Law enforcement has many competing interests with advocates of Fourth Amendment protections. One is law enforcement’s use of GPS devices to track a suspect’s movements in his vehicle during the early stages of a criminal investigation. The use of such devices has created an outcry among many who claim that law enforcement must retrieve a search warrant before using a GPS device to track an individual in his car. Law enforcement continues to justify their actions by pointing to Supreme Court precedent, which explains that the use of tracking devices in public places does not
Blog Posts - Evidence
Translation: Science to Legalese
What does “environmental insult” mean? How do "sequence-specific oligonucleotide probes" work? And what the heck is “DSM-IV-TR diagnostic criteria”?
New Computer Software is Replacing Lawyers
Corporate law firms often assign teams of lawyers to sift through the millions of documents that are produced through e-discovery in large lawsuits. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure allow each side of a litigation to collect certain information before trial. This is known as discovery. Electronic discovery, or e-discovery, refers to dis
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What of the NC SBI Forensic Lab: A few bloodstained apples or rotten throughout?
On February 17, 2010, the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission exonerated Gregory Taylor from a fourteen-year-old conviction in the murder of Jaquetta Thomas on account of new evidence which was not presented at trial. Taylor’s hearing uncovered new blood test results in the lab technician’s notebook which were not contained in the final report presented to the prosecutor and defense team. The only piece of forensic evidence used in the conviction of Mr.
Viacom’s Lies and an Honest Look at Email Evidence
The suit filed by Viacom against Google for copyright infringement on YouTube has all the bells and whistles of digital age litigation: e-discovery, data uploaded from covert locations, 60,000 digital video clips and (according to Viacom) a lively debate about the DMCA. By and large, the case seems to be another reminder of how US courts have successfully adapted to developing technologies. However, the far from cutting edge technology of email has been proffered in the case as a smoking gun and may prove that our legal system has yet to fully “learned computers.”
Who Gets Those Data?—Questions of Availability for Databases Underlying GIS Products
The law is about words; it is about the effective use of words to make an argument and craft policy. Maps are about data, about presenting information with shapes and colors. Increasingly, lawyers are finding ways to use maps to present their cases.
No Justice, No Tweets
The Judicial Conference Committee on Court Administration and Case Management recently released mock jury instructions for federal courts explicitly informing jurors that they may not use electronic devices to discuss or research the cases for which they are sitting.
Bowling for Justice
Among other things, the Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures by requiring a warrant “particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” When narcotics detectives near Lakeland, Florida executed their search warrant on Michael Difalco’s home, it is doubtful the Nintendo Wii they spent hours bowling
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MLB Players Get Back Their List, but What About Their Reputations?
Ray Donovan once asked the question "Which office do I go to get my reputation back?" After last week's 9th Circuit decision finding that federal investigators should not have retrieved the entire list of 2003 Major League Baseball (“MLB”) positive drug tests using a search warrants much narrower in scope, a number of MLB players are probably asking themselves the same question.
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E-Discovery: No easy solution for the inadvertent disclosure of privileged documents
Technological advancements have changed the way businesses operate and their methods of creating and maintaining business documents. More documents are created and stored than years ago and this heightens the pressures of a business faced with discovery requests. Researchers have been trying to come up with the perfect search terms to tag the appropriate documents; however, documents are still overlooked and inadvertently disclosed. Congress adopted Read more ...
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