Like “reading the white space” on a police report (that is, focusing on what is NOT included), the “missing evidence” jury instruction “essentially creates evidence from non-evidence.”
Everything you need to know about clearing, expunging or sealing your criminal record in anticipation of background check for employment, adoption, immigration, volunteer opportunity or gun license.
Words in the law do not always mean what their dictionary definitions say they mean. With respect to a prior consistent statement, for example, it is not really, as suggested by the rule, that such a statement must be offered to rebut a charge of “recent fabrication.” Instead, it is “only that the alleged contrivance be closer to the trial …
A court accepts a well-known and indisputable fact without taking the time and trouble of requiring a party to prove it. What could be more straightforward, more commonsensical, than that? As McCormick puts it, the “oldest and plainest ground for judicial notice is that the fact is so commonly known in the community as to make it unprofitable to require …
Motive. It is really big on TV shows. At the same time, if you listen to Wayne LaFave, it is completely irrelevant when it comes to substantive criminal law: The government is not required to prove motive in order to secure a conviction. The New Oxford American dictionary defines “motive” as “a reason for doing something, esp. one that is …
Translated into English, actus no facit reum nisi mens sit rea means that “an act does not make one guilty unless his mind is guilty.” In other words, it is not enough for the government to prove a physical part of a crime; that is, an act or an omission to act. The government must also prove a mental part …
You are sitting in a legally parked car on the side of the road minding your own business when a police car pulls in directly behind you and activates its overhead lights. How many people would feel that they were perfectly free to drive away at this point? Anybody? Anybody at all? Because this is the standard for determining whether …
Police questioning results in “testimonial” evidence if the primary purpose of the interrogation is “to establish or prove past events potentially relevant to later criminal prosecution.”
Police officers fail to preserve a critical piece of evidence, in this case a video recording taken of the incident in question. The defendant moves for sanctions. In opposing this motion, the government argues that the defendant’s arguments about what the recording contained is speculative. The court agrees. Am I missing something here? Without the opportunity to have actually watched …
One of my favorite episodes from the old T.V. show “All In The Family” involved a situation in which an African-American repairman came to the Bunker household to fix a kitchen appliance. Archie Bunker, the right-wing bigot, and his leftist, hippie son-in-law each remembered the incident differently, and the show began with two flashbacks in which each man re-told the …