The officer gets his overtime. The defendant gets his freedom. But the victim doesn’t get his property back. If someone steals all of the money in my bank account, the police find a paper trail that shows who did it, but the courts suppress the evidence because the evidence was...
We’ve written about the lie-detector uses of fMRI exams before (see here and here).
Now it looks like Brooklyn attorney David Zevin is trying to get it introduced for the first time in a real life court case. (The previous attempt, aimed at using it during sentencing in a San Diego case, was later withdrawn.) It’s an employer-retaliation case, which has devolved into a “he-said/she-said stalemate.” Zevin’s client says she stopped getting good assignments after she complained about sexual harassment. A co-worker says he heard the supervisor give that order, and the supervisor says he never did. So at Zevin’s request, the co-worker underwent an fMRI to see if he’s telling the truth when he says he heard that order.
Needless to say, there is opposition to letting this kind of evidence come in. There’s a pretty good discussion of the whole thing, believe it or not, over at Wired.
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“Why is this case here, except as an opportunity to upset Melendez-Diaz?” So wondered Justice Scalia during oral argument a couple weeks back in the case of Briscoe v. Virginia. For some background, see our previous post on this case here. Briefly, the Supreme Court held last year in Melendez-Diaz...
The “Prosecutor’s Fallacy” is one example of why we think Statistics should be a required course in college. Let’s say the police have the DNA of a rapist. Only 1 in 3,000,000 people chosen at random will match that DNA sample. Your DNA matches. At your trial, the DNA expert...
In October, we reported that functional magnetic resonance imaging (better known as fMRI) is being touted as an honest-to-goodness lie detector. Unlike a polygraph, which required interpretation of physical bodily reactions, an fMRI looks at real-time brain activity to see if brain areas associated with lying are activated during any...
Judge Posner issued a scathing decision yesterday for the 7th Circuit, reversing a jury’s fraud conviction and directing an acquittal. Why? Because the only fraudulent misrepresentations were those of the prosecutor. The decision is great, and we plan to use some of it in our own future arguments. Sadly, it...
First, a recap: Last July, former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens was indicted on seven counts of failing to report gifts he’d received, including renovations to his house in excess of what he’d paid for, but mostly goods and services from oil tycoon Bill Allen. Sen. Stevens pled not guilty, and...
The Bill of Rights, notably Amendments 4-6, protects accused individuals from improper action by the police. The typical remedy for police violation of these rights is suppression of the evidence that would not have been gathered but for the violation. This Exclusionary Rule protects the justice system, by ensuring that...
On Tuesday, the Fifth Circuit ruled on Jeff Skilling’s appeal from his conviction in the Enron case, upholding the conviction, but sending the case back for re-sentencing. Skilling may be able to raise a Brady issue on remand, as well, so the case doesn’t seem to be over. The opinion...
Guilt or innocence, one might say, is all in the mind. After all, there are very few crimes that can be committed without the requisite mens rea, or mental state. If we’re going to punish someone, their acts cannot have been mere accident. We want to know that they had...
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