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Flickering Admissibility: Neuroimaging Evidence In The U.S. Courts, Jane Moriarty Dec 2007

Flickering Admissibility: Neuroimaging Evidence In The U.S. Courts, Jane Moriarty

Jane Campbell Moriarty

This article explores the admissibility of neuroimaging evidence in U.S. courts, recognizing various trends in decisions about such evidence. While courts have routinely admitted some neuroimages, such as CT scans and MRI, as proof of trauma and disease, they have been more circumspect about admitting the PET and SPECT scans and fMRI evidence. With the latter technologies, courts have often expressed reservations about what can be inferred from the images. Moreover, courts seem unwilling to find neuroimaging sufficient to prove either insanity or incompetency, but are relatively lenient about admitting neuroimages in death penalty hearings. Some claim that fMRI and …


Establishing Separate Criminal And Civil Evidence Codes, John J. Capowski Dec 2007

Establishing Separate Criminal And Civil Evidence Codes, John J. Capowski

John J. Capowski

This article suggests that the Federal Rules of Evidence (Rules) should be separated into distinct criminal and civil evidence codes. The arguments for this separation are both practical and theoretical, and this article is the first comprehensive discussion of this proposed separation.

The most important of the arguments for bifurcation is that our current unified evidence code leads to inappropriate admission decisions. These inappropriate admission decisions most often occur when the interpretation of a rule in a criminal case is applied in later civil law cases. This result is in part because our rules, and their interpretations, are transubstantive; they …