Harvard Law School celebrates its 50th year of admitting women with a three day program, featuring Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Attorney General Janet Reno.

We begin our 30th year of practicing law today--we have no idea where the time went. It really flew.

Our law school class had some 200 students, 11 of whom were women. Women now make up 50% or more of law school classes around the country.

We'd like to see more women criminal defense lawyers in private practice--this field remains very much male-dominated.

To get a real inside glimpse of the hurdles women defense lawyers face -- and the degree of determination needed to suceed, we highly recommend defense lawyer-turned Court TV anchor Rikki Klieman's new book, Fairy Tales Can Come True : How a Driven Woman Changed Her Destiny which debuts May 8--

Buy the Book Today!

We describe the book on CrimeLynx as "a riveting, brutally honest memoir by celebrated criminal trial attorney and Court TV Anchor Rikki Klieman, in which she details not only her triumphs as a pioneer in the male-dominated arena of criminal defense, but the price she paid for success-- and the toll it took on her personal life and physical health. The book becomes filled with spirit and joy, however, as Rikki describes falling in love in middle age and learning that she can have it all."

"For the first time in New York since the state's high court opened courtroom doors to identification experts, a judge has said a jury can hear testimony that suggests eyewitnesses are particularly unreliable when identifying perpetrators of a different ethnicity. The judge rejected prosecutors' arguments that scientific experts had not reached generally accepted theories on the accuracy of "cross-racial" IDs."

"It has become one of the most researched issues in eyewitness identification today," Justice Massaro wrote in People v. Radcliffe, 3714/01. "Inexorably, the studies are conclusive that human perception is inexact and that human memory is fallible; where cross racial-identification is involved, this is especially so." ...The judge said that although courts can give jurors a separate instruction when a criminal case relies on one witness, the question of cross-racial identification is not covered by the instruction and could require expert testimony if certain circumstances are met.

Eyewitness identification is the leading cause of wrongful convictions. Juries need to be educated about the principles of memory and proper versus improper identification techniques. This opinion is a major step in that direction.

It should be noted that the Judge refused to allow expert testimony on the issue of eyewitness confidence. We think this is in error given the current state of psychological research showing that jurors tend to overbelieve eyewitnesses and that a witness' confidence in their selection of a suspect from a photo or live lineup is actually a weak indicator of reliability.

Thinking of going to law school? US News and World Report's 2004 ranking of the nation's law schools is hot off the press and available free here. [link via Paper Chase]

We are probably on careers today because we are excited for fellow blogger Matt Yglesias who is graduating from Harvard and just landed a job at Tapped's parent company, American Prospect.

The case of Gideon v. Wainwright is about the right to a court-appointed attorney. Its importance is only underscored by developments today in the cases of American born detainees Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla. Robert C. Boruchowitz, director of The Defender Association and a Soros Justice Senior Fellow of the Open Society Institute, explains the connection .

From our earlier post:

We will be in Washington with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers for the 40th Anniversary of Gideon commemoration and to do some lobbying with some Republican members of Congress on the Innocence Protection Act on Tuesday and Wednesday. We will be blogging evenings and early mornings from D.C.

If you're in Washington, come to the Gideon Symposium. It is free and open to the public. You can access the brochure here. Details:

March 18, 2003, 9:30 am - 5:00 pm
Georgetown University Law Center
600 New Jersey Avenue, NW
Washington, DC

South Knox Bubba got dismissed from jury duty in a crack cocaine case where the defendant, an African-American, allegedly sold to an undercover agent. SK notes the only other African-American in the room was the prosecutor--and that on voir dire he volunteered his criticism of the war on drugs and was promptly booted off.

A note to prospective jurors: If you say you think drugs should be legal or decriminalized or are a victimless crime, you will never get on the jury. Defense lawyers need people like you on juries. You have to tell the truth, but think a few minutes how you phrase it so you can stay on.

SK links to a certain alleged violent offender at the bottom of the post, commenting that it's hard to be against the death penalty sometimes. It shouldn't be--life without the possibility of is a death penalty--and the defendant suffers for many more years.

Instapundit took his Constitutional Law class on a field trip to a shooting range:

The students got a chance to shoot a variety of guns, from a .45 automatic to a .357 magnum revolver to an HK MP5 submachinegun, which last was especially popular with a couple of the women. Indeed, the bellicose-women trend was pretty visible in the class. All the students had been shooting before, something you probably wouldn't find in a law school in the Northeast or in California, but the women were notably enthusiastic. (One even knew from experience that Tuesday is "ladies' day" -- free range time -- at Guncraft.) I suppose that in some ways the teaching value would have been higher if some of the students hadn't had any experience with guns. On the other hand, perhaps the legal parts of the lesson would have been eclipsed by the sheer novelty of the experience. And I'm just happy to have had a successful field trip in a class that doesn't lend itself to field trips very well.

Denver criminal defense attorney Lisa Wayne has put together a similar field trip for NACDL lawyers at the annual meeting in Denver this August where the theme is forensics. We think it's a great idea and are looking forward to attending.

Former President Bill Clinton has been tapped for jury duty in a New York murder case. The Judge is inclined to excuse him due to the publicity and effect of the constant presence of secret service--she wants the trial to stay focused on the evidence.

Clinton filled out his questionnaire, and said he could be fair. His lawer, David Kendall, says he's ready to serve. The prosecution wants Clinton excused. The defense says, "not so fast."

We would love the opportunity to voir dire Clinton --but ultimately, we feel sure we would excuse him. Too many crime bills came in under Clinton, particularly the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. Under his Admnistration, we saw big increases in the number of death penalty-eligible offenses, the number of wiretaps and mandatory minimum sentences. While most people think of Clinton as liberal and tolerant, he was terrible on criminal justice issues.

So while we wish he was still President for other reasons, we know we wouldn't want him on a murder jury. We'd make a challenge for cause, and if that was denied, he'd be peremptory challenge number one. Sorry, Bill.

Say hello to Fourth Amendment.com by our good friend and fellow criminal defense lawyer John Wesley Hall.

John is the author of the textbook Search and Seizure (3rd. Ed. 2000) and this site has the updated supplements to the text.

We prodded John to include a blog on his site last December in Key West at the NORML legal seminar where we both were speaking, and we're very glad he took our suggestion.

What all does the site have? "Case updates with news and views on the law of search and seizure and arrest and detention, including the Fourth Amendment and state law."

John is also the author of Professional Responsibility of the Criminal Lawyer, 2d Ed. (West)

Here's something else that is not being reported in the U.S. Oral arguments began yesterday in the World Court in a long-standing lawsuit filed by Iran against the United States for damages caused by the US Navy's destruction of three Iranian oil platforms in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war. (in 1987-88). The arguments are scheduled to continue until March 7. The case is ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

You can access yesterday's transcripts of the hearing here, and all of the documents here.

Iran argues that the U.S. was not neutral in the conflict as it claimed, but was actively helping Iraq to win its war with Iran. It disputes the U.S. claim that the destruction of the platforms was necessary to protect it's "essential security interest."

The U.S. has acknowledged attacking and destroying the platforms. We find a few of Iran's statements interesting (The U.S. isn't presenting its case until later). Specifically, Iran complains

... that the United States consistently provided intelligence and logistical support for Iraqi aggression against Iran, and that the United States was “concerned that Iraq should not lose the war”.

'Brain Fingerprinting' to solve crimes? Forgive our skepticism, but we don't think so. And even if it did, the privacy invasion into one's thoughts is hardly worth it.

A technique called "brain fingerprinting," which seeks to probe whether a suspect has specific knowledge of a crime, could become a powerful weapon in national security, its inventor believes.

Lawrence Farwell, a Harvard-educated neuroscientist who founded Brain Fingerprinting Laboratories Inc. 12 years ago and runs the company from a small town in southern Iowa, believes the technique could emerge as the next big thing in law enforcement and intelligence.

"From a scientific perspective, we can definitively say that brain fingerprinting could have substantial benefits in identifying terrorists or in exonerating people accused of being terrorists," Farwell said.

But first the controversial technique, which has had some success, must overcome the skepticism of some experts who are reluctant to embrace it."

Let's hope this one bites the dust quickly.

"It's pure snake oil. There's no evidence you can determine evil intent or anything else from brain fingerprinting. It's the 21st century version of the lie detector test, which also doesn't work very well," said Barry Steinhardt, who directs a technology program for the American Civil Liberties Union. A General Accounting Office report in 2001 found that CIA, FBI, Department of Defense and Secret Service officials did not at this stage foresee using brain fingerprinting because of the expertise needed to employ the technique and because it would likely be of limited usefulness....Independent scientists contacted by the GAO investigators raised various objections to brain fingerprinting and said it needed more work into issues such as how memory was affected by drugs and alcohol, mental illness and extreme anxiety during crime situations.

Limited usefulness? How about limited reliability? How about not being able to pass the Daubert criteria for admission into evidence in court (although, one Iowa court apparently admitted it in a murder case)? Then there's this:

Still, William Iacono, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Minnesota, said he was confident that brain fingerprinting would eventually establish itself for many applications, including the investigation of carefully planned premeditated crimes.

Frightening stuff for use in crime-solving. At least, "just like lie detector tests, the technique requires the cooperation of the subject. A suspect could simply refuse to cooperate by closing his eyes and refusing to watch the prompts flashed on the screen before him."

Farrell says the technique may have use in Alzheimer's research. He wants to explore it's ability to detect and monitor the onset of the disease. That we would endorse.

First it was handwriting, hair and fiber comparison. Then it was polygraphs and fingerprints. Now it's the law enforcement technique of bullet lead analysis to come under legal and scientific attack.

For over 20 years, the FBI has been using chemical analysis of bullet lead to match bullets to the gun they were fired from and even to the ammunition box they came from. This technique, like the others mentioned, has now come under scientific attack. "The problem, experts say, is that such methods evolved from hunches, trial and error, and anecdotal evidence rather than from accepted scientific practice, which requires controlled experiments and rigorous peer review of the results."

It seems that contrary to what FBI agents have testified to in court the past few decades, bullets that appear chemically identical can come from different batches of lead.

FBI experts have testified repeatedly in court that each time lead is melted and cast, its composition changes just enough to create a unique chemical signature for each batch.....Recent scientific studies have concluded that this premise is wrong. Studying blocks of lead used in the manufacture of bullets, researchers have found the same chemical makeup in batches made at different times. They also have reported that the concentration of trace elements can vary significantly in the same casting of lead. If the skeptics are right, the matches found by FBI lab technicians are meaningless.

A separate study, commissioned by a former FBI agent and a metallurgist who once worked together on the Unabomber case, was conducted by four researchers.

...The four researchers found that there is no such signature. Trace elements are often distributed unevenly within each casting, they reported, so that entire batches rarely bear a uniform chemical profile. As molten lead is cooled, the trace elements tend to concentrate, clumping silver, arsenic or tin toward the center, the study found. As a result, the researchers said, bullets created from the same block of lead can appear unrelated and bullets produced years apart can appear virtually identical.

Defense counsel around the country have begun contesting the FBI's technique--and some are trying to set aside clients' convictions where the technique may have played a principal role at trial.

Richard Saferstein, former chief forensic scientist for the New Jersey State Police, said in a recent interview that the problem with bullet-lead analysis is not with the lab work but with the conclusions drawn from it. The FBI, he said, has tended to overstate the significance of such evidence. "It's the image that the FBI projects, of course, more than the technology. That image, when you are talking to jurors, is impressive," he said. "You can't abuse that privilege. It comes back to haunt the agency and the profession."

TAPPED leads us to a commentary addressing whether John Ashcroft's press conferences on Moussaoui, John Walker Lindh, Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla violated government ethics rules. They do.

"Many of Ashcroft's statements, in all four cases, had no serious prosecutorial or law enforcement purpose. Their apparent purpose was to serve as part of a public relations campaign - with the intent of increasing political support for the actions of the administration, and silencing potential critics. "

But read the whole thing, you'll learn why prosecutors are so rarely disciplined for their misconduct and why our only likely recourse against Ashcroft is to vote against the Republicans in 2004.