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Full-Text Articles in Law
Do You See What I See? Problems With Juror Bias In Viewing Body-Camera Video Evidence, Morgan A. Birck
Do You See What I See? Problems With Juror Bias In Viewing Body-Camera Video Evidence, Morgan A. Birck
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
In the wake of the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, advocates and activists called for greater oversight and accountability for police. One of the measures called for and adopted in many jurisdictions was the implementation of body cameras in police departments. Many treated this implementation as a sign of change that police officers would be held accountable for the violence they perpetrate. This Note argues that although body-camera footage may be useful as one form of evidence in cases of police violence, lawyers and judges should be extremely careful about how it is presented to the jury. Namely, the …
Responding To Independent Juror Research In The Internet Age: Positive Rules, Negative Rules, And Outside Mechanisms, Robbie Manhas
Responding To Independent Juror Research In The Internet Age: Positive Rules, Negative Rules, And Outside Mechanisms, Robbie Manhas
Michigan Law Review
Independent juror research is an old problem for jury trials. It invites potentially prejudicial, irrelevant, and inaccurate information to guide jury decisionmaking. At the same time, independent juror research compromises our adversarial system by preventing parties from responding to all the evidence under consideration and obfuscating the record on which the jury’s decision is made. These threats have only increased in the internet age, where inappropriate sources of information are ubiquitous and where improper access is hard to detect. Nevertheless, courts and parties continue to engage in the same inhibitory measures they have employed for decades. This Note argues for …
Party's Over: Admissibility Of Post-Trial Juror Testimony Should Depend On The Nature Of The Conduct, Justin Gillett
Party's Over: Admissibility Of Post-Trial Juror Testimony Should Depend On The Nature Of The Conduct, Justin Gillett
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat
What do you call a weeklong period in which you and a handful of acquaintances drink alcohol every day at lunch, sleep though the afternoons, smoke marijuana and ingest a couple lines of cocaine on occasion? You call it the time when a jury convicted Anthony Tanner and William Conover of conspiracy to defraud the United States and commit various acts of mail fraud. Under a current rule of evidence, which precludes juror testimony to impeach a verdict except on extraneous prejudicial information, juror intoxication is not an external influence about which jurors may testify. A new test for the …
Doctors & Juries, Philip G. Peters Jr.
Doctors & Juries, Philip G. Peters Jr.
Michigan Law Review
Physicians widely believe that jury verdicts are unfair. This Article tests that assumption by synthesizing three decades of jury research. Contrary to popular belief the data show that juries consistently sympathize more with doctors who are sued than with patients who sue them. Physicians win roughly half of the cases that expert reviewers believe physicians should lose and nearly all of the cases that experts feel physicians should win. Defendants and their hired experts, it turns out, are more successful than plaintiffs and their hired experts at persuading juries to reach verdicts contrary to the opinions of independent reviewers.
The Cognitive Psychology Of Circumstantial Evidence, Kevin Jon Heller
The Cognitive Psychology Of Circumstantial Evidence, Kevin Jon Heller
Michigan Law Review
Empirical research indicates that jurors routinely undervalue circumstantial evidence (DNA, fingerprints, and the like) and overvalue direct evidence (eyewitness identifications and confessions) when making verdict choices, even though false-conviction statistics indicate that the former is normally more probative and more reliable than the latter The traditional explanation of this paradox, based on the probability-threshold model of jury decision-making, is that jurors simply do not understand circumstantial evidence and thus routinely underestimate its effect on the objective probability of the defendant's guilt. That may be true in some situations, but it fails to account for what is known in cognitive psychology …
Jury Trial Techniques In Complex Civil Litigation, Ronald S. Longhofer
Jury Trial Techniques In Complex Civil Litigation, Ronald S. Longhofer
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Ronald Longhofer, an experienced litigator, discusses the challenges inherent in trying a complex civil case to a jury. He explores aspects of complex litigation that often impede jurors from effectively hearing such cases. In conclusion, he suggests litigation techniques which have proved successful in overcoming such obstacles and effectively translating complex evidence to jurors.
An Outsider's View Of Common Law Evidence, Roger C. Park
An Outsider's View Of Common Law Evidence, Roger C. Park
Michigan Law Review
same line by a Newton. There have been improvements since Bentham's jeremiad. But Anglo-American evidence law is still puzzling. It rejects the common-sense principle of free proof in favor of a grotesque jumble of technicalities. It has the breathtaking aspiration of regulating inference by rule, causing it to exalt the foresight of remote rulemakers over the wisdom of on-the-spot adjudicators. It departs from tried-and-true practices of rational inquiry, as when it prohibits courts from using categories of evidence that are freely used both in everyday life and in the highest affairs of state. Sometimes it seems to fear dim light …
A Feminist Approach To Social Scientific Evidence: Foundations, Andrew E. Taslitz
A Feminist Approach To Social Scientific Evidence: Foundations, Andrew E. Taslitz
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
This Article addresses several aspects of a feminist approach to social scientific evidence, specifically, the interpretive nature of mental states, the feminist attitude toward juries, and the political nature of evidence law.
Legal Psychology: Eyewitness Testimony--Jury Behavior, Michigan Law Review
Legal Psychology: Eyewitness Testimony--Jury Behavior, Michigan Law Review
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Legal Psychology: Eyewitness Testimony--Jury Behavior by L. Craig Parker
Civil Juries And Complex Cases: Let's Not Rush To Judgment, Richard O. Lempert
Civil Juries And Complex Cases: Let's Not Rush To Judgment, Richard O. Lempert
Michigan Law Review
When a fundamental constitutional right is at issue, it is admittedly difficult for the Court to treat the lower courts as laboratories. But if the constitutional right turns on empirical questions, it is better to wait for knowledge than to rush toward a judgment that may later be shown to have vitiated an important right across all circuits. If the Court feels compelled to resolve the conflict, the better decision - if empirical issues are seen as central - is to sustain the right to jury trial regardless of complexity. Sustaining that right will allow courts and researchers to collect …
Probability Theory Meets Res Ipsa Loquitur, David Kaye
Probability Theory Meets Res Ipsa Loquitur, David Kaye
Michigan Law Review
This Article uses probability theory normatively in an effort to clarify one aspect of the famous tort doctrine known as res ipsa loquitur. It does not urge that jurors be instructed in probability theory or be equipped with microprocessors. Rather, it seeks an accurate statement of the res ipsa doctrine in ordinary language. In particular, this Article will show that the conventional formulation of the doctrine is misleading at best, and should be replaced with a more careful statement of the conditions warranting the res ipsa inference. To this end, Section I briefly surveys the legal doctrine, or, more precisely, …
Modeling Relevance, Richard O. Lempert
Modeling Relevance, Richard O. Lempert
Michigan Law Review
During the past decade, particularly during the years immediately following the California Supreme Court's decision in People v. Collins, a number of articles have appeared suggesting ways in which jurors might use certain mathematical techniques of decision theory as aids in the rational evaluation of circumstantial evidence. Professor Tribe, in an important response to the post-Collins articles, argues against introducing these techniques into the factfinding process. Problems that Tribe foresees include the necessary imprecision of the probabilistic estimates that these techniques require, the dwarfing of soft variables by those that are more readily quantified, and the potential dehumanization …
Medical Facts That Can And Cannot Be Proved By X-Ray: Historical Review And Present Possibilities, Samuel W. Donaldson
Medical Facts That Can And Cannot Be Proved By X-Ray: Historical Review And Present Possibilities, Samuel W. Donaldson
Michigan Law Review
As the science of the practice of medicine has progressed, new discoveries have brought out newer methods of diagnosis and treatment. With the discovery of x-rays by Professor Wilhelm Roentgen in 1895, an entirely new field was opened. The growth of this new field of medical radiology has been unusually rapid and of great importance. Radiology embraces the use of x-rays, radium, and other radioactive substances. Roentgenology is a division of radiology in that it is limited to the use of the Roentgen rays or x-rays, and medical roentgenology may be termed as the use of x-rays for the diagnosis …
Trial - Directed Verdict Where Testimony Is Conflicting, Edward S. Biggar
Trial - Directed Verdict Where Testimony Is Conflicting, Edward S. Biggar
Michigan Law Review
Defendants engaged the plaintiff to repair a barn roof. In his suit to recover damages for injuries sustained while on the defendants' premises, the plaintiff testified that he had been struck by a truck which one of the defendants had been driving. The defendants testified that they had discovered the plaintiff lying injured at the side of the barn, near a ladder which had been placed against it. Defendants moved for a directed verdict, which was denied, and after a verdict for the plaintiff, defendants appealed from the denial of their motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict. Held, that …
Practice And Procedure - Reservation Of Decision On Motion For Directed Verdict As Means Of Avoiding Unnecessary New Trials
Michigan Law Review
What may be done to remedy the situation if a jury brings in a verdict in favor of a party against whom a verdict should have been directed? This question becomes pertinent in view of the fact that judges, while hard pressed by counsel in the heat of trial, frequently wrongfully deny a motion for directed verdict and submit the case to the jury. One obvious remedy is the granting of a new trial by the trial judge, or by an appellate court after reversal. But this practice has proved eminently unsatisfactory, for it submits the aggrieved party to the …