Evidence Commons^™

Expert Evidence, Samuel R. Gross

Articles

It seems that the use of expert witnesses in common law courts has always been troublesome. In his Treatise on the Law of Evidence, first published in 1848, Judge John Pitt Taylor describes several classes of witnesses whose testimony should be viewed with caution, including: enslaved people (which accounts for "the lamentable neglect of truth, which is evinced by most of the nations of India, by the subjects of the Czar, and by many of the peasantry in Ireland"); women (because they are more susceptible to "an innate vain love of the marvelous"); and "foreigners and others ... living out …

Search And Seizure

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Search And Seizure

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Due Process

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Errors In Good Faith: The Leon Exception Six Years Later, David Clark Esseks

Michigan Law Review

Given this vast literature on the good faith exception, little room appears to exist for additional commentary on the propriety of the decision, its theoretical weaknesses or strengths, or what further changes in constitutional criminal procedure it forebodes. This Note will not add to the many voices complaining of the Court's misconstrual of the grounding of the exclusionary rule, nor of its crabbed notion of deterrence. Instead, it accepts, arguendo, the propriety of the exception and its underlying purpose, and then examines the six-year experience with the revised rule. The proliferation of reported applications of the good faith exception …

The Admissibility Of Scientific Evidence In Illinois, M. Thaddeus Murphy

Loyola University Chicago Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Where To Draw The Guideline: Factoring The Fruits Of Illegal Searches Into Sentencing Guidelines Calculations, Cheryl G. Bader, David S. Douglas

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Killing Daddy: Developing A Self-Defense Strategy For The Abused Child, Joelle A. Moreno

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Testimonial Consistency: The Hobgoblin Of The Federal False Declaration Statute, Sidney Delong

Faculty Articles

This article focuses on the inconsistent statement provision of the Federal False Declaration Statute. Part I of this article identifies certain anomalous aspects of perjury that make it particularly difficult to control by threats of punishment. Perjury's resemblance to an innocent mistake creates a risk that criminal sanctions will be misapplied. These sanctions may have counterproductive effects, at times inducing people to commit perjury and at others inhibiting people from correcting inaccurate testimony that they have previously given. Part II demonstrates the way in which the conflict between the goals of deterrence and mitigation is manifested in the federal perjury …

Arizona V. Youngblood: Does The Criminal Defendant Lose His Right To Due Process When The State Loses Exculpatory Evidence?, Willis C. Moore

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Rock V. Arkansas: Hypnosis And The Prejudice Rule - Your Memories May Not Be Your Own, 21 J. Marshall L. Rev. 409 (1988), Gail Downer Zwemke

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Administrative Searches For Evidence Of Crime: The Impact Of New York V. Burger, Perry S. Reich

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Videotaping Children's Testimony: An Empirical View, Paula E. Hill, Samuel M. Hill

Michigan Law Review

Increases in the number of reported incidents of child abuse and sexual molestation have resulted in more and younger children becoming courtroom participants. Some courts refuse to consider the special needs of the child in this adversarial environment. Relying on questionable precedent, these courts hold that the defendant's right to directly confront the child, as well as strict compliance with evidentiary rules, overrides that child's interest in freedom from embarrassment or psychological trauma. This Note focuses on pressures felt by the testifying child and the ways in which these pressures affect her testimony; it then proposes using videotaped testimony as …

Judicial Notice: An Essay Concerning Human Misunderstanding, E. F. Roberts

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Articles limning the law pertaining to judicial notice are legion, and the footnotes which have been cite checked by generations of law review editors must number in the thousands. These articles assume that reason, properly employed, produces correct answers. They assume that disagreements can be resolved by reason, because it is self-evident that any problem, once identified, can be solved. Reflected here are the presuppositions of lawyers brought up in the Western legal tradition.

What if one were to doubt that reason necessarily governed the behavior of lawyers? What if one doubted as well that all problems were susceptible to …

The Perils Of Privilege: Waiver And The Litigator, Richard L. Marcus

Michigan Law Review

Waiver can be made less tricky, although it will never yield algebraic accuracy. Focusing on civil litigation, this article develops a framework for waiver decisions. It begins by stressing a factor that others have neglected - the costs generated by broad traditional waiver rules. These costs result largely from changes in lawyer behavior to reduce waiver risks. Thus, enormous energy can be expended to guarantee that privileged materials are not inadvertently revealed in discovery, and lawyers may adopt elaborate witness preparation strategies in order to prevent witnesses from seeing privileged materials. Judges also feel the burden; where waiver is at …

The Cost Of Acceptability: Blue Buses, Agent Orange, And Aversion To Statistical Evidence, Neil B. Cohen

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Emerging "Victim Factor" In The Supreme Court's Criminal Jurisprudence: Should Victims' Interests Ever Prevent A Court From Overturning A Conviction And Ordering A Retrial?, Roger A. Pauley

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Hypnotically Refreshed Testimony: Is It Legally Relevant To A Criminal Proceeding In Ohio, Thomas H. Allison

Cleveland State Law Review

In the past twenty years a growing number of courts, both state and federal, have addressed the problem of the admissibility in a criminal trial of testimony by a witness whose memory has been "refreshed" by the use of pre-trial hypnosis. Some courts are of the opinion that hypnosis is nothing more than a memory aid, to be treated like any other device to refresh recollection. Other courts believe hypnosis is more of a "science," and as such should be treated consistently with the rules for the admission of other scientific evidence. While the reliability of using hypnosis to refresh …

Toward A Unified Approach To Privileges And Relevancy, Thomas F. Guernsey

Law Faculty Publications

No topic in evidence has received more attention from commentators than evidentiary privileges. In the writings on privilege, however, there has been little discussion that the auxiliary public policies excluding otherwise logically relevant evidence under relevance analysis are essentially the same as the public policies that underlie the creation of privileges. In fact, as a general matter, if no topic has received more attention than privileges, few topics have received less attention than relevancy, and there has been virtually no discussion of the connection between privilege analysis and relevancy analysis. ...

An Introduction To Trial Law, J. Alexander Tanford

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Confidence In Probability: Burdens Of Persuasion In A World Of Imperfect Knowledge, Neil B. Cohen

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Burger Court And Prosecutorial Misconduct, Bennett L. Gershman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Professor Gershman critically examines a series of recent Supreme Court decisions dealing with prosecutorial misconduct. In each case, the Court reversed the lower court and reinstated the conviction.

There are a broad range of issues involved; from suppression of evidence to trial misconduct. As a former prosecutor in New York City, the author is forced to conclude that, "Prosecutorial misconduct occurs because it works and because sanctions for misbehavior are virtually nonexistent."

Allen V. The United States Of America: The “Substantial” Connection Between Nuclear Fallout And Cancer, Daniel Swartzman, Tom Christoffel

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Book Review Of Passion: An Essay On Personality , Richard F. Devlin Frsc

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Passion is a cogently structured, compel Jingly argued and seductively enthralling masterpiece which, in years to come, will undoubtedly stand out as an inspirational source for many who seek social transformation. Unger's style, in this essay at least, is lucid and inviting. Substantively, Passion demonstrates not only the depth of his penetrating intellect but also his command of an array of' disciplines. Unger's polymathy is all the more impressive when we remember that ours is an era in which idiosyncratic specialization is the norm.

The Supreme Court And The Privilege Against Self-Incrimination: Has The Burger Court Retreated?, Paul Marcus

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Psychiatric Expert As Due Process Decisionmaker, Robert S. Berger

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Prosecutor's Duty To Disclose Evidence, Brett A. Kassabian

North Carolina Central Law Review

No abstract provided.

Cross-Racial Identification Errors In Criminal Cases, Sheri Johnson

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Introduction: Trends And Developments With Respect To That Amendment 'Central To Enjoyment Of Other Guarantees Of The Bill Of Rights', Yale Kamisar

Articles

Seventy years ago, in the famous Weeks case,' the Supreme Court evoked a storm of controversy by promulgating the federal exclusionary rule. When, a half-century later, in the landmark Mapp case,2 the Court extended the Weeks rule to state criminal proceedings, at least one experienced observer assumed that the controversy "today finds its end." 3 But as we all know now, Mapp only intensified the controversy. Indeed, in recent years spirited debates over proposals to modify the exclusionary rule or to scrap it entirely have filled the air - and the law reviews.'

Inculpatory Statements Against Penal Interest: State V. Parris Goes Too Far, James E. Beaver, Cheryl Mccleary

Seattle University Law Review

This article first demonstrates that courts historically did not trust penal interest statements in general, and that courts were extremely suspicious of any statements by a third party that implicated the defendant. Since Washington adopted Federal Rule of Evidence 804(b)(3) verbatim, this article then analyzes the legislative history of the rule. The article concludes that the legislative history favored exclusion of inculpatory statements but that Congress failed to codify the exclusion because of unrelated problems. Finally, the article discusses the confrontation clause problems that arise when inculpatory statements are allowed into evidence. This article argues that the Parris holding should …