Flawed witness testimony is as old as the notion of justice itself. A witness may have unquestionable integrity, but his memories and perspectives may be incomplete or incorrect. In his August Illinois Bar Journal column, retired circuit court judge Ron Spears examines Abraham Lincoln’s famous almanac trial for the lessons it reveals about flawed witnesses. Spears also discusses how discoveries in neuroscience are adding to our understanding of human memory and eyewitness identification.
Illinois Bar Journal
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August 13, 2018 |
Practice News
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August 7, 2018 |
Practice News
Attorneys defending a village against a sidewalk slip-and-fall case are caught off guard when the plaintiff produces images from Google Map’s Street View allegedly showing the sidewalk had been in poor condition for years prior to the plaintiff’s fall. If the court accepts the images, the plaintiff has a much stronger case that the village had constructive notice and plenty of time to make the repairs before the plaintiff fell. But do the images actually prove anything at all?
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July 25, 2018 |
Practice News
Did you know that in the early days of Illinois statehood, African Americans who wanted to reside in Illinois had to pay the local county clerk $1,000 just for the possibility that they may not be able to support themselves? African Americans also had to carry paperwork proving they were not runaway slaves. Even though technically “free,” they could be manipulated into indentured servitude for life. Illinois became a main thoroughfare of the Underground Railroad anyway and, after the Civil War, African Americans flocked to the new state, where many of its harshest anti-African American laws were sporadically enforced.
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July 23, 2018 |
Practice News
The Illinois Supreme Court interprets its supervisory authority broadly and holds that it is “unlimited in extent and hampered by no specific rules or means for its exercise.” Yet, historically, the court has used its supervisory powers only regarding issues brought to the court’s attention in petitions for leave to appeal (“PLAs”) where the court can order relief without full briefing, oral argument, or issuance of an opinion.
But recently, the court has been willing to exercise its supervisory power outside of the traditional context of PLAs. Examples include removing a judge for alleged judicial bias and misconduct, reinstating a summary judgment order vacated by the trial court on an improper basis, and ordering the appellate court to vacate an injunction.
1 comment (Most recent July 27, 2018) -
July 17, 2018 |
Practice News
Illinois is one of only 10 states that do not define "reasonable doubt" for juries.
Illinois courts have a well-established precedent to refrain from defining for juries what "beyond a reasonable doubt" means. The principle also is baked into the Illinois Pattern Jury Instructions-Criminal, which informs trial courts to not provide a definition instruction, stating: "reasonable doubt is a term which needs no elaboration and we have so frequently discussed the futility of attempting to define it that we might expect the practice to be discontinued."
2 comments (Most recent July 21, 2018) -
July 9, 2018 |
Practice News
Leaders of an organization discuss a proposed policy at a meeting, but ultimately decide against it. Later, an incident occurs that may have been prevented had that policy been put in place and the organization is sued for dismissing the proposed policy. An article in July’s Illinois Bar Journal discusses the implications of Glisson v. Indiana Department of Corrections, which held that a municipality and private contractors may be liable for failing to adopt a policy that was considered, but not implemented. The Glisson case may have a profound impact on Section 1983 actions.
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July 2, 2018 |
Practice News
Computer algorithms guide and propel decisions we make every day, from the shows we choose on Netflix to the purchases we make on Amazon. Algorithms also operate behind the scenes of our professional lives. Susan Nevelow Mart, director of the University of Colorado Law School library, recently published a study (see https://bit.ly/2GJBmwW) that compared how six legal search platforms reacted to identical keyword queries. She and her team looked at the first 10 cases retrieved by Westlaw, Lexis Advance, Fastcase, Casetext, Ravel Law, and Google Scholar. She found, on average, that each platform listed four cases that did not appear within the first 10 results of any of the other platform’s top10 results.
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July 2, 2018 |
ISBA News
Some copies of the July edition of the Illinois Bar Journal were incorrectly stapled at the printers, resulting in pages being out of order. The ISBA apologizes for this inconvenience. The printers will resend the journal in its correct form to members beginning Thursday, July 5. Meanwhile, the Illinois Bar Journal is available online.
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June 25, 2018 |
Practice News
More than nine out of every 10 consumers use reviews to make decisions. Nearly as many trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Regarding the legal profession, of the 58 million people who sought a lawyer in 2012, more than 75 percent used online resources in their search.
Good online reviews can be a great thing for your firm; they essentially translate into cheap and effective advertising. But what happens when a negative review of your services lands online? How do you react? Should you react at all?
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June 18, 2018 |
Practice News
Justice Michael B. Hyman of the Illinois Appellate Court – and one of the Illinois Bar Journal’s regular columnists – has had enough of bold, underlined, italicized, and ALL-CAPPED words and phrases. Don’t even get him started on redundant exclamation points!!!
We all may agree that such stylizations are all too common in our emails, texts, and social media posts. But Justice Hyman says such bad habits are making their way into legal documents meant to sway his opinion. In his June "Judging Your Writing" column, the justice – in no uncertain terms – says this isn’t a good idea.