Evidence Commons^™

The Supreme Court Rules On Statements Against Interest, Michael M. Martin

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Death And Transfiguration Of Frye, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

The rule of Frye v. United States was seventy years old, and had long dominated American law on the question of how well established a scientific principle must be for it to provide the basis for expert testimony. Even after the passage of the Federal Rules of Evidence, several of the federal circuits, as well as various states, purported to adhere to Frye's "general acceptance" standard. But now, unanimously, briefly, and with no apparent angst, the United States Supreme Court has held in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. that the Frye rule is incompatible with the Federal Rules.

Daubert's Significance, Thomas G. Field Jr., Colleen M. Keegan

RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002)

The authors review and note the limited reach of Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals. They also address its implications for concerned non-lawyers.

Burdens Of Proof, Jose E. Alvarez

Michigan Journal of International Law

Review of the book Fact-Finding Before International Tribunals edited by Richard B. Lillich

Case Preparation: The Expert Witness’ Role, Bruce E. Kroeker

Uncovering the Hidden Resource: Groundwater Law, Hydrology, and Policy in the 1990s (Summer Conference, June 15-17)

9 pages.

Galileo's Revenge: Junk Science In The Courtroom, John F. Baughman

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Galileo's Revenge: Junk Science in the Courtroom by Peter W. Huber

Infinite Strands, Infinitesimally Thin: Storytelling, Bayesianism, Hearsay And Other Evidence, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

David Schum has long been one of our keenest commentators on questions of inference and proof. He has been particularly interested in, and illuminating on, the subject of "cascaded," or multi-step, inference.' This is a subject of importance to lawyers, because most evidence at trial can be analyzed in terms of cascaded inference. Usually, the proposition that the fact finder2 might immediately infer from the evidence is not itself an element of a crime, claim, or defense. Most often, an extra inference would be required to jump from that proposition to a proposition that the law deems material. Thus, inference …

Toward A Partial Economic, Game-Theoretic Analysis Of Hearsay, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

In this Article, I offer a fundamentally different and nondoctrinaire way of approaching hearsay questions. In brief, I take the view that the resolution of a hearsay dispute, when the declarant is not on the stand, is essentially a matter of deciding who should bear the burden of producing the declarant, or more precisely, how courts should allocate that burden. Adopting a simple procedural improvement, concerning the examination of the declarant if she is produced as a witness, allows the court to allocate the burden optimally. If live testimony by the declarant would be more probative than prejudicial, then most …

Telling Tales In Court: Trial Procedure And The Story Model, Richard O. Lempert

Articles

There are three ways in which stories may figure prominently at trials. First, litigants may tell stories to jurors. Not only is there some social science evidence that this happens, but trial lawyers have an instinctive sense that this is what they do. Ask a litigator to describe a current case and she is likely to reply, "Our story is ... " Second, jurors may try to make sense of the evidence they receive by fitting it to some story pattern. If so, the process is likely to feed back on itself. That is, jurors are likely to build a …

The Admissibility Of Hypnotically Enhanced Testimony In Criminal Trials, Gary Shaw

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Fourth, Fifth, And Sixth Amendments, William E. Hellerstein

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

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 …

Improving The Procedure For Resolving Hearsay Issues, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

In this article, I propose two changes in the way hearsay issues are usually resolved. First, in some circumstances courts should divide the burdens of producing the declarant-for example, by imposing the physical burden on the proponent and the financial burden on the opponent. Second, no matter how the declarant is produced as a witness, she should ordinarily testify as part of the proponent's case, subject to cross-examination by the opponent. If the declarant does become a witness, the admissibility of her out-of-court statement should not be resolved until her current testimony about the underlying events is received.

The Conflict Concerning Expert Witness And Legal Conclusions, Charles W. Ehrhardt

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Impeachment Of Witnesses: Part Ii, Paul C. Giannelli

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Impeachment Of Witnesses: Part I, Paul C. Giannelli

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Balancing The Right To Confrontation And The Need To Protect Child Sexual Abuse Victims: Are Statutes Authorizing Televised Testimony Serving Their Purpose?, Kimberley Seals Bressler

Seattle University Law Review

This Comment begins by providing a brief outline of the procedures regulating the use of televised testimony. Next, against the larger backdrop of the history of the right to confrontation, Part III addresses the treatment of televised testimony as hearsay. This section presents a recent Maryland decision as an illustration of the undesirable analogy of televised testimony to hearsay that leads to a more difficult admission standard. Part III concludes with the argument that televised testimony is the functional equivalent of in-court testimony, and thus, a hearsay analysis is inappropriate. Part IV of this Comment presents a recent Supreme Court …

The Admissibility Of Former Testimony Under Rule 804(B)(1): Defining A Predecessor In Interest, Mark Lawrence

University of Miami Law Review

No abstract provided.

Growing Disenchantment With Hypnotic Means Of Refreshing Witness Recall, Michael J. Beaudine

Vanderbilt Law Review

Society has developed several uses for the psychological phenomenon known as hypnosis.' These uses, mostly medical in nature, include substituting for anesthesia and treating pain, anxiety, phobias, and allergies. Not surprisingly, some professional athletes have turned to hypnosis for better success on the playing field. While the scientific and medical communities generally have accepted these uses, controversy has arisen over the use of hypnosis in legal proceedings to refresh the memory of a witness who testifies later in court. The use of hypnosis for investigating crimes began in the early 1970s when law enforcement agencies and police departments formed the …

The Ultimate Violation, Todd Maybrown

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Ultimate Violation by Judith Rowland

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 …

Eyewitness Identifications And Expert Testimony, Paul C. Giannelli

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Unavailability And Admissibility: Are A Child's Out-Of-Court Statements About Sexual Abuse Admissible If The Child Does Not Testify At Trial?, Joellen S. Mccomb

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Loss Of Innocence: Eyewitness Identification And Proof Of Guilt, Samuel R. Gross

Articles

It is no news that eyewitness identification in criminal cases is a problem; it is an old and famous problem. Judges and lawyers have long known that the identification of strangers is a chancy matter, and nearly a century of psychological research has confirmed this skeptical view. In 1967 the Supreme Court attempted to mitigate the problem by regulating the use of eyewitness identification evidence in criminal trials; since then it has retreated part way from that effort. Legal scholars have written a small library of books and articles on this problem, the courts' response to it, and various proposed …

The Subversion Of The Hearsay Rule: The Residual Hearsay Exceptions, Circumstantial Guarantees Of Trustworthiness, And Grand Jury Testimony, Randolph N. Jonakait

Articles & Chapters

Under the Federal Rules of Evidence, hearsay is generally prohibited, being admitted only when it falls within a limited class of specific hearsay exceptions. Two general hearsay exceptions were, however, engrafted onto the list of specific ones to allow the courts to confront new and unforseen hearsay problem Lower courts have interpreted these "residual" or "catchall" exceptions differently.

This Article analyzes judicial interpretations of the residual exceptions in cases considering the admissibility of grandjury testimony. The author initially discusses the traditional hearsay approach and reviews the legislative history of the residual exceptions. He then analyzes Fourth Circuit cases considering the …

I Cannot Tell A Lie: The Standard For New Trial In False Testimony Cases, Daniel Wolf

Michigan Law Review

This Note examines the question of what standard should be used for granting a new trial when a defendant's conviction is alleged to have been based, at least in part, on false testimony. Part I demonstrates the failure of the existing standards to strike a satisfactory balance between defendants' rights and the efficient administration of the criminal justice system. Part II argues that motions for retrial based upon false testimony should be governed by a standard drawn not only from newly discovered evidence cases generally, but also from cases involving prosecutorial misconduct. Finally, Part III suggests that the proper test …

The Admissibility Of Prior Silence To Impeach The Testimony Of Criminal Defendants, Rex A. Sharp

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Note focuses on whether a defendant who was called as a witness at the prior, severed trial of a codefendant and refused to testify by invoking the fifth amendment can subsequently be impeached by this silence at his own trial. In addition to the obvious implications this issue has for severed criminal trials, the factors considered when deciding whether impeachment by silence should be allowed generally are in sharpest focus in this factual setting. Thus, the analysis of the constitutional and evidentiary questions this Note enlists to argue that impeachment by silence in this context is permissible applies as …

Commissioning Morallity: An Introduction To The Symposium, Alan J. Weisbard, John D. Arras

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Legal Psychology: Eyewitness Testimony--Jury Behavior, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Legal Psychology: Eyewitness Testimony--Jury Behavior by L. Craig Parker

Admission Of An Unavailable Witness’ Grand Jury Testimony: Can It Be Justified?, Judd Burstein

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.