Evidence Commons^™

The Early Returns Are In: A Review Of The First Two Years Of Amended Federal Rule Of Evidence 702, Mark Behrens, Lee Mickus, Christopher Appel

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Seeing Justice Up Close 10-22-2025, Alli-Michelle Conti

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

How Experts View The Legal System's Use Of Scientific Evidence, Shari Seidman Diamond, Richard Lempert

Articles

Legal scholars and courts frequently write about how scientific evidence is vetted and presented in legal proceedings, but the views of experts themselves have received little attention. Our research aims to fill that gap. This paper reports some of what we learned from a series of surveys we conducted, beginning with a survey in 2016 of scientists who had been elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.3 Subsequent surveys were directed to subscribers of the journal Science who identified as scientists and engineers and to self-identified experts who advertised their availability as experts to lawyers or …

Virtual Court Proceedings And Their Effect On Criminal Defendants’ Rights, Hunter J. Phillips

Marquette Intellectual Property & Innovation Law Review

This Comment examines whether implementing virtual evidentiary proceedings diminishes a criminal defendant’s Constitutional rights. Part One introduces the Confrontation Clause and judicial interpretations that shape its modern legal view.

Part One also introduces the importance of face-to-face testimony and how the Confrontation Clause is founded upon that principle. Part One concludes by offering psychological research that highlights the im-portance of face-to-face proceedings that allow for effective criminal proceedings. Part Two introduces legislation that hinders defendants’ Confrontation rights and critically analyzes that legislation. Part Three argues for the abandonment of virtual criminal proceedings and highlights other factors that should be considered …

Guess Who?: First-Time In-Court Identifications And Due Process, Natalie Beers

Washington and Lee Law Review

Juries believe eyewitnesses. When an identifying eyewitness takes the stand and points to a defendant in a courtroom, the jury is more likely to render a guilty verdict. But how reliable is that identification? What if the eyewitness is on the stand identifying a perpetrator for the first time, in the court room, rather than at the police station with a lineup or photo array? How do those suggestive circumstances implicate a criminal defendant’s due process rights?

First-time in-court identifications are inherently suggestive. While the Supreme Court has acknowledged the suggestive nature of similar identifications, it did not directly address …

A Proposal To Replace The Hearsay Rules, Richard D. Friedman

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This essay proposes a set of rules to replace entirely the 800 series of the Federal Rules of Evidence, the hearsay rules, with a very different, and relatively compact, set of procedural rules. (The current hearsay rules run over 3000 words; the proposed rules run under 1000.) The change will improve truth-determination, make trials more efficient, and better protect the rights of criminal defendants and other parties. There would, of course, be some adjustment period for lawyers and judges as they get accustomed to a different system, but I am confident that it would soon be easier to administer than …

Expert Malpractice, James R. Steiner-Dillon

Akron Law Faculty Publications

The provision of expert testimony in litigation has become a big business. The paradigmatic testifying expert is no longer the “amateur” expert who maintains a separate professional identity and testifies only once, or at most sporadically, in litigation to which their expertise is uniquely pertinent. Rather, they are a professional provider of litigation support services who spends a substantial part of their time, and derives a substantial part of their income from, consulting on pending or contemplated lawsuits. Legal rules concerning the provision of expert testimony continue to apply the former, obsolete paradigm of the testifying expert. This conflict of …

The Contribution Of Forensic Science To Wrongful Convictions: An Analysis Of Forensic Expert Testimony, Parker Gunter

Honors Theses

The purpose of this study was to explore the progression and potential improvement of forensic science in court. Errors is forensic science have contributed to the problem of wrongful convictions, but research surrounding forensic expert testimony over the last decade is lacking. The way that an expert explains evidence in court is important to gain a broader understanding for how forensic science may fail. The testimonies of forensic experts were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively to further understand the shortcomings in the field at the end of its journey through the criminal justice system. The results showed that the testimonies …

The Future Of Testamentary Capacity, Reid Kress Weisbord, David Horton

Washington and Lee Law Review

Recently, the #FreeBritney saga cast a harsh spotlight on state guardianship systems. Yet despite their serious flaws, guardianship regimes have benefited from waves of reform. Indeed, since the 1970s, most jurisdictions have taken steps to protect the autonomy of people with cognitive, intellectual, or developmental disabilities (CIDD). Likewise, lawmakers are currently experimenting with supported decision-making (SDM): an alternative to guardianship designed to help individuals with CIDD make their own choices. These changes are no panacea, but they have modernized a field that once summarily denied “idiots” and “lunatics” power over their affairs.

However, in a related context, the legal system’s …

One Or Many? Critiquing New York’S "Unfortunate Event" Test For Determining Occurrences In Light Of The Passage Of The New York Child Victims Act, Kharis Lund

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Recollections Refreshed And Recorded, Len Niehoff

Articles

Witnesses forget stuff. When they do, the evidence rules give us two tools to help solve the problem. Lawyers call one "refreshed recollection" and the other "past recollection recorded," labels just similar enough to guarantee confusion. Nevertheless, these principles get at very different things and are well worth the effort necessary to distinguish and understand them. So how do we get there?

"The" Rule: Modernizing The Potent, But Overlooked, Rule Of Witness Sequestration, Daniel J. Capra, Liesa L. Richter

Faculty Articles

Starting with its illustration in the Apocrypha and continuing into the modern day both in courtrooms and in ubiquitous criminal procedurals, one evidence rule has proven so powerful that it has become known as "THE" Rule of Evidence. The rule of witness sequestrationdemands that multiple witnesses to the same events be examined separately from one another to prevent them from, consciously or subconsciously, tailoring their testimony to ensure that it remains consistent. Witness sequestration is conceptually simplistic and famously mighty. Yet, this bedrock protection against inaccurate trial testimony is imperiled by conflicting interpretations of Federal Rule of Evidence 615, the …

The Truthsayer And The Court: Expert Testimony On Credibility, Michael W. Mullane

Maine Law Review

The purpose of this Article is to analyze the admissibility of expert testimony on credibility. State v. Woodburn serves as a lens to focus on the broader issues. The primary issue is an examination of expert testimony on credibility in light of the Federal Rules of Evidence and their progeny. The Rules of Evidence mandate admission or exclusion of expert testimony based on certain criteria. How are these criteria applied to expert testimony on credibility? How should they be applied? The surprising survivability of other criteria discarded by the Rules is also considered.

Controlling The Jury-Teaching Function, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

When evidence with a scientific basis is offered, two fundamental questions arise. First, should it be admitted? Second, if so, how should it be assessed? There are numerous participants who might play a role in deciding these questions—the jury (on the second question only), the parties (through counsel), expert witnesses on each side, the trial court, the forces controlling the judicial system (which include, but are not limited to, the appellate courts), and the scientific establishment. In this Article, I will suggest that together, the last two—the forces controlling the judicial system and the scientific establishment—have a large role to …

Cabining Judicial Discretion Over Forensic Evidence With A New Special Relevance Rule, Emma F.E. Shoucair

Michigan Law Review

Modern forensic evidence suffers from a number of flaws, including insufficient scientific grounding, exaggerated testimony, lack of uniform best practices, and an inefficacious standard for admission that regularly allows judges to admit scientifically unsound evidence. This Note discusses these problems, lays out the current landscape of forensic science reform, and suggests the addition of a new special relevance rule to the Federal Rules of Evidence (and similar rules in state evidence codes). This proposed rule would cabin judicial discretion to admit non-DNA forensic evidence by barring prosecutorial introduction of such evidence in criminal trials absent a competing defense expert or …

The Excited Utterance Paradox, Steven Baicker-Mckee

Seattle University Law Review

Based on nothing more than John Henry Wigmore’s personal belief that a witness under the throes of excitement is unable to fabricate an untruthful statement, the excited utterance exception allows parties to present out-of-court statements to the jury or judge without any of the safeguards the judicial system uses to promote honest and accurate testimony. This Article collects and examines much of the scientific evidence bearing on Wigmore’s premise and identifies two paradoxical conclusions that undermine the exception. First, the premise itself is unfounded; science absolutely does not support the notion that a witness is incapable of lying while emotionally …

Juror Assessment Of Certainty About Firearms Identification Evidence, Sarah L. Cooper, Paraic Scanlon

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Why New Hampshire Must Update Rape Shield Laws, Amy Vorenberg

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] “Recent research indicates that New Hampshire has some of the highest rates of sexual assault in the nation; nearly one in four New Hampshire women and one in 20 New Hampshire men will experience sexual assault. Although reporting a crime can be hard for anyone, sexual assault victims have particular reasons for not reporting. After an assault, a rape victim typically feels embarrassment, shame and fears reprisal (most of these crimes are committed by an acquaintance). The deeply personal nature of rape makes it uniquely traumatizing and confusing.”

Bias In Blue: Instructing Jurors To Consider The Testimony Of Police Officer Witnesses With Caution, Vida B. Johnson

Pepperdine Law Review

Jurors in criminal trials are instructed by the judge that they are to treat the testimony of a police officer just like the testimony of any other witness. Fact-finders are told that they should not give police officer testimony greater or lesser weight than any other witness they will hear from at trial. Jurors are to accept that police are no more believable or less believable than anyone else. Jury instructions regarding police officer testimony stand in contrast to the instructions given to jurors when a witness with a legally recognized interest in the outcome of the case has testified. …

Informant Witnesses And The Risk Of Wrongful Convictions, Jessica A. Roth

Articles

Several studies in the last two decades have revealed that false criminal informant testimony is a leading factor in wrongful convictions, along with false confessions, eyewitness misidentification, and faulty forensic science. Although a great deal more remains to be done, many jurisdictions have implemented evidence-based reforms to these last three categories of evidence. Policy about criminal informants, however, seems to be stubbornly stagnant, and relevant social science is virtually nonexistent. This Article questions the relative lack of attention to informant testimony and suggests that the dangers posed by informant testimony are both greater and different than previously thought. Unlike much …

Mind The Analytical Gap! Tracing A Fault Line In Daubert, Susan Haack

Articles

No abstract provided.

Crossing The Line: Daubert, Dual Roles, And The Admissibility Of Forensic Mental Health Testimony, Sara Gordon

Scholarly Works

Psychiatrists and other mental health professionals often testify as forensic experts in civil commitment and criminal competency proceedings. When an individual clinician assumes both a treatment and a forensic role in the context of a single case, however, that clinician forms a dual relationship with the patient—a practice that creates a conflict of interest and violates professional ethical guidelines. The court, the parties, and the patient are all affected by this conflict and the biased testimony that may result from dual relationships. When providing forensic testimony, the mental health professional’s primary duty is to the court, not to the patient, …

The Probative Value Of Testimony From The Hypnotically Refreshed Recollection, Kevin L. Pelanda

Akron Law Review

"The experience of the last three centuries of judicial trials has demonstrated that in disputed issues one cannot depend upon the mere assertion of anybody, however plausible, without scrutiny into its basis." The recent increase in the use of hypnotic memory enhancement on the victims and witnesses of crimes, as well as on defendants' and plaintiffs' witnesses, necessitates an in-depth examination of the reliability of hypnosis as a basis for testimony or statements of persons who are speaking from a hypno-enhanced recollection. Such an examination of hypnosis reveals that hypnotically enhanced memories are likely to be fraught with fantasized and …

Systemic Lying, Julia Simon-Kerr

William & Mary Law Review

This Article offers the foundational account of systemic lying from a definitional and theoretical perspective. Systemic lying involves the cooperation of multiple actors in the legal system who lie or violate their oaths across cases for a consistent reason that is linked to their conception of justice. It becomes a functioning mechanism within the legal system and changes the operation of the law as written. By identifying systemic lying, this Article challenges the assumption that all lying in the legal system is the same. It argues that systemic lying poses a particular threat to the legal system. This means that …

Hiding The Elephant: How The Psychological Techniques Of Magicians Can Be Used To Manipulate Witnesses At Trial, Sydney A. Beckman

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Compensation Conundrum In Partial Takings Cases And The Consequences Of Borough Of Harvey Cedars, Brittany Harrison

Cardozo Law Review de•novo

This Note suggests that the goals the Harvey Cedars court sought to achieve—including reduced windfalls and greater certainty in the law—would best be achieved by applying the market value rule as adopted in California, which follows a value plus damages approach and requires payment for the part taken. Part I of this Note introduces the Harvey Cedars case. Part II provides a historical background to partial takings cases and a discussion of the special benefits doctrine, a type of compensation method that emerged as a compromise position to compensation to better protect condemnees. Part III surveys the various compensation methods …

Diagnosis Dangerous: Why State Licensing Boards Should Step In To Prevent Mental Health Practitioners From Speculating Beyond The Scope Of Professional Standards, Jennifer S. Bard

Utah Law Review

This Article reviews the use of mental health experts to provide testimony on the future dangerousness of individuals who have already been convicted of a crime that qualifies them for the death penalty. Although this practice is common in many states that still retain the death penalty, it most frequently occurs in Texas because of a statute that makes it mandatory for juries to determine the future dangerousness of the defendant they have just found guilty. Both the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association have protested the use of mental health professionals in this setting because there are …

Jack Weinstein And The Missing Pieces Of The Hearsay Puzzle, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

For the first three quarters of the twentieth century, the Wigmore treatise was the dominant force in organizing, setting out, and explaining the American law of evidence. Since then, the first two of those roles have been taken over in large part by the Federal Rules of Evidence (Rules). And the third has been performed most notably by the Weinstein treatise. Judge Jack Weinstein was present at the creation of the Rules and before. Though he first made his name in Civil Procedure, while still a young man he joined two of the stalwarts of evidence law, Edmund Morgan and …

Supreme Court, Bronx County, People V. Paul, Adam D'Antonio

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Virginia's Gap Between Punishment And Culpability: Re-Examining Self-Defense Law And Battered Women's Syndrome, Kendall Hamilton

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.