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How Victim Impact Statements Promote Justice: Evidence From The Content Of Statements Delivered In Larry Nassar's Sentencing, Paul Cassell, Edna Erez
How Victim Impact Statements Promote Justice: Evidence From The Content Of Statements Delivered In Larry Nassar's Sentencing, Paul Cassell, Edna Erez
Utah Law Faculty Scholarship
Whether crime victims should present victim impact statements (VISs) at sentencing remains a subject of controversy in the criminal justice literature. But relatively little is known about the content of VISs and how victims use them. This article provides a content analysis of the 168 VISs presented in a Michigan court sentencing of Larry Nassar, who pleaded guilty to decades of sexual abuse of young athletes while he was treating them for various sports injuries. Nassar committed similar crimes against each of his victims, allowing a robust research approach to answer questions about the content, motivations for, and benefits of …
Shifting The Male Gaze Of Evidence, Teneille R. Brown
Shifting The Male Gaze Of Evidence, Teneille R. Brown
Utah Law Faculty Scholarship
In this article I target the altar at which many of us worship—the pursuit of rationality. For evidence purposes, rationality is defined as decisions that are reasonable, objective, inductive, and free from the bias of emotion. This view of rationality is deeply embedded in evidence scholarship and practice. It is also reflected in evidence rules like FRE 403, which treat emotional testimony as unfairly prejudicial simply because it is emotional. The anti-emotion view of rationality reflects the thinking of Western philosophical giants. Plato, Hobbes, Descartes, and Bacon all thought that men should strive for rationality by suppressing their emotions, because …