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Evidence

Justice in America Episode 27: Junk Forensic Science

Josie Duffy Rice and guest co-host Zak Cheney Rice talk with Radley Balko, opinion journalist at the Washington Post and author of The Cadaver and the Country Dentist, about faulty forensic science.

Will the Most Controversial Rule of Evidence be Reformed?

To most, the Federal Rules of Evidence may seem esoteric. But how the rules draw evidentiary boundaries between admissible and inadmissible information matters quite a bit, both for litigants and for our justice system. Federal Rule of Evidence 609 is a case in point. Rule 609 allows attorneys to impeach criminal defendants (and other witnesses) with their […]

Prior Conviction Impeachment: Is Reform Finally Afoot?

At a recent conference of Washington State judges, a panel of experts discussed prohibiting “impeachment by prior conviction” — that is, the practice of attorneys using prior convictions to attack the credibility of witnesses, including criminal defendants. This practice is used in the federal system and in all but three states. In 1963, Kansas enacted a statute prohibiting the […]

Bar complaint filed against former MA Assistant Attorneys General in lab scandal

Recently, a Massachusetts judge took two former prosecutors to task for attempting to cover-up the extent of a massive lab scandal that called into question thousands of drug convictions in the state. Today, a lawyer from the Innocence Project and a Northeastern Law Professor took the rare step of filing bar complaints against those lawyers — Kris Foster and Anne Kaczmarek — previously […]