Evidence Commons^™

In Memory Of Professor James E. Bond, Janet Ainsworth

Seattle University Law Review

Janet Ainsworth, Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law: In Memory of Professor James E. Bond.

Hyperreal: Law And The Interpretation Of Visual Media, Amy L. Landers

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Herman Melville’S Billy Budd: Why This Classic Law And Literature Novel Endures And Is Still Relevant Today, Rodger Citron

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

In General Public Use: An Unnecessary Test In Fourth Amendment Searches Using Advanced Sensing Technology, Mike Petridis

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Can The Pursuit Of Truth Reconcile With The Principle Of Minimizing False Convictions?, Doron Menashe

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

No abstract provided.

Washington’S Young Offenders: O’Dell Demands A Change To Sentencing Guidelines, Erika Vranizan

Seattle University Law Review

This Note argues that the O’Dell decision was a watershed moment for criminal justice reform. It argues that the reasoning in O’Dell should be seized upon by the legislature to take action to remediate instances in which defendants are legal adults but do not possess the cognitive characteristics of an adult sufficient to justify adult punishment. Given both the scientific impossibility of identifying a precise age at which characteristics of youthfulness end and adulthood begins and the Court’s repeated recognition that these very factors impact culpability, the current approach to sentencing young offenders aged eighteen to twenty-five as adults simply …

Experiments With Suppression: The Evolution Of Repressive Legality In Britain In The Revolutionary Period, Christopher M. Roberts

Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review

This article is concerned with the structure of repressive governance, and how it has evolved historically. It examines this theme through an exploration of the manner which repressive laws and institutions evolved in Britain over the course of the late eighteenth century. In particular, it reviews the various measures that British authorities utilized and relied upon in order to confront a growing wave of calls for social and political reforms. These included a policy of aggressive prosecutions of dissidents; the creation of new institutions such as the Home Office designed to enhance the powers of the central authorities; extralegal measures …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Standards Of Review In Texas, W. Wendell Hall, Ryan G. Anderson

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Can You Hear Me Now: The Impacts Of Prosecutorial Call Monitoring On Defendants' Access To Justice, Hope L. Demer

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Justice Begins Before Trial: How To Nudge Inaccurate Pretrial Rulings Using Behavioral Law And Economic Theory And Uniform Commercial Laws, Michael Gentithes

William & Mary Law Review

Injustice in criminal cases often takes root before trial begins. Overworked criminal judges must resolve difficult pretrial evidentiary issues that determine the charges the State will take to trial and the range of sentences the defendant will face. Wrong decisions on these issues often lead to wrongful convictions. As behavioral law and economic theory suggests, judges who are cognitively busy and receive little feedback on these topics from appellate courts rely upon intuition, rather than deliberative reasoning, to resolve these questions. This leads to inconsistent rulings, which prosecutors exploit to expand the scope of evidentiary exceptions that almost always disfavor …

Between Brady Discretion And Brady Misconduct, Bennett L. Gershman

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

The Supreme Court’s decision in Brady v. Maryland presented prosecutors with new professional challenges. In Brady, the Supreme Court held that the prosecution must provide the defense with any evidence in its possession that could be exculpatory. If the prosecution fails to timely turn over evidence that materially undermines the defendant’s guilt, a reviewing court must grant the defendant a new trial. While determining whether evidence materially undermines a defendant’s guilt may seem like a simple assessment, the real-life application of such a determination can be complicated. The prosecution’s disclosure determination can be complicated under the Brady paradigm because …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Should Judges Convict Based On Their Speculations Of Guilt?, Doron Menashe, Eyal Gruner

Buffalo Public Interest Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Where The Constitution Falls Short: Confession Admissibility And Police Regulation, Courtney E. Lewis

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

A confession presented at trial is one of the most damning pieces of evidence against a criminal defendant, which means that the rules governing its admissibility are critical. At the outset of confession admissibility in the United States, the judiciary focused on a confession’s truthfulness. Culminating in the landmark case Miranda v. Arizona, judicial concern with the reliability of confessions shifted away from whether a confession was true and towards curtailing unconstitutional police misconduct. Post-hoc constitutionality review, however, is arguably inappropriate. Such review is inappropriate largely because the reviewing court must find that the confession was voluntary only by …

Punishment Without Process: Victim Impact Proceedings For Dead Defendants, Bruce Green, Rebecca Roiphe

Articles & Chapters

After Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide in jail, two judges allowed his accusers to speak in court. This article argues that the proceedings were inappropriate because the criminal case ends when the defendant dies. If the conviction and appeal are not final, there is no finding of guilt, and the defendant is still presumed innocent. Allowing accusers to speak at this time violates the principle of due process and threatens to undermine faith in judges and the criminal justice system in general. While courts are at times legally required to hear from victims of crimes, they were not allowed to do …

Forensic Science: Complex Admissibility Standard For Scientific Evidence And Expert Witness's Testimony, Md Wahidur Rahman, Marissa J. Moran

Publications and Research

Modern science forces the world to accept new theories and invention. Science has invented several tools, which are used in the legal system to dispute criminal cases. Scientific evidence and expert witness testimony have weight in the courtroom because those are scientifically proved to be true. Even though there are few case laws and Federal rule of evidence 1975, still the admissibility standard is complex which may lead injustice.

This article examines the Federal rule of evidence, case laws and scholars’ opinion to address the complexity of the admissibility standard of scientific evidence and expert testimony. The first legal question …

The First Amendment Case For Public Access To Secret Algorithms Used In Criminal Trials, Vera Eidelman

Georgia State University Law Review

As this Article sets forth, once a computerized algorithm is used by the government, constitutional rights may attach. And, at the very least, those rights require that algorithms used by the government as evidence in criminal trials be made available—both to litigants and the public. Scholars have discussed how the government’s refusal to disclose such algorithms runs afoul of defendants’ constitutional rights, but few have considered the public’s interest in these algorithms—or the widespread impact that public disclosure and auditing could have on ensuring their quality.

This Article aims to add to that discussion by setting forth a theory of …

Garbage In, Garbage Out: Revising Strickland As Applied To Forensic Science Evidence, Mark Loudon-Brown

Georgia State University Law Review

Sophisticated scientific evidence may be an undesirable subject matter for a judge to tackle anew, and it can be even more daunting for a defense attorney to confront, particularly one faced with a crushing caseload. It can be tempting to avoid a challenge to a vulnerable forensic science discipline—be it new, novel, or simply recently called into question—when a lawyer reasonably believes that the evidence will be admitted regardless.

Worse still, it may seem reasonable to disregard any adversarial challenge to incriminatory science altogether, and to opt instead for a different defense or to encourage a guilty plea. With hundreds …

The Uk Forensic Science Regulator: A Model For Forensic Science Regulation?, Carole Mccartney, Emmanuel N. Amoako

Georgia State University Law Review

The use of an array of scientific techniques and technologies is now considered customary within criminal justice, with technological developments and scientific advancements regularly added to the crime investigator’s arsenal. However, the scientific basis, reliability, and fallibility of the application of such “forensic science” (and the resulting scientific evidence) continues to come under intense scrutiny. In response to apparently irremediable problems with the quality of scientific evidence in the United Kingdom (UK), the government created the role of “Forensic Science Regulator” in 2007.

The introduction of a regulator was intended to establish quality standards for all forensic science providers in …

The Institutions Of Innocence Review: A Comparative Sociological Perspective, Jessica A. Roth

Articles

The last three decades have seen the rise of an international innocence movement that has forced participants in diverse criminal justice systems to confront their systems’ fallibility, previously thought more theoretical than real. The public acknowledgment of that fallibility has led to the creation of new institutional mechanisms to re-examine old convictions. This short essay prepared for a symposium issue of the Rutgers University Law Review on the theory of criminal law reform compares the error correction institutions created in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States, three English-speaking countries with common law roots and an adversarial structure, through …

It’S Not The Thought That Counts: Pennsylvania Quietly Made Rape And Idsi Strict Liability Crimes, Jordan E. Yatsko

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

In 1982, the Pennsylvania Superior Court decided Commonwealth v. Williams, wherein the court held that a defendant charged with rape or involuntary deviate sexual intercourse (IDSI) cannot use a mistake of fact defense as to the victim’s consent. The court relied on the reasoning that a defendant’s mens rea is not an element of either rape or IDSI. Section 302 of the Pennsylvania Crimes Code, however, requires that where the legislature has failed to expressly require a finding of mens rea in the text of the statute, at least recklessness must be imputed to each material element.

This Comment …

Fleeing The Rat’S Nest: Title Vii Jurisprudence After Ortiz V. Werner Enterprises, Inc., Zachary J. Strongin

Brooklyn Law Review

In 2016, the Seventh Circuit issued an opinion that may be a harbinger for an important shift in the federal judiciary’s long-standing employment discrimination jurisprudence. In Ortiz v. Werner Enterprises, Judge Easterbrook reiterated the frustration with the existing “rat’s nest” of tests and standards used in Title VII discrimination and retaliation claims. The note contains two overarching arguments. First, the Supreme Court’s employment discrimination and “rat’s nest” of tests and standards has led to an untenable situation in which federal district courts apply different standards at different stages of litigations. This in turn has caused confusion amongst the various federal …

Mitochondrial Dna Replacement: Moral And Halakhic Concerns, J. David Bleich

Articles

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), transmitted from mother to child, have their own genetic code that may cause debilitating genetic diseases. To prevent such unfortunate occurrences, researchers have developed a process enabling them to completely replace an ovum’s mitochondria with mitochondria contributed by a donor. Children born by use of this method have genetic material from both the mitochondrial donor and the birth mother; they are “three-parent babies.” Resultant medical, ethical, legal and theological problems are obvious.

Moreover, this technology may pose significant risks to neonates born of such procedures. Certainly no person has the right to cause harm to a fellow …

"I'Ve Got My Mind Made Up": How Judicial Teleology In Cases Involving Biologically Based Evidence Violates Therapeutic Jurisprudence, Michael L. Perlin

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article critiques the teleological reasoning employed by judges in cases involving biologically-based evidence, particularly in mental disability law. It argues that judges often prioritize pre-determined outcomes over evidence, leading to decisions that neglect valid scientific data and violate the principles of therapeutic jurisprudence.

Find My Criminals: Fourth Amendment Implications Of The Universal Cell Phone "App" That Every Cell Phone User Has But No Criminal Wants, Christopher Joseph

Barry Law Review

No abstract provided.

Teaching The Quandary Of Statistical Jurisprudence: A Review-Essay On Math On Trial By Schneps And Colmez, Noah Giansiracusa

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This review-essay on the mother-and-daughter collaboration Math on Trial stems from my recent experience using this book as the basis for a college freshman seminar on the interactions between math and law. I discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this book as an accessible introduction to this enigmatic yet deeply important topic. For those considering teaching from this text (a highly recommended endeavor) I offer some curricular suggestions.

Litigating From The Prison Of The Mind: A Cognitive Right To Post-Conviction Counsel, Ken Strutin

Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal

No abstract provided.

Reconsidering The Standards Of Admission For Prior Bad Acts Evidence In Light Of Research On False Memories And Witness Preparation, Jason Tortora

Fordham Urban Law Journal

No abstract provided.