You may be familiar with the quote: In every case involving [state your poison], we are confronted with relativity and the degree to which such conduct may have affected the substantial rights of the defendant. It is better to follow the rules than to try to undo what has been…
Here is an observation by federalevidence.com: One issue raised by the new case concerns whether a majority of the Court still supports the Confrontation Clause analysis established under Crawford v. Washington in 2004, and Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts in 2009. Two Justices who voted in the majority (John Paul Stevens and…
This report from Savannah.now questions why expert payments within the 3ID claimancy take so long. The military judge also questioned why experts for the defense continue to have difficulties obtaining payments for work done on Bozicevich’s behalf as attorneys prepare for a February 2011 capital court-martial trial. The humor is…
United States v. Douglas. This is a UCI case. The military judge found UCI and then crafted a remedy. The issue on appeal related to the appropriateness of the remedy and whether or not the appellant had accepted the remedy and actively participated in the remedy. The AFCCA decision was…
Here is a link to the full cert petition in Pendergrass v. Indiana. The question presented is: Whether the Confrontation Clause permits the prosecution to introduce testimonial statements of a nontestifying forensic analyst through the in-court testimony of a supervisor or other person who did not perform or observe the…
Does it exist or not. Here are a couple of news articles about a pending case in Fairfax, VA. Shaken baby syndrome itself is put on trial in Fairfax court Shaken-baby syndrome at center of Fairfax trial
I have done several posts on this blog (here, here, here, here, and here) about the inaccuracy of regular and cross-racial eyewitness identifications and whether expert testimony about this inaccuracy should be allowed. My general sense is that most courts allow such expert testimony although a decent number of courts,…
Before we place too much faith in police sponsored and monitored laboratories, here is a word of caution. The New York State Police’s supervision of a crime laboratory was so poor that it overlooked evidence of pervasively shoddy forensics work, allowing an analyst to go undetected for 15 years as…