Law Commons^™

Impeachment Methods Illustrated: Movies, Novels, And High Profile Cases, Martin A. Schwartz, John Nicodemo

Martin A. Schwartz

No abstract provided.

Trial Evidence 2011: Advocacy, Analysis, & Illustrations, Martin A. Schwartz, Deborah Jones Merritt, William G. Young

Martin A. Schwartz

No abstract provided.

Taking A Stand On Taking The Stand: The Effect Of A Prior Criminal Record On The Decision To Testify And On Trial Outcomes, Theodore Eisenberg, Valerie P. Hans

Valerie P. Hans

This article uses unique data from over 300 criminal trials in four large counties to study the relations between the existence of a prior criminal record and defendants testifying at trial, between testifying at trial and juries' learning about a criminal record, and between juries' learning about a criminal record and their decisions to convict or acquit. Sixty percent of defendants without criminal records testified compared to 45 percent with criminal records. For testifying defendants with criminal records, juries learned of those records in about half the cases. Juries rarely learned about criminal records unless defendants testified. After controlling for …

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

Valerie P. Hans

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 …

Moral Turpitude, Julia Simon-Kerr

Julia Simon-Kerr

This Article gives the first account of the moral turpitude standard, tracing its history from the early American law of defamation to evidence law, where it has been used for witness impeachment, and then to legal areas as diverse as voting rights, juror disqualification, professional licensing, and immigration law, where it is used as a collateral sanctioning mechanism. "Moral turpitude" was formalized as a legal standard by common law courts seeking a manageable test for slander per se. As the standard spread and was appropriated for use in other fields, it functioned as a standard that purported to judge character …

The “Ensuing Loss” Clause In Insurance Policies: The Forgotten And Misunderstood Antidote To Anti-Concurrent Causation Exclusions, Chris French

Christopher C. French

As a result of the 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco which destroyed the city, a clause known as the “ensuing loss” clause was created to address concurrent causation situations in which a loss follows both a covered peril and an excluded peril. Ensuing loss clauses appear in the exclusions section of such policies and in essence they provide that coverage for a loss caused by an excluded peril is nonetheless covered if the loss “ensues” from a covered peril. Today, ensuing loss clauses are found in “all risk” property and homeowners policies, which cover all losses except for …

An Unsettling Development: The Use Of Settlement Related Evidence For Damages Determinations In Patent Litigation, Tejas N. Narechania, J. Taylor Kirklin

Tejas N. Narechania