Evidence Commons^™

The Brady Database, Brandon L. Garrett, Adam M. Gershowitz, Jennifer Teitcher

Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Brady v. Maryland turns sixty this year. The Brady doctrine, which requires the government to disclose favorable and material evidence to the defendant, is one of the most frequently litigated criminal procedure issues. Yet, despite decades of Brady cases in federal and state courts, we still know relatively little about how Brady claims are litigated, adjudicated, and what such claims can tell us about the criminal justice system writ large. Scholars are in the dark about how often Brady violations occur, whether it is primarily the fault of prosecutors or the police, whether violations …

Measuring Jury Perception Of Explainable Machine Learning And Demonstrative Evidence, Rachel Edie Sparks Rogers

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Subjective pattern comparison has been subject to increased scrutiny by the courts and by the general public, resulting in an increased interest in pattern comparison algorithms that provide quantitative assessments of similarity for use by forensic scientists. While these algorithms would mark an improvement over current subjective comparison methods, individuals without a statistical background may struggle with the statistical concepts and language necessary for describing algorithmic methods. If algorithms are to be used, examiners must be able to testify about their use in a way that is accessible to the jury. In a series of studies, we conduct an assessment …

Emotionally Harmed? It Might Not Matter: An Analysis Of Cummings V. Premier Rehab Keller And Its Implications For Title Ii Of The Americans With Disabilities Act Of 1990, Sotir Zhupa

Cardozo Law Review

On April 28, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down an opinion that shocked the disability rights community. In Cummings v. Premier Rehab Keller, P.L.L.C., the Court ruled that compensatory damages for emotional distress may not be recovered by claimants who sue for disability discrimination under section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (section 504) and section 1557 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010..

Cummings involved a woman, Jane Cummings, who is both deaf and legally blind. Because of her disabilities, she communicates through American Sign Language (ASL)—her first and primary language—and cannot communicate …

What's Said In The Booth Never Stays In The Booth: A Comparative Analysis Of The Use Of Rap Lyrics In American And English Criminal Trials, Yekaterina Shrayber

Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

Transparency In Forensic Exams, Dorothy Sims, Chris Dove, Richard Frederick

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Precarious Art Of Classifying Facts, Allison Orr Larsen

Faculty Publications

In their terrific new article, Fact Stripping, Joseph Blocher and Brandon Garrett bring formidable expertise from their respective fields to tackle the inscrutable puzzle of appellate fact review.

[...]

In this short reply I will add to Blocher and Garrett’s illuminating work by exploring a foundational confusion their article exposes. I will first explain why classifying facts as either suitable for trial or not is a very fraught endeavor; I will then argue that this difficulty allows for significant manipulation and the risk of unprincipled application. Finally, I will nod to prior work and forecast future work where I …

Garrity Immunity And The U.S. Armed Forces, Bretton H. Laudeman, Gabriel J. Chin

BYU Law Review

The U.S. military is one of the nation’s largest and most important public employers. Given the unique nature of military service, the service branches have a strong interest in ensuring the integrity of their ranks. Yet the military lacks a critical force-management tool used by every other public employer to investigate workplace misconduct: the ability to demand answers to potentially incriminating questions under Garrity v. New Jersey, 385 U.S. 493 (1967). The Garrity solution, known as “Garrity immunity,” strikes a critical balance between the government’s interests in workplace oversight and accountability with the employee’s Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination by …

Neuropsychological Malingering Determination: The Illusion Of Scientific Lie Detection, Chunlin Leonhard, Christoph Leonhard

Georgia Law Review

Humans believe that other humans lie, especially when stakes are high. Stakes can be very high in a courtroom, from substantial amounts of monetary damages in civil litigation to liberty or life in criminal cases. One of the most frequently disputed issues in U.S. courts is whether litigants are malingering when they allege physical or mental conditions for which they are seeking damages or which would allow them to avoid criminal punishment. Understandably, creating a scientific method to detect lies is very appealing to all persons engaged in lie detection. Neuropsychologists claim that they can use neuropsychological assessment tests (Malingering …

Anything You Say (Or Like, Repost, And Quote) Can Be Used Against You, Alexandra Heyl

Catholic University Law Review

Social media allows users to exchange thoughts and ideas without saying a single word. Whether a user “likes” “reposts” or “quotes” third-party content, a user publicly interacts with content authored by someone else with the click of a button. Is this online activity more akin to a user making a statement, adopting a third-party’s statement, or not making a statement at all? Does it matter? Only certain statements can be used against you at trial. Federal Rule of Evidence (“Federal Rule”) 802(a) provides that “hearsay” is an out-of-court statement offered for the truth of the matter asserted. According to Federal …

The New People V. Collins: How Can Probabilistic Evidence Be Properly Admitted?, David Crump

Maine Law Review

The California Supreme Court’s decision in People v. Collins is a staple in Evidence casebooks. An innovative assistant district attorney in the trial court had presented a mathematician who applied probabilities to questions about the perpetrators’ characteristics. The state supreme court disapproved the injection of an equation featuring what mathematicians call the “product rule.” The opinion contains thank-goodness-we-escaped-that-disaster reasoning and condemnation of this use of mathematics with probabilities. But the court’s analysis probably would be different if the case were decided today, as the “new” People v. Collins. Therefore, this Article considers what the author calls the new People v. …

The Automated Fourth Amendment, Maneka Sinha

Faculty Scholarship

Courts routinely defer to police officer judgments in reasonable suspicion and probable cause determinations. Increasingly, though, police officers outsource these threshold judgments to new forms of technology that purport to predict and detect crime and identify those responsible. These policing technologies automate core police determinations about whether crime is occurring and who is responsible. Criminal procedure doctrine has failed to insist on some level of scrutiny of—or skepticism about—the reliability of this technology. Through an original study analyzing numerous state and federal court opinions, this Article exposes the implications of law enforcement’s reliance on these practices given the weighty interests …

Henderson And The Objective Observer Standard: The Future Of Race-Conscious Standards Post-Students For Fair Admissions, Gabriela Dionisio

Seattle University Law Review

On June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Students for Fair Admissions v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, which struck down race-conscious admissions policies. Within just a year after its ruling, Students for Fair Admissions has already had a sweeping impact, reaching beyond higher education. Although the Supreme Court did not indicate whether Students for Fair Admissions applies to sectors beyond higher education, law firms, and other employers have already modified their diversity policies and initiatives, erasing race and company diversity considerations. Given those dramatic changes, there is growing fear that Students for Fair Admissions …

Same Crime, Different Time: Sentencing Disparities In The Deep South & A Path Forward Under The Fourteenth Amendment, Hailey M. Donovan

Seattle University Law Review

The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. The American obsession with crime and punishment can be tracked over the last half-century, as the nation’s incarceration rate has risen astronomically. Since 1970, the number of incarcerated people in the United States has increased more than sevenfold to over 2.3 million, outpacing both crime and population growth considerably. While the rise itself is undoubtedly bleak, a more troubling truth lies just below the surface. Not all states contribute equally to American mass incarceration. Rather, states have vastly different incarceration rates. Unlike at the federal level, …

Public Primacy In Corporate Law, Dorothy S. Lund

Seattle University Law Review

This Article explores the malleability of agency theory by showing that it could be used to justify a “public primacy” standard for corporate law that would direct fiduciaries to promote the value of the corporation for the benefit of the public. Employing agency theory to describe the relationship between corporate management and the broader public sheds light on aspects of firm behavior, as well as the nature of state contracting with corporations. It also provides a lodestar for a possible future evolution of corporate law and governance: minimize the agency costs created by the divergence of interests between management and …

Robo-Voting: Does Delegated Proxy Voting Pose A Challenge For Shareholder Democracy?, John Matsusaka, Chong Shu

Seattle University Law Review

Robo-voting is the practice by an investment fund of mechanically voting in corporate elections according to the advice of its proxy advisor— in effect fully delegating its voting decision to its advisor. We examined over 65 million votes cast during the period 2008–2021 by 14,582 mutual funds to describe and quantify the prevalence of robo-voting. Overall, 33% of mutual funds robo-voted in 2021: 22% with ISS, 4% with Glass Lewis, and six percent with the recommendations of the issuer’s management. The fraction of funds that robo-voted increased until around 2013 and then stabilized at the current level. Despite the sizable …

The Limits Of Corporate Governance, Cathy Hwang, Emily Winston

Seattle University Law Review

What is the purpose of the corporation? For decades, the answer was clear: to put shareholders’ interests first. In many cases, this theory of shareholder primacy also became synonymous with the imperative to maximize shareholder wealth. In the world where shareholder primacy was a north star, courts, scholars, and policymakers had relatively little to fight about: most debates were minor skirmishes about exactly how to maximize shareholder wealth.

Part I of this Essay discusses the shortcomings of shareholder primacy and stakeholder governance, arguing that neither of these modes of governance provides an adequate framework for incentivizing corporations to do good. …

The Pioneers, Waves, And Random Walks Of Securities Law In The Supreme Court, Elizabeth Pollman

Seattle University Law Review

After the pioneers, waves, and random walks that have animated the history of securities laws in the U.S. Supreme Court, we might now be on the precipice of a new chapter. Pritchard and Thompson’s superb book, A History of Securities Law in the Supreme Court, illuminates with rich archival detail how the Court’s view of the securities laws and the SEC have changed over time and how individuals have influenced this history. The book provides an invaluable resource for understanding nearly a century’s worth of Supreme Court jurisprudence in the area of securities law and much needed context for …

Three Stories: A Comment On Pritchard & Thompson’S A History Of Securities Laws In The Supreme Court, Harwell Wells

Seattle University Law Review

Adam Pritchard and Robert Thompson’s A History of Securities Laws in the Supreme Court should stand for decades as the definitive work on the Federal securities laws’ career in the Supreme Court across the twentieth century.1 Like all good histories, it both tells a story and makes an argument. The story recounts how the Court dealt with the major securities laws, as well the agency charged with enforcing them, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the rules it promulgated, from the 1930s into the twenty-first century. But the book does not just string together a series of events, “one …

On The Value Of History: A Review Of A.C. Pritchard & Robert B. Thompson’S A History Of Securities Law In The Supreme Court, Joel Seligman

Seattle University Law Review

A.C. Pritchard and Bob Thompson have written a splendid history of securities law decisions in the Supreme Court. Their book is exemplary because of its detailed use of the long unpublished papers of Supreme Court justices, including those of Harry Blackmun, William O. Douglas, Felix Frankfurter and Lewis F. Powell, primary sources which included correspondence with other Justices and law clerks as well as interviews with law clerks. The use of these primary sources recounted throughout the text and 67 pages of End Notes deepens our understanding of the intentions of the Justices and sharpens our understanding of the conflicts …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents