Law Commons^™

Wanting The Truth: Comparing Prosecutions Of Investigative And Institutional Deception, Lisa Kern Griffin

Faculty Scholarship

Defensive dishonesty in criminal investigations has increasingly been prosecuted without standards for identifying harmful deception or other meaningful checks on prosecutorial discretion. Although they are often grouped together statistically and evaluated as comparable crimes, there is a clear distinction between investigative lies and in-court perjury. The differences between the offenses—including the standards for prosecution, the perceived victim, and the purposes of bringing charges—suggest reasons to reconsider the current approach to investigative lies such as false statements. More truth is produced, and arguably more cooperation results, when the government focuses on the quality of the information flow. The structural protections in …

The Phases And Faces Of The Duke Lacrosse Controversy: A Conversation James E. Coleman, Jr., James E. Coleman Jr., Angela Davis, Michael Gerhardt, K.C. Johnson, Lyrissa Lidsky, Howard M. Wasserman

Faculty Scholarship

This panel took place at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Association of Law Schools ("SEALS") in July 2008 in West Palm Beach, Florida

The Special Threat Of Informants To The Innocent Who Are Not Innocents: Producing “First Drafts,” Recording Incentives, And Taking A Fresh Look At The Evidence, Robert P. Mosteller

Faculty Scholarship

Fabricated testimony by informants often plays an important role in convictions of the innocent. In this article, I examine the particularly problematic situation of defendants who are innocent of the particular crime charged but are not strangers to crime. As to such defendants, potential informants abound among crime associates, and they have a ready story line that authorities are preconditioned to accept. Independent proof, which could be an antidote, will predictably be lacking. Indeed, that the informant has exclusive, critical knowledge often leads the prosecution to offer particularly tempting deals.

I focus on the case of Lee Wayne Hunt, a …