Wrongful convictions; eyewitness error; DNA exonerations. These are the exciting and popularly-acclaimed aspects of criminal defense – preventing or correcting the error of someone being wrongfully accused or imprisoned for an act that never occurred or was committed by someone else. But focusing on those cases ignores the primary role invoked by the Sixth Amendment
There was much to look forward to when a new textbook on trial advocacy, by two experienced women lawyers, was released: new voices, more prominence for women advocates, and [hopefully] the latest in multi-disciplinary insights to teaching and performing the art of litigation. And the promotional material for Camille Abate’s and Kathleen Mullin’s ADVOCACY EXCELLENCE
Lawyers need to train their experts? Well, sort of. Experts need no training in their subject matter, but they may and often do need guidance in preparing for report-writing, depositions, and trial. And there may be no better guide than the succinct ABA publication HOW TO TRAIN YOUR EXPERT: MAKING YOUR CLIENT’S CASE. Written as
There can be no doubt that Stephen Saltzburg knows his way around a courtroom, and his way around the Federal Rules of Evidence, too. This prowess is on full display in the fourth edition of Trial Tactics, released by the ABA earlier this year. Trial Tactics takes Saltzburg’s columns from the ABA’s “Criminal Justice” magazine,
Where do I stand? When should I move – my location, my arms? Is this much eye contact too much eye contact? How loud should I get, and when? And in all of this, where is the line between communicating effectively and being seen as histrionic or manipulative? Those are among the questions FOOLPROOF is
This book might be titled, alternatively, JUDGING JUDGES or JUDGES JUDGE THEMSELVES. It is a text I was prepared to discount as self-serving – judges writing about some of the “hardest decisions they’ve ever made” according to the cover’s blurb. I was wrong. This is a mostly remarkable collection of essays, each from one
Motions – pre-trial, mid-trial – are where the edge is gained in litigation. Said more powerfully, the lawyer who understands and excels in motions practice – narrowing the claims, restricting or amplifying the admissible proof and how it is to be considered – is the lawyer who controls the litigation and is better positioned
THE JURY CRISIS is subtitled “What’s Wrong With Jury Trials and How Can We Save Them.” Yet the value of this book is not in its assessment of anything “wrong” with jury trials but instead in its deep and rich understanding of how jurors [and judges] make decisions and what advocates can do with that
This book is aptly subtitled “A true story of injustice in the American south.” Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington take the reader to the backwaters of Mississippi and the tale of the local medical examiner who somehow conducted 3 to 4 times as many autopsies per year as any pathologist should (or even could) and
The theme of this exceptionally useful book is simple but essential – as the number of trials plummets, the importance of the deposition as a tool to secure a favorable non-trial disposition increases exponentially. The TUTORIAL is the ultimate guide on how to rethink the deposition and still have it in hand if the case