Court-Martial Trial Practice Blog

Here is a link to Orin Kerr’s review of Fourth Amendment cases from the 2011 SCOTUS term.

Justice Scalia’s new book, “Reading Law:  The Interpretation of Legal Texts,” is available. Here’s the puff piece from Amazon. In this groundbreaking book by best-selling authors Justice Antonin Scalia and Bryan A. Garner, all the most important principles of constitutional, statutory, and contractual interpretation are systematically explained in an engaging…

To paraphrase CMTG, Military (Federal) Rule of Evidence 801(d)(1) provides that A statement is not hearsay if: 1.  The declarant testifies and is subject to cross-examination about a prior statement. 2.  The declarant testified under oath at a prior “hearing” or “or proceeding.” 3.  The prior statement is inconsistent with…

This is an academic book written in a very accessible style with limited jargon and lots of information as to what advocacy lore is supported (and what is not supported) by the research literature. The book covers a wide variety of topics: attorney demeanor, attorney verbal communication as well as…

The July issue of The Jury Expert is now on-line.  There are several items of interest to the trial practitioner. I was always told: Tell ‘em what you’re going to tell ‘em; Tell ‘em; Tell ‘em what you told ‘em; Sit down. But now there’s a different perspective about what…

In trial of defendant for sexually abusing two minors, the admissibility of evidence that victims had made false accusation of sexual abuse against others was admissible, not under FRE 403, FRE 412, or 608(b), but rather under the Sixth Amendment Right to Confrontation, in United States v. Frederick, 683 F.3d…

Impeachment with conviction. Mil. R. Evid. 609(b) issues of impeachment with a prior conviction rarely come up at court-martial.  But if there were to be a prior conviction there may be some interpretation necessary.  So parsing several posts of Prof. Colin Miller the Great at Evidence Prof Blog, here we…

As of July 1, the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services has promulgated new model policies regarding eyewitness identification, including photo line-ups, following a study that was done showing how many mistaken IDs there are. By statute, all police departments are required to have a policy regarding both live and…

To Err is Human: Using Science to Reduce Mistaken Eyewitness Identifications Through Police Lineups by Maureen McGough Solving Sexual Assaults: Finding Answers Through Research by Nancy Ritter

The Importance of James Otis Thomas K. Clancy West Virginia University College of Law; University of Mississippi School of Law July 17, 2012 Mississippi Law Journal, Vol. 82, 2012 Abstract: Historical analysis remains a fundamentally important tool to interpret the words of the Fourth Amendment and no historical event is…