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…
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.
In post-conviction proceedings, showing that a trial was defective is not enough. The petitioner must prove that the defect was harmful—that it had a substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury’s verdict. Even for constitutional violations, the Supreme Court has made clear that reversal is not automatic. Instead, the petitioner bears the…
Based on an estimate of the proportion of jury-qualified adults who would find a defendant guilty, it is possible to estimate the probability of a guilty verdict. In other words, we can estimate the probability of a group decision based on the pre-deliberation preferences of individuals. You can simulate the estimation process for yourself. To…