Are criminal trials fair?

Judge Kozinski says no way in this really interesting read from the Georgetown Annual Review of Criminal Procedure.  His main points, as summarized by Business Insider:

1. Eyewitnesses are highly reliable

Eyewitnesses are highly unreliable, especially when the witness and perpetrator are of different races, or when witnesses are asked to recall a situation in which they were under the stress of violent crime or catastrophe, Kozinski writes. Mistaken eyewitness testimony was a factor in one-third of all wrongful conviction cases, according to his article.
Jed Rakoff, another well-known federal judge, made the same point in a Washington Post op-ed this year.

2. Fingerprint evidence is foolproof

Kozinski says prints left in the field are often smudged and incomplete — making them difficult to identify. He adds that when tested by more rigorous scientific methods, fingerprint examiners have a significant error rate.
The National Academies of Sciences has also said the work of fingerprint examiners can be flawed. 

3. Other types of forensic evidence are scientifically proven and therefore infallible

Aside from DNA evidence, Kozinski says what is true about fingerprint evidence is doubly true about bloodstain-pattern identification, foot- and tire-print identification, and ballistics.
"Some fields of forensic expertise are built on nothing but guesswork and false common sense," Kozinski writes. 
Recently, the Justice Department exposed major problems with microscopic hair testing in criminal cases. 

4. DNA evidence is infallible

Kozinski says the integrity of DNA evidence is often compromised during the collection, preservation, and testing process, and that DNA examiners are not always competent and honest.
As Mother Jones noted in April, "Real-life crime labs are a total mess."

5. Human memories are reliable

Kozinski, citing a study by cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, believes the mind not only distorts and embellishes memories, but that external factors affect how memories are recalled and described. 
In an interview with Slate, Loftus acknowledged that we're all capable of fabricating memories. 
"We all have memories that are malleable and susceptible to being contaminated or supplemented in some way," Loftus told Slate. 

6. Confessions are infallible because innocent people never confess

Kozinski has found that innocent people confess surprisingly often, due to a variety of factors including interrogation tactics, Stockholm syndrome, emotional or financial exhaustion, family considerations, and general feeble-mindedness. 
As The New Yorker has reported, police can also produce false confessions by using a certain interrogation technique. 

7. Juries follow instructions

Kozinski claims courts know very little of what juries do when they decide cases. Courts have no way of knowing whether juries follow instructions or even whether they understand them, according to Kozinski. 
"We have no convincing reason to believe that jury instructions in fact constrain jury behavior in all or even most cases," Kozinski writes.

8. Prosecutors play fair

Kozinski believes prosecutors often fail to turn over evidence that could be favorable to the defense, known as exculpatory evidence. In a case called Brady v. Maryland, the Supreme Court ruled that prosecutors have to turn over that evidence. But Kozinski claims there's an "epidemic" of Brady violations in America. 

9. The prosecution is at a substantial disadvantage because it must prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt

In reality, Kozinski writes, the defendant is often at a disadvantage because prosecutors have the chance to argue their case before the defense during a trial.
That's troubling because of psychological evidence showing that "whoever makes the first assertion about something has a large advantage over everyone who denies it later," according to Kozinski.

10. Police are objective in their investigations

Kozinski says police have the opportunity to alter or remove evidence, influence witnesses, extract confessions, and more or less lead an investigation in such a way that they can stack the deck against somebody they believe should be convicted.
"There are countless documented cases where innocent people have spent decades behind bars because the police manipulated or concealed evidence," Kozinski writes. 

11. Guilty pleas are conclusive proof of guilt

Kozinski has found that when a defendant believes an outcome is highly uncertain or stacked against them, they might cave and enter a guilty plea to a lesser charge so that they can still salvage a part of their life.
Judge Jed Rakoff has also lamented the fact that 97% of federal criminal defendants plead guilty if their cases aren't dismissed. 

12. Long sentences deter crime

America has 716 prisoners for every 100,000 people — the most of any country in the world, Kozinski notes. America also has much longer sentences than other countries for comparable crimes. Kozinski points out that a burglary charge in the US warrants an average of 16 months in prison, compared with five months in Canada and seven months in England.
"As with much else in the law, the connection between punishment and deterrence remains mysterious," Kozinski writes. "We make our decisions based on faith."

Meantime, there are a bunch of criminal trials starting this summer, which are expected to last over a month.  One just started before Judge Martinez, so if you are looking for something for your interns to do... send them over to watch a federal trial!

Happy 10th Birthday to the Blog!

The Southern District of Florida Blog shares its birthday with the U S of A.  The blog turns 10 this year.  And America is 239, not 2015.

The very first post 10 years ago asked for President Bush to appoint a Floridian to the Supreme Court.  Although the Court did get its first Hispanic jurist, it did not get a Floridian.  Hopefully one day soon!

Since then, the blog has had 2835 posts and more than 2 million views.

Thanks to all of my tipsters and readers.  It's been a fun 10 years.

--David

New Article on the Eleventh Circuit's State of Emergency

Section 46(b) of Title 28 of the U.S. Code states that appeals may be heard and determined "by separate panels, each consisting of three judges, at least a majority of whom shall be judges of that court, ... unless the chief judge of that court certifies that there is an emergency." By General Order No. 41, the Eleventh Circuit was for the better part of 2014 certified to be in an emergency state. South Florida appellate lawyer Andrew L. Adler, who clerked for two judges of the Eleventh Circuit, wrote about this in his scholarly article Extended Vacancies, Crushing Caseloads, and Emergency Panels in the Federal Courts of Appeals, which was recently published in the Journal of Appellate Practice and Process.

Here's the introduction:

At the end of 2013, the chief judge of the Eleventh Circuit declared a state of emergency, exempting the court from the requirement in 28 U.S.C. §46(b) that each of its panels include a majority of Eleventh Circuit judges. As would later become clear, the emergency arose from multiple vacancies on the court, which exacerbated the effect of its heavy per-judge caseload. Throughout 2014, emergency panels consisting of one Eleventh Circuit judge and two visiting judges resolved over one hundred appeals. 

In a petition for rehearing filed in one such case, an unsuccessful appellant challenged the validity of the emergency panel. Rather than resolving the petition summarily, the emergency panel instead published a precedential opinion upholding the certified emergency. Although other circuits have certified section 46(b) emergencies based on the vacancy-caseload combination, the Eleventh Circuit's opinion is the first federal appellate decision addressing a challenge to such an emergency. Because extended vacancies and heavy caseloads are likely to persist, that opinion invites new scrutiny of the emergency exception to section 46(b)'s majority requirement. This article begins that undertaking.

Adler defends Chief Judge Carnes's application of the emergency exception.

If you're interested in the Eleventh Circuit -- or in the federal courts of appeals in general -- do check out Adler's well written and thoroughly researched article.

Extended Vacancies, Crushing Caseloads, and Emergency Panels in the Federal Courts of Appeals

“They say that any prosecutor worth his salt can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. It may be that a decent prosecutor could get a petit jury to convict a eunuch of rape.”

That's Judge Kozinski in this article calling for criminal justice reform:

Defense lawyers who are found to have been ineffective regularly find their names plastered into judicial opinions, yet judges seem strangely reluctant to name names when it comes to misbehaving prosecutors. Indeed, judges seem reluctant to even suspect prosecutors of improper behavior, as if they were somehow beyond suspicion….Naming names and taking prosecutors to task for misbehavior can have magical qualities in assuring compliance with constitutional rights.
If judges have reason to believe that witnesses, especially police officers or government informants, testify falsely, they must refer the matter for prosecution. If they become aware of widespread misconduct in the investigation and prosecution of criminal cases, a referral to the U.S. Department of Justice for a civil rights violation might well be appropriate. *** The U.S. Justice Department seems ready enough to pursue charges of civil rights violations in cases where police have engaged in physical violence, but far more reluctant to pursue misbehaving prosecutors.

And from the East Coast, you have Judge Gertner saying her sentences during 17 years on the bench were unfair and immoral:

Among 500 sanctions that she handed down, “80 percent I believe were unfair and disproportionate,” she said. “I left the bench in 2011 to join the Harvard faculty to write about those stories––to write about how it came to pass that I was obliged to sentence people to terms that, frankly, made no sense under any philosophy.”
No theory of retribution or social change could justify them, she said. And that dispiriting conclusion inspired the radical idea that she presented: a call for the U.S. to mimic its decision after World War II to look to the future and rebuild rather than trying to punish or seek retribution. As she sees it, the War on Drugs ought to end in that same spirit. “Although we were not remotely the victors of that war, we need a big idea in order to deal with those who were its victims,” she said, calling for something like a Marshall Plan.

And yet, nothing seems to be happening with reform....  Same old, same old.

But, we may have a new Broward courthouse:

Florida's most conservative and liberal members of Congress joined forces Tuesday in calling for more federal spending — for projects in the state.
Led by U.S. Reps. Lois Frankel, a Democrat who represents Broward and Palm Beach counties, and Jeff Miller, a Republican who represents part of the Florida Panhandle, half the state's congressional delegation wrote the administrator of the agency in charge of federal buildings that Fort Lauderdale and Pensacola need new federal courthouses.

The letter to the General Services Administration, signed by 13 of the state's 27 representatives, declared an "urgent need" for new buildings, citing "substandard conditions" that "hinder the efficient administration of justice."

Federal judges, and the lawyers who appear before them, have been complaining for years about the courthouse at Broward Boulevard and Northeast Third Avenue in Fort Lauderdale. The development community in Fort Lauderdale has urged a new courthouse as has Mayor Jack Seiler, a lawyer. Cost of a new Fort Lauderdale courthouse has been estimated at $250 million.

I'm gonna miss Jon Stewart:

If, even as the price to be paid for a fifth vote, I ever joined an opinion for the Court that began: “The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity,” I would hide my head in a bag. The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie.

Sick burn by Justice Scalia. He came out on the completely wrong side of this, but at least his writing is entertaining (and at least he wrote the other opinion that day striking the ACCA residual clause; that's more than you can say for Alito, who is entirely predictable and political, and a boring writer.).

Perhaps you'd like to see you own name in a Scalia insult... well, click here for your Scalia insult.

Meantime, it's the last day of the Term today.  Pretty anticlimactic. Go to SCOTUSblog at 10am to see the final 3 opinions.

In the meantime, here's your Monday morning moment of zen: