Law Commons^™

Hearsay And Informal Reasoning, Craig R. Callen

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Federal Rules of Evidence define hearsay as "a statement, other than one made by the declarant while testifying at the trial or hearing, offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted."' A statement, in turn, is "(1) an oral or written assertion or (2) nonverbal conduct of a person, if it is intended by the person as an assertion." Hearsay is inadmissible unless it falls within an exception to the rule or an exclusion from the definition. Courts and commentators often write as if the distinctions they make between hearsay and nonhearsay are consistent with informal …

Depravity Thrice Removed: Using The 'Heinous, Cruel, Or Depraved' Factor To Aggravate Convictions Of Nontriggermen Accomplices In Capital Cases, Richard W. Garnett

Journal Articles

In Tison v. Arizona, the Tison brothers' appeal from their death sentences, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a nontriggerman convicted of first-degree felony murder could constitutionally be executed if he was a major participant in the crime and if he exhibited a reckless disregard for human life. This decision blurred the bright-line rule announced just five years earlier in Enmund v. Florida, which limited the death penalty to defendants who kill, attempt to kill, or at least intend to kill. Tison thus dramatically increased the exposure of nontriggermen to capital punishment, undercutting the death penalty's limited purpose of identifying …

Violence Against Lesbians And Gay Men, Suzanne B. Goldberg, Bea Hanson

Faculty Scholarship

Faggot! Dyke! Pervert! Homo!" Just words? Or rhetoric that illuminates and fuels hatred of lesbians and gay men? How often are these words supplemented by the use of a bat, golf clubs, a hammer, a knife, a gun? Studies indicate that lesbians and gay men experience criminal victimization at rates significantly higher than other individuals and are the most frequent victims of bias crime.

Since lesbians and gay men live all across the country – in large cities, small towns, and rural areas – we can be targets of bias crime no matter where we live. From the attacks against …

Taking The Fifth: Reconsidering The Origins Of The Constitutional Privilege Against Self-Incrimination, Eben Moglen

Faculty Scholarship

The purpose of this essay is to cast doubt on two basic elements of the received historical wisdom concerning the privilege as it applies to British North America and the early United States. First, early American criminal procedure reflected less tenderness toward the silence of the criminal accused than the received wisdom has claimed. The system could more reasonably be said to have depended on self-incrimination than to have eschewed it, and this dependence increased rather than decreased during the provincial period for reasons intimately connected with the economic and social context of the criminal trial in colonial America.

Second, …

Categorical And Individualized Rights-Ordering On Federal Habeas Corpus, Daniel B. Yeager

Faculty Scholarship

This Article criticizes the Supreme Court's treatment of both individualized and categorical bases of relief on federal habeas corpus. Part I notes the Court's trend toward trimming the process that is due in criminal and prisoner litigation generally. This trend may explain the drop in process on habeas as well, but generally declining process cannot explain which rights, if any, should survive the decline. That would require our weighting, if not reconciling, accuracy and dignitary norms, which is the subject of Part II. In Part II, I examine Withrow v Williams, a case from the Court's 1992 Term, which, for …

Equal Protection: People V. Walker

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Sanist Lives Of Jurors In Death Penalty Cases: The Puzzling Role Of Mitigating Mental Disability Evidence, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Overbroad Civil Forfeiture Statutes Are Unconstitutionally Vague, Deborah Duseau, David Schoenbrod

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Foreword: The Jurisprudence Of Reconstruction, Angela Harris

Angela P Harris

No abstract provided.

Facing The Accuser: Ancient And Medieval Precursors Of The Confrontation Clause, Frank R. Herrmann, Brownlow M. Speer

Frank R. Herrmann, S.J.

No abstract provided.

Case Note: The Court Of Appeal's Lack Of Jurisdiction To Reopen Appeals: Abdullah Bin A Rahman V Public Prosecutor [[1994] 3 Slr [Singapore Law Reports] 129, Ca]; Lim Choon Chye V Public Prosecutor [[1994] 3 Slr 135, Ca], Jack Tsen-Ta Lee

Jack Tsen-Ta LEE

It is ironic that Abdullah bin A Rahman v PP and Lim Choon Chye v PP were decided in the aftermath of the Birmingham Six, Guildford Four and Maguire Seven cases from the United Kingdom. As in these cases, Abdullah and Lim Choon Chye highlight a serious flaw in our criminal justice system: there appears to be no appropriate way to correct miscarriages of justice. The purpose of this case note is to set out the conclusions reached by the Court of Appeal and to suggest directions for the future.