Law Commons^™

Expert Testimony In Capital Sentencing: Juror Responses, John H. Montgomery, J. Richard Ciccone, Stephen P. Garvey, Theodore Eisenberg

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The U.S. Supreme Court, in Furman v. Georgia (1972), held that the death penalty is constitutional only when applied on an individualized basis. The resultant changes in the laws in death penalty states fostered the involvement of psychiatric and psychologic expert witnesses at the sentencing phase of the trial, to testify on two major issues: (1) the mitigating factor of a defendant’s abnormal mental state and (2) the aggravating factor of a defendant’s potential for future violence. This study was an exploration of the responses of capital jurors to psychiatric/psychologic expert testimony during capital sentencing. The Capital Jury Project is …

Reliability Matters: Reassociating Bagley Materality, Strickland Prejudice, And Cumulative Harmless Error, John H. Blume, Christopher W. Seeds

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Most commonly invoked after conviction and direct appeal, when a defendant may claim that his lawyer was ineffective or that the government failed to disclose exculpatory information, the Brady doctrine, which governs the prosecutor’s duty to disclose favorable evidence to the defense, and the Strickland doctrine, which monitors defense counsel’s duty to represent the client effectively, have developed into the principal safeguards of fair trials, fundamental to the protection of defendants’ constitutional rights and arguably defendants’ strongest insurance of a reliable verdict. But the doctrines do not sufficiently protect these core values.

The doctrines, despite their common due process heritage …

Judge-Jury Agreement In Criminal Cases: A Partial Replication Of Kalven And Zeisel's The American Jury, Theodore Eisenberg, Paula L. Hannaford-Agor, Valerie P. Hans, Nicole L. Waters, G. Thomas Munsterman, Stewart J. Schwab, Martin T. Wells

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This study uses a new criminal case data set to partially replicate Kalven and Zeisel's classic study of judge-jury agreement. The data show essentially the same rate of judge-jury agreement as did Kalven and Zeisel for cases tried almost 50 years ago. This study also explores judge-jury agreement as a function of evidentiary strength (as reported by both judges and juries), evidentiary complexity (as reported by both judges and juries), legal complexity (as reported by judges), and locale. Regardless of which adjudicator's view of evidentiary strength is used, judges tend to convict more than juries in cases of "middle" evidentiary …

Expert Testimony In Capital Sentencing: Juror Responses, John H. Montgomery, J. Richard Ciccone, Stephen P. Garvey, Theodore Eisenberg

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The U.S. Supreme Court, in Furman v. Georgia (1972), held that the death penalty is constitutional only when applied on an individualized basis. The resultant changes in the laws in death penalty states fostered the involvement of psychiatric and psychologic expert witnesses at the sentencing phase of the trial, to testify on two major issues: (1) the mitigating factor of a defendant’s abnormal mental state and (2) the aggravating factor of a defendant’s potential for future violence. This study was an exploration of the responses of capital jurors to psychiatric/psychologic expert testimony during capital sentencing. The Capital Jury Project is …

Juror Bias Is A Special Problem In High-Profile Trials, Valerie P. Hans

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Scott Peterson's jury convicted him and sentenced him to death. Whether he had a fair jury is a question that the appellate courts will confront as they review Peterson's appeal of his conviction and sentence. Would the jury have reached the same decisions if the case had not been so extensively covered in the media? Or was Scott Peterson condemned by media publicity? Whatever your verdict, the Peterson trial provides yet another example of the hurdles to fair trials in high-profile cases.