The more a trial is based on live witness testimony, the more it is an exercise in assessing (and sometimes only guessing) whether memory equals fact. What has been written about eyewitness identification testimony – that “ in light of the malleable nature of memory, the effectiveness of scrutinising identification evidence at trial is dependent
The return of death sentences by the jury was inevitable in the case of Dylann Roof, who was on trial for killing nine black churchgoers during a Bible study in Charleston, S.C. But no one – fan or foe of capital punishment – should take comfort in how this came about; and an understanding
The adage “but I’ve always done it that way” is proof only of consistency and not of correctness. Yet there are hundreds if not thousands of lawyers who approach trials with little grasp of advocacy fundamentals and instead ‘try it the way I always have’ [or ‘try it the way others before me have’].
While judges believe the Rules of Evidence are their tools for controlling lawyers, I have always believed and taught that knowledge of the Rules is what permits lawyers to control the courtroom. This is true in at least two regards. Because the litigation process is adversarial, it is the lawyer who addresses evidence claims in
Lawyers regularly move, pre-trial, to exclude evidence. Shouldn’t the same approach be used to ensure inclusion of proof? The answer should be “of course,” but I recently came across a contrary view – one that is dead wrong. A Judge [yes, a sitting judge] gave the following advice – “A motion in limine should
That eyewitnesses make errors – errors of a catastrophic nature that can send an innocent person to jail for decades or even face a sentence of death – cannot be doubted. As confirmed by the INNOCENCE PROJECT, “[e]yewitness misidentification is the greatest contributing factor to wrongful convictions proven by DNA testing, playing a role in
What does the President of the United States have to do with forensic science? Answering that could take one, indirectly, back to Abraham Lincoln, who signed the legislation that led to the creation of the National Academy of Sciences. The NAS, in 2009, issued a report that called into question the validity and precision
Advice on a listserve can be like medical, ‘scientific’ or political information on the internet – of questionable accuracy and dubious value. Yet listserves persist and advice-givers proceed apace, sometimes requiring a cooler/older ‘head’ to intervene. Such was the case on a criminal defense listserve, where a lawyer sought advice on how to impeach
Until reading JURY TRIALS: OUTSIDE IN (NITA, 2016) by psychologist Melissa Gomez, I was more than skeptical regarding the value of jury consultants. And I was not alone. As of 2005, “[a]lthough jury consultants claim high success rates, little research ha[d] been conducted on the actual effect jury consultants have in the outcome of a
The great jazz trumpeter Miles Davis recorded his classic Seven Steps to Heaven in 1963, with no explanation as to why this was the number of steps needed to ascend. He just laid down a seven beat, seven note structure and the music flew. Well, perhaps there are an equal number of steps to “hearsay heaven,”