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The Lessons Of People V. Moscat: Confronting Judicial Bias In Domestic Violence Cases Interpreting Crawford V. Washington, David Jaros

All Faculty Scholarship

Crawford v. Washington was a groundbreaking decision that radically redefined the scope of the Confrontation Clause. Nowhere has the impact of Crawford and the debate over its meaning been stronger than in the context of domestic violence prosecutions. The particular circumstances that surround domestic violence cases 911 calls that record cries for help and accusations, excited utterances made to responding police officers, and the persistent reluctance of complaining witnesses to cooperate with prosecutors -- combine to make the introduction of "out-of-comment statements" a critical component of many domestic violence prosecutions. Because domestic violence cases are subject to a unique set …

Testimonial And The Formalistic Definition -- The Case For An "Accusatorial" Fix, Robert P. Mosteller

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Examining The Repercussions Of Crawford: The Uncertain Future Of Hearsay Evidence In Missouri, Jon W. Jordan

Missouri Law Review

While making a course correction in Confrontation Clause jurisprudence, the United States Supreme Court leaves much uncertainty in its wake. Some hearsay evidence previously admissible under a "firmly rooted hearsay exception" or because it possessed "particularized guarantees of trustworthiness" will no longer be allowed under the Court's new standard. However, the Court's failure to define its key terms leaves practitioners in desparate need of further clarification. This Note is intended to assist Missouri practitioners in understanding the Supreme court's new Confrontation Clause standard as stated in Crawford v. Washington and provide practical guidance for its application. The Note identifies Missouri's …

A Blow To Domestic Violence Victims: Applying The "Testimonial Statements" Test In Crawford V. Washington, Melissa Moody

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

The Tricky Nature Of Proving Genocide Against Saddam Hussein Before The Iraqi Special Tribunal, Michael J. Kelly

Cornell International Law Journal

In this article in the Symposium on Milosevic & Hussein on Trial, the author discusses procedural challenges to proving genocide in the trial of Saddam Hussein to argue that the legitimacy of the Iraqi Special Tribunal (IST) & the proof of genocide rest on a sense of fairness, transparency, & completion of trials on a reasonable schedule. The Geneva Convention definition of genocide is discussed in terms of the impact of general verses specific intent in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). A historical analysis of the colonial creation of Iraq relates Saddam's style of government control …

Evidence Destroyed, Innocence Lost: The Preservation Of Biological Evidence Under Innocence Protection Statutes, Cynthia Jones

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Evidence—Sixth Amendment And The Confrontation Clause—Testimonial Trumps Reliable: The United States Supreme Court Reconsiders Its Approach To The Confrontation Clause. Crawford V. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004)., Kristen Sluyter

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Brave New World Of Criminal Justice: Neil Gerlach's Genetic Imaginary, Steve Coughlan

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In this well written and intriguing book, Neil Gerlach asks why the criminal justice system has accepted DNA evidence in much the same way that our Anglo-Saxon predecessors accepted trial by ordeal. Why have we not instead shown the same caution we show polygraph evidence? To be sure, he does not present the issue in those terms, and might shudder at the analogy. Still, the central issue he pursues in the book is the question of how DNA evidence has managed to assume its current aura of infallibility, as evidence which is somehow uniquely objective and "true": how it has …

How Earl Warren's Twenty-Two Years In Law Enforcement Affected His Work As Chief Justice, Yale Kamisar

Articles

Before becoming governor of California, Earl Warren had spent his entire legal career, twenty-two years, in law enforcement. Professor Kamisar maintains that this experience significantly influenced Warren's work as a Supreme Court justice and gave him a unique perspective into police interrogation and other police practices. This article discusses some of Warren's experiences in law enforcement and searches for evidence of that experience in Warren's opinions. For example, when Warren was head of the Alameda County District Attorney's Office, he and his deputies not only relied on confessions in many homicide cases but also themselves interrogated homicide suspects. The seeds …

It's The Prosecution's Story, But They're Not Sticking To It: Applying Harmless Error And Judicial Estoppel To Exculpatory Post-Conviction Dna Testing Cases , Hilary S. Ritter

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Deviance, Due Process, And The False Promise Of Federal Rule Of Evidence 403, Aviva A. Orenstein

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In a significant break with traditional evidence rules and policies, Federal Rules of Evidence 413 and 414 (concerning rape and child abuse, respectively) allow jurors to use the accused's prior sexual misconduct as evidence of character and propensity. Courts have rejected due process challenges to the new rules, holding that Federal Rule of Evidence 403 serves as a check on any fairness concerns. However, courts' application of Rule 403 in cases involving these sexual propensity rules is troubling. Relying on the legislative history of the new rules and announcing a presumption of admissibility, courts have forsaken the traditional operation of …

Crawford's Impact On Hearsay Statements In Domestic Violence And Child Sexual Abuse Cases, Robert P. Mosteller

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Yes, Then No, Means No: Current Issues, Trends, And Problems In Post-Penetration Rape, Tiffany Bohn

Northern Illinois University Law Review

Post-penetration rape describes the scenario when, at some point after consensual intercourse begins, one of the participants asks that the intercourse cease and the other does not desist. This situation is one of the more recently recognized forms of acquaintance rape. This recognition comes with various nuances and complexities that have caused a split amongst courts regarding how to deal with it when it arises in criminal prosecutions. One significant concern in the recognition of post-penetration rape as a rape rather than a battery or other crime is the need to strike a balance between providing recourse in the justice …

The Criminal Defence Lawyer's Role, David Layton

Dalhousie Law Journal

Defence lawyers often fight to prevent the conviction of people who have committed serious crimes. How can this role be justified? In providing his answer the author generally accepts the traditional view of criminal lawyering according to which defence counsel "does good" by ensuring that the state does not obtain a conviction in the absence of proof beyond a reasonable doubt based on admissible and reliable evidence Ethical advocacy in the criminal context is thus heavily influenced by a conception of justice that includes not only the search for truth but also due process rights for accused persons. The author …

Forecasting Harm: The Law And Science Of Risk Assessment Among Prisoners, Predators, And Patients, John Monahan

ExpressO

Scientifically valid instruments are being used for the first time to assess an individual’s risk of violence in criminal sentencing and in the civil commitment of mental patients and sexual predators. Risk factors on these instruments pertain to what the person is (e.g., gender), what the person has (e.g., personality disorder), what the person has done (e.g., past violence), and what has been done to the person (e.g., past victimization). In this Article, I argue that in criminal law, with its emphasis on blameworthiness for actions taken, the admissibility of scientifically valid risk factors is properly constrained to those that …

“Which One Of You Did It?” Criminal Liability For “Causing Or Allowing” The Death Of A Child, Lissa Griffin

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

Summerlin V. Stewart And Ring Retroactivity, Tonya G. Newman

Chicago-Kent Law Review

The Sixth Amendment guarantees criminal defendants a trial before a jury. Until the Supreme Court decided Ring v. Arizona, however, nine states wholly or partially surrendered a portion of the jury's role to a sentencing judge. Specifically, those states allowed sentencing judges to make factual determinations regarding sentencing considerations by which capital defendants became eligible for the death penalty. The Ring Court halted the use of sentencing considerations to erode the jury's fundamental role in preserving accuracy and fairness of criminal proceedings, holding that the Sixth Amendment requires that a jury make factual findings on all elements, including sentencing …

Courtroom Technology: For Trial Lawyers The Future Is Now, Fredric I. Lederer

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Australia And The United States: Two Common Criminal Justice Systems Uncommonly At Odds, Paul Marcus, Vicki Waye

Faculty Publications

At first glance the criminal justice systems of Australia and the United States look strikingly similar. With common law roots from England, they both emphasize the adversary system, the roleof the advocate, the presumption of innocence, and an appeals process. Upon closer reflection,however, they appear starkly different. From both Australian and U.S. perspectives, the authorsexplore those differences, examining important features such as the exclusion of evidence, rules regarding interrogation, the entrapment defense, and the open nature of trials. The Article concludes with an analysis of the reasons for those differences, reasons that heavily relate back to the founding of the …

Federal Court Adjudication Of State Prisoner Claims For Post-Conviction Dna Testing: A Bifurcated Approach, Dylan Ruga

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “Undoubtedly, there are innocent people in prison. Moreover, it is probable that the wrongly convicted, if given a chance to conduct DNA testing on evidence used against them at trial, could establish their innocence. […]

Part II of this Comment will examine the reasoning behind recent circuit court decisions concerning prisoners’ rights to post-conviction genetic testing. I will explain that a bifurcated approach is the appropriate paradigm for reviewing these claims and demonstrate why three of the four circuit courts erred in their analyses. This part also will review the Supreme Court decisions cited by the circuit courts and …

The Central Park Five, The Scottsboro Boys, And The Myth Of The Bestial Black Man, N. Jeremi Duru

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

A Look Back On A Half-Century Of Teaching, Writing And Speaking About Criminal Law And Criminal Procedure, Yale Kamisar

Articles

When I look back at my academic career, I realize that, as hard as I tried to plan things, various events often overrode my plans.

Punishment Evidence: Grunsfeld Ten Years Later., Edward L. Wilkinson

St. Mary's Law Journal

This Article deals with the admissible evidence during the punishment phase of a non-capital trial in Texas. In 1989, the Texas Legislature amended Article 37.07, Section 3(a) of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure to widen the scope of evidence admissible during the punishment phase of a non-capital trial. Grunsfel v. State, the leading case, the Court of Criminal Appeals interpreted the statute so narrowly as to render the changes meaningless. In 1993, the legislature amended the statute a second time; it provided for a more expansive range of evidence to be introduced, but deleted a critical definition of what …

Postscript: Another Look At Patane And Seibert, The 2004 Miranda 'Poisoned Fruit' Cases, Yale Kamisar

Articles

Some months after I finished writing an article that, inter alia, discussed the lower court opinions in Patane and Seibert (an article that appears elsewhere in this issue of the Journa),1 the Supreme Court handed down its decisions in those cases.2 In Patane, a 5-4 majority held admissible a Glock pistol located as a result of a failure to comply with Miranda. In Seibert, a 5-4 majority agreed with the state court that a "second confession," one obtained after the police had deliberately used a two-stage interrogation technique designed to undermine the Miranda warnings, was inadmissible. 3 In Patane, Justice …

The Self-Incrimination Clause Explained And Its Future Predicted, Ronald Jay Allen, M. Kristin Mace

Public Law and Legal Theory Papers

Like many areas of the law, the Fifth Amendment has defied theoretical explanation by scholars. We examine whether the fifth amendment cases can be explained with a relatively simple theory, and find that they can. The key to that theory is the recognition that, although never acknowledged by the Court, its cases make plain that "testimony" is the substantive content of cognition - the propositions with truth-value that people hold or generate (as distinct from the ability to hold or generate propositions with truth-value). This observation leads to a comprehensive positive theory of the Fifth Amendment right: the government may …

Misuse Of Scientific Evidence By Prosecutors, Bennett L. Gershman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The prosecutor's misuse of scientific evidence to charge and convict has not been sufficiently examined. Courts and commentators critiquing abuses of scientific evidence in criminal cases rarely focus on the prosecutor's role in the process. Issues typically discussed are the questionable nature of the evidence, the controversial manner in which the evidence was acquired and tested, whether the expert arrived at her conclusions in a scientifically reliable manner, and whether the expert's courtroom testimony was false or misleading. The prosecutor's control over and manipulation of the scientific evidence to shape the fact-finder's evaluation of the facts and to persuade the …

A Unilateral Hope: Reliance On The Clemency Process As A Trigger For A Right Of Access To State-Held Dna Evidence, Ryan Dietrich

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

Trials And Tribulations: Science In The Law, Susan Haack

Articles

No abstract provided.

Revoking Our Privileges: Federal Law Enforcement’S Multi-Front Assault On The Attorney-Client Privilege (And Why It Is Misguided), Lance Cole

Faculty Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

It Is Not So Simply Because An Expert Says It Is So: The Reliability Of Gang Expert Testimony Regarding Membership In Criminal Street Gangs: Pushing The Limits Of Texas Rule Of Evidence 702., Placido G. Gomez

St. Mary's Law Journal

The mechanisms developed by the criminal justice system addressing the criminal activities of street gangs, for the most part, have proved ineffective. The evolution of gangs, their complex structure, and multipurpose focus keep them one step ahead of law enforcement. The most recent weapon created to fight the war on gangs, the civil injunction, suffers from numerous inadequacies. One concern is that civil injunctions raise numerous constitutional concerns. Another is that these injunctions fall short of constitutional demands. Furthermore, the practical implementation of the injunction forces an analysis of the reliability of the gang expert’s testimony. This Article proposes courts …