After 300+ exonerations, and the attraction to forensics engendered by television series, one might think that the recovery of DNA at a crime scene – DNA that does *not* match the defendant – would quickly lead to acquittal. The contrary has occurred, however, particularly where a ‘good story’ to ‘explain’ the foreign DNA is told.
I [Grant] have been teaching again in my Advanced Trial Advocacy class on Patsy Rodenburg’s book, The Second Circle, and decided this month that I would dovetail a bit with Jules’s excellent post last month on how the voice persuades.[1] While this month’s post isn’t necessarily about new research, my hope is that you find
Consider an argument you made to your jury just before they deliberate and hand you your hard-fought victory. Did you persuade them or did you convince them? Perhaps you just dissuaded them from finding for the other side. However, if you dissuaded them, why can’t you also say that you dis-convinced them? Or disvinced them?
INTRODUCTION: This author was recently asked to submit a DECLARATION affidavit as to whether the science of perception, memory and recall – the study that informs eyewitness expert testimony and helps police improve the collection and preservation of critical evidence – is a “forensic” science. The nomenclature was important – in the jurisdiction where the
We have all seen it. We have all seen the lawyer or the student so involved with her notes or his script that they seem to have uncoupled from the courtroom itself. I take that moment to study the faces of the jury. What are they doing while the scribe at the podium has a
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