Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Exposing Police Misconduct In Pre-Trial Criminal Proceedings, Anjelica Hendricks

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article presents a unique argument: police misconduct records should be accessible and applicable for pre-trial criminal proceedings. Unfortunately, the existing narrative on the value of police misconduct records is narrow because it exclusively considers how these records can be used to impeach officer credibility at trial. This focus is limiting for several reasons. First, it addresses too few defendants, since fewer than 3% of criminal cases make it to trial. Second, it overlooks misconduct records not directly addressing credibility—such as records demonstrating paperwork deficiencies, failures to appear in court, and “mistakes” that upon examination are patterns of abuse. Finally, …

Evidence, Arrest Circumstances, And Felony Cocaine Case Processing, Jacqueline G. Lee, Alexander Testa

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications and Presentations

Case evidence and situational arrest characteristics are widely speculated to influence courtroom actor decisions, yet such measures are infrequently included in research. Using new data on felony cocaine cases from an urban county in a Southern non-guideline state, this study examines how physical evidence and arrest circumstances affect three stages of case processing: initial charge type, charge reduction, and sentence length. The influence of evidence appeared strongest at the early stage when prosecutors chose the appropriate charge, though certain evidentiary and arrest measures continued to influence later decisions. Charge reductions were driven mostly by legal factors, and while guilt should …

From Standardization To Formality: Unintended Consequences Of Police Standardization Reform Of Law Enforcement In China, Lianhan Zhang

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

According to social construction theory, cases are not objective entities waiting to be discovered or revealed; they cannot exist without case-makers. Construction of a case is a subjective process of choosing, increasing, decreasing, selecting, and reshaping. Therefore, a natural gap exists between the constructed and the real world. This dissertation delves into the gap, not from the existing angle of selectiveness, but from the angle of compliance. The study uses empirical data to try to answer the following question: Since the police standardization reform of law enforcement—at least parts of them—aim at controlling the evidence-collecting process and at improving the …

Contemporary Soviet Criminal Law: An Analysis Of The General Principles And Major Institutions Of Post-1958 Soviet Criminal Law, Chris Osakwe

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Actions Speak Louder Than Images: The Use Of Neuroscientific Evidence In Criminal Cases, Stephen J. Morse

All Faculty Scholarship

This invited commentary for Journal of Law & the Biosciences considers four empirical studies previously published in the journal of the reception of neuroscientific evidence in criminal cases in the United States, Canada, England and Wales, and the Netherlands. There are conceded methodological problems with all, but the data are nonetheless instructive and suggestive. The thesis of the comment is that the courts are committing the same errors that have bedeviled the reception of psychiatric and psychological evidence. There is insufficient caution about the state of the science, and more importantly, there is insufficient understanding of the relevance of the …

Bill Cosby, The Lustful Disposition Exception, And The Doctrine Of Chances, Wesley Oliver

Wesley M Oliver

The Admissibility Of Polygraph ("Lie Detector") Evidence Pursuant To Stipulation In Criminal Proceedings, Bruce C. Heslop

Akron Law Review

American courts have traditionally held that evidence pertaining to the results of a lie-detector test is inadmissible in a criminal proceeding on behalf of either the prosecution or defense….In recent years, however, a few jurisdictions have withdrawn from the traditional approach and have admitted lie-detector evidence in limited situations, notwithstanding objection by the adverse party….The decision of whether or not to adopt the approach presented here must critically evaluate the potential value of polygraph evidence along with its potential dangers. In so doing, the courts of Ohio should determine whether a procedure may be devised to maximize the value and …

Neuroprediction: New Technology, Old Problems, Stephen J. Morse

All Faculty Scholarship

Neuroprediction is the use of structural or functional brain or nervous system variables to make any type of prediction, including medical prognoses and behavioral forecasts, such as an indicator of future dangerous behavior. This commentary will focus on behavioral predictions, but the analysis applies to any context. The general thesis is that using neurovariables for prediction is a new technology, but that it raises no new ethical issues, at least for now. Only if neuroscience achieves the ability to “read” mental content will genuinely new ethical issues be raised, but that is not possible at present.

Evidence-Based Practice Attitudes, Knowledge And Perceptions Of Barriers Among Juvenile Justice Professionals, Esther Chao Mckee

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This mixed methods study examined the attitudes, knowledge and perceptions of barriers toward Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) among Florida Juvenile Justice Service Professionals (JJSP). Previous research established individual factors such as age, gender, years of professional experience and educational attainment are related to attitudes and perceptions of barriers among social service and mental health professionals, but scant research has been conducted among juvenile justice providers (Aarons 2004, 2010; Rubin & Parrish, 2007, 2012; Jette et al., 2003). Most individual factors were found to have no significant effect on attitude and knowledge scores within this population with exception of gender and major …

Dna Testing Is The Most Effective Procedure To Solve Crimes, Son Nguyen

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

There are several different techniques to solve crimes. Fingerprinting has been used as an investigative tool to help law enforcement find suspects. By using the fingerprints obtained at a crime scene, investigators can try to find a match within the fingerprint database. Since fingerprints are truly unique, there are better technological advances that will aid law enforcements and forensic scientists confirm a suspect was at the crime scene. By using DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid, technology, established in 1985 but was first used in 1987 in law enforcement, as the main investigative tool, several different crimes can be solve by analyzing the …

High Expectations And Some Wounded Hopes: The Policy And Politics Of A Uniform Statute On Videotaping Custodial Interrogations, Andrew E. Taslitz

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

Much has been written about the need to videotape the entire process of police interrogation of suspects. Videotaping discourages abusive interrogation techniques, improves police training in proper techniques, reduces frivolous suppression motions, and improves jury decision making about the voluntariness and accuracy of a confession. Despite these benefits, only a small number of states have adopted legislation mandating electronic recording of the entire interrogation process. In the hope of accelerating legislative adoption of this procedure and of improving the quality of such legislation, the Uniform Law Commission (ULC) ratified a uniform recording statute for consideration by the states. I was …

Forensic Science Evidence And Judicial Bias In Criminal Cases, Hon. Donald E. Shelton

Hon. Donald E. Shelton

Although DNA exonerations and the NAS report have raised serious questions about the validity of many traditional non-DNA forms of forensic science evidence, criminal court judges continue to admit virtually all prosecution-proferred expert testimony. It is is suggested that this is the result of a systemic pro-prosecution bias by judges that is reflected in admissibility decisions. These "attitudinal blinders" are especially prevalent in state criminal trial and appellate courts.

Examining The "Csi-Effect" In The Cases Of Circumstantial Evidence And Eyewitness Testimony: Multivariate And Path Analyses, Hon. Donald E. Shelton, Young S. Kim, Gregg Barak

Hon. Donald E. Shelton

As part of a larger investigation of the changing nature of juror behavior in the context of technology development, this study examined important questions unanswered by previous studies on the “CSI-effect.” In answering such questions, the present study applied multivariate and path analyses for the first time. The results showed that (a) watching CSI dramas had no independent effect on jurors' verdicts, (b) the exposure to CSI dramas did not interact with individual characteristics, (c) different individual characteristics were significantly associated with different types of evidence, and (d) CSI watching had no direct effect on jurors' decisions, and it had …

The Admissibility Of Social Science Evidence In Criminal Cases, Hon. Donald E. Shelton

Hon. Donald E. Shelton

The rapid development of emerging scientific methods, especially the increased understanding of deoxyribonucleic acid ("DNA"), has had, and will undoubtedly continue to have, an almost stunning impact on our justice system, particularly at the trial level. The forensic applications of these new scientific discoveries have been most dramatically seen in the criminal trial court. They have also caused us to re-examine other forms of forensic evidence that have been rather routinely admitted in our courts. Forensic evidence from social scientists is certainly one of those forms. Which of these forms of scientific forensic evidence have sufficient validity to be used …

The Death Of The American Trial, Robert P. Burns

Faculty Working Papers

This short essay is a summary of my assessment of the meaning of the "vanishing trial" phenomenon. It addresses the obvious question: "So what?" It first briefly reviews the evidence of the trial's decline. It then sets out the steps necessary to understand the political and social signficance of our vastly reducing the trial's importance among our modes of social ordering. The essay serves as the Introduction to a book, The Death of the American Trial, soon to be published by the University of Chicago Press.

The Language Of Consent In Police Encounters, Janice Nadler, J.D. Trout

Faculty Working Papers

In this chapter, we examine the nature of conversations in citizen-police encounters in which police seek to conduct a search based on the citizen's consent. We argue that when police officers ask a person if they can search, citizens often feel enormous pressure to say yes. But judges routinely ignore these pressures, choosing instead to spotlight the politeness and restraint of the officers' language and demeanor. Courts often analyze the language of police encounters as if the conversation has an obvious, context-free meaning. The pragmatic features of language influence behavior, but courts routinely ignore or deny this fact. Instead, current …

How Accountability-Based Policing Can Reinforce - Or Replace - The Fourth Amendment Exclusionary Rule, David A. Harris

Articles

In Hudson v. Michigan, a knock-and-announce case, Justice Scalia's majority opinion came close to jettisoning the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule. The immense costs of the rule, Scalia said, outweigh whatever benefits might come from it. Moreover, police officers and police departments now generally follow the dictates of the Fourth Amendment, so the exclusionary rule has outlived the reasons that the Court adopted it in the first place. This viewpoint did not become the law because Justice Kennedy, one member of the five-vote majority, withheld his support from this section of the opinion. But the closeness of the vote on …

The Street Perspective: A Conversation With The Police, Patrick L. Baude

IUSTITIA

Professor Baude's purpose in this discussion is to elicit police officers' comments on what members of the legal profession ought to know about the influence of the "street perspective" in shaping those officers' attitudes towards the criminal justice system and the role they play in it. It is police insistence on the broad validity of insights which only "the street" can provide that accounts for the considerable gulf between "front-line" enforcement officers and other functionaries in (and students of) that system. Law students (and no doubt lawyers) seem uncomfortable with the notion that our system cannot adequately be understood without …