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Jury Charges in Criminal Cases First of all, there is a presumption and you may have a difference of opinion on this, but there is a presumption that; juries do follow instructions. Now, this is a rebuttable presumption. However, the US Supreme Court says that; they’re going to presume, as all the appellate courts do, […]

Defensive Theories in Jury Charge Now defensive theories! This is where I think some prosecutors get tripped up sort of like Brady, ok! Trial court who are former prosecutors and never done anything else like some of them in Bare County. They tend to think that if the evidence is unbelievable or they think it’s

Jury Charge and Sufficiency of the Evidence So will be very hard overturning a case on sufficiency of the evidence based on jury charge error, Ok! Let me talk about talk about this for a moment, we had a case of my firm I think Mick Geris here I saw on earlier from Jim Well’s

Note Taking by Jurors and Lesser Included Offenses in Jury Charge Lesser included, we’ve talked about that, a jury cannot convict the defendant of lesser included offense of… of lesser included offense, it’s not submitted in the jury instructions, that means a jury can’t take it upon themselves to go back in the jury room

Unanimity Requirement in Jury Charge Ok, jury unanimity! That’s very important when you have different manner and means. But the court of criminal appeals has been very consistent in holding that the jury does not have to agree on the manner and means. They only have to agree on the gravamens of the offense which

Federal Sentencing By Judge Judges increasingly, judges like Judge Weinstein in New York. Judges are writing opinions that are getting all around on the internet explaining why these guidelines simply are not the right way to treat human beings that is; punishment by the numbers. May make federal judges comfortable if they never did any

Jury Selection Case Law We going to talk about the very best cases from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals from the last term and a few of the worst and a few more to watch out for that are now pending on PDR and so we’re going to watch them for the next year

Case Law on Experts in Criminal Law Part 1 Let’s talk about experts for minute. The Blasdell cases, extremely important case on page 30 of the paper, decided by the court of criminal appeals. In that case, the defense wanted to put on a physiological expert to talk about the unreliability of the eye witness

Case Law on Experts in Criminal Law Polygraphs Part 2 Leonard the next case. I forget the exact facts of Leonard but Leonard was on probation for sex offense and he was required to take polygraphs and he objected to that and he failed the polygraph obviously and they revoked his probation and he objected

Case law on Experts in Sex Cases Ok, let’s talk about sex cases. Fleming is the most intriguing case I think out there. Its pending right now in the court of criminal appeals and in Fleming, the question now is; does the Texas constitution actually that’s not the question. In 2011, the case went up