Evidence Commons^™

The Death Of Discretion: Prior Felony Convictions Automatically Admissible In Civil Actions - Green V. Bock Laundry Machine Co., Kimberly S. Smith

Campbell Law Review

This Note has four objectives. First, the Note examines the facts presented to the Green Court. Second, the Note surveys Rule 609's history and the divergent pre-Green views regarding Rule 609's application in the civil arena. Third, the Note examines Green's analysis and the Supreme Court's conclusion that Rule 609 forecloses any judicial discretion in admitting or excluding prior convictions evidence. And, finally, the Note concludes that North Carolina's Rule 609 should also be interpreted as requiring trial judges to admit prior convictions evidence regardless of unfair prejudice.

Evidence, Fifth Circuit Symposium, David A. Schlueter

Faculty Articles

This article reviews decisions by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on evidence issues and concludes that if an attorney has any hopes of obtaining appellate relief on an evidentiary issue, it is essential that the issues be presented concisely and completely to the trial court. The appellate courts will not reverse an evidentiary ruling of a trial court, even if the trial court has erred. This deference to the trial court is in recognition of the hundreds of rulings on evidence that the trial court must conduct within the course of a trial. In order …

Campbell V. Greer: Impeaching Witnesses With Prior Conviction Evidence In A Civil Trial

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Fit To Be Fryed: Frye V. United States And The Admissibility Of Novel Scientific Evidence, John D. Borders Jr.

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Needed: A Rewrite, Paul F. Rothstein

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Proposed far-reaching changes in the Federal Rules of Evidence are of major practical significance to every lawyer involved in the criminal justice process. The proposed changes are contained in a recent report by the American Bar Association Criminal Justice Section's Rules of Criminal Procedure and Evidence Committee. The report was selected for publication in Federal Rules Decisions, 120 F.R.D. 299 (1988), because of its interest to federal practitioners and judges. More than 40 judges, lawyers, and scholars were involved in the four-year study, and experts on each particular rule acted as "reporters" to the committee on those areas.

The report …

The Newsman's Confidential Source Privilege In Virginia, Phillip Randolph Roach Jr.

University of Richmond Law Review

The two hundredth anniversary celebration of the United States Constitution in 1987 provided an excellent opportunity to reflect upon how we now interpret the political doctrines that influenced the founding fathers in forming our government. At the time of the American Revolution, the basic tenets and freedoms that were written into the Declaration of Independence, and later incorporated into the Bill of Rights through the efforts of James Madison and George Mason of Virginia were considered essential human rights.

Res Gestae, The Present Sense Impression Exception And Extrinsic Corroboration Under Federal Rules Of Evidence 803(1) And Its State Counterparts, William Gorman Passannante

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Note presents an overview of the hearsay rule and its general historical development, as well as background on the history of the res gestae doctrine to provide a clearer understanding of the Federal Rules discussed. It examines the current analysis of the three Rule 803 hearsay exceptions, and compares the requirements of external corroboration of hearsay statements under each of Rules 803(1), (2) and (3) to illustrate some inconsistencies in the application of these rules. The author concludes that it is essential that a concise and historically consistent method of applying the present sense impression exception be used, and …

Ambiguity: The Hidden Hearsay Danger Almost Nobody Talks About, Paul Bergman

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Improving Expert Testimony, Jack B. Weinstein

University of Richmond Law Review

Our real world outside the ivory towers of academia and the courts grows more and more complex. The law's use of expert witnesses has expanded at a pace reflective of society's reliance on specialized knowledge. Hardly a case of importance is tried today in the federal courts without the involvement of a number of expert witnesses.

Voice Spectrography Evidence: Approaches To Admissibility, Sharon E. Gregory

University of Richmond Law Review

The admissibility of the results of voiceprint' analysis as evidence in a criminal trial has received a great deal of attention in the last ten years, both from legal scholars and in the courts. Although a relative newcomer to the field of forensic science, voice spectrography is not a recent development in the field of evidence; Wigmore foresaw the use of a voiceprint as early as 1937, when he suggested that the individuality of a person's voice provided a possible means of speaker identification.

Computer Data And Reliability: A Call For Authentication Of Business Records Under The Federal Rules Of Evidence, Rudolph J.R. Peritz

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

The Subversion Of The Hearsay Rule: The Residual Hearsay Exceptions, Circumstantial Guarantees Of Trustworthiness, And Grand Jury Testimony, Randolph N. Jonakait

Articles & Chapters

Under the Federal Rules of Evidence, hearsay is generally prohibited, being admitted only when it falls within a limited class of specific hearsay exceptions. Two general hearsay exceptions were, however, engrafted onto the list of specific ones to allow the courts to confront new and unforseen hearsay problem Lower courts have interpreted these "residual" or "catchall" exceptions differently.

This Article analyzes judicial interpretations of the residual exceptions in cases considering the admissibility of grandjury testimony. The author initially discusses the traditional hearsay approach and reviews the legislative history of the residual exceptions. He then analyzes Fourth Circuit cases considering the …

Modern Evidence And The Expert Witness, Faust Rossi

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Preparation Of The Multistate Bar Examination: One Drafting Committee's Perspective, John W. Reed

Articles

One who wants to know how the Multistate Bar Examination is created should begin by learning how the drafting committees work. My assignment is to describe the work of one of those committees: the Evidence Committee. Though there are differences among the six committees, they mostly are ones of style, and to learn how to operate in the evidence group is to understand the process generally.

Inculpatory Statements Against Penal Interest: State V. Parris Goes Too Far, James E. Beaver, Cheryl Mccleary

Seattle University Law Review

This article first demonstrates that courts historically did not trust penal interest statements in general, and that courts were extremely suspicious of any statements by a third party that implicated the defendant. Since Washington adopted Federal Rule of Evidence 804(b)(3) verbatim, this article then analyzes the legislative history of the rule. The article concludes that the legislative history favored exclusion of inculpatory statements but that Congress failed to codify the exclusion because of unrelated problems. Finally, the article discusses the confrontation clause problems that arise when inculpatory statements are allowed into evidence. This article argues that the Parris holding should …

Federal Rule Of Evidence 403: Observations On The Nature Of Unfairly Prejudicial Evidence, Victor J. Gold

Washington Law Review

The object of this article is to identify what makes evidence unfairly prejudicial. The first part analyzes the language of and the policies behind Rule 403, and demonstrates that the courts' current ad hoc approach has frustrated those policies and prevented the rule from operating as written. Part II analyzes the nature of unfairly prejudicial evidence in light of the policies intended to be advanced by Rule 403. That part concludes that evidence may be considered unfairly prejudicial when it has a tendency to cause the trier of fact to commit an inferential error. The third part describes recent empirical …

The Silent Revolution, Faust Rossi

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Civil Procedure: Commentary, Faust Rossi

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Perils Of The Rulemaking Process: The Development, Application, And Unconstitutionality Of Rule 804(B)(3)'S Penal Interest Exception, Peter W. Tague

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

As the culmination of a decade of rulemaking, in 1975 Congress enacted the Federal Rules of Evidence, which include in rule 804(b)(3) an exception to the hearsay rule that allows federal courts to admit statements against penal interest. Having reviewed previously unpublished memoranda and nonpublic tape recordings of the deliberations of the Advisory and Standing Committees to the Judicial Conference and the Special Subcommittee on Reform of Federal Criminal Laws of the House Judiciary Committee, Professor Tague explores the development of rule 804(b)(3), one of the more controversial rules that emerged from that rulemaking process. After analyzing rule 804(b)(3) and …

Current Controversies Concerning Witness Immunity In The Federal Courts, Jane Duffy

Villanova Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Federal Rules Of Evidence: Six Years After, Paul F. Rothstein

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Federal Rules of Evidence have been in effect since 1975. Six years of experience is not much time in which to assess such a complex and important body of law. Nevertheless, there is now some "evidence" of the impact of the Federal Rules on the various states and circuits.

The Rules do seem to have proved successful enough to stimulate widespread imitation. Approximately half the states in the United States have or will very shortly have evidence codes patterned substantially on the Rules, even down to their numbers. Many of the remaining states (e.g., Iowa, Illinois, and Pennsylvania) have …

Inculpatory Declarations Against Penal Interest And The Coconspirator Rule Under The Federal Rules Of Evidence, Diane M. Frye

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Co-Conspirator Declarations: The Federal Rules Of Evidence And Other Recent Developments, From A Criminal Law Perspective, Paul Marcus

Faculty Publications

Perhaps the most important advantage available to a prosecutor in a criminal conspiracy case is the exception to the hearsay rule for co-conspirator declarations. The exception is widely used and is often a significant part of the government presentation. In essence, it provides that otherwise inadmissible hearsay declarations of coconspirators are admissible at trial against the defendant so long as they were made during the course and in furtherance of the conspiracy. The exception typically arises when an alleged co-conspirator declarant tells the witness (often an undercover police officer) all about the conspiracy, perhaps in the hope of attracting a …

The Federal Rules Of Evidence: A Model For Improved Evidentiary Decisionmaking In Washington, Robert H. Aronson

Washington Law Review

This article discusses the underlying reasons for establishing rules of evidence, defines two unavoidable conflicts encountered in attempting to effectuate the purposes for adopting such rules, suggests that the Federal Rules of Evidence help resolve these conflicts by adhering to several clearly enunciated rationales, and, finally, indicates how the Rules recognize and accommodate important new scientific and social insights on the admissibility of evidence.

Elimination Of The Agency Fiction In The Vicarious Admissions Exception, Norman B. Page

Washington Law Review

This note will compare the Washington courts' application of the common law vicarious admissions exception to the broad rule embodied in Federal Rule 801(d)(2)(D). Furthermore, it will identify and analyze the policies upon which the vicarious admissions rule is grounded and will compare the effectiveness of the common law rule and the federal or "broad" rule in fulfilling those policies. It will demonstrate how, in focusing on the substantive law of agency rather than directly on those circumstances which tend to assure a statement's trustworthiness, both rules share a fundamental flaw and, as a result, accomplish only imprecisely the basic …

Proposed Rule Of Evidence 609: Impeachment Of Criminal Defendants By Prior Convictions, D. Joseph Hurson

Washington Law Review

This comment describes current Washington law on the use of criminal convictions to impeach the testimony of criminal defendants and examines the factors which are relevant to the formation of a more acceptable rule. Adoption of the proposed rule would also affect the rules for impeaching nondefendant witnesses. Only a criminal defendant, however, is in jeopardy of actually being convicted as a result of a jury's misuse of evidence of prior convictions. Because the interests of the criminal defendant witness will be so drastically affected by the prior conviction rule which the Washington Supreme Court ultimately adopts, this comment will …

The Proposed Federal Rules Of Evidence: Of Privileges And The Division Of Rule-Making Power, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

This Note proposes that the lower federal courts accord the same binding authority to the Proposed Rules that they give those judicially promulgated procedural rules, such as the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, that have been implicitly approved by Congress.

Part I of the Note analyzes the constitutional division of the rule-making power by examining both the policy considerations involved and the relevant constitutional language and doctrines. That examination indicates that the power to establish such rules is shared by Congress and the Supreme Court. To determine when that power is appropriately exercised by one branch rather than the other, …

Prior Consistent Statements, Arthur H. Travers Jr.

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Federal Rules Of Evidence: A Model For Improved Evidentiary Decisionmaking In Washington, Robert H. Aronson

Articles

This article discusses the underlying reasons for establishing rules of evidence, defines two unavoidable conflicts encountered in attempting to effectuate the purposes for adopting such rules, suggests that the Federal Rules of Evidence help resolve these conflicts by adhering to several clearly enunciated rationales, and, finally, indicates how the Rules recognize and accommodate important new scientific and social insights on the admissibility of evidence.

Impeaching The Professional Expert Witness By A Showing Of Financial Interest, Michael H. Graham

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.