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Full-Text Articles in Law

Dna Exonerations And Stakeholder Responses: A Case Of Cognitive Dissonance, Anne Richardson Oakes, Julian Killingley Jan 2022

Dna Exonerations And Stakeholder Responses: A Case Of Cognitive Dissonance, Anne Richardson Oakes, Julian Killingley

Tennessee Law Review

The availability of DNA testing developed in the 1980s transformed the ability of prosecutors to secure convictions while providing Innocence Projects with the tools to overturn them. However, DNA exonerations which establish conclusively that a person convicted of a crime is in fact innocent, can represent a major threat to the value systems and therefore the self-belief of stakeholders who acted in good faith and in the genuine but mistaken belief that the exoneree was guilty. This Article reports on the findings of an investigation into stakeholder responses to DNA exonerations between 1990-1999 when DNA evidence was new and more …


Commissioning Innocence And Restoring Confidence: The North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission And The Missing Deliberative Citizen, Mary Kelly Tate Jul 2017

Commissioning Innocence And Restoring Confidence: The North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission And The Missing Deliberative Citizen, Mary Kelly Tate

Maine Law Review

Since 1989, the United States has witnessed 289 DNA exonerations, with exonerees serving an average of thirteen years in prison. Although DNA an its unmatched power for the conclusive results is what brought popular attention to wrongful convictions, the scope of the problem is vastly larger than the number of known DNA exonerations. The actual number of convicted individuals who are factually innocent is unknown. The state of North Carolina has recently responded to this national crisis via a newly created state agency. This essay applauds North Carolina’s response, but urges that ordinary citizens, qua jurors, be active participants in …


Optimizing Collection Of Trace Biological Samples From Vehicle Headrests, Kevin Tang, Jesse Ramirez, John Bond, Jocelyn Weart, Yvette Delatorre, Ian Fitch, Steven Lee May 2017

Optimizing Collection Of Trace Biological Samples From Vehicle Headrests, Kevin Tang, Jesse Ramirez, John Bond, Jocelyn Weart, Yvette Delatorre, Ian Fitch, Steven Lee

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

Tape-lifting and swabbing are two methods commonly used for collecting biological samples in the United Kingdom and United States to investigate vehicle crimes. Determining the optimal collection method may lead to an increase in generating DNA profiles and crime-solving. The objective of this study is to evaluate the efficiency of adhesive tape and the double-swab collection methods for investigating vehicle crimes with possible touch DNA samples. Two experiments were conducted to evaluate the use of tape-lifts and swabs on spiked common vehicle fabric materials. The efficiency of recovery between the two collection methods was performed using qPCR. The results from …


Forensics And Fallibility: Comparing The Views Of Lawyers And Jurors, Brandon L. Garrett, Gregory Mitchell Dec 2016

Forensics And Fallibility: Comparing The Views Of Lawyers And Jurors, Brandon L. Garrett, Gregory Mitchell

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.


Confronting Science: Expert Evidence And The Confrontation Clause, David H. Kaye, Jennifer L. Mnookin Mar 2016

Confronting Science: Expert Evidence And The Confrontation Clause, David H. Kaye, Jennifer L. Mnookin

David Kaye

In Crawford v Washington, the Supreme Court substantially changed its understanding of how the Confrontation Clause applies to hearsay evidence. Since then, the Court has issued three bitterly contested expert-evidence-related Confrontation Clause decisions, and each one has generated at least as many questions as answers. This article analyzes this trilogy of cases, especially the most recent, Williams v Illinois.

In Williams, the Court issued a bewildering array of opinions in which majority support for admitting the opinion of a DNA analyst about tests that she did not perform was awkwardly knitted together out of several incompatible doctrinal …


Dna Typing: Emerging Or Neglected Issues, David H. Kaye, Edward J. Imwinkelried Mar 2016

Dna Typing: Emerging Or Neglected Issues, David H. Kaye, Edward J. Imwinkelried

David Kaye

DNA typing has had a major impact on the criminal justice system. There are hundreds of opinions and thousands of cases dealing with DNA evidence. Yet, at virtually every stage of the process, there are important issues that are just emerging or that have been neglected.At the investigative stage, courts have barely begun to focus on the legal limitations on the power of the police to obtain samples directly from suspects and to use the data from DNA samples in various ways. Issues such as the propriety of "DNA dragnets" (in which large numbers of individuals in a geographic area …


Testing Jury Reforms, Valerie P. Hans, B. Michael Dann, David H. Kaye, Erin J. Farley, Stephanie Albertson Jun 2015

Testing Jury Reforms, Valerie P. Hans, B. Michael Dann, David H. Kaye, Erin J. Farley, Stephanie Albertson

Valerie P. Hans

DNA evidence has become a key law enforcement tool and is increasingly presented in criminal trials in Delaware and elsewhere. The integrity of the criminal trial process turns upon the jury's ability to understand DNA evidence and to evaluate properly the testimony of experts. How well do they do? Can we assist them in the process?


Newsroom: Waters '98 Testifies For Innocence Project, Roger Williams University School Of Law Apr 2015

Newsroom: Waters '98 Testifies For Innocence Project, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.


The Admissibility Of Trueallele: A Computerized Dna Interpretation System, Katherine L. Moss Mar 2015

The Admissibility Of Trueallele: A Computerized Dna Interpretation System, Katherine L. Moss

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.


Dna Analysis And The Confrontation Clause: “Special Needs” Category For Dna Testimonial Evidence, Colleen Clark Sep 2014

Dna Analysis And The Confrontation Clause: “Special Needs” Category For Dna Testimonial Evidence, Colleen Clark

Golden Gate University Law Review

This Comment examines three recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions dealing with forensic evidence and how its use is affected by the Confrontation Clause. The Confrontation Clause provides a defendant with the right to confront adverse witnesses. Notably, in Williams v. Illinois, Justice Breyer pointed out that the Court has explicitly not addressed the “outer limits of the “testimonial statements” rule set forth in Crawford v. Washington.” Specifically, Justice Breyer asked how “the Confrontation Clause [applies] to the panoply of crime laboratory reports and underlying technical statements written by (or otherwise made by) laboratory technicians?” This question, while left …


Williams V. Illinois: Confronting Experts, Science, And The Constitution, Natasha Crawford May 2013

Williams V. Illinois: Confronting Experts, Science, And The Constitution, Natasha Crawford

Mercer Law Review

DNA evidence has revolutionized forensic science, making it the "single greatest advance in the search for truth.., since the advent of cross-examination." In Williams v. Illinois, the United States Supreme Court affirmed the Illinois Supreme Court's holding that there was no Confrontation Clause violation where experts based their testimony on another analyst's DNA report that was not admitted into evidence. The Court held an expert may assume the truth of certain facts-such as a DNA profile contained in a forensic report-to offer testimony based on those facts without testifying to the truth of the matter asserted. Until Williams, the …


Genetic Privacy And The Fourth Amendment: Unregulated Surreptitious Dna Harvesting, Albert E. Scherr Jan 2013

Genetic Privacy And The Fourth Amendment: Unregulated Surreptitious Dna Harvesting, Albert E. Scherr

Law Faculty Scholarship

Genetic privacy and police practices have come to the fore in the criminal justice system. Case law and stories in the media document that police are surreptitiously harvesting the DNA of putative suspects. Some sources even indicate that surreptitious data banking may also be in its infancy. Surreptitious harvesting of out-of-body DNA by the police is currently unregulated by the Fourth Amendment. The few courts that have addressed the issue find that the police are free to harvest DNA abandoned by a putative suspect in a public place. Little in the nascent surreptitious harvesting case law suggests that surreptitious data …


Confronting Science: Expert Evidence And The Confrontation Clause, David H. Kaye, Jennifer L. Mnookin Jan 2013

Confronting Science: Expert Evidence And The Confrontation Clause, David H. Kaye, Jennifer L. Mnookin

Journal Articles

In Crawford v Washington, the Supreme Court substantially changed its understanding of how the Confrontation Clause applies to hearsay evidence. Since then, the Court has issued three bitterly contested expert-evidence-related Confrontation Clause decisions, and each one has generated at least as many questions as answers. This article analyzes this trilogy of cases, especially the most recent, Williams v Illinois.

In Williams, the Court issued a bewildering array of opinions in which majority support for admitting the opinion of a DNA analyst about tests that she did not perform was awkwardly knitted together out of several incompatible doctrinal …


The Admissibility Of Eyewitness-Identification Expert Testimony In Oklahoma, Sean S. Hunt Jan 2011

The Admissibility Of Eyewitness-Identification Expert Testimony In Oklahoma, Sean S. Hunt

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.


"False But Highly Persuasive": How Wrong Were The Probability Estimates In Mcdaniel V. Brown?, David H. Kaye Jan 2009

"False But Highly Persuasive": How Wrong Were The Probability Estimates In Mcdaniel V. Brown?, David H. Kaye

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

In McDaniel v. Brown, the Supreme Court will review the use of DNA evidence in a 1994 trial for sexual assault and attempted murder. The Court granted certiorari to consider two procedural issues—the standard of federal postconviction review of a state jury verdict for sufficiency of the evidence, and the district court's decision to allow the prisoner to supplement the record of trials, appeals, and state postconviction proceedings with a geneticist's letter twelve years after the trial. The letter from Laurence Mueller, a professor at the University of California at Irvine, identified two obvious mistakes in the state's expert testimony. …


Trawling Dna Databases For Partial Matches: What Is The Fbi Afraid Of?, David H. Kaye Jan 2009

Trawling Dna Databases For Partial Matches: What Is The Fbi Afraid Of?, David H. Kaye

Journal Articles

DNA evidence is often presented as the “gold standard” for forensic science. But this was not always the case. For years, eminent scientists complained that the estimates of the tiny frequencies of DNA types were unfounded. It took scores of research papers, dozens of judicial opinions, and two committees of the National Academy of Sciences to resolve the dispute by the mid-1990s. Since 2000, however, reports have surfaced of shocking numbers of “partial matches” among samples within large DNA databases, and some scientists have complained that the infinitesimal figures used in court to estimate the probability of a random match …


Special Issues Raised By Rape Trials, Aviva A. Orenstein Jan 2007

Special Issues Raised By Rape Trials, Aviva A. Orenstein

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Rape cases reveal core conflicts in the space where evidence, law, and ethics intersect. Such conflicts include the tension between victim protection and the rights of the accused, the challenges attorneys face trying to negotiate the demands of sensitive and emotionally difficult cases, and the role of the law in counteracting stereotypes and bias.

In this essay, I will begin by presenting the cultural milieu surrounding rape allegations, briefly reviewing attitudes towards perpetrators and victims. Next, I will attempt to capture the legal zeitgeist concerning rape, focusing on two recent phenomena: the reversal of false rape convictions based on DNA …


Testing Jury Reforms, Valerie P. Hans, B. Michael Dann, David H. Kaye, Erin J. Farley, Stephanie Albertson Oct 2005

Testing Jury Reforms, Valerie P. Hans, B. Michael Dann, David H. Kaye, Erin J. Farley, Stephanie Albertson

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

DNA evidence has become a key law enforcement tool and is increasingly presented in criminal trials in Delaware and elsewhere. The integrity of the criminal trial process turns upon the jury's ability to understand DNA evidence and to evaluate properly the testimony of experts. How well do they do? Can we assist them in the process?


Testimonial Or Nontestimonial? The Admissibility Of Forensic Evidence After Crawford V. Washington, John M. Spires Jan 2005

Testimonial Or Nontestimonial? The Admissibility Of Forensic Evidence After Crawford V. Washington, John M. Spires

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.


Convictions Of Innocent Persons In Massachusetts: An Overview, Stanley Z. Fisher Oct 2002

Convictions Of Innocent Persons In Massachusetts: An Overview, Stanley Z. Fisher

Faculty Scholarship

Scholars documenting the incidence and causes of wrongful convictions in the United States have focused on cases arising all across the country. Because reform of the practices that lead to such errors of justice must largely take place on the state level, there is value in examining wrongful convictions in particular jurisdictions. This article attempts to identify and briefly describe all known cases of conviction of innocent persons in Massachusetts from 1800 to the present time. Part I discusses the criteria for identifying "the innocent." For the purpose of gaining support for needed reforms in the law, the most persuasive …


Dna Typing: Emerging Or Neglected Issues, David H. Kaye, Edward J. Imwinkelried Jan 2001

Dna Typing: Emerging Or Neglected Issues, David H. Kaye, Edward J. Imwinkelried

Journal Articles

DNA typing has had a major impact on the criminal justice system. There are hundreds of opinions and thousands of cases dealing with DNA evidence. Yet, at virtually every stage of the process, there are important issues that are just emerging or that have been neglected.

At the investigative stage, courts have barely begun to focus on the legal limitations on the power of the police to obtain samples directly from suspects and to use the data from DNA samples in various ways. Issues such as the propriety of "DNA dragnets" (in which large numbers of individuals in a geographic …


Introduction Symposium: Toward More Reliable Jury Verdicts - Law, Technology, And Media Development Since The Trials Of Dr. Sam Sheppard , Patricia J. Falk Jan 2001

Introduction Symposium: Toward More Reliable Jury Verdicts - Law, Technology, And Media Development Since The Trials Of Dr. Sam Sheppard , Patricia J. Falk

Cleveland State Law Review

The three Sheppard cases, spread over almost half a century, serve as a point of departure to explore how the multiple forces of law, science, and the media have interacted in criminal trials and in later challenges to the reliability of those trials. The Sheppard cases have resulted in five enduring legacies. Perhaps the most obvious legacy of the Sheppard cases is the new law the case made when it was heard by the United States Supreme Court on a federal habeas corpus appeal. In Sheppard v. Maxwell, the Court created a new legal standard regarding the effects of pretrial …


A Distant Mirror: The Sheppard Case From The Next Millennium, James Robertson Jan 2001

A Distant Mirror: The Sheppard Case From The Next Millennium, James Robertson

Cleveland State Law Review

My own vantage point is that of a trial judge, and for me, revisiting the Sheppard case is a chance to ruminate on the relationship between judges and the media and how judges deal with high profile cases. I will consider that subject, and then meander a little farther along and share a few thoughts about what I call hermetically sealed justice - our modem insistence that judges say nothing and juries know nothing. Finally, I will have a few words to say about DNA evidence and the "reliable verdict" ideal that appears to be one of the propositions to …


Introduction: O.J. Simpson And The Criminal Justice System On Trial, Christopher B. Mueller Jan 1996

Introduction: O.J. Simpson And The Criminal Justice System On Trial, Christopher B. Mueller

Publications

No abstract provided.


The Suspect Population And Dna Identification, Richard O. Lempert Sep 1993

The Suspect Population And Dna Identification, Richard O. Lempert

Articles

Forensic DNA analysis typically proceeds by first determining whether alleles (one of two or more alternative forms of a gene) found in DNA apparently left by the perpetrator of a crime at a crime scene (the "evidence sample") match alleles extracted from a sample of the suspected criminal's blood (the "suspect sample"). If alleles drawn from the two sources match, the next step is to provide information about the probative value of the match by estimating the probability that alleles extracted from the blood of some random individual would have matched the alleles in the evidence sample. Thinking in terms …


Introduction Of Scientific Evidence In Criminal Cases, H. Patrick Furman Jan 1993

Introduction Of Scientific Evidence In Criminal Cases, H. Patrick Furman

Publications

No abstract provided.


Genetically Altered Admissibility: Legislative Notice Of Dna Typing, Jayne L. Jakubaitis Jan 1991

Genetically Altered Admissibility: Legislative Notice Of Dna Typing, Jayne L. Jakubaitis

Cleveland State Law Review

This note examines the conflict over acceptance of DNA evidence. Part I discusses the process of DNA typing as a form of scientific evidence and the courts' responses to this novel technique. Part II examines the legislative responses to DNA typing. Part III explores the potential impact of the admissibility statutes both on the courts and on the accused. Finally, Part IV suggests areas of legislative regulation which may aid in resolving the current difficulties of DNA typing.


Genetically Altered Admissibility: Legislative Notice Of Dna Typing, Jayne L. Jakubaitis Jan 1991

Genetically Altered Admissibility: Legislative Notice Of Dna Typing, Jayne L. Jakubaitis

Cleveland State Law Review

This note examines the conflict over acceptance of DNA evidence. Part I discusses the process of DNA typing as a form of scientific evidence and the courts' responses to this novel technique. Part II examines the legislative responses to DNA typing. Part III explores the potential impact of the admissibility statutes both on the courts and on the accused. Finally, Part IV suggests areas of legislative regulation which may aid in resolving the current difficulties of DNA typing.


Dna Fingerprinting: Evidence Of The Fuiture, Jane E. Hanner Jan 1990

Dna Fingerprinting: Evidence Of The Fuiture, Jane E. Hanner

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.


Don't Be Cowed By Scientific Evidence: A Pretrial Primer For Prosecutors And Defense Attorneys, F. Thomas Schornhorst Jan 1988

Don't Be Cowed By Scientific Evidence: A Pretrial Primer For Prosecutors And Defense Attorneys, F. Thomas Schornhorst

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.