeffrey W. Sheehan

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

The ideal of the public trial in open court continues to guide decisions about public access to courts and their records, even as cases are increasingly decided "on the papers." This is still the case when those "papers" take the form of electronic documents that can be uploaded, downloaded, copied, and distributed by anyone with an internet connection. A series of opinions from the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reinforcing this ideal of public access to court records and unsealing district court filings offers an opening to reconsider core values that must inform our treatment of private …

Forensics, Chicken Soup, And Meteorites: A Tribute To Michael Risinger, Edward K. Cheng

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Michael Risinger's scholarship has had a profound impact on our field. And while his work has run the gamut in evidence law, I think it is clear that Michael's true love has always been expert evidence, and more specifically, forensics. So let me take a moment to revisit "an oldie but a goodie": his 1989 article entitled Exorcism of Ignorance as a Proxy for Rational Knowledge: The Lessons of Handwriting Identification "Expertise," published in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and co-authored with Mark Denbeaux and Michael Saks.' For those of you who have not read the article, you should. …

Manipulation Of Suspects And Unrecorded Questioning, Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Fifty years after Miranda, courts still do not have clear guidance on the types oftechniques police may use during interrogation. While first-generation tactics (a.k.a. the third degree) are banned, second-generation tactics such as those found in the famous Reid Manual continue to be used by interrogators. The Supreme Court has sent only vague signals as to which of these second- generation techniques, if any, are impermissible, and has made no mention of newly developed third-generation tactics that are much less reliant on manipulation. This Article divides second-generation techniques into four categories: impersonation, rationalization, fabrication, and negotiation. After concluding, based on …

From Nuremberg To Kenya: Compiling The Evidence For International Criminal Prosecutions, Jennifer Stanley

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has encountered significant difficulty in conducting investigations. Faced with violence on the ground, witnesses who fear repercussions, and limitations on resources, the Prosecutor has turned to relying on secondary forms of evidence, such as the reports of NGOs and other third-party information providers.

This Note argues that the Prosecutor's use of such evidence is problematic because it fails to adequately follow the evidentiary rules of the Court and, subsequently, to protect the rights of witnesses and defendants. Moreover, the Office of the Prosecutor's dependence on third-party evidence has stunted the Prosecutor's ability to …

Group To Individual Inference In Scientific Expert Testimony, Christopher Slobogin, David Faigman, John Monahan

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

A fundamental divide exists between what scientists do as scientists and what courts often ask them to do as expert witnesses. Whereas scientists almost invariably inquire into phenomena at the group level, trial courts typically need to resolve cases at the individual level. In short, scientists generalize while courts particularize. A basic challenge for trial courts that rely on scientific experts, therefore, concerns determining whether and how scientific knowledge derived from studying groups can be helpful in the individual cases before them (what this Article refers to as "G2i'). To aid in dealing with this challenge, this Article proposes a …

Reconceptualizing The Burden Of Proof, Edward K. Cheng

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The preponderance standard is conventionally described as an absolute probability threshold of 0.5. This Essay argues that this absolute characterization of the burden of proof is wrong. Rather than focusing on an absolute threshold, the Essay reconceptualizes the preponderance standard as a probability ratio and shows how doing so eliminates many of the classical problems associated with probabilistic theories of evidence. Using probability ratios eliminates the so-called Conjunction Paradox, and developing the ratio tests under a Bayesian perspective further explains the Blue Bus problem and other puzzles surrounding statistical evidence. By harmonizing probabilistic theories of proof with recent critiques advocating …

Erie And The Rules Of Evidence, Edward K. Cheng

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Jay Tidmarsh offers an intriguing new test for drawing the allimportant line between procedure and substance for purposes of Erie. The Tidmarsh test is attractively simple, yet seemingly reaches the right result in separating out truly “procedural” rules from more substantive ones. Since I am not a proceduralist, in this Response I will leave the Tidmarsh test’s explanatory power and practical workability vis-à-vis general civil procedure rules to others more qualified than I. Instead, I want to focus on the implications of the Tidmarsh test for the Federal Rules of Evidence. Like others in the evidence world, I have long …

The Risks Of Taking Facebook At Face Value: Why The Psychology Of Social Networking Should Influence The Evidentiary Relevance Of Facebook Photographs, Kathryn R. Brown

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Social networking sites in general, and Facebook in particular, have changed the way individuals communicate and express themselves. Facebook users share a multitude of personal information through the website, especially photographs. Additionally, Facebook enables individuals to tailor their online profiles to project a desired persona. However, as social scientists have demonstrated, the image users portray can mislead outside observers. Given the wealth of information available on Facebook, it is no surprise that attorneys often peruse the website for evidence to dispute opponents' claims.

This Note examines the admission and relevance of Facebook photographs offered to prove a litigant's state of …

Plea Bargaining, Discovery, And The Intractable Problem Of Impeachment Disclosures, R. Michael Cassidy

Vanderbilt Law Review

Several recent high-profile cases have illustrated flaws with the government's discovery practices in criminal cases and have put prosecutors across the country on the defensive about their compliance with disclosure obligations. The conviction of former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens on ethics charges was set aside after it was revealed that federal prosecutors withheld notes of an interview with a key government witness; one member of the Stevens prosecution team who was under investigation for contempt subsequently committed suicide. The Supreme Court remanded a double murder case from Tennessee for potential resentencing after it was revealed that state prosecutors had withheld …

Scientific Evidence As Foreign Law, Edward K. Cheng

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Most contemporary debates about scientific evidence focus on admissibility under Daubert and the Federal Rules of Evidence. That bias is quite understandable-after all, it is the framework imposed by the United States Supreme Court. Daubert, however, rests on a fundamental assumption: that courts should treat scientific facts like any other adjudicative facts ultimately left to the jury. Perhaps the involvement of specialized knowledge requires judges to act as gatekeepers to ensure some basic level of reliability, but under Daubert, scientific facts are still just facts. As I will argue, scientific facts fit awkwardly into the conventional framework for conceptualizing and …

Law, Statistics, And The Reference Class Problem, Edward K. Cheng

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Statistical data are powerful, if not crucial, pieces of evidence in the courtroom. Whether one is trying to demonstrate the rarity of a DNA profile, estimate the value of damaged property, or determine the likelihood that a criminal defendant will recidivate, statistics often have an important role to play. Statistics, however, raise a number of serious challenges for the legal system, including concerns that they are difficult to understand, are given too much deference from juries, or are easily manipulated by the parties' experts. In this preview piece, I address one of these challenges, known as the "reference class problem," …

The Individualization Fallacy In Forensic Science Evidence, Michael J. Saks, Jonathan J. Koehler

Vanderbilt Law Review

Forensic identification science involves two fundamental steps. The first step is to compare a questioned item of evidence to an exemplar from a known source and judge whether they appear so alike that they can be said to match. The second step is to assess the meaning of that reported match: What is the probability that the questioned and the known originated from the same source?

Different risks of error are present at each step. The risk of error in the first step is that a reported match between a questioned and a known sample might not really match. Even …

The Perils Of Evidentiary Manipulation, Edward K. Cheng

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The use of evidentiary rules to achieve substantive goals strikes me as a Faustian bargain, and, given Bierschbach and Stein's acknowledgedly tentative position, I hope to dissuade them of the virtues of the practice. My goal therefore is to explore briefly the potential dark side of specialized evidentiary rules. The concerns of injecting substantive goals into evidence law extend far beyond the narrow legitimacy concerns Bierschbach and Stein raise. It is not simply the question of whether we aspire to a pluralistic or majority-take-all democratic society. Rather, evidentiary manipulation threatens the legitimacy of criminal and evidence law... Bierschbach and Stein's …

Same Old, Same Old: Scientific Evidence Past And Present, Edward K. Cheng

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

For over twenty years, and particularly since the Supreme Court's Daubert' decision in 1993, much ink has been spilled debating the problem of scientific evidence in the courts. Are jurors or, in the alternative, judges qualified to assess scientific reliability? Do courts really need to be concerned about "junk science"? What mechanisms can promote better decision making in scientific cases? Even a cursory scan of the literature shows the recent explosion of interest in these issues, precipitating new treatises, hundreds of articles, and countless conferences for judges, practitioners, and academics.

Fishing For The Smoking Gun, Y. Daphne Coelho-Adam

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Industry-wide tort litigation, such as tobacco and gun litigation, poses a new problem for extraterritorial discovery. These suits allege conspiracies on the part of the tobacco and gun industries to conceal the dangers of their products from the public. Much of the evidence needed to prove the industries' knowledge is in their possession. These industries are international with companies located in the United Kingdom. Under U.S. discovery law the evidence is discoverable, but such is not the case under British discovery law. Therefore, the evidence and witnesses located in the United Kingdom are outside the grasp of U.S. plaintiffs. The …

Testilying: Police Perjury And What To Do About It, Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Police, like people generally, lie in all sorts of contexts for all sorts of reasons. This article has focused on police lying designed to convict individuals the police think are guilty. Strong measures are needed to reduce the powerful incentives to practice such testilying and the reluctance of prosecutors and judges to do anything about it. Among them might be the adoption of rewards for truth telling, the redefinition of probable cause, and the elimination of the exclusionary rule and its insidious effect on the resolve of legal actors to implement the commands of the Constitution. Ultimately, however, the various …

The Hague Evidence Convention: The Need For Guidance On Procedures And Resolution Of Conflicts In Transnational Discovery, John C. Plaster

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

As international commercial disputes become more common, United States courts increasingly face difficult issues involved in transnational discovery. Two frequently encountered issues are choosing whether to use the discovery procedures of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure or the Hague Evidence Convention and whether to enforce a discovery order when the order conflicts with a law of the state in which discovery is to occur. Although the Supreme Court has addressed both of these issues, it has left lower courts considerable discretion to deal with these issues case by case. Lower courts, therefore, have not been uniform in their approaches …

United States Punitive Damage Awards In German Courts: The Evolving German Position On Service And Enforcement, Klaus J. Beucher, John B. Sandage

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Article addresses the problems United States plaintiffs may face when seeking enforcement of United States court awards of punitive damages in German courts. The authors show the close relationship between service of process and subsequent enforcement procedures in Germany. The analysis focuses on two recent German court decisions that provide indications of how German courts might respond to requests to serve process and to enforce judgments in actions seeking punitive or multiple damages. The fundamentally different approaches to punitive damages taken by the German and the United States legal systems create the difficulties encountered when these two systems intersect. …

Extraterritorial Discovery: Cooperation, Coercion And The Hague Evidence Convention, Harold G. Maier

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Article reviews the most recent case law on this issue and examines the results of those cases in the light of existing principles of comity and of the newly promulgated Restatement of Foreign Relations Law of the United States (Revised). The analysis focuses on three important appellate court decisions, all of which are or have been before the United States Supreme Court, and examines the contents and origins of the United States Government's position on these issues as found in amicus briefs submitted in these cases. The article concludes with an evaluation of the dilemma evidenced by the need …

Obtaining Evidence Abroad, Harry J. O'Kane

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This talk will avoid a discussion of whatever problems exist in true international litigation. True international litigation may be defined as that body of law devoted to disputes between nations and governmental bodies which are addressed in nonterritorial world courts or those courts accepting the disputes under their own system of jurisprudence. My remarks will focus on the problems in obtaining evidence in a country other than the United States for use in a suit within the United States. A tabular listing of information relating to what can and cannot be accomplished in the way of obtaining evidence in various …

Burdens Of Proof: Degrees Of Belief, Quanta Of Evidence, Or Constitutional Guarantees?, C.M.A. Mccauliff

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article analyzes the whole range of burdens of proof as well as their constitutional implications. Part H of the Article discusses the traditional burdens of proof and the use of probability theory in legal fact finding. Part HI of the Article studies the decision making processes of law enforcement officers, the judges that review their decisions, and the decision making processes in appellate and administrative review. Part IV of the Article returns to the trial process and analyzes burdens of proof, not as degrees of belief, but as reflections of constitutional due process that mandate a required degree of …

The Acquisition Of Evidence For Criminal Prosecution: Some Constitutional Premises And Practices In Transition, H. Richard Uviller

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article isolates only two of the many aspects of the Court's labors affecting the acquisition of evidence for criminal prosecution. The first concerns the allocation of primacy among the values that the exclusionary response to the illegal acquisition of evidence serves: a theoretical choice that may carry some notable practical consequences. The second requires are examination of the role of the trial court in supervising the preaccusatory search for evidence in a way that suggests the possible obsolescence of the Supreme Court's ruling credo in the Stewart era.

Capacity To Contest A Search And Seizure: The Passing Of Old Rules And Some Suggestions For New Ones, Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Professor Slobogin examines recent Supreme Court decisions involving standing to challenge search and seizure violations, and argues that the Court's commitment to a "totality of the circumstances" approach has permitted erosion of fourth amendment protections. After concluding that these decisions provide little guidance to lower courts, Professor Slobogin offers a set of principles which will aid in analyzing the Court's direction.

Diminished Capacity-Recent Decisions And An Analytical Approach, Robert P. Bryant, Corbin B. Hume

Vanderbilt Law Review

The concept of diminished capacity allows a defendant in a criminal case to prove, usually by presenting psychiatrists who testify that he suffered from an abnormal mental condition, that he was unable to entertain the particular mens rea required for conviction.' Although courts historically have been reluctant to admit such testimony, in recent years a growing number of jurisdictions have recognized the concept of diminished capacity. Recent decisions in Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, and North Carolina, as well as recently adopted statutes in ten other jurisdictions,illustrate the evidentiary, social, and constitutional issues raised by the concept of diminished capacity. …

The Types Of Evidence: An Analysis, Lyman R. Patterson

Vanderbilt Law Review

Since the purpose of this article is to analyze evidence in functional terms, it may be helpful at the outset to state the basic ideas which underlie the discussion.

1. Evidence consists of propositions of fact which are related to another proposition, a proposed conclusion. Evidence is thus to be distinguished from the fact or facts which are its basis. 2. The essential relationship of propositions which are evidence to the proposition which is the proposed conclusion is relevancy. 3. The relevancy of evidence to the proposed conclusion is determined by the inference drawn from the evidence. If the evidence …

Evidence: A Functional Meaning, Lyman R. Patterson

Vanderbilt Law Review

A trial always involves two basic problems-the problem of ascertaining the truth of the matter in issue, and the problem of re-solving a dispute. The former can be characterized as the probative problem, arising from the problem of proving, and the latter as the forensic problem, arising from the procedural problem of proving-in-a-trial. The probative problem is a problem of evidence in that it is the problem of using evidence to ascertain the truth by "the ratiocinative process of continuous persuasion."' The forensic problem is a problem of the admissibility of evidence, and it is the forensic problem which has …

Contracts -- 1964 Tennessee Survey, Paul I. Hartman

Vanderbilt Law Review

I. Promissory Estoppel--Application by Federal Court

II. Third Party Beneficiary--Enforcement of Labor and Material Bond

III. Statute of Frauds--Statute as Defense to Third Party

IV. Parol Evidence Rule--Application to Extrensic Subsequent Agreement

V. Illegal Bargains--Agreement Not to Compete

VI. Death of Party to Personal Service Contract as Terminating the Contract

Recent Cases, Law Review Staff

Vanderbilt Law Review

Antitrust Law--Violation of Section 7 of the Clayton Act by Joint Venture

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Civil Rights--Anti-discrimination Law as a Vehicle for a Private Civil Action

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Condemnation--Landowner Cannot Recover From Federal Government for Damages Caused Before Date of Taking Where Government Did Not Previously Contemplate, Condemning Property

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Constitutional Law--Loss of Nationality--Foreign Residency Statute Held Violative of Due Process

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Constitutional Law--Reapportionment--Both Houses of a State Legislature Must Be Based as Nearly as Is Practicable on Population

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Constitutional Law--Twenty-first Amendment--Scope of State Power Over Intoxicants Moving Within Its Borders

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Evidence--Statutory Presumptions--Reasonableness Is Implicit in Test of Rational Connection

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Evidence -- 1963 Tennessee Survey, Lyman R. Patterson

Vanderbilt Law Review

The doctrine of judicial notice is that an indisputable proposition of fact or a proposition of law of the jurisdiction is not subject to proof. The doctrine thus serves to relieve the litigant of the burden of proving certain facts and law, and is one of immense theoretical implication for the trial lawyer. A fact which is judicially noticed has much greater probative value than a fact which is proved, no matter how strong the proof. Judicial notice thus offers the trial lawyer an extremely effective, but apparently largely unused, device in litigation. None of the cases involving judicial notice …