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A Synthesis Of The Science And Law Relating To Eyewitness Misidentifications And Recommendations For How Police And Courts Can Reduce Wrongful Convictions Based On Them, Henry F. Fradella
A Synthesis Of The Science And Law Relating To Eyewitness Misidentifications And Recommendations For How Police And Courts Can Reduce Wrongful Convictions Based On Them, Henry F. Fradella
Seattle University Law Review
The empirical literature on perception and memory consistently demonstrates the pitfalls of eyewitness identifications. Exoneration data lend external validity to these studies. With the goal of informing law enforcement officers, prosecutors, criminal defense attorneys, judges, and judicial law clerks about what they can do to reduce wrongful convictions based on misidentifications, this Article presents a synthesis of the scientific knowledge relevant to how perception and memory affect the (un)reliability of eyewitness identifications. The Article situates that body of knowledge within the context of leading case law. The Article then summarizes the most current recommendations for how law enforcement personnel should—and …
When A Tent Is Your Castle: Constitutional Protection Against Unreasonable Searches Of Makeshift Dwellings Of Unhoused Persons, Evanie Parr
Seattle University Law Review
This Note will argue that all jurisdictions should follow the Washington State Court of Appeals, Division II in validating makeshift dwellings used by people experiencing homelessness as spaces protected from unwarranted police intrusions by shifting evaluations of “reasonable expectations of privacy” to a more equitable standard that appreciates the realities of economic disparity. This approach to constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures is imperative to protect the rights of people experiencing homelessness, given that such individuals are regularly subjected to invasions of privacy and heightened exposure to the criminal justice system.
Recording A New Frontier In Evidence-Gathering: Police Body-Worn Cameras And Privacy Doctrines In Washington State, Katie Farden
Recording A New Frontier In Evidence-Gathering: Police Body-Worn Cameras And Privacy Doctrines In Washington State, Katie Farden
Seattle University Law Review
This Note contributes to a growing body of work that weighs the gains that communities stand to make from police body-worn cameras against the tangle of concerns about how cameras may infringe on individual liberties and tread on existing privacy laws. While police departments have quickly implemented cameras over the past few years, laws governing the use of the footage body-worn cameras capture still trail behind. Notably, admissibility rules for footage from an officer’s camera, and evidence obtained with the help of that footage, remain on the horizon. This Note focuses exclusively on Washington State’s laws. It takes a clinical …
Cops On Trial: Did Fourth Amendment Case Law Help George Zimmerman’S Claim Of Self-Defense?, Josephine Ross
Cops On Trial: Did Fourth Amendment Case Law Help George Zimmerman’S Claim Of Self-Defense?, Josephine Ross
Seattle University Law Review
When police kill unarmed civilians, prosecutors and grand juries often decline to bring criminal charges. Even when police officers are indicted, they are seldom convicted at trial. There are many reasons why police are rarely convicted for violent acts. Commentators have criticized the inherent conflict of interest for prosecutors who decide whether to bring charges and the fact that police are investigating their own. However, this article considers another way that police may be treated differently than other people suspected of committing violent crimes. The Fourth Amendment, designed to protect civilians from overzealous officers, now helps insulate police suspected of …
Analyzing Stops, Citations, And Searches In Washington And Beyond, Mario L. Barnes, Robert S. Chang
Analyzing Stops, Citations, And Searches In Washington And Beyond, Mario L. Barnes, Robert S. Chang
Seattle University Law Review
Racial disproportionality in the criminal justice system is a fact. But the fact of racial disproportionality is the beginning and not the end of the conversation. The fact that blacks are overrepresented in stop, arrest, charge, pretrial detention, conviction, and incarceration statistics demonstrates only correlation and not causation. A number of commentators caution that disproportionality and the overrepresentation of blacks, Native-Americans, and Hispanics in Washington State’s prisons do not prove racial discrimination. Further, the fact of disproportionality at each stage of criminal justice processing does not prove that racial discrimination occurs at each particular stage. For example, the observed disproportionality …
Methodological Issues In Biased Policing Research With Applications To The Washington State Patrol, Clayton Mosher, J. Mitchell Pickerill
Methodological Issues In Biased Policing Research With Applications To The Washington State Patrol, Clayton Mosher, J. Mitchell Pickerill
Seattle University Law Review
Racial profiling violates the United States Constitution’s premise that all people are equal under the law, as well as the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee that people should be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. Racial profiling has been found to result from individual officer racism or stereotyping, from institutionalized biases, and from the organizational culture of law enforcement agencies. We begin this Article by discussing the history of racial profiling before proceeding to consider various studies from a select number of American jurisdictions. We then examine important methodological and theoretical issues in conducting research on racial profiling and racially biased policing, …
Seizing Opportunity, Searching For Theory: Article I, Section 7, George R. Nock
Seizing Opportunity, Searching For Theory: Article I, Section 7, George R. Nock
Seattle University Law Review
Washington case law dealing with searches and seizures has now reached a developmental stage from which it can proceed either haphazardly or along any of several well-defined lines. The purpose of this Article is not to provide a compendium of Washington search-and-seizure cases. Rather, the Article analyzes the more recent (and some of the earlier) cases in which the Washington Supreme Court has interpreted article I, section 7, and suggests several alternative theoretical bases for the further development of Washington constitutional search-and-seizure jurisprudence.