Criminal Law & Process – Page 50 – Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

Evidence-Based Decision Making: The Increasing Use of Research in our Criminal Justice System

Post author:Kelli Thompson
Post published:July 11, 2013
Post category:Criminal Law & Process Public

There is a growing trend in the criminal justice field to integrate evidence-based decision making, or EBDM, into local justice systems. At its simplest, EBDM can be described as the practice of using what has been proven to work. It places the primary reliance upon current and sound research, rather than upon anecdotal information, guesswork, or solely the experience of an individual. While the use of evidence-based decision making is relatively new to the field of criminal justice, the healthcare industry has embraced EBDM for sometime.
The promise of evidence-based decision making is that it produces more consistent and better outcomes, as confirmed by the underlying research. In the criminal justice system, the benefits include the implementation of policies and practices that meet the goals of maximizing public safety, reducing the risk of reoffending, more appropriate allocation of limited resources, and reducing costs.

Wisconsin is at the forefront of the trend towards the introduction of EBDM into its criminal justice systems.

Do I Need to Draw You a Picture? The Zimmerman Trial and CGI Evidence

Post author:Daniel D. Blinka
Post published:July 10, 2013
Post category:Criminal Law & Process Evidence Public

The Zimmerman trial nicely illustrates how messy trials can be. Witnesses contradict one another on most critical issues. For example, a bevy of witnesses have split over whether it was the victim Trayvon Martin or the defendant George Zimmerman screaming for help on the 911 recording. Moreover, the split among witnesses is, predictably, along party lines: friends and relatives of each claim the voice as their own. To make things messier, some of these witnesses seem to have contradicted themselves, asserting earlier that they couldn’t recognize the voice despite their trial testimony that now positively identifies it. Adding to the confusion, some witnesses deny making the earlier inconsistent statements.

So, what’s the jury to make of this morass? The defense solution is to draw a picture – literally. Yesterday the parties sparred over the defense’s attempts to introduce a computer-animated recreation of the fatal struggle between Zimmerman and Martin. Computer-graphic imaging (CGI) technology is being used more and more to recreate events in a myriad of cases. A week of conflicting testimony may be reduced to a 60-second cartoon.

There are two problems here. First, the accuracy (authentication) of a CGI recreation depends on its fidelity to the historical record: does it accurately reflect what occurred? Hard to say in this case. Martin is dead. Zimmerman has not testified. The CGI recreation rests on the creators’ reconstruction of events based on conflicting pretrial statements, including Zimmerman’s, some of which have been contradicted by trial testimony, itself no model of clarity.

Put differently, the CGI recreation is the animators’ version of the shooting, resting heavily on the defense version of events. It is tantamount to Zimmerman’s story of what occurred with one crucial difference: Zimmerman does not have to take the stand and face cross-examination under oath about any of it. My own view is that it should be excluded unless Zimmerman takes the stand and testifies that it “fairly and accurately” depicts what happened.

The Legacy of Gideon v. Wainwright in Wisconsin

Post author:Kelli Thompson
Post published:July 3, 2013
Post category:Constitutional Law Criminal Law & Process Public Wisconsin Criminal Law & Process

I’d like to take the opportunity through my posts this month to talk about some of the trends and milestones that I see in the field of law, particularly as it pertains to our criminal justice system.

Gideon v. Wainwright, the landmark 1963 U.S. Supreme Court case, started with a handwritten petition from Clarence Gideon. The decision in Gideon set the country’s criminal justice system on a different course: defendants who could not afford legal counsel had the right be be provided with such representation.

Although the scope of the constitutional right to counsel was established with the Gideon decision, the responsibility and the details of its implementation were left to the individual states. In the early years following the decision, Wisconsin complied with the requirement through a county-by-county system. This county-based approach changed in 1977 when Wisconsin took the strategic step of adopting a statewide model of indigent defense, establishing the Office of the State Public Defender (SPD) as an independent, executive-branch state agency. SPD trial offices started to open across the state, and the appellate representation, previously overseen by the Wisconsin Supreme Court, was transferred to the agency. The SPD ensures that our state meets the constitutional requirements set forth in Gideon.