Law Commons^™

Crawford Confusion Marches On: The Confrontation Clause And Hearsay Laboratory Drug Reports, David A. Doellman

Missouri Law Review

Rapid advances in science and technology have influenced criminal prosecutions as police often utilize advanced technology to obtain evidence that is integral to the prosecution's case against a criminal defendant. Such practices are especially common in cases involving illegal drugs, in which slight variations in the precise measurements of such substances could add or subtract from the lengths of sentences. Often, prosecutors offer this crucial evidence in court through a laboratory report documenting the exact results of the tests performed on the alleged illegal substances. The admission of these lab reports seemingly complies with the rules of evidence of most …

Loss Of Sixth Amendment Confrontation Rights: Forfeiture Triggered By Voluntary Wrongful Conduct, Ralph Ruebner, Eugene Goryunov

Ralph Ruebner

The hotly contested debate about the nature of confrontation rights of the criminally accused under the Sixth Amendment continues. The latest issue before the United States Supreme Court is whether intent to prevent live in-court testimony is a necessary element of the constitutional forfeiture analysis. A number of state courts, including the Supreme Court of California in People v. Giles, 152 P.3d 433, 440 (2007), cert. granted, 128 S.Ct. 976 (2008), have rejected the element of intent. Other courts, including the Illinois Supreme Court in People v. Stechly, 870 N.E.2d 333 (2007), have mandated the inclusion of the element of …

The Confrontation Right Across The Systemic Divide, Richard D. Friedman

Book Chapters

In his notable work, Evidence Law Adrift, Mirjan Damaška identified three pillars of the common law system of determining facts in adjudication, and examined these through a comparative lens: the organisation of the trial court; the phenomenon of temporally compressed trials; and a high degree of control by parties and their counsel. In reviewing the book, I suggested that a strong concept of individual rights was another critical feature of the common law system, especially in its American variant and especially with respect to criminal defendants.

In this essay, I will explore how these four features play out in the …

Rule 804(B)(6) - The Illegitimate Child Of The Failed Liaison Between The Hearsay Rule And Confrontation Clause, Anthony Bocchino, David Sonenshein

Missouri Law Review

This article argues that the "Forfeiture by Wrongdoing" exception to the hearsay rule is utterly lacking in any of the traditional indicia of trustworthiness, which are the universal hallmark of all admissible hearsay evidence pursuant to the Federal Rules of Evidence. Further, we take the position that this rule is an unnecessary systemic check against civil and criminal litigants who intentionally subvert the justice system by procuring the unavailability of witnesses by wrongdoing. Other sanctioning mechanisms which do not allow criminal and civil justice decisions be influenced or determined by untrustworthy evidence exist and are better tailored to the deterrence …