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
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