Evidence Commons^™

Detection Of Deception: The Case Of Handwriting Expertise, Samuel R. Gross

Articles

The basic method of handwriting identification is the same now as it was in Twelfth Night: to compare the questioned writing with other writings by the supposed writer. This can be done from memory if (like Malvolio) one is already familiar with the claimed author's handwriting, or by examining the questioned document together with known samples. It's a simple, obvious task. Any person-certainly any literate person--can have a go at it. The claim by handwriting experts, now and in the past, is equally simple: We can do it better.

Establishing Inevitability Without Active Pursuit: Defining The Inevitable Discovery Exception To The Fourth Amendment Exclusionary Rule, Stephen E. Hessler

Michigan Law Review

Few doctrines of constitutional criminal procedure generate as much controversy as the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule. Beyond the basic mandate of the rule - that evidence obtained in violation of an individual's right to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure is inadmissible in a criminal proceeding - little else is agreed upon. The precise date of the exclusionary rule's inception is uncertain, but it has been applied by the judiciary for over eight decades. While the Supreme Court has emphasized that the rule is a "judicially created remedy," and not a "personal constitutional right," this characterization provokes argument as …

The Perils Of Courtroom Stories, Stephan Landsman

Michigan Law Review

As Janet Malcolm1 tells it, Sheila McGough was a middle-aged single woman living at home with her parents and working as an editor and administrator in the publications department of the Carnegie Institute when she decided to switch careers and go to law school. She applied and was admitted to the then recently accredited law school at George Mason University. After graduation, she began a solo practice in northern Virginia that involved a significant amount of stateappointed criminal defense work. In 1986, approximately four years after her graduation from law school, McGough received a call requesting assistance from an incarcerated …

Time For Final Action On 18 U.S.C. § 3292, Abraham Abramovsky, Jonathan I. Edelstein

Michigan Journal of International Law

18 U.S.C. § 3292 was enacted in order to meet a compelling prosecutorial need-the increasing necessity of obtaining evidence from abroad via procedures which are frequently time-consuming. However, the statute contains numerous ambiguities, as well as built-in disadvantages both to prosecutors and defendants, which diminish its value as a prosecutorial evidence-gathering device while increasing the possibility that defendants' rights and expectations will be violated. However, it is possible to interpret the statute in a manner which is consistent with its terms and purpose and which concomitantly preserves the rights of the Government and of grand jury targets.

The Suggestibility Of Children: Scientific Research And Legal Implications, Stephen J. Ceci, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

In this Article, Professors Ceci and Friedman analyze psychological studies on children's suggestibility and find a broad consensus that young children are suggestible to a significant degree. Studies confirm that interviewers commonly use suggestive interviewing techniques that exacerbate this suggestibility, creating a significant risk in some forensic contexts-notably but not exclusively those of suspected child abuse-that children will make false assertions of fact. Professors Ceci and Friedman address the implications of this difficulty for the legal system and respond to Professor Lyon's criticism of this view recently articulated in the Cornell Law Review. Using Bayesian probability theory, Professors Ceci and …

Dna As Evidence: Viewing Science Through The Prism Of The Law, Peter Donnelly, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

In this article, we analyze a problem related to DNA evidence that is likely to be of great and increasing significance in the near future. This is the problem of whether, and how, to present evidence that the suspect has been identified through a DNA database search. In our view, the two well-known reports on DNA evidence issued by the National Research Council (NRC) have been badly mistaken in their analysis of this problem. The mistakes are significant because the reports have carried great authority with American courts; moreover, the DNA Advisory Board of the FBI has endorsed the second …

Lilly V. Virginia Glimmers Of Hope For The Confrontation Clause?, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

In 1662, in The Case of Thomas Tong and Others, which involved charges of treason against several defendants, the judges of the King's Bench conferred on a crucial set of points of procedure. As reported by one of the judges, Sir John Kelyng, the judges agreed unanimously that a pretrial confession made to the authorities was evidence against the Party himself who made the Confession, and indeed, if adequately proved could support a conviction of that party without additional witnesses to the treason itself. But -- again unanimously, and quite definitively -- the judges also agreed that the confession cannot …

Congress' Arrogance, Yale Kamisar

Articles

Does Dickerson v. U.S., reaffirming Miranda and striking down §3501 (the federal statute purporting to "overrule" Miranda), demonstrate judicial arrogance? Or does the legislative history of §3501 demonstrate the arrogance of Congress? Shortly after Dickerson v. U.S. reaffirmed Miranda and invalidated §3501, a number of Supreme Court watchers criticized the Court for its "judicial arrogance" in peremptorily rejecting Congress' test for the admissibility of confessions. The test, pointed out the critics, had been adopted by extensive hearings and debate about Miranda's adverse impact on law enforcement. The Dickerson Court did not discuss the legislative history of §3501 at all. However, …

A Presumption Of Innocence, Not Of Even Odds, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

Now I know how the Munchkins felt. Here I have been, toiling in the fields of Evidenceland for some years, laboring along with others to show how use of Bayesian probability theory can assist in the analysis and understanding of evidentiary problems.' In doing so, we have had to wage continuous battle against the Bayesioskeptics-the wicked witches who deny much value, even heuristic value, for probability theory in evidentiary analysis.2 Occasionally, I have longed for law-and-economics scholars to help work this field, which should be fertile ground for them.3 So imagine my delight when the virtual personification of law and …

Jury Trial Techniques In Complex Civil Litigation, Ronald S. Longhofer

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Ronald Longhofer, an experienced litigator, discusses the challenges inherent in trying a complex civil case to a jury. He explores aspects of complex litigation that often impede jurors from effectively hearing such cases. In conclusion, he suggests litigation techniques which have proved successful in overcoming such obstacles and effectively translating complex evidence to jurors.

When Balance And Fairness Collide: An Argument For Execution Impact Evidence In Capital Trials, Wayne A. Logan

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

A central precept of death penalty jurisprudence is that only the "death worthy" should be condemned, based on a "reasoned moral response" by the sentencing authority. Over the past decade, however, the Supreme Court has distanced itself from its painstaking efforts in the 1970s to calibrate death decision making in the name of fairness. Compelling proof of this shift is manifest in the Court's decisions to permit victim impact evidence in capital trials, and to allow jurors to be instructed that sympathy for capital defendants is not to influence capital decisions. This Article examines a novel strategy now being employed …

The Jury And Scientific Evidence, Richard O. Lempert

Articles

Read court decisions and commentaries from 100, or evenfive years ago, and you will find that experts and scientific evidence were causing problems then just as they are causing problems now. I do not think that Daubert, Kumho Tire, or any change in a rule of evidence will keep expert scientific testimony from being a difficult area for the legal system. Yet we must still ask: "What are the best terms on which to deal with scientific experts, and how can weimprove the system?"

Reconceiving The Right To Present Witnesses, Richard A. Nagareda

Michigan Law Review

Modem American law is, in a sense, a system of compartments. For understandable curricular reasons, legal education sharply distinguishes the law of evidence from both constitutional law and criminal procedure. In fact, the lines of demarcation between these three subjects extend well beyond law school to the organization of the leading treatises and case headnotes to which practicing lawyers routinely refer in their trade. Many of the most interesting questions in the law, however, do not rest squarely within a single compartment; instead, they concern the content and legitimacy of the lines of demarcation themselves. This article explores a significant, …

Confrontation Confronted, Richard D. Friedman, Margaret A. Berger, Steven R. Shapiro

Articles

The following article is an edited version of the amicus curiae brief filed with the Supreme Court of the United States in the October Term, 1998, in the case of Benjamin Lee Lilly v. Commonwealth of Virginia (No. 98-5881). "This case raises important questions about the meaning of the confrontation clause, which has been a vital ingredient of the fair trial right for hundreds of years," Professor Richard Friedman and his co-authors say. "In particular, this case presents the Court with an opportunity to reconsider the relationship between the confrontation clause and the law of hearsay." On June 10 the …

Narrative Relevance, Imagined Juries, And A Supreme Court Inspired Agenda For Jury Research, Richard O. Lempert

Articles

This paper has its roots in Old Chief v. United States, a case the Supreme Court of the United States decided in 1997. I will begin by describing this case; then comment on its implications for the Supreme Court's conception of the jury, and conclude by examining the agenda one may draw from it for empirical jury research. Old Chief arose when Johnny Lynn Old Chief was charged not only with assault with a dangerous weapon and using a firearm in the commission of a crime of violence, but also with violating a law that precludes convicted felons from possessing …

The Three Threats To Miranda, Yale Kamisar

Articles

Miranda v. Arizona (1966) was the centerpiece of the Warren Court's "revolution" in American criminal procedure. Moreover, as Professor Stephen Schulhofer of the University of Chicago Law School has recently noted, a numbir of the Miranda safeguards "have now become entrenched in the interrogation procedures of many countries around the world." But Miranda is in serious trouble at home.

Confessions, Search And Seizure And The Rehnquist Court, Yale Kamisar

Articles

About the time William Rehnquist ascended to the Chief Justiceship of the United States, two events occurred that increased the likelihood that Miranda would enjoy a long life. In Moran v. Burbine,' a 6-3 majority held that a confession preceded by an otherwise valid waiver of a suspect's Miranda rights should not be excluded either (a) because the police misled an inquiring attorney when they told her they were not going to question the suspect she called about or (b) because the police failed to inform the suspect of the attorney's efforts to reach him.

Lost Lives: Miscarriages Of Justice In Capital Cases, Samuel R. Gross

Articles

In case after case, erroneous conviction for capital murder has been proven. I contend that these are not disconnected accidents, but systematic consequences of the nature of homicice prosecution in the general and capital prosecution in particular - that in this respect, as in others, death distorts and undermines the course of the law.

Dna Database Searches And The Legal Consumption Of Scientific Evidence, Peter Donnelly, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

DNA evidence has transformed the proof of identity in criminal litigation, but it has also introduced daunting problems of statistical analysis into the process. In this Article, we analyze a problem related to DNA evidence that is likely to be of great and increasing significance in the near future. This is the problem of whether, and how, to present evidence that the suspect has been identified through a DNA database search. In our view, the two well-known reports on DNA evidence issued by the National Research Council ("NRC"), each of which has carried great authority with the American courts on …

Lilly V. Virginia: A Chance To Reconceptualize The Confrontation Right, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

In Lilly v. Virginia, the Supreme Court once again has the opportunity to grapple with the meaning of the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendmel).t. The basic facts of Lilly are simple, for they present the ageold problem of accomplice confessions. Three men, Gary Barker and Ben and Mark Lilly, went on a crime spree, during which one of them shot to death a young man they had robbed and kidnaped. Ben Lilly was charged with being the triggerman, and Barker testified to that effect at Ben's trial. Mark did not testify. But Mark had made a statement to the …

Kumho Tire Company, Ltd. V. Carmichael: Brief Amici Curiae Of Neil Vidmar, Richard O. Lempert, Shari Seidman Diamond, Valerie P. Hans, Stephan Landsman, Robert Maccoun, Joseph Sanders, Harmon M. Hosch, Saul Kassin, Marc Galanter, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen Daniels, Edith Greene, Joanne Martin, Steven Penrod, James Richardson, Larry Heuer And Irwin Horowitz In Support Of Respondents, Phoebe C. Ellsworth, Richard C. Lempert

Appellate Briefs

Amici are university professors or hold positions in independent research institutions. Each has conducted empirical research on juries. The interest of these amici in this case is to provide the Court with an accurate picture of what a substantial body of research says about jury competence and behavior as it pertains to the evaluation of expert testimony. Short biographies of each amicus are provided in Appendix A.

This brief addresses the issue of jury performance and jury responses to expert testimony. It reviews and summarizes a substantial body of research evidence about jury behavior that has been produced over the …

First, Do No Harm: The Use Of Covert Video Surveillance To Detect Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy- An Unethical Means Of "Preventing" Child Abuse, Michael T. Flannery

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Since it was first identified in 1977, Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy has uniquely affected the way in which the medical and legal communities deal with the issue of child abuse. Inherent in the medical response to the disease are issues of suspicion, investigation, identification, confrontation, and, of course, the health of an innocent child. Given the deceptive dynamics of the disease, however, denial and disbelief naturally overshadow every action taken by medical professionals in pursuing these issues. Fortunately, as medical knowledge about the dynamics of the disease continues to develop, medical professionals become more willing and better able to identify …

An Outsider's View Of Common Law Evidence, Roger C. Park

Michigan Law Review

same line by a Newton. There have been improvements since Bentham's jeremiad. But Anglo-American evidence law is still puzzling. It rejects the common-sense principle of free proof in favor of a grotesque jumble of technicalities. It has the breathtaking aspiration of regulating inference by rule, causing it to exalt the foresight of remote rulemakers over the wisdom of on-the-spot adjudicators. It departs from tried-and-true practices of rational inquiry, as when it prohibits courts from using categories of evidence that are freely used both in everyday life and in the highest affairs of state. Sometimes it seems to fear dim light …

Extradition Law At The Crossroads: The Trend Toward Extending Greater Constitutional Procedural Protections To Fugitives Fighting Extradition From The United States, Lis Wiehl

Michigan Journal of International Law

Part I of this article will describe the historical evolution of U.S. extradition law as a field parallel to, but separate from, domestic criminal procedure. Part II of this article describes the Parretti case and the Ninth Circuit's holding that the federal extradition statutory scheme of Title 18, United States Code, Section 3184, violates the Fourth Amendment to the extent that it authorizes the issuance of a provisional arrest warrant by a court without a prior evidentiary showing of probable cause to believe that the fugitive committed the crime charged abroad. Part III explores some of the implications and effects …

Damaška: Evidence Law Adrift. A Book Review, Richard O. Lempert

Reviews

Let me state my biases at the start. I am a great fan of Professor Damaska and have been ever since I read his first book, The Faces of Justice and State Authority. Professor Damaska's most recent book, Evidence Law Adrift, adds to my admiration. In Evidence Law Adrift Professor Dama~ka examines Continental and Anglo-American trial procedures and argues that changes in the way Anglo-American courts resolve cases, especially the marginalization of the jury trial, strip common law evidence doctrine of its theoretical base and place it in danger of becoming an intellectual curiosity confined, in Professor Damaska's words, "to …

A Feminist Approach To Social Scientific Evidence: Foundations, Andrew E. Taslitz

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article addresses several aspects of a feminist approach to social scientific evidence, specifically, the interpretive nature of mental states, the feminist attitude toward juries, and the political nature of evidence law.

Thoughts From Across The Water On Hearsay And Confrontation, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

This article draws on the history of the hearsay rule, and on recent decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, to argue that the right to confrontation should be recognised as a basic principle of the law of evidence, and that aspects of the Law Commission's proposals for reform of the hearsay rule, and of the Home Office's proposals for restrictions on the right of cross-examination, are therefore unsatisfactory.

Built On Lies: Preliminary Reflections On Evidence Law As An Autopoetic System, Richard O. Lempert

Articles

This Symposium on Truth and Its Rivals seems most concerned with what one might think of as the "output" side of evidence law that is, whether the rules of evidence enhance the likelihood that trial verdicts will capture the true state of the matter giving rise to the litigation. From this perspective, the legitimate rivals to truth are values that may justify decisions that eclipse the truth. The most obvious examples are rules of privilege, which allow probative information to remain concealed even where it is essential to accurate fact finding.

Economic Analysis Of Evidentiary Law: An Underused Tool, An Underplowed Field (Symposium: The Economics Of Evidentiary Law), Richard D. Friedman

Articles

The law and economics movement has had a major impact on many areas of law, but rather little on the law of evidence. This is not to say that there have been no attempts to analyze evidentiary issues through an economic lens,' but such efforts are far more scattered in evidence than in other legal fields, including the closely related one of civil procedure.2 Believing that economics has value for evidentiary analysis, I suggested to the Executive Committee and Advisory Board of the Evidence Section of the Association of American Law Schools ("AALS"), when I was chairman of the section, …

Make-Believe: The Rules Excluding Evidence Of Character And Liability Insurance (Symposium: Truth And Its Rivals: Evidence Reform And The Goals Of Evidence Law), Samuel R. Gross

Articles

Article IV of the Federal Rules of Evidence includes several rules that prohibit the use of specified types of information as evidence of particular propositions. Subsequent remedial measures are inadmissible to prove negligence (but admissible to show ownership, control, et cetera),' settlement offers are inadmissible to prove liability (but admissible to show bias or prejudice, or for other purposes),2 and so forth. Any exclusion of relevant evidence involves some distortion of reality in the sense that the picture presented to the trier of fact includes less information than the available total. That will be true whether the evidence is kept …