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Maine Law Review

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Findings Of Fact Vs. Conclusions Of Law: How The Law Court Complicated The Case Of State V. Connor, Christopher S. Boulos Oct 2017

Findings Of Fact Vs. Conclusions Of Law: How The Law Court Complicated The Case Of State V. Connor, Christopher S. Boulos

Maine Law Review

In State v. Connor, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, sitting as the Law Court, upheld a trial judge’s denial of a motion to suppress evidence. Although the evidence presented in the suppression hearing seemed adequate to support the denial of the motion, the trial judge failed to clearly state his conclusions of law when denying the motion. However, the Law Court mistook the ambiguous conclusions of law as ambiguous findings of fact. Because the findings of fact were ambiguous in the court’s view, the majority and dissenting opinions spent the bulk of their energies discussing how the court should review …


Post-Trial Judicial Review Of Criminal Convictions: A Comparative Study Of The United States And Finland, Christopher M. Johnson Oct 2017

Post-Trial Judicial Review Of Criminal Convictions: A Comparative Study Of The United States And Finland, Christopher M. Johnson

Maine Law Review

In 2011, two murder cases involving defendants who professed their innocence came to dramatic conclusions in appellate courts. In Finland in August 2011, the murder prosecution of Anneli Auer ended with her acquittal by an appellate court. In the United States in September 2011, the murder prosecution of Troy Davis ended in his execution in Georgia’s death chamber, despite exculpatory information developed after his trial about the reliability of some eyewitnesses identification evidence. The Finish case arose out if the December 2006 death if Jukka Lahti in Ulvila. His wife, Auer, called the police and claimed that an intruder entered …


A Comment On Christopher Johnson's "Post-Trial Judicial Review Of Criminal Convictions: A Comparative Study Of The United States And Finland", Malick W. Ghachem Jul 2017

A Comment On Christopher Johnson's "Post-Trial Judicial Review Of Criminal Convictions: A Comparative Study Of The United States And Finland", Malick W. Ghachem

Maine Law Review

Christopher Johnson has dug deeply into a neglected corner of comparative law and emerged with some fascinating and important contrasts. Finland does not appear often on the radar screen of American legal scholars, even those who primarily focus is comparative law. And so we are indebted to Johnson for reminding us that critical comparative insights can arise out of studying the experiences of nations deemed “marginal” to the international system, and to mainstream comparative law scholarship (which itself occupies a position of uncertain import in American legal scholarship generally). Johnson’s findings are all the more significant because they come from …