Evidence Commons^™

The Admissibility Of Weapons Not Used In The Crime Charged, Melynda Melear

St. Thomas Law Review

In many prosecutions in which weapons have been used to commit charged offenses, the State seeks to introduce into evidence weapons not actually used in the crime but purportedly related either to the charged crime or to the credibility of a witness. For years, courts have struggled with the issue of whether the State has established the relevancy of a weapon not used in the crime underlying the case at hand as well as whether the admission of a weapon under those circumstances would cause unfair prejudice to the defendant. Case law on the relevancy of weapon evidence presents a …

Seeking Consistency For Prior Consistent Statements: Amending Federal Rule Of Evidence 801(D)(1)(B), Liesa L. Richter

Faculty Articles

The Advisory Committee for the Federal Rules of Evidence was hard at work in 2013 trying to bring resolution to a mystery that has plagued Rule 801(d)(1)(B) since its enactment thirty-eight years ago. Scholars, judges, and litigants have long pondered why the drafters of Rule 801(d)(1)(B) carved out a hearsay exemption for prior consistent statements admitted to repair impeaching attacks on witness motivations, but failed to extend the same treatment to other similarly situated prior consistencies admitted to repair other types of impeaching attacks. In May 2013, the Advisory Committee proposed an amendment to Rule 801(d)(1)(B) in an effort to …

Evidence Of Lies And Rules Of Evidence: The Admissibility Of Fmri-Based Expert Opinion Of Witness Truthfulness, William A. Woodruff

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

The Time Has Come For A Restatement Of Child Sex Abuse, Marci A. Hamilton

Articles

No abstract provided.

When Truth Cannot Be Presumed: The Regulation Of Drug Promotion Under An Expanding First Amendment, Christopher Robertson

Faculty Scholarship

The Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) requires that, prior to marketing a drug, the manufacturer must prove that it is safe and effective for the manufacturer’s intended uses, as shown on the proposed label. Nonetheless, physicians may prescribe drugs for other “off-label” uses, and often do so. Still, manufacturers have not been allowed to promote the unproven uses in advertisements or sales pitches.

This regime is now precarious due to an onslaught of scholarly critiques, a series of Supreme Court decisions that enlarge the First Amendment, and a landmark court of appeals decision holding that the First Amendment precludes …

Avoiding Adversarial Adjudication, Michael T. Morley

Scholarly Publications

There are a variety of procedural vehicles through which litigants may seek a substantive court ruling or order that declares or modifies their legal rights and obligations without actually litigating the merits of a case as a whole or particular issues within the case. These alternatives include defaults, failures to oppose motions for summary judgment, waivers and forfeitures, stipulations of law, confessions of error, and consent decrees. Courts presently apply different standards in determining whether to accept or allow litigants to take advantage of each of these vehicles for avoiding adversarial adjudication. Because all of these procedural alternatives share the …

Cipa Creep: The Classified Information Procedures Act And Its Drift Into Civil National Security Litigation, Ian Macdougall

National Security Law Program

This Note documents an incipient trend in the courts and Congress, which I call "CIPA creep," and investigates its implications for civil national security litigation. CIPA – the Classified Information Procedures Act – governs the use of classified information in federal criminal cases. No comparable statute exists in the civil context, where the judge-made state secrets privilege determines whether litigants may use sensitive government information. The prevailing scholarly and popular accounts hold that this privilege, in the tense post-9/11 security environment, transformed from a narrow evidentiary rule into a non-justiciability doctrine that cedes to executive branch officials the power to …

Defensible Data Deletion: A Practical Approach To Reducing Cost And Managing Risk Associated With Expanding Enterprise Data, Dennis R. Kiker

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

Modern businesses are hosts to steadily increasing volumes of data, creating significant cost and risk while potentially compromising the current and future performance and stability of the information systems in which the data reside. To mitigate these costs and risks, many companies are considering initiatives to identify and eliminate information that is not needed for any business or legal purpose (a process referred to herein as “data remediation”). There are several challenges for any such initiative, the most significant of which may be the fear that information subject to a legal preservation obligation might be destroyed.

This Is Your Sword: How Damaging Are Prior Convictions To Plaintiffs In Civil Trials?, Kathryn M. Stanchi, Deirdre Bowen

Scholarly Works

The conventional wisdom in law is that a prior conviction is one of the most powerful and damaging pieces of evidence that can be offered against a witness or party. In legal lore, prior convictions seriously undercut the credibility of the witness and can derail the outcome of a trial. This Article suggests that may not always be true.

This Article details the results of an empirical study of juror decision-making that challenges the conventional wisdom about prior convictions. In our study, the prior conviction evidence did not have a direct impact on the outcome of the civil trial or …

The Mold That Shapes Hearsay Law, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

In response to an article previously published in the Florida Law Review by Professor Ben Trachtenberg, I argue that the historical thesis of Crawford v. Washington is basically correct: The Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment reflects a principle about how witnesses should give testimony, and it does not create any broader constraint on the use of hearsay. I argue that this is an appropriate limit on the Clause, and that in fact for the most part there is no good reason to exclude nontestimonial hearsay if live testimony by the declarant to the same proposition would be admissible. I …

Comments: Trending: Proportionality In Electronic Discovery In Common Law Countries And The United States' Federal And State Courts, Laura Hunt

University of Baltimore Law Review

No abstract provided.

Some Thoughts On The Fundamentals Of An Evidence Code From The U.S. American Perspective, Paul F. Rothstein

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In the U.S. American trial system proof mainly consists of live witnesses presented in open court under oath before the judge, jury, and parties, subject to perjury laws. Cross-examination of the witnesses in that setting is the principal (though not the only) form of testing their reliability. It is for these reasons that we have a rule against hearsay (second-hand reporting in court of what someone has said outside of court).

The Exclusion Of Improperly Obtained Evidence At The International Criminal Court: A Principled Approach To Interpreting Article 69(7) Of The Rome Statute, Michael Madden

LLM Theses

This thesis examines article 69(7) of the Rome Statute, which creates an exclusionary rule for improperly obtained evidence at the International Criminal Court (ICC). Ultimately, the thesis proposes how the ICC should interpret its exclusionary rule. The thesis discusses the theory underlying exclusionary rules, the evidence law and remedial law contexts within which exclusionary rules operate, and numerous comparative examples of exclusionary doctrine from within national criminal justice systems. Finally, some unique aspects of international criminal procedure are described in order to demonstrate how an international exclusionary rule might need to differ from a domestic rule, and previous jurisprudence relating …

Juror Perceptions Of Eyewitness Identification Evidence, Timothy G. Wykes

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Jurors rely on eyewitness testimony in deciding a defendant’s guilt or innocence. Archival analyses of hundreds of post-conviction DNA exonerations have identified eyewitness misidentification as the highest individual factor contributing to wrongful convictions (Innocence Project, 2014). Internationally, criminal justice systems have employed procedural safeguards (PSs) to educate juries on factors affecting eyewitness identification accuracy. Two such safeguards include the introduction of eyewitness expert testimony during trial proceedings and the reading of cautionary instructions by a presiding judge. In an independent factorial design, this research sought to examine the effects of a model judicial caution drafted by the Ontario Judicial Council …

Setting The Tipping Point For Disclosing The Identity Of Anonymous Online Speakers: Lessons From Other Disclosure Contexts, Helen Norton

Publications

At what point should anonymous online speakers alleged to have engaged in defamatory, threatening, or other unprotected and illegal speech be required to “unmask” themselves – i.e., to disclose their identities? Courts confronted with such questions have proposed a variety of tests that seek to determine the point – I’ll call this the tipping point – at which they become sufficiently confident that disclosure’s accountability gains justify the unmasking of an anonymous online speaker. This essay suggests that an intradisciplinary approach may be helpful when choosing among these alternative tests. To this end, it recalls parallel disclosure challenges in campaign, …

No Idea What The Future Holds: The Retrospective Evidence Dilemma, Dennis Fan

Faculty Scholarship

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act’s predecessor established a multilevel administrative and judicial review system for special education decisions, and ever since, the volume of special education cases in federal court has ballooned. Most present cases involve disputes over whether the school district drafted an individualized education program capable of providing a child with disabilities a “free appropriate public education.” But what evidence parties can bring to these disputes is not settled. Circuit courts are split on whether “retrospective evidence” — evidence that arises after the school district drafts the individualized education program — is admissible. This Note addresses present …

Sweet Caroline: The Backslide From Federal Rule Of Evidence 613(B) To The Rule In Queen Caroline's Case, Katharine T. Schaffzin

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Since 1975, Rule 613(b) of the Federal Rules of Evidence has governed the admission of extrinsic evidence of a prior inconsistent statement in federal court. Rule 613(b) requires the proponent of the prior inconsistent statement to provide the declarant an opportunity to explain or deny it. There is no requirement that the proponent provide that opportunity at any particular time or in any particular sequence. Rule 613 reflected a change from the common law that had fallen out of fashion in the federal courts. That common law rule, known as the Rule in Queen Caroline’s Case, required the proponent of …

“Liking” The Social Media Revolution, Thaddeus A. Hoffmeister

School of Law Faculty Publications

As in other areas of society, social media has significantly influenced the law. Currently, civil and criminal cases can, and often do, turn on an attorney's understanding and use of social media. In the realm of family law, most practitioners view social media as an essential tool-one that could serve as grounds for malpractice if ignored. Even in legal academia-an area long resistant to change-law schools are starting to understand the impact of social media on the law and offer courses like Social Media and Criminal Law and Law and Social Media.

The goal of this essay is not to …

Understanding And Contextualizing Precedents In E-Discovery: The Illusion Of Stare Decisis And Best Practices To Avoid Reliance On Outdated Guidance, Jonathan M. Redgrave, Keltie Hays Peay, Mathea K.E. Bulander

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

But as precedents survive like the clavicle in the cat, long after the use they once served is at an end, and the reason for them has been forgotten, the result of following them must often be failure and confusion from the merely logical point of view.

Frcp 26 Vs. Fre 408: Why Settlement Negotiations Should Be Privileged Against Third-Party Discovery, Andrew Sher

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

This Note proposes that courts should recognize a settlementnegotiation privilege because it will incentivize parties to settle. Settling disputes is beneficial to the judicial system as it is more efficient and effective at resolving disputes than trying cases. Recognizing a settlement-negotiation privilege will increase the number of settlements by avoiding the free-rider problem that the Federal Circuit's approach in In re MSTG will create. Similarly, creating a settlement-negotiation privilege will avoid the uncertainty caused by not recognizing a privilege or requiring heightened standards for discovery. The confidentiality and certainty of a settlement-negotiation privilege will encourage parties to settle as well …

The Hidden Daubert Factor: How Judges Use Error Rates In Assessing Scientific Evidence, John B. Meixner Jr., Shari Seidman Diamond

Scholarly Works

In Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, the United States Supreme Court provided a framework under which trial judges must assess the evidentiary reliability of scientific evidence whose admissibility is challenged. One factor of the Daubert test, the “known or potential rate of error” of the expert’s method, has received considerably less scholarly attention than the other factors, and past empirical study has indicated that judges have a difficult time understanding the factor and use it less frequently in their analyses as compared to other factors. In this paper, we examine one possible interpretation of the “known or potential rate of …

Detecting Knowledge Of Incidentally Acquired, Real-World Memories Using A P300-Based Concealed-Information Test, John B. Meixner Jr., J. Peter Rosenfeld

Scholarly Works

Autobiographical memory for events experienced during normal daily life has been studied at the group level, but no studies have yet examined the ability to detect recognition of incidentally acquired memories among individual subjects. We present the first such study here, which employed a concealed-information test in which subjects were shown words associated with activities they had experienced the previous day. Subjects wore a video-recording device for 4 hr on Day 1 and then returned to the laboratory on Day 2, where they were shown words relating to events recorded with the camera (probe items) and words of the same …

Neuroscientists In Court, Owen D. Jones, Anthony D. Wagner, David L. Faigman, Marcus E. Raichle

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Neuroscientific evidence is increasingly being offered in court cases. Consequently, the legal system needs neuroscientists to act as expert witnesses who can explain the limitations and interpretations of neuroscientific findings so that judges and jurors can make informed and appropriate inferences. The growing role of neuroscientists in court means that neuroscientists should be aware of important differences between the scientific and legal fields, and, especially, how scientific facts can be easily misunderstood by non-scientists,including judges and jurors.

This article describes similarities, as well as key differences, of legal and scientific cultures. And it explains six key principles about neuroscience that …

Group To Individual Inference In Scientific Expert Testimony, Christopher Slobogin, David Faigman, John Monahan

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

A fundamental divide exists between what scientists do as scientists and what courts often ask them to do as expert witnesses. Whereas scientists almost invariably inquire into phenomena at the group level, trial courts typically need to resolve cases at the individual level. In short, scientists generalize while courts particularize. A basic challenge for trial courts that rely on scientific experts, therefore, concerns determining whether and how scientific knowledge derived from studying groups can be helpful in the individual cases before them (what this Article refers to as "G2i'). To aid in dealing with this challenge, this Article proposes a …

The Exclusionary Rule As A Symbol Of The Rule Of Law, Jenia I. Turner

SMU Law Review

Throughout South America, Southern and Eastern Europe, and East Asia, more than two dozen countries have transitioned to democracy since the 1980s. A remarkable number of these have adopted an exclusionary rule (mandating that evidence obtained unlawfully by the government is generally inadmissible in criminal trials) as part of broader legal reforms. Democratizing countries have adopted exclusionary rules even though they are not required to do so by any international treaty and there is no indication that there is widespread popular demand for such rules. This has occurred at a time when the rule has been weakened in the United …

Redefining Relevancy And Exclusionary Discretion In Sir James Fitzjames Stephen’S Indian Evidence Act Of 1872: The Singapore Experiment And Lessons For Other Indian Evidence Act Jurisdictions, Siyuan Chen

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In many jurisdictions, the rules of evidence can often be instrumental in determining the outcome of a dispute. But to what extent can evidence law be controlled by codification, or is it better to leave its regulation and development to the judges via common law? In an attempt to bridge the gap between the rules of an antiquated evidence statute and the modern realities of practice, Singapore’s Evidence Act was amended in 2012. Certain relevancy provisions were amended to allow greater admissibility of evidence, while new provisions were introduced to act as a check against abuse. However, it will be …

Thinking Outside The Box: Limiting The Collection Of Rape Kit Evidence In Acquaintance Rape Trials, Taylor Gamble

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The note argues that limiting the collection of rape kit evidence in acquaintance rape cases could strike a balance between reducing victim trauma, conserving resources, and maintaining the integrity of the justice system. While DNA evidence is crucial in stranger rape cases, its utility in acquaintance rapes is limited since the central issue is often consent rather than identity. The analysis weighs the benefits of minimizing invasive exams and protecting victim privacy against the potential loss of probative evidence, ultimately suggesting that the benefits of selective collection outweigh the harms.

Mixed Signals On Summary Judgment, Howard Wasserman

Faculty Publications

This essay examines three cases from the Supreme Court’s October Term 2013 addressing the standards for summary judgment. In one case, the Court affirmed summary judgment against a civil-rights plaintiff, in a continued erroneous over-reliance on the certainty of video evidence. In two other cases, the Court rejected the grant of summary judgment against civil-rights plaintiffs, arguably for the first time in quite a while. This essay unpacks the substance and procedure underlying all three decisions and considers the effect of the three cases and what signals they send to lower courts and litigants about the proper approach to summary …

Persuasive Visions: Film And Memory, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

This commentary takes a new look at law and film studies through the lens of film as memory. Instead of describing film as evidence and foreordaining its role in truth-seeking processes, it thinks instead of film as individual, institutional and cultural memory, placing it squarely within the realm of contestability. Paralleling film genres, the commentary imagines four forms of memory that film could embody: memorabilia (cinema verite), memoirs (autobiographical and biographical film), ceremonial memorials (narrative film monuments of a life, person or institution), and mythic memory (dramatic fictional film). Imagining film as memory resituates film’s role in law (procedural, substantive …

Teaching “The Wire”: Crime, Evidence, And Kids, Andrea L. Dennis

Scholarly Works

I have a confession: I have only watched Season 1 of The Wire, and it has been many years since I did that. Thus, both my knowledge and pedagogical use of the show are limited. What explanation can I offer for my failings? I am a Maryland native with family who resides in Baltimore City, or Charm City as it is affectionately called. I worked for several years as an assistant federal public defender in Baltimore City. Over time, I have seen the city evolve, and I have seen it chew up and spit out many good people and some …