Monday, April 13, 2015

National Academies reports - Growth of Incarceration

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The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences  (2014), packed with research and analysis from social s...
Thursday, April 9, 2015

Evidence-Based Practice in Criminal Defense

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This interesting paper was recently posted on SSRN: Jennifer E. Laurin, Gideon by the Numbers: The Emergence of Evidence-Based Practice in...
Friday, April 3, 2015

Conviction Reversed Because Expert Testimony re Eyewitness ID Excluded

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Interesting case from New York: Joel Stashenko, Conviction Reversed as Expert Barred from Testifying , N.Y.L.J., April 3, 2015. The case i...

Federal Appellate Brief Word Limit to Change?

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A  proposed change to Rule 32 of the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure  would put appellate briefs on an enforced diet: a principal bri...
Monday, March 23, 2015

Right to Counsel at Bail Hearing?

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The Constitution Project 's National Right to Counsel Committee has produced a new report, Don't I Need a Lawyer? Pretrial Justice...
Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Big-Dollar Judicial Campaigns

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Former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Sue Bell Cobb decries the effect of money on judicial campaigns: I Was Alabama's Top Judge. I'm...

Quality of briefs matters!

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A fascinating study of briefs opposing summary judgment in a particular class of employment discrimination cases—a topic with conflicting ca...
Monday, February 2, 2015

Innocence Movement: Free Online Course / Video Series

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The University of Illinois Springfield offers a free online course on the Innocence Movement beginning today, Feb. 2, 2015. You can regist...
Friday, December 5, 2014

More Follow-up to #Ferguson Forum

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During the forum on Tuesday, there was discussion about why Darren Wilson was not interviewed for a few days after shooting Michael Brown...
Thursday, December 4, 2014

Capital Punishment: Race, Poverty, & Disadvantage—Free Online Course

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Stephen Bright is president and senior counsel at the Southern Center for Human Rights , a public interest law program that deals with hum...
Tuesday, December 2, 2014

UW Law Forum on #Ferguson

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This afternoon attorney Jeffery Robinson led a discussion on the events in Ferguson, MO—the killing of Michael Brown last summer, the grand...
Monday, November 3, 2014

Bryan Stevenson's Memoir, Just Mercy

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Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, AL, and a professor at NYU Law , has written a memoir ab...
Thursday, October 23, 2014

Videos of U.S. Supreme Court Arguments—at Last!

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On the HBO program Last Week Tonight , John Oliver observed that without video Supreme Court oral arguments are pretty dry, even with court...
Thursday, August 7, 2014

Conflicts Among Wash. Court of Appeals Divisions

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Unlike the federal circuits, the Washington Court of Appeals is a "unitary system"—one court that sits in three divisions, not th...
Friday, June 20, 2014

Ethics of Advising Marijuana Users and Businesses

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Under RPC 1.2(d) , a "lawyer shall not counsel a client to engage, or assist a client, in conduct that the lawyer knows is criminal . ....
Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Perceptions of Justice—Olympia, June 9

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The Washington State Minority and Justice Commission presents a half-day program, Perceptions of Justice , reviewing a report on Washington...

Adolescent Brain Development & Juvenile Justice

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The Washington Supreme Court hosted "Looking to the Future: Adolescent Brain Development and the Juvenile Justice System" May 20, ...
Monday, April 28, 2014

Can Lawyers Look up Jurors on Social Media

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Is it permissible for a lawyer to look for information about jurors on social media? A new ABA ethics opinion ( Formal Opinion 466 ) says ye...
Friday, March 28, 2014

What Makes Lawyers Happy?

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What makes lawyers happy? Apparently people want to know, because an article on that topic was the most downloaded paper on SSRN last week. ...

How Damaging Is a Prior Conviction as Impeachment in a Civil Trial?

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Kathryn Stanchi & Deirdre M. Bowen, This is Your Sword: How Damaging are Prior Convictions to Plaintiffs in Civil Trials? , 89 Wash. L. ...

Alaska Bill Would Allow Jury Nullification

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A House bill promoting the notion that jurors can ignore Alaska's criminal code and let a lawbreaking defendant off the hook had a brie...
Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Rap Lyrics as Evidence in a Criminal Case

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Should a jury hear (or read) violent lyrics written by a criminal defendant? Even if they were written years before the crime? The issue has...

Juvenile Justice Resources

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The Models for Change initiative "supports a network of government and court officials, legal advocates, educators, community leaders,...

Top 5 Things to Look for in a Legal Job

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How do you figure out what sort of job to look for? Experienced lawyers and law teachers Jennifer Fan and Deborah Maranville say the main ...

What Female Attorneys Should Wear to Court

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Slate's Amanda Hess observes Female Lawyers Who Dress Too "Sexy" Are Apparently a "Huge Problem" in the Courtroom (M...

Does Allocution Make a Difference?

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The new issue of the Alabama Law Review has an article reporting the results of a survey of federal district judges about allocution in sen...
Friday, March 21, 2014

How Female Lawyers Dress

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Slate's Amanda Hess observes Female Lawyers Who Dress Too "Sexy" Are Apparently a "Huge Problem" in the Courtroom (M...
Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Juvenile Justice Resources

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The Models for Change initiative "supports a network of government and court officials, legal advocates, educators, community leaders,...
Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Measuring Criminal Defense Attorneys' Competence

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If you were running a public defender office, wouldn't you want to know which lawyers were getting the best results for the clients? And...
Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Predicting Erroneous Convictions

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What causes criminal trials to go wrong? This new article attempts to answer: Jon B. Gould et al., Predicting Erroneous Convictions , 99 Iow...

Rap Lyrics as Evidence of Crime

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Should a jury hear (or read) violent lyrics written by a criminal defendant? Even if they were written years before the crime? The issue has...
Monday, January 20, 2014

Jurors Have a Hard Time Resisting Call of the Web

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After a five-week trial, Judge Mary E. Roberts Judge Mary E. Roberts (UW Law '84) Photo from King County Superior Court faced a t...
1 comment:
Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Free Webcasts from NITA

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NITA (the National Institute for Trial Advocacy) offers a free webcast in a couple of weeks: Bad Facts in Your Case? Using theme and theory ...
Friday, December 27, 2013

U.S. Chamber Targets "Lawsuit Abuse"

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The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is one of the strongest voices decrying what it says is Americans' overreliance on litigation, operating i...
Friday, July 19, 2013

Crime Stats and Google

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An economist has been mining Google search data to learn more about crime, particularly for crimes that are underreported. Seth Stephens-Dav...
Saturday, July 13, 2013

Witness Testifying Via Skype

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Weekend Edition this morning included this: Witness in Zimmerman Case Testifies by Skype Two problems arise with the new technology: The wit...
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Friday, July 12, 2013

Judge Texts Hint to Prosecutor

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A judge in Texas thought of a helpful line of questioning for the prosecution and texted a note to another prosecutor, asking her to pass it...
1 comment:
Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Calling Home Is Expensive

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Most prisons charge inmates such high rates that " a phone call from an inmate across town may be ten times more expensive than ringing...
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Thursday, June 6, 2013

Drug Dogs Going Back to School

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Reflecting the change in Washington State law making it legal for adults to possess small amounts of marijuana and use it in private, some l...
1 comment:
Sunday, June 2, 2013

Crazy—Book About Mentally Ill in the Criminal Justice System

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Spurred by his son's mental illness and prosecution for breaking into a neighbor's house while he was delusional, journalist Pete Ea...