State crime labs and sloppy forensic science
Science comes up routinely in court - DNA testing, breath tests for alcohol, chemical tests or gas spectrometer tests to determine what a substance is made of, often from a police-run crime lab. The lawyers aren’t usually experts in the science, and neither is the judge, nor the jurors, and so the science is usually explained through the testimony of a scientific expert such as an...
Read MoreUnreliable eyewitness identification puts innocent people in prison
The right to a jury trial carries with it the assumption that a group of disinterested, nonexpert citizens are good at deciding fact disputes. If the dispute is about which witness to believe, or about how to interpret complex circumstantial evidence, there’s neither a good way to test jury reliability nor any obvious alternatives. But it looks like the best system that we can come up with,...
Read MoreMiranda Warnings and Non-English Speakers
At the motion-to-suppress hearing, the police officer testifies: I read the defendant Miranda warnings, and I asked if he understood them. He said yes. I asked if he wanted to waive his rights and speak to me. He said yes. I asked if he had broken into the house and stolen the purse inside, and he said yes. Is that sufficient to show a valid Miranda waiver? Suppose that the defendant has dark...
Read MoreWhy Can Misdemeanor Sentences be Worse than Felony Sentences?
Why doesn’t a one-year sentence for a misdemeanor violate Oregon’s proportionality clause, Or Const, Art I, sec 16? The general rule is that a sentence for a lesser crime is disproportionate if longer than the worst possible sentence for some greater crime. See e.g., Cannon v. Gladden, 203 Or 629, 281 P2d 233 (1955). Felonies of crime-seriousness (“CS”) 1 and no departure factors cannot...
Read MoreNine things to know about Oregon criminal appeals
1. Unlike a trial, an appeal is not about the facts At trial, the parties offer evidence to resolve issues of fact. In a jury trial, the jury listens to the evidence and decides whether to believe it. When evidence is in conflict (one witness says that the defendant was not provoked before hitting the victim, and one witness says that the victim hit the defendant first) the jury...
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