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Colb Commentary on Defendant Testimony

By standdown

Cornell Law prof Sherry Colb's latest FindLaw commentary is, "The Costs of Testifying in One?s Own Defense: An Empirical Study Highlights the Problem, But What To Do About It?"  Here's the beginning: This year in the Cornell Law Review, Professors Theodore Eisenberg and Valerie Hans will be publishing an illuminating and important article (available in draft form here) demonstrating the impact of introducing prior convictions against a criminal defendant. Their findings show, among other things, that when revealed to a jury, a defendant's record of prior convictions can, in marginal cases, significantly increase the odds of a guilty verdict. This finding will confirm the suspicions of many defense attorneys and evidence scholars, but the next question is what the proper reaction ought to be...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on January 09, 2009 (boomark / email).