Few figures illustrate the future-dangerousness problem more clearly than Dr. James Grigson, the Texas psychiatrist known as “Doctor Death.” Grigson was notorious not simply because he testified for the prosecution, but because of what he told juries. He repeatedly claimed that defendants were incurable sociopaths and that there was a “one hundred percent and absolute”…
Courts cannot evaluate trial errors without imagining what should have happened instead. That is easy to overlook, but it is central to claims involving prosecutorial misconduct, suppressed evidence, ineffective assistance of counsel, and other trial defects. The Richard Glossip case shows why this matters. At Glossip’s second murder trial, the prosecution’s case depended heavily on…
Coerced confessions are dangerous evidence. They can appear powerful to jurors even when they are unreliable, and they can distort the jury’s understanding of the entire case. For that reason, courts must take coerced confession evidence seriously. But not every improperly admitted confession changes the outcome of a trial. The case of Texas v. Bobby…
Some trial errors are obviously harmful. Others are obviously harmless. The hardest cases fall in between. Arizona v. Fulminante is one of those cases. The U.S. Supreme Court held that the admission of Fulminante’s coerced confession was subject to harmless error analysis, but that the error was not harmless in his case. The decision became…
Jury instructions are not just formal language read at the end of trial. They tell jurors what legal standard governs the case. When the instructions change, the same facts may produce a different verdict. The Commonwealth v. Berkowitz trial provides a useful example. The case involved a rape prosecution in Pennsylvania where the victim did…
Jury instructions matter because they tell jurors what legal rule to apply. In most cases, the same evidence may look different depending on the legal standard the jury is asked to use. United States v. King provides a useful example. The case involved an insanity defense, and Professor Rita James Simon later used the case…
Some trial errors are devastating. Others are real errors but do not substantially affect the outcome. A valid method for measuring trial fairness must be able to tell the difference. David Leroy Washington’s case produced one of the most important criminal procedure decisions in American law: Strickland v. Washington. The case established the modern framework…
In capital sentencing, the jury’s task is not only to decide whether the defendant committed a terrible crime. It must decide whether that person should live or die. That decision requires the full story. George Porter was sentenced to death in Florida after his lawyer failed to present important mitigation evidence about his life. Porter’s…
How does the victim’s age affect the probability that a homeowner will be found liable for an accidental shooting? Read summary of the liability Analysis.
A randomized controlled experiment is a study in which participants are randomly assigned to one of two or more conditions. One group (the treatment group) experiences the condition of interest—for example, a new policy, medication, or procedural change. The other group (the control group) does not. Because the assignment is random, the two groups are…