Articles Posted in Evidence

Captain John S. Reid, as this “Is It Hearsay? A Practical Primer,” in 43 The Reporter, No. 2 (2016), for a quick and good review of the various hearsay rules.  

The Army legal websites are back en clair, having been unavailable to the public for about five to six weeks.  Of course, they came back up just as the AFCCA and CAAF were going dark.  Anyway. United States v. Commisso, No. 20140205 (A. Ct. Crim. App. 29 April 2016), has…

In United States v. Mercier, __ M.J. __, No. 20160318 (C.G. Ct. Crim. App. Mar. 18, 2016) the court denied a Government interlocutory appeal of a military judge’s ruling that found that a specification was improperly referred and dismissed the specification without prejudice. This would seem to be a perfect…

We all laugh at TV shows and movies which we think of as fantasy.  The CSI shows, NCIS, JAG, among .  We ..get a laugh out of them.  But reality may make you cry. Nathan J. Robinson, Forensic Pseudoscience: The Unheralded Crisis of Criminal Justice.  Boston Review, November 16, 2015. This past April,…

“[I]t is relatively straightforward for an innocent person’s DNA to be inadvertently transferred to surfaces that he or she has never come into contact with. This could place people at crime scenes that they had never visited or link them to weapons they had never handled.” In discussing United States…

Because of the current politics surrounding sexual assaults in the military, some are wondering what they can do in advance to avoid a later false claim of sexual assault.  This has lead to a suggestion that the interactions should be video recorded, the idea being that the recording will later…

(W)e seem to be on an endless quest to unmask the deceiver. This is easier said than done. The research is surprising. Even the professionals aren’t very good at catching people in a lie. When we do catch a lie, it’s often not for the reasons you may expect. There…

We do a lot of military sexual assault cases with alcohol involved.  It is not unusual for a complaining witness to claim they were drunk, blacked out and didn’t consent. First, if blacked out they can’t know they didn’t consent–it’s impossible if they were blacked out, rather than them exhibiting a…

Several relevant items for you this weekend. Orin Kerr has this post at The Volokh Conspiracy. In part: Computer searches usually happen in two stages. Agents take the computer, make a mirror image copy of its hard drive on a government storage device, and then search the image. Officers do this…

The NMCCA has issued an interesting published opinion on a government appeal. United States v. Rios.  From the opinion. The appellee is currently facing trial by special court-martial on numerous charges regarding larceny from the Marine Corps Exchange (MCX) on Camp Pendleton, California. He is alleged to have conspired with…