Perceptions of the Independent Trial Judge Role in the Seventh Circuit

1972 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 615
Author(s):  
Beverly Blair Cook
Keyword(s):  
Trial Judge ◽  
Independent Trial

Admissibility of confession evidence: Principles of hearsay and the rule of voluntariness

2021 ◽  
pp. 136571272110022
Author(s):  
Jennifer Porter
Keyword(s):  
Western Australia ◽  
Common Law ◽  
South Australia ◽  
Judicial Discretion ◽  
Trial Judge ◽  
Important Policy ◽  
Oral Testimony ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law ◽  
Confession Evidence

The common law test of voluntariness has come to be associated with important policy rationales including the privilege against self-incrimination. However, when the test originated more than a century ago, it was a test concerned specifically with the truthfulness of confession evidence; which evidence was at that time adduced in the form of indirect oral testimony, that is, as hearsay. Given that, a century later, confession evidence is now mostly adduced in the form of an audiovisual recording that can be observed directly by the trial judge, rather than as indirect oral testimony, there may be capacity for a different emphasis regarding the question of admissibility. This article considers the law currently operating in Western Australia, Queensland and South Australia to see whether or not, in the form of an audiovisual recording, the exercise of judicial discretion as to the question of the admissibility of confession evidence might be supported if the common law test of voluntariness was not a strict test of exclusion.

Depression, Homicide and Diminished Responsibility: New Scottish directions

2003 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 195-202
Author(s):  
Philip Collins ◽  
Thomas White
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Depression ◽  
Trial Judge ◽  
Appeal Court ◽  
Diminished Responsibility

In a recent Scottish Appeal Court opinion ( Kim Louise Scarsbrook or Galbraith v. Her Majesty's Advocate, 2001) it was successfully argued by the appellant that her conviction of murder was unsound inter-alia on the basis of overly restrictive pre-existing definitions of diminished responsibility in Scottish law resulting in unduly narrow directions being given by the trial judge to the jury in her case. We felt it timely to present a revised overview of the defence of diminished responsibility in Scotland and to consider the issues surrounding its applicability in cases of clinical depression. The psychiatric literature regarding depression and homicide is reviewed.

Solitary Confinement in Canada

2019 ◽  
pp. 335-342
Author(s):  
Joseph J. Arvay ◽  
Alison M. Latimer
Keyword(s):  
Significant Risk ◽  
Solitary Confinement ◽  
Supreme Court Of Canada ◽  
Trial Judge ◽  
Administrative Segregation ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Psychological Harm ◽  
Pain And Suffering ◽  
Self Harm ◽  
The Government

On January 17, 2018, a historic decision put Canada at the forefront of an international movement against solitary confinement. A trial judge found that administrative segregation is a form of solitary confinement and that it causes some inmates physical harm and places all inmates subject to it in Canada at significant risk of serious psychological harm, including mental pain and suffering, and increased incidence of self-harm and suicide. This chapter describes the Canadian litigation and the findings of the trial judge with respect to the laws’ constitutional invalidity. The decision of the trial judge was largely upheld by the British Columbia Court of Appeal. The Canadian Parliament has now enacted a new law that purports to abolish solitary confinement but the authors are skeptical that the new law will pass constitutional muster because it is still too restrictive of inmate rights. It is expected that the government will seek leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Legal and Ethical Considerations

1993 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth E. Melson
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Dna Analysis ◽  
Dna Typing ◽  
The United States ◽  
Forensic Sciences ◽  
Dna Identification ◽  
Trial Judge ◽  
Margin Of Error ◽  
Previous Contact ◽  
Her 2

The legal system, in both the criminal and civil arenas, may well be revolutionized by the advent of forensic DNA typing. One state trial judge has written that DNA typing “can constitute the single greatest advance in the ‘search for truth,’ and the goal of convicting the guilty and acquitting the innocent, since the advent of cross examination.” People v. Wesley, 140 Misc.2d 306, 533 N.Y.S.2d 643 (Co. Ct. 1988). A prominent professor in the field of law and forensic sciences believes that “DNA analysis will be to the end of the 20th century what fingerprinting was to the 19th.” The Washington state legislature has found the accuracy of DNA identification to be superior to that of any presently existing technique, and the Maryland General Assembly has proclaimed DNA identification to have been refined to a level of scientific accuracy that approaches an infinitesimal margin of error. Indeed, the forensic applications of DNA typing are limited only by the circumspection of the criminal mind. Regardless of the type of crime committed, whenever trace evidence appropriate for DNA analysis is left behind by the perpetrator and later recovered by the police, the test results can be an important investigative tool. Most frequently, such evidence will be found as a result of violent crimes. With 92,490 rapes and 20,680 homicides in the United States in 1988, the forensic application of DNA typing should significantly increase the arrest and conviction rates. The use of DNA typing is not confined to those cases in which body fluids, hairs, or tissue are left at the crime scene or on the victim by the perpetrator, thereby connecting a suspect to the scene or victim. Just as common is the situation where evidence is left by a victim on the suspect or the suspect’s belongings, which will establish previous contact between the accused and the victim. The Joseph Castro case is an example of this situation. He was accused in New York of stabbing to death a 20-year-old woman who was seven months pregnant and her 2-year-old daughter.

afterwards, the company's chairman agreed to the company being taken over by another company. The merchant bankers informed the appellant of the proposed take-over and told him that a public announcement would be made shortly but that until then the information was sensitive and highly confidential. The appellant promptly purchased 6,000 shares in the company and, following the announcement of the take over, made a substantial profit. He was charged with two offences of dealing in the securities of a company as a prohibited person, contrary to s1(3) and (4)(a) of the Company Securities (Insider Dealing) Act 1985 (subsequently replaced by Criminal Justice Act 1993, Pt V). The trial judge directed the jury to acquit the appellant on the ground that there was no evidence that he had 'obtained' the information, for the purposes of s1(3), since it had been given to him unsolicited. The Attorney General then referred to the Court of Appeal for its opinion the question of the meaning of 'obtained' in s1(3) of the 1985 Act. The Court of Appeal held that a person obtained information for the purposes of s1(3) and (4)(a) of the 1985 Act, even if he came by it without any positive action on his part. On the appellant's application the Court of Appeal referred the point to the House of Lords. where-(a)

2012 ◽  
pp. 185-188
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Attorney General ◽  
Trial Judge ◽  
Public Announcement ◽  
House Of Lords ◽  
Positive Action ◽  
Insider Dealing ◽  
A Company ◽  
Court Of Appeal

4. The course of the trial

Evidence ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 140-200
Author(s):  
Roderick Munday
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Proceedings ◽  
Criminal Cases ◽  
Trial Judge ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Right

Titles in the Core Text series take the reader straight to the heart of the subject, providing focused, concise, and reliable guides for students at all levels. This chapter discusses the following: the right to begin; the role of the trial judge; the judge’s right to call a witness; examination-in-chief; hostile witnesses; cross-examination; re-examination; calling evidence relating to witnesses’ veracity; witness support; the Crown’s right to reopen its case; and special protections extended to various classes of witness in criminal cases. Many of the rules apply to civil and criminal proceedings alike. However, as elsewhere in this book, the accent will be on rules of criminal evidence.

THEFT OR SHARP PRACTICE: WHO CARES NOW?

2001 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-58
Author(s):  
A.T.H. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Civil Law ◽  
Positive Answer ◽  
Trial Judge ◽  
House Of Lords ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Court Of Appeal

THE House of Lords has upheld, by a majority, the decision of the Court of Appeal in Hinks [2000] 3 W.L.R. 1590 (noted (1999) 58 C.L.J. 10), giving a positive answer to the certified question: “Whether the acquisition of an indefeasible title to property is capable of amounting to an appropriation of property belonging to another for the purposes of section 1(1) of the Theft Act 1968”. The appellant had persuaded a somewhat simple-minded man to make her the “gift” of a quite considerable sum of money. No deception was alleged to have been employed, and so far as the civil law was concerned, the “gift” might well have been a perfectly valid transaction; the question was never determined by the jury, because it was deemed to be irrelevant by the trial judge. But the decision of the House of Lords is to the effect that she was properly convicted of theft however that question might have been answered. So, it would seem, a person may become the indefeasible owner of property and nevertheless be accounted a thief of that very same property, and by the very act of acquiring the ownership of it.

'IF it Ain't in the Notes…’ Dental Record-keeping in Adversity

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 49-52
Author(s):  
Stephen Henderson
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Trial Judge ◽  
Record Keeping ◽  
Opposite View ◽  
As If

There are some dento-legal mantras that have, by default, come to be understood as the truth, for example: “If it ain't in the notes, it didn't happen” and “Good records, good defence; poor records, poor defence; no records, no defence.” The opposite view was offered by the trial judge in a dental clinical negligence case in recent years. The judge's view can be summed up as: “If you don't make a note of something that has happened, you leave yourself at risk of proceedings like these.”

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