The below advice was developed for a lecture to Temple trial team members as work to ‘up our game’ in various aspects of courtroom advocacy. The advice, with minimal modification, is also useful for practicing attorneys. Why concentrate on the opening statement? It is where we are judged first, and our performance shapes how
Given that the Rules of Evidence were developed without regard to, or prior to the development of, principles of cognitive science, one might expect courts to use scientific research to mediate those rules and, especially, to inform the exercise of discretion. But as two divergent lines of cases show, although each involves how a visual
Eyewitness testimony—seen more as the staple of state court trials rather than federal, more often the subject of focus in criminal trials than in civil litigation—is, in fact, ubiquitous. For federal courts, it is involved in trials and in review of state court convictions, particularly on habeas. The prominence of eyewitness testimony, and the
In a world of Covid-19 infection, prisoners and pretrial detainees are out of sight and, to too many, out of mind. Perhaps in recognition of that phenomenon, the Philadelphia Bar’s Criminal Justice Section named Assistant Defender Thomas Innes as the recipient of its annual Thurgood Marshall Award. Mr. Innes is Director of Prisoner Services with
The below article is a guest-authored piece to which the host of this BLOG contributed. The other authors are Michael Cherry, Edward J. Imwinkelreid, Jack King, Philip Mause and Elven Riley. It identifies advances in two areas of science and raises concerns of what the consequences may be when science and technology advance but courts,
It is conventional wisdom that a story of actual innocence – there was no crime, the wrong person is on trial, the accused acted in self-defense – is the preferred modality in criminal cases. Why? An argument of ‘they can’t prove it beyond a reasonable doubt’ may come across like a schoolyard taunt – my
The stronger and more compelling the case against a criminal defendant, the more cohesive the picture of guilt painted by the prosecution in opening statement, the more defense counsel must have something coherent to say in response – an alternate story, a more complete story, or an attack on the veracity and integrity of the
It is rare if ever that a proffered expert will be deemed so unqualified as to be precluded from testifying. Why? The threshold for expertise is decidedly low. To use the Pennsylvania test, “[t]o qualify as an expert witness, a witness need only have a reasonable pretension to specialized knowledge, on a subject for which expert
Do mask-wearing witnesses deprive criminal defendants of their right of Confrontation? Does impairing the ability of jurors and lawyers to fully assess ‘demeanor’ result in less reliable trials? Can jury selection be fair of prospective jurors’ faces are covered? Or is this all a Shakespearean “much ado about nothing” because we – the great majority
Does science support a firearms and toolmark expert from saying anything more than that “the firearm may have fired the recovered casing…? Not ‘it came from this gun and no other,’ or ‘casings from the crime scene and from test fires of the suspect’s gun match,’ but a much more calibrated and restricted conclusion, evidence that is