Eyewitness Misidentification

Jennifer Thompson & Ronald Cotton   in the Picking Cotton: 60 Minutes Special

Eyewitness   testimony is a big part of my criminal cases but it can be flawed. Procedures   dealing with eyewitness, photo lineups, and in-person lineups have changed   over the years because old procedures have been found to be flawed.

1. Should   witnesses or victims be believed without testing and without investigation in   criminal cases? Explain.

2. Do   witnesses and victims ever lie in criminal cases?

3. In   medical studies involving the testing of medicine a double-blind method of   testing medicine is used in which the participants taking the medicine are   not told if they are taking real medicine or a placebo. Doctors administering   the drugs are also not told which whether the medicine they are administering   is real or a placebo. 

o Why do you believe the double-blind method   is used in medicine?

o Do you believe this procedure should be used   with eyewitness identification in criminal cases? Why?

4. Based   on events in 2018, do you believe Americans understand the issues surrounding   due processes and criminal justice? Explain.

5. Do   social media movements help or hurt due process and accuracy in our criminal   justice system? Explain.

Nothing to declare: Why U.S. border agency’s vast stop and search powers undermine press freedom

Recommendations: The Committee to Protect Journalists offers the following recommendations

Watch the video and read the article from the Committee to Protect Journalist. A link to the CPJ’s recommendations is also available. The infographic chart provided is helpful at providing an overview of rulings on border searches. The CPJ discusses border searches of electronic devices. The CPJ points out that President Obama prosecuted eight individuals under the Espionage Act and A.G. Jeff Sessions has filed indictments in four leak investigations. The CPJ is concerned about border searches for those reasons.

1. Is there any evidence provided in the article to suggest that searches of electronic devices at the border have been used to specifically target journalists?

2. Of the investigations related to leaks under Obama and Trump, were any of those investigations involving border searches?

3. Have searches of electronic devices increased in the past few years? By how much?

4. Do you believe searching electronic devices at the border is necessary for national security? If you were in charge of adopting a policy to be used at all international borders would you restrict the warrantless searches of devices altogether, or require some suspicion for a warrantless search, or allow all devices to be searched without any individualized suspicion? Justify your decision.

Using DNA to catch Killers and free the innocent is not a new concept. We typically think of using DNA to create a direct match between the suspect and the suspect’s DNA left at the crime scene. But what about using a public DNA database to search for potential relatives of a suspect in order to identify the actual suspect?

Below are several stories involving police catching killers using DNA databases most of us are familiar with. Review the stories and videos and answer the following questions.

How Did They Catch the Golden State   Killer? An Online DNA Service and His Genetic Relatives Revealed   the Suspect.

Another Murderer Caught Using Same DNA Website as the Golden State Killer Case

Search for ‘Golden State Killer’ Leads to Arrest of Ex-Cop.

34 

1. Does a suspect have any privacy in the DNA he leaves at a crime scene to include DNA left inside of the body of a rape victim? Explain your answer, legally.

2. Does a person have privacy in their DNA left on trash that they discard? Explain your answer.

3. Is it okay, legally, for the police to use a suspect’s DNA to create a fake profile on a public DNA site in order to help identify relatives of that suspect?

4. Do any of these police tactics affect people who have not committed a crime? Explain how.

5. If the police have to use public databases for sources of DNA, what does that say about theories that the government has all of our DNA?

1. What are the specific aims and purposes of the criminal law? To what extent does the criminal law control behavior?

2. What kinds of activities should be labeled criminal in contemporary society? Why?

3. What is a criminal act? What is a criminal state of mind? When are individuals liable for their actions?

4. Discuss the various kinds of crime classifications. To what extent or degree are they distinguishable?

5. Numerous states are revising their penal codes. Which major categories of substantive crime do you think should be revised?

6. Entrapment is a defense when the defendant was entrapped into committing the crime. To what extent should law enforcement personnel induce the commission of an offense?

7. What legal principles can be used to justify self defense? Given that the law seeks to prevent crime, not promote it, are such principles sound?

8. What are the minimum standards of criminal procedure required in the criminal justice system?

Ex post facto laws are forbidden by the United States Constitution, and this protection prohibits the government from charging you with a crime using a law that was created after the crime was committed. If it was not a crime at the time an actor committed an act, then the actor may not be charged when the act becomes a crime. But protection against ex post facto laws effect more than just the elements of a crime, it also effects sentencing and punishment. The links below describe an unusual situation involving a cold case murder. Read the articles and discuss the questions below.

Man, 52, Is Convicted as a Juvenile in a 1976 Murder, Creating a Legal Tangle

10-year prison term imposed in cold case murder of Westfield woman

1. Should a 52 year-old man who has eluded justice for so many years enjoy protections normally afforded juvenile defendants simply because he was 15 when he committed the crime?

1. Why do ex post facto protections always work to the benefit of the accused regarding sentencing even when there was a more severe sentence available at the time the crime was committed?

1. Should the law be able to punish this 52 year old man for not turning himself in for such a long period of time? Is there an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would prevent the criminal justice system from punishing him for not confessing?

Submit a 2- to 4-page paper that includes the following:

• A summary of your findings regarding sexual orientation and its impact on life-span development, including findings from the resources and from the journal article(s) you selected during your research
• An explanation of how you might apply your findings to social work practice

If you want to invest in a company and you noticed that the company’s free cash flow or operating cash flow from its assets was negative for the past 3 years, what do you think could be the cause, and how can the company survived for so long time with  negative cash flows. Would you invest in this company? Why?

Do Not think of these topics as questions you must answer.   Do not go to some websites and copy and paste. You must not rely entirely on the references. Most of the grade will come from your own thoughts, knowledge, and analysis of the discussion topic.   You must always adhere to Academic Integrity policy, and you  must comply with  APA standard rules by providing in-text citations (including double quotations) and references taken from any sources.