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Full-Text Articles in Law
Promising Protection: 911 Call Records As Foundation For Family Violence Intervention, James G. Dwyer
Promising Protection: 911 Call Records As Foundation For Family Violence Intervention, James G. Dwyer
Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Comments On Maryland V. King In 'U.S. Supreme Court To Hear Arguments Over Md. Dna Case: Justices' Decision Will Have National Implications On Future Crime-Fighting Procedures', Colin Starger
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
More Than A "Quick Glimpse Of The Life": The Relationship Between Victim Impact Evidence And Death Sentencing, Jerome E. Deise, Raymond Paternoster
More Than A "Quick Glimpse Of The Life": The Relationship Between Victim Impact Evidence And Death Sentencing, Jerome E. Deise, Raymond Paternoster
Faculty Scholarship
In striking down the use of victim impact evidence (VIE) during the penalty phase of a capital trial, the Supreme Court in Booth v. Maryland and South Carolina v. Gathers argued that such testimony would appeal to the emotions of jurors with the consequence that death sentences would not be based upon a reasoned consideration of the blameworthiness of the offender. After a change in personnel, the Court overturned both decisions in Payne v. Tennessee, decided just two years after Gathers. The majority in Payne were decidedly less concerned with the emotional appeal of VIE, arguing that it would only …
Getting Beyond Intuition In The Probable Cause Inquiry, Erica R. Goldberg
Getting Beyond Intuition In The Probable Cause Inquiry, Erica R. Goldberg
Journal Articles
Courts are proudly resigned to the fact that the probable cause inquiry is “nontechnical.” In order to conduct a search or make an arrest, police need to satisfy the probable cause standard, which the Supreme Court has deemed “incapable of precise definition or quantification into percentages.” The flexibility of this standard enables courts to defer to police officers’ reasonable judgments and expert intuitions in unique situations. However, police officers are increasingly using investigative techniques that replace their own observational skills with test results from some other source, such as drug sniffing dogs, facial recognition technology, and DNA matching. The reliability …
Reconceptualizing The Burden Of Proof, Edward K. Cheng
Reconceptualizing The Burden Of Proof, Edward K. Cheng
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The preponderance standard is conventionally described as an absolute probability threshold of 0.5. This Essay argues that this absolute characterization of the burden of proof is wrong. Rather than focusing on an absolute threshold, the Essay reconceptualizes the preponderance standard as a probability ratio and shows how doing so eliminates many of the classical problems associated with probabilistic theories of evidence. Using probability ratios eliminates the so-called Conjunction Paradox, and developing the ratio tests under a Bayesian perspective further explains the Blue Bus problem and other puzzles surrounding statistical evidence. By harmonizing probabilistic theories of proof with recent critiques advocating …
Empirical Fallacies Of Evidence Law: A Critical Look At The Admission Of Prior Sex Crimes, Tamara Rice Lave, Aviva Orenstein
Empirical Fallacies Of Evidence Law: A Critical Look At The Admission Of Prior Sex Crimes, Tamara Rice Lave, Aviva Orenstein
Articles
In a significant break with traditional evidence rules and policies, Federal Rules of Evidence 413-414 allow jurors to use the accused's prior sexual misconduct as evidence of character and propensity to commit the sex crime charged. As reflected in their legislative history, these propensity rules rest on the assumption that sexual predators represent a small number of highly deviant and recidivistic offenders. This view of who commits sex crimes justified the passage of the sex-crime propensity rules and continues to influence their continuing adoption among the states and the way courts assess such evidence under Rule 403. In depending on …
Five Answers And Three Questions After United States V. Jones (2012), The Fourth Amendment Gps Case, Benjamin Priester
Five Answers And Three Questions After United States V. Jones (2012), The Fourth Amendment Gps Case, Benjamin Priester
Journal Publications
Each year, the United States Supreme Court's docket includes a range of "high profile" cases that attract attention not merely from law professors and others with an acquired fascination with the Court, but also from a general audience of law students, lawyers, scholars and commentators on American politics and society, as well as, occasionally, the public at large. During the 2011 Term, one of those cases was "the GPS case," formally known as United States v. Jones.' Media coverage of the case spread far beyond the legal blogosphere to a wide variety of mainstream and popular sources, both in print …