Posts that illustrate or discuss practical solutions to the problem of measuring fairness.
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…
In science, medicine, and law, a basic principle holds true: a good test doesn’t always say “yes.” For a test to be useful, it must sometimes confirm a claim and sometimes reject it. A thermometer that always reads 98.6°F isn’t telling you who has a fever. A smoke detector that always goes off isn’t telling…
Everyone deserves a fair trial. It’s a bedrock promise of the legal system—but one that’s often broken. Defendants raise constitutional violations all the time: unfair juries, withheld evidence, incompetent lawyers. But raising the issue isn’t enough. To prevail, one must prove whether those errors mattered—that there’s a reasonable probability the outcome would have been different…