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Anglo-American And Continental Systems: Marsupials And Mammals Of The Law., Richard O. Lempert

Book Chapters

When Peter Tillers invited me to participate in this festschrift for Mirjan Damaška, I proposed to write a short concluding essay reviewing the articles in this volume and drawing links between them. Perhaps I should have anticipated that this would be no easy task, and maybe even have foreseen that it was an assignment I would eventually shun. I should have known that there would not be the six to eight articles I anticipated but the 17 that have been submitted. Had I thought more, I would have realised that there would be many people, myself included, who would seek …

Pretrial Discovery Of Expert Testimony, Paul C. Giannelli

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

What's Wrong With Litigation-Driven Science? An Essay In Legal Epistemology, Susan Haack

Articles

No abstract provided.

Commenting On Credibility In Kansas: A Constructive Criticism Of State V. Pabst, Steve Leben

Faculty Works

In some respects, this is a cautionary tale about overruling precedent. The Kansas Supreme Court openly overruled its own thirty-two year old precedent in deciding State v. Pabst in 2000. Cautionary tales and precedents aside, this Article is primarily about how trials are conducted, and how much latitude an attorney should have in Kansas to talk directly to jurors in closing argument about all the issues-including witness credibility-that will decide the case. Pabst forced attorneys to change the way they conduct closing arguments. While the result in Pabst was right, the rationale the court used to support the decision was …

The Confrontation Right Across The Systemic Divide, Richard D. Friedman

Book Chapters

In his notable work, Evidence Law Adrift, Mirjan Damaška identified three pillars of the common law system of determining facts in adjudication, and examined these through a comparative lens: the organisation of the trial court; the phenomenon of temporally compressed trials; and a high degree of control by parties and their counsel. In reviewing the book, I suggested that a strong concept of individual rights was another critical feature of the common law system, especially in its American variant and especially with respect to criminal defendants.

In this essay, I will explore how these four features play out in the …

Acknowledging Guilt: Forcing Self-Identification In Post-Conviction Dna Testing, Tonja Jacobi, Gwendolyn Carroll

Faculty Articles

This Essay formally illustrates how it is possible to force prisoners to self-identify as innocent or guilty by deciding whether to seek post­conviction DNA testing. Additionally, it shows why other systems that aim to reduce the number of guilty petitioners seeking post-conviction DNA testing create perverse incentives, and why only additional incarceration can effectively encourage innocent and guilty prisoners alike to self-identify. This will reduce costs on the judicial system by discouraging guilty prison­ers from seeking post-conviction DNA tests. It will also make it faster and easier for actually innocent prisoners to seek the tests they need for timely exoneration. …

Reverse 404(B) Evidence: Exploring Standards When Defendants Want To Introduce Other Bad Acts Of Third Parties, Jessica Broderick

University of Colorado Law Review

Reverse 404(b) evidence is the name courts have given to a less common use of Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b), wherein a defendant attempts to introduce the "other bad acts" of a third party, usually to prove that this third party committed the crime of which the defendant is accused or that the third party coerced the defendant into committing the crime. This Comment first reviews the standard use of FRE 404(b): when prosecutors seek to introduce other bad acts of the defendant. Then it explores how federal courts have addressed reverse 404(b) evidence. Currently there is no consensus among …

Regulating Unreliable Evidence: Can Evidence Rules Guide Juries And Prevent Wrongful Convictions, Lisa Dufraimont

Articles & Book Chapters

Recent years have seen increasing concern over the prevalence of wrongful convictions in Canadian criminal courts. This concern is particularly pronounced in jury trials, as jurors are untrained and often lack the familiarity, experience and knowledge required to evaluate evidence of doubtful reliability. Research has suggested that three forms of evidence - eyewitness identification, confessions and jailhouse-informant testimony -pose particular reliability concerns in jury trials. The special problem, common to all three, is the tendency of jurors to overlook the factors that make them unreliable. Canadian criminal evidence law purports to address this problem, but the author argues that the …

Dna Is Different:Implications Of The Public Perception Ofdna Evidence On Police Interrogation Methods, Christine D. Salmon

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

These reform proposals have been met with vehement criticism, most of which stem from a concern that any attempt to prohibit or regulate deceptive interrogation methods would decrease the number of confessions and convictions produced by the criminal justice system. With these concerns in mind, this article proposes a different, more moderate reform: a per se ban on the falsification of DNA evidence during police interrogations. This proposal differs from those described above in three important ways. First, the prohibition on fabricating DNA evidence does not require a change in the voluntariness test used to ascertain the admissibility of a …

Nontestimonial Identification Orders For Dna Testing, Paul C. Giannelli

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Dna Is Different:Implications Of The Public Perception Ofdna Evidence On Police Interrogation Methods, Christine D. Salmon

Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest

These reform proposals have been met with vehement criticism, most of which stem from a concern that any attempt to prohibit or regulate deceptive interrogation methods would decrease the number of confessions and convictions produced by the criminal justice system. With these concerns in mind, this article proposes a different, more moderate reform: a per se ban on the falsification of DNA evidence during police interrogations. This proposal differs from those described above in three important ways. First, the prohibition on fabricating DNA evidence does not require a change in the voluntariness test used to ascertain the admissibility of a …

Waiting For The Other Shoe: Hudson And The Precarious State Of Mapp, David A. Moran

Articles

I have no idea whether my death will be noted in the New York Times. But if it is, I fear the headline of my obituary will look something like: "Professor Dies; Lost Hudson v. Michigan' in Supreme Court, Leading to Abolition of Exclusionary Rule." The very existence of this Symposium panel shows, I think, that my fear is well-grounded. On the other hand, I am not quite as fearful that Hudson foreshadows the complete overruling of Mapp v. Ohio2 and Weeks v. United States3 as I was when I published an article just three months after the Hudson decision …

Experts, Mental States, And Acts, Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article, written for a symposium on "Guilt v. Guiltiness: Are the Right Rules for Trying Factual Innocence Inevitably the Wrong Rules for Trying Culpability?," argues that the definition of expertise in the criminal justice system, derived in the federal courts and in most states from Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Co., should vary depending on whether the issue involved is past mental state or past conduct. While expert psychological testimony about past acts ought to be based on scientifically verifiable assertions, expert psychological testimony about subjective mental states relevant to criminal responsibility need not meet the same threshold. This …

Alternatives To The Exclusionary Rule After Hudson V. Michigan: Preventing And Remedying Police Misconduct, Alicia M. Hilton

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Addressing The Evidentiary Sources Of Wrongful Convictions: Categorical Exclusion Of Evidence In Capital Statutes, Rory K. Little

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Evidence, Marc T. Treadwell

Mercer Law Review

The most significant news during the current survey period continued to be the judiciary's efforts to come to terms with the "tort reform" legislation enacted by the General Assembly in 2005, particularly Official Code of Georgia Annotated ("O.C.G.A.") section 24-9-67.1, which purports to adopt, more or less, the United States Supreme Court's decision in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

As discussed below, it is beginning to appear that Georgia courts will follow a somewhat different course than that followed by federal courts in their interpretation of Daubert and Daubert's codification in Federal Rule of Evidence 702. As discussed …

Statistics In The Jury Box: How Jurors Respond To Mitochondrial Dna Match Probabilities, David H. Kaye, Valerie P. Hans, B. Michael Dann, Erin J. Farley, Stephanie Albertson

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article describes parts of an unusually realistic experiment on the comprehension of expert testimony on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequencing in a criminal trial for robbery. Specifically, we examine how jurors who responded to summonses for jury duty evaluated portions of videotaped testimony involving probabilities and statistics. Although some jurors showed susceptibility to classic fallacies in interpreting conditional probabilities, the jurors as a whole were not overwhelmed by a 99.98% exclusion probability that the prosecution presented. Cognitive errors favoring the defense were more prevalent than ones favoring the prosecution. These findings lend scant support to the legal argument that mtDNA …

Coming Clean About "Junk Dna", Simon A. Cole

NULR Online

No abstract provided.

The Antigone Dilemma: When The Paths Of Law And Morality Diverge, J. C. Oleson

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Dui Law In Virginia, Monte Kuligowski

University of Richmond Law Review

As the demand for safer roadways needs little supporting argument, I turn to the constitutional problem of strict criminal liability law, followed with a brief analysis of criminal intent and strict liability law within the criminal system, some examples of how other states have responded to the inherent tensions, and a few specific thoughts for the legislature to consider.

Science In The Jury Box: Jurors' Views And Understanding Of Mitochondrial Dna Evidence, Valerie P. Hans, David H. Kaye, B. Michael Dann, Erin J. Farley, Stephanie Albertson

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article describes parts of an unusually realistic experiment on the comprehension of expert testimony on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequencing in a criminal trial for robbery. Specifically, we examine how jurors who responded to summonses for jury duty evaluated portions of videotaped testimony involving probabilities and statistics. Although some jurors showed susceptibility to classic fallacies in interpreting conditional probabilities, the jurors as a whole were not overwhelmed by a 99.98% exclusion probability that the prosecution presented. Cognitive errors favoring the defense were more prevalent than ones favoring the prosecution. These findings lend scant support to the legal argument that mtDNA …

Kids Say The Darndest Things: The Prosecutorial Use Of Hearsay Statements By Children, Tom Lininger

Indiana Law Journal

The papers in this symposium were originally prepared for the Section on Evidence of the 2007 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Law Schools.

Toward A History Of Children As Witnesses, David S. Tanenhaus, William Bush

Indiana Law Journal

The papers in this symposium were originally prepared for the Section on Evidence of the 2007 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Law Schools.

Is The “Junk” Dna Designation Bunk?, Simon A. Cole

NULR Online

No abstract provided.

Mediating Rules In Criminal Law, Alex Stein, Richard A. Bierschbach

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Mediating Rules In Criminal Law, Richard A. Bierschbach, Alex Stein

Articles

This Article challenges the conventional divide between substantive criminal law theory, on the one hand, and evidence law, on the other, by exposing an important and unrecognized function of evidence rules in criminal law. Throughout the criminal law, special rules of evidence work to mediate conflicts between criminal law's deterrence and retributivist goals. They do this by skewing errors in the actual application of the substantive criminal law to favor whichever theory has been disfavored by the substantive rule itself The mediating potential of evidentiary rules is particularly strong in criminal law because the substantive law's dominant animating theories-deterrence and …

Testimonial? What The Heck Does That Mean?: Davis V. Washington, Lindsay Brewer

Mercer Law Review

The 2004 United States Supreme Court decision in Crawford v. Washington reformulated the standard for determining when the admission of hearsay' statements in criminal cases is permitted under the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The majority held that the Confrontation Clause operates to exclude out-of-court statements that are "testimonial" in nature, unless the person making the statement is unavailable to testify and the defendant has had an opportunity for cross-examination. Chief Justice Rehnquist, who concurred in the judgment, expressed concerns that the decision would lead to uncertainty in future criminal trials because the Court …

Miranda Is Not Enough: A New Justification For Demanding "Strong Corroboration" To A Confession, Boaz Sangero

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Conundrum Of Mental States: Substantive Rules And Evidence Combined, Keren Shapira-Ettinger

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Sign-Post Without Any Sense Of Direction: The Supreme Court's Dance Around The Inevitable Discovery Doctrine And The Exclusionary Rule In Hudson V. Michigan, David A. Stuart

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.