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Full-Text Articles in Law
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 …
Psychology, Factfinding, And Entrapment, Kevin A. Smith
Psychology, Factfinding, And Entrapment, Kevin A. Smith
Michigan Law Review
Through the entrapment defense, the law acknowledges that criminal behavior is not always the result of a culpable mind, but is sometimes the result of an interaction between the individual and his environment. By limiting the amount of pressure and temptation that undercover agents may bring to bear on a target, the defense recognizes that the ordinary, law-abiding citizen can be persuaded, cajoled, or intimidated into criminal activity that, he would never consider absent law-enforcement interference. Appropriate application of the defense requires, however, that courts be able to accurately separate the truly wicked from the merely weak-willed, and offensively coercive …
The Anatomy Of Disgust In Criminal Law, Dan M. Kahan
The Anatomy Of Disgust In Criminal Law, Dan M. Kahan
Michigan Law Review
My goal in this review is to call attention to a defect in the dominant theories of criminal law and to identify a resource for remedying it. The defect is the absence of a sophisticated account of how disgust does and should influence legal decisionmaking. The corrective resource is William Miller's The Anatomy of Disgust. To make my claims more vivid, consider two stories. Both involve men who were moved to kill by disgust toward homosexuality.