Evidence Commons^™

The (Mis)Application Ofrule 404(B) Heuristics, Dora W. Klein

University of Miami Law Review

In all of the federal circuit courts of appeals, application of Rule 404(b) of the Federal Rules of Evidence has been distorted by judicially-created “tests” that, while intended to assist trial courts in properly admitting or excluding evidence, do not actually test for the kind of evidence prohibited by this rule. Rule 404(b) prohibits evidence of “crimes, wrongs, or other acts” if the purpose for admitting the evidence is to prove action in accordance with a character trait. This evidence is commonly referred to as “propensity” evidence, or “once a drug dealer, always a drug dealer” evidence.

This ...

Privacy, Screened Out: Analyzing The Threat To Individual Privacy Rights And Fifth Amendment Protections In State V. Stahl, Jesse Coulon

Boston College Law Review

Courts across the United States have applied Fifth Amendment protections to passcodes, as long as those passcodes are not a foregone conclusion. In order for a court to determine that a passcode is a forgone conclusion, and thus not testimonial in nature, the prosecution must show that they knew the existence, possession, and authenticity of the evidence that would be discovered by the compelled passcode, before the passcode is compelled. The foregone conclusion doctrine was established, and had been used, to balance the need of law enforcement to gather incriminating evidence while still protecting defendants’ Fifth Amendment rights. In 2016 ...

The Effects Of Implicit Encouragement And The Putative Confession On Children's Memory Reports, Kyndra C. Cleveland, J A. Quas, Thomas D. Lyon

University of Southern California Legal Studies Working Paper Series

The current study tested the effects of two interview techniques on children's report productivity and accuracy following exposure to suggestion: implicit encouragement (backchanneling, use of children's names) and the putative confession (telling children that a suspect "told me everything that happened and wants you to tell the truth"). One hundred and forty-three, 3-8-year-old children participated in a classroom event. One week later, they took part in a highly suggestive conversation about the event and then a mock forensic interview in which the two techniques were experimentally manipulated. Greater use of implicit encouragement led to increases, with age, in ...

State V. Nelson: Determining "Reasonable Suspicion" For Investigatory Stops In Maine, Sandra Denison Shannon

Maine Law Review

In 1994 the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, sitting as the Law Court, held in State v. Nelson that a police officer's observation of motorist Theodore Nelson consuming a single can of beer over a one-hour time period did not, by itself, give rise to a reasonable suspicion that Nelson thereafter illegally operated the vehicle under the influence of alcohol. This Note analyzes the Law Court's decision in Nelson. In its analysis, this Note compares Nelson to several other Maine opinions and recommends that, if the Maine Law Court is to continue to adhere to both objective and subjective ...

Trammel V. United States: Bad History, Bad Policy, And Bad Law, Michael W. Mullane

Maine Law Review

In 1980 the United States Supreme Court decided Trammel v. United States. The opinion changed the Spouses' Testimonial Privilege, overturning centuries of consistent case decisions. The Court based its decision on the history and effect of privilege and a straw poll of state legislative and court decisions on the issue. The Court concluded its decision would permit the admission of more spousal testimony without impairing the benefits the privilege was supposed to confer on spouses. The Court's decision in Trammel was wrong on three counts. The first was bad history overlaid with questionable analysis. The survey of the state ...

An Empirical Study Of Rule 609 And Suggestions For Practical Reform, Ric Simmons

Boston College Law Review

Rule 609 of the Federal Rules of Evidence allows a party to impeach a witness with his or her prior criminal convictions. It is fair to say that this rule is the most criticized of all the Rules of Evidence; scholars have been calling for its reform or outright abolition for decades. These critics argue that the rule relies on propensity evidence, which has very little probative value in evaluating a witness’s truthfulness on the stand, and that—especially when used to impeach a criminal defendant—the evidence carries a high risk of unfair prejudice and often prevents defendants ...

Technological Opacity & Procedural Injustice, Seth Katsuya Endo

Boston College Law Review

From Google’s auto-correction of spelling errors to Netflix’s movie suggestions, machine-learning systems are a part of our everyday life. Both private and state actors increasingly employ such systems to make decisions that implicate individuals’ substantive rights, such as with credit scoring, government-benefit eligibility decisions, national security screening, and criminal sentencing. In turn, the rising use of machine-learning systems has led to questioning about whether they are sufficiently accurate, fair, and transparent. This Article builds on that work, focusing on how opaque technologies can subtly erode the due process norm of participation. To illuminate this issue, this Article examines ...

“A Search Is A Search”: Scanning A Credit, Debit, Or Gift Card Is A Search Under The Fourth Amendment, John A. Leblanc

Boston College Law Review

On May 18, 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, in United States v. Hillaire, joined the Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth circuits in holding that the government’s act of scanning the magnetic stripes of lawfully seized credit, debit, or gift cards to access the information encoded therein is not a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. In each case, the courts concluded that an individual is precluded from claiming a reasonable expectation of privacy in the electronic information encoded on a card’s magnetic stripe. This Note provides an overview of how Fourth ...

62. The Effects Of Implicit Encouragement And The Putative Confession On Children’S Memory Reports., Kyndra C. Cleveland, Jodi A. Quas, Thomas D. Lyon

Thomas D. Lyon

Self Incrimination And Cryptographic Keys, Gregory S. Sergienko

Greg Sergienko

Modern cryptography can make it virtually impossible to decipher documents without the cryptographic key thus making the availability of the contents of those documents depend on the availability of the key. This article examines the Fourth and Fifth Amendments' protection against the compulsory production of the key and the scope of the Fifth Amendment immunity against compelled production. After analyzing these questions using prevailing Fourth and Fifth Amendment jurisprudence, I shall describe the advantages of a privacy-based approach in practical and constitutional terms. [excerpt]

The Grand Jury: A Shield Of A Different Sort, R. Michael Cassidy, Julian A. Cook Iii

R. Michael Cassidy

According to the Washington Post, 991 people were shot to death by police officers in the United States during calendar year 2015, and 957 people were fatally shot in 2016. A disproportionate percentage of the citizens killed in these police-civilian encounters were black. Events in Ferguson, Missouri; Chicago, Illinois; Charlotte, North Carolina; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Staten Island, New York - to name but a few affected cities - have now exposed deep distrust between communities of color and law enforcement. Greater transparency is necessary to begin to heal this culture of distrust and to inform the debate going forward about police ...

Whren V. United States: An Abrupt End To The Debate Over Pretextual Stops, Brian J. O'Donnell

Maine Law Review

In Whren v. United States, the United States Supreme Court held that a traffic stop is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment if a police officer has probable cause to believe that a traffic violation has occurred, even if the stop is a pretext for the investigation of a more serious offense. The Court affirmed the convictions of Michael A. Whren and James L. Brown, who had been arrested on federal drug charges after Washington, D.C., police stopped Brown for minor traffic infractions. The Court's unanimous opinion, delivered by Justice Scalia, brought an end to a long-running debate over ...

A Call For Consistency: State V. Caouette Is No Longer Viable In Light Of Colorado V. Connelly And State V. Eastman, Donald W. Macomber

Maine Law Review

This Article challenges the Law Court's expansive interpretation in State v. Caouette of the scope of the privilege against self-incrimination embodied in Article I, section 6 of the Maine Constitution in the context of reviewing claims of the involuntariness of a confession. The court's declaration that a reliable confession must be suppressed on state constitutional grounds based solely on a suspect's internal factors, and in the absence of any police overreaching in obtaining the confession, contradicted two centuries of constitutional jurisprudence requiring some form of government action to implicate the protections of the Bill of Rights and ...

Deceptively Simple: Framing, Intuition And Judicial Gatekeeping Of Forensic Feature-Comparison Methods Evidence, Jane Campbell Moriarty

Jane Campbell Moriarty

The Admissibility Of Sampling Evidence To Prove Individual Damages In Class Actions, Hillel J. Bavli, John Kenneth Felter

Boston College Law Review

The 2016 Supreme Court decision in Tyson Foods, Inc. v. Bouaphakeo revived the use of “representative” or sampling evidence in class actions. Federal courts are now more receptive to class plaintiffs’ efforts to prove classwide liability and, occasionally, aggregate damages, with sampling evidence. However, federal courts still routinely deny motions for class certification because they find that calculations of class members’ individual damages defeat the predominance prerequisite of Rule 23(b)(3). As a result, meritorious classwide claims founder. In this paper, we combine legal and statistical analyses and propose a novel solution to this dilemma that adheres to the ...

Rethinking The Law Of Legal Negotiation: Confidentiality Under Federal Rule Of Evidence 408 And Related State Laws, Richard C. Reuben

Boston College Law Review

Federal Rule of Evidence 408 and related state laws are among the most important rules to implement the national policy favoring the settlement of legal disputes. These rules bar the introduction of statements made during negotiations leading to the resolution of legal disputes. However, comprehensive analysis of the rule’s text, doctrinal history, and modern context demonstrates that the rule no longer meets its noble goals. Rather, the rule has evolved textually from a remarkably narrow and complex categorical presumption of inadmissibility with limited exceptions to a simpler rule that gives courts considerable deference to admit such evidence when they ...

To Understand Us V. Microsoft, Consider 'Acme V. Shamrock', Peter B. Rutledge, Amanda W. Newton

Popular Media

The February 27, 2018, Supreme Court argument in United States v. Microsoft Corp. raises profound questions about issues of executive power, corporate governance, technology, judicial power and international affairs. At stake for the government is the scope of its investigative authority to obtain information located in a foreign country, irrespective of that country’s laws. At stake for Microsoft is its ability to organize its international corporate affairs and the predictability of the laws that will govern those affairs. This article analyzes the potential effects of this critical Supreme Court case.

Panel Discussion: Author Meets Critic

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Panel Discussion: Ethnographic Evidence

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Panel Discussion: Ethnography, Ethics & Law

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.