So after catching one of the guys thought to have committed the Boston Marathon bombing (and a string of violent acts thereafter), the government said they weren’t going to read him his rights. Not just yet. Invoking the “public safety exception” to the Miranda rule, they said they wanted a...
Last month, we wrote a piece here on reasons why innocent people wind up confessing to crimes they didn’t commit. It’s a horrible thought, yet it happens far too often. (For tips on defending cases involving a confession, see our CLE lecture over at West Legal Ed Center.) Anyway, there’s a...
The blawgosphere was atwitter recently over that Kentucky murder trial where the defendant had confessed, but claimed it was a false confession, due to “sleep-deprived psychosis” from drinking too much coffee. The jury didn’t buy it (here’s a short article on it). Did that case remind anyone else of this...
It should come as no surprise to anyone with any experience in criminal law that perfectly innocent people will sometimes confess to crimes they did not commit. Perhaps they were in a suggestible state, and the police led them to believe they’d done it. Maybe they were broken by the...
For as long as we can remember, the word on the street has always been that cops cannot lie. So if you’re doing a drug deal with an undercover cop, and you ask him point blank if he’s a police officer, then he has to tell you the truth. He...
The Supreme Court heard a very important argument this week in the case of Maryland v. Shatzer. It was one of those situations where the oral argument makes a huge difference in the outcome of the case. We read the briefs earlier this month, and remarked to colleagues that both...
The Supreme Court ruled this morning that a confession obtained in violation of the 6th Amendment right to counsel is still admissible on cross-examination to impeach a defendant who testified that someone else did it. Writing for the 7-2 majority in Kansas v. Ventris today was the always-entertaining Justice Scalia....
We admit it: we like to skip to the Scalia dissent. Not because we necessarily agree with his philosophy of jurisprudence. But because it’s a good bet to be an entertaining read. Whether he’s dissenting from an expansive activist or a fellow limited-role jurist, he’s good for a bit of...
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