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Evidence

Selected Works

2018

Articles 1 - 14 of 14

Full-Text Articles in Law

64. Effects Of The Putative Confession Instruction On Perceptions Of Children’S True And False Statements, Jennifer Gongola, Nicholas Scurich, Thomas D. Lyon Oct 2018

64. Effects Of The Putative Confession Instruction On Perceptions Of Children’S True And False Statements, Jennifer Gongola, Nicholas Scurich, Thomas D. Lyon

Thomas D. Lyon

The putative confession instruction (“[suspect] told me everything that happened and wants you to tell the truth”) during forensic interviews with children has been shown to increase the accuracy of children’s statements, but it is unclear whether adult’s perceptions are sensitive to this salutary effect. The present study examined how adults perceive children’s true and false responses to the putative confession (PC) instruction. Participants (n = 299) watched videotaped interviews of children and rated the child’s credibility and the truthfulness of his/her statements. When viewing children’s responses to the PC instruction, true and false statements were rated as equally credible, …

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Much Uncertainty About Uncertain Tax Positions, Robert D. Probasco Aug 2018

Much Uncertainty About Uncertain Tax Positions, Robert D. Probasco

Robert Probasco

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced in January 2010 a new initiative to require certain businesses to report “uncertain tax positions” on a new schedule filed with their annual tax returns. Draft schedules and instructions issued in April 2010 clarified some of the mechanical aspects of the new requirement but left many open issues and questions. The IRS proposal built on requirements by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) in FASB Interpretation No. 48, Accounting for Uncertainty in Income Taxes (“FIN 48”). The standard requires companies, in their financial statements, to reserve some of the benefits from any position taken …

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Limited Admissibility And Its Limitations, Lisa Dufraimont Jul 2018

Limited Admissibility And Its Limitations, Lisa Dufraimont

Lisa Dufraimont

Among the challenges facing juries and judges in adjudicating cases is the obligation to use evidence for limited purposes. Evidence inadmissible for one purpose is frequently admissible for other purposes, a situation known as "limited admissibility". Where limited admissibility arises in jury trials, courts generally deliver limiting instructions outlining the inferences that can legitimately be drawn from the evidence and identifying prohibited lines of reasoning to be avoided. Limiting instructions represent an expedient solution to limited-admissibility problems, but they create obvious problems of their own. A thoughtful observer might suspect-as psychological studies confirm-that limiting instructions are likely to fail in …

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Realizing The Potential Of The Principled Approach To Evidence, Lisa Dufraimont Jul 2018

Realizing The Potential Of The Principled Approach To Evidence, Lisa Dufraimont

Lisa Dufraimont

Ron Delisle's concern that lawyers and judges be constantly mindful of the purposes and policies underlying the rules of evidence led him to become one of the pioneers of the principled approach to evidence. This paper seeks to evaluate the extent to which the efforts of Canadian courts to incorporate principles into evidence law have alleviated the problem of the complexity of the traditional rules. Evidentiary rules are complex because they are dense or technical. Evidentiary principles are more capable of flexible and contextual application than evidentiary rules, but principles too are complex in the sense that they are less …

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63. Children’S Conversational Memory Regarding A Minor Transgression And A Subsequent Interview., Stacia N. Stolzenberg, Kelly Mcwilliams, Thomas D. Lyon May 2018

63. Children’S Conversational Memory Regarding A Minor Transgression And A Subsequent Interview., Stacia N. Stolzenberg, Kelly Mcwilliams, Thomas D. Lyon

Thomas D. Lyon

Children’s memories for their conversations are commonly explored in child abuse cases. In two studies, we examined conversational recall in 154 4- to 9-year-old children’s reports of an interaction with a stranger, some of whom were complicit in a transgression and were admonished to keep it a secret. Immediately afterwards, all children were interviewed about their interaction. One week later, children were asked recall questions about their interaction with the stranger, their conversations with the stranger, and their conversations with the interviewer. Overall, interaction recall questions elicited few details about children’s conversations, whereas conversation recall questions were effective in doing …

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62. The Effects Of Implicit Encouragement And The Putative Confession On Children’S Memory Reports., Kyndra C. Cleveland, Jodi A. Quas, Thomas D. Lyon Mar 2018

62. The Effects Of Implicit Encouragement And The Putative Confession On Children’S Memory Reports., Kyndra C. Cleveland, Jodi A. Quas, Thomas D. Lyon

Thomas D. Lyon

The current study tested the effects of two interview techniques on children's report productivity and accuracy following exposure to suggestion: implicit encouragement (backchanneling, use of children's names) and the putative confession (telling children that a suspect "told me everything that happened and wants you to tell the truth"). One hundred and forty-three, 3-8-year-old children participated in a classroom event. One week later, they took part in a highly suggestive conversation about the event and then a mock forensic interview in which the two techniques were experimentally manipulated. Greater use of implicit encouragement led to increases, with age, in children's narrative …

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Self Incrimination And Cryptographic Keys, Gregory S. Sergienko Mar 2018

Self Incrimination And Cryptographic Keys, Gregory S. Sergienko

Greg Sergienko

Modern cryptography can make it virtually impossible to decipher documents without the cryptographic key thus making the availability of the contents of those documents depend on the availability of the key. This article examines the Fourth and Fifth Amendments' protection against the compulsory production of the key and the scope of the Fifth Amendment immunity against compelled production. After analyzing these questions using prevailing Fourth and Fifth Amendment jurisprudence, I shall describe the advantages of a privacy-based approach in practical and constitutional terms. [excerpt]

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The Grand Jury: A Shield Of A Different Sort, R. Michael Cassidy, Julian A. Cook Iii Mar 2018

The Grand Jury: A Shield Of A Different Sort, R. Michael Cassidy, Julian A. Cook Iii

R. Michael Cassidy

According to the Washington Post, 991 people were shot to death by police officers in the United States during calendar year 2015, and 957 people were fatally shot in 2016. A disproportionate percentage of the citizens killed in these police-civilian encounters were black. Events in Ferguson, Missouri; Chicago, Illinois; Charlotte, North Carolina; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Staten Island, New York - to name but a few affected cities - have now exposed deep distrust between communities of color and law enforcement. Greater transparency is necessary to begin to heal this culture of distrust and to inform the debate going forward …

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Deceptively Simple: Framing, Intuition And Judicial Gatekeeping Of Forensic Feature-Comparison Methods Evidence, Jane Campbell Moriarty Feb 2018

Deceptively Simple: Framing, Intuition And Judicial Gatekeeping Of Forensic Feature-Comparison Methods Evidence, Jane Campbell Moriarty

Jane Campbell Moriarty

During the Symposium for the Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules, held at Boston College on October 27, 2017, the scientists, statisticians, legal academics, and criminal defense lawyers presented a unified theme: the federal courts have not fulfilled their role as gatekeepers to exclude or limit potentially unreliable feature-comparison methods of forensic science evidence (“FCM evidence”). The only voiced dissents came from the DOJ and FBI lawyers, who argued that the courts had been admitting such pattern-matching evidence properly and that the evidence was indeed reliable.

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Using Prior Consistent Statements To Rehabilitate Credibility Or To Prove Substantive Assertions Before And After The 2014 Amendment Of Federal Rule Of Evidence 801(D)(1)(B), Floralynn Einesman Feb 2018

Using Prior Consistent Statements To Rehabilitate Credibility Or To Prove Substantive Assertions Before And After The 2014 Amendment Of Federal Rule Of Evidence 801(D)(1)(B), Floralynn Einesman

Floralynn Einesman

The Federal Rules of Evidence (FRE) expanded the non-hearsay category of admissible prior consistent statements with FRE 801(d)(1)(B)(ii) to include any statements counsel uses to rehabilitate a declarant’s credibility after that credibility has been attacked. FREV 801(d)(1)(B)(i) and (ii) require that a declarant testify and be subjected to cross-examination about the prior consistent statement. Under these rules, the time at which the declarant made the consistent statement and her reason for making it are critical.

When the declarant does not testify, however, under FRE 806 opposing counsel may still attack the declarant’s credibility. Under these circumstances, it is often challenging …

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Hall V. Florida: The Supreme Court’S Guidance In Implementing Atkins, James W. Ellis Feb 2018

Hall V. Florida: The Supreme Court’S Guidance In Implementing Atkins, James W. Ellis

James W. Ellis

No abstract provided.

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Character Assassination: Amending Federal Rule Of Evidence 404(B) To Protect Criminal Defendants, Liesa L. Richter Dec 2017

Character Assassination: Amending Federal Rule Of Evidence 404(B) To Protect Criminal Defendants, Liesa L. Richter

Liesa L. Richter

There is a war raging over the admissibility of the prior bad acts of criminal defendants in federal trials. While many circuits treat Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b) as a rule of “inclusion” and liberally admit such prior bad-acts evidence with predictably explosive effects on criminal juries, a few circuits are developing rigorous standards designed to foreclose prosecutorial use of such bad-acts evidence. This Article chronicles the well-documented permissive admission of the prior bad acts of criminal defendants notwithstanding the prohibition on such evidence by Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b)(1), as well as recent efforts by some federal circuits to …

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Goldilocks And The Rule 803 Hearsay Exceptions, Liesa L. Richter Dec 2017

Goldilocks And The Rule 803 Hearsay Exceptions, Liesa L. Richter

Liesa L. Richter

Criticism of the hearsay exceptions embodied in the Federal Rules of Evidence has reached a fever pitch in recent years. With scholars calling for the abrogation of the entire hearsay regime or of individual exceptions within it and the Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules exploring hearsay amendments, the time for genuine hearsay soul-searching may be at hand. This Article suggests that aggressive proposals to scuttle existing doctrine entirely in favor of alternative approaches to hearsay are overly broad, rejecting the benefits of significant portions of existing doctrine that are functioning well and threatening costly consequences that could make matters worse …

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Adopted Statements In The Digital Age: Hearsay Responses To Social Media "Likes", Daniel R. Tilly Dec 2017

Adopted Statements In The Digital Age: Hearsay Responses To Social Media "Likes", Daniel R. Tilly

Daniel R. Tilly

Social media users collectively register billions of "likes" each and every day to the endless flow of content posted on social networking websites. What an individual user actually intends by the quick click of the "like" button may vary widely. Perhaps she is conveying acknowledgement but not agreement. Maybe he is expressing support but not acceptance. Within the social media context, short-form clicks register the same response. Yet they may be intended to convey sorrow, joy, support, agreement, acknowledgement, humor, or a multitude of other emotions. What a user actually intends by social media "likes" depends entirely on the person …

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