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Thought Police?
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,...
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Can Skilling Get a New Trial?
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...
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Justices Miss the Point of the Exclusionary Rule
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...
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More Allegations of Prosecutorial Misconduct in Sen. Ted Stevens Case
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,...
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Food Fraud Prosecutors Caught Selling Snake Oil
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...
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First Attempt to Admit MRI Lie Detector Evidence in Court
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...
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Ninth Circuit Bungles Math, Can the Supremes Fix It?
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...
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Supreme Court Smackdown
“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,...
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Lie-Detecting MRI to be Used at Trial?
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...
View ArticleQ&A Roundup Part 4
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...
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