In a recent (October, 2019) manslaughter trial in Philadelphia, the jury heard a lot about the victim, information not limited to conduct at the time of the fight that led to his death. The jury heard, as an early defense witness, a bartender from Florida. Although the death occurred in 2018, the jury heard about
The joke for criminal defense lawyers, such as it is, is the response to the question “how do you represent guilty people?” The answer/punchline is “that’s easy; it’s representing someone who is actually innocent that causes nightmares.” You may ‘lose the case,’ but your client loses freedom. As the original trial lawyer for Willie Veasy,
Monthly LEXIS updates under the search term “primacy w/2 recency” produced a hit recently from a California guide on defending Drunk Driving cases. Here is what it claimed: Traditional wisdom had it that the best approach in Opening was to not present one, or at the very least to reserve the Opening. Studies of primacy and recency have convinced
A GUEST COLUMN BY PROFESSOR SARA JACOBSON This Fall I helped conduct a trial advocacy training in a major metropolitan city on the East Coast. It’s a training I’ve helped with off and on for over a decade, an advanced training geared toward lawyers who already have courtroom experience. We were using the same NITA
On September 11, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court heard argument in two cases raising a challenge to the death penalty process in this Commonwealth as so dysfunctional as to violate the Pennsylvania Constitution. It will decide first whether to exercise its King’s Bench authority and hear the substantive claims; and if so whether the system is
It is arrogant to claim that what happens in the United States is the best – or here, worst – in the world. But the following transcript excerpt displays such a deficient performance that it may be fair to claim the title of “world’s worst,” and certainly lawyers in other countries would be happy to
Much has been written about story-telling, and the use of stories to frame issues at trial. Two discrete documents – one a new law review article about story-telling versus scientific fact; the second a classic psychology text from 1932, describing an experiment where people read and then recalled a Native American story called “The War
The dilemma is simple, the law growing more complex. A prosecutor wants to tell a rich and complete story, and asks the Officer or Detective how or why a suspect came to be arrested, or even how a person became the focus of police scrutiny or came to be in a photo array. Yet eliciting
Pennsylvania Courts still struggle with the 803(3) state of mind hearsay exception The day a woman died, a note was found on her day planner in her handwriting that read “”If something happens to me – JOE.” Needless to say, “Joe” ended up charged with murder. And in upholding the admission of the note
“The DNA profile from the crime scene shares the same alleles as the DNA from the accused.” That is a statement of fact or an expert opinion, but whatever it is it is not lay opinion. “I ride bicycles a lot. When the brake pads start to wear down, it’s riskier to ride in the