If they don’t dump the rest of the veterans in order to secure the worst record in the league, Paxson should be fired.

In practice, it is not all that difficult to get twelve people to agree. I worked for a judge who had been a judge for 12 years and presided over many criminal trials, and he had seen, I believe, two acquittals and one hung jury (the defendant who got the hung jury was eventually convicted on retrial).

It seems there’s some confusion about what the 5th Amendment prohibits. If a defendant says something to someone that is relevant to the case, the prosecution can introduce that statement even if the defendant doesn’t testify (unless the statement was elicited without Miranda warnings during interrogation by law…

Any prosecutor that actually tries cases won’t be surprised by this at all. There’s a popular belief that everyone that goes to trial is found guilty but—in state court at least—this is nonsense (in federal court, the conviction rate at trial is insanely high). I’ve got anecdote upon anecdote of crazy jury verdicts…

This is a very ambitious and worthwhile project, but I have serious doubts about the value of the data because . . . “garbage in, garbage out.”

Yeah, that sentence requires some explanation during closing arguments.

That’s why it’s frequently left undefined. But if you’re going to define it, this one isn’t that bad. I’ve seen worse.

Not every jurisdiction provides a definition of “reasonable doubt” to a jury. Here is Pennsylvania’s (pretty favorable to the State):

He has also never directed a film with a person of color as a lead or even as the number 2.

You don’t know what you’re talking about. The low conviction rate is not a result of indifference from prosecutors. If a victim refuses to provide testimony it’s frequently impossible to get a conviction because these crimes often take place inside the home with no witnesses.

While I’m very happy that Jones was properly released, there’s certainly a lot of comments along the lines of “19 years for just stealing a cell phone?!?!?”

One of the odder things about this trial has been the upsetting of the norm that prosecutors tend to rely on the accuser’s account and the defense tends to rely on the defendant’s account.

The judge did not overturn the verdict. When you are on probation, your probation may be revoked if you commit a new offense. The probation revocation hearing does not require proof beyond a reasonable doubt (and is separate from the trial on the new offense). The state only needs to prove that it’s more likely…

So Chatman went to trial. It turns out that during the trial, the police had no evidence for the case. 

While I don’t agree with a law as described in the above article, blaming law enforcement for the lack of domestic violence prosecutions is ignorant. In my jurisdiction, the vast majority of domestic violence calls that don’t lead to a prosecution and conviction are directly related to the victim refusing to…

Hearsay is a rule of evidence.

I don’t get the Paxson hate. Sure, the Thibodeau situation wasn’t handled as well as it could have been, but since he took over the Bulls, only the Heat and Celtics have a better winning percentage in the East.

Scott was supposedly VERY uncooperative during the initial case, and there was a lot of speculation that she was being compensated for that.

The article suggests that there is a particular problem with athletes not being prosecuted for domestic battery (“Charges were not brought for either incident, and as is commonly the case in domestic violence cases involving athletes, the district attorney cited insufficient evidence and an uncooperative witness…