We are pleased to presnet the following review of Cross Examination Handbook: Persuasion, Strategies and Techniques by Ronald H. Clark and others as acknowledged below. The review was prepared by our Senior Law Librarian for Public Access, Theodore Pollack
Title: Cross-Examination Handbook: Persuasion, Strategies, and Techniques
Author: Ronald H. Clark, George R. Dekle, Sr., William S. Bailey
A recently released U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics Study presents data on the number of adults under some form of correctional supervision at the end of the year 2009. The Report discussing the Study was released on December 21, 2010; it is part of the Correctional Population of the United States Series, published annually. For more information see the Bureau of Justice Statistics Press Release accompanying the Report For additional information including links to accompanying spread sheet data click here.
David Badertscher
The New York Supreme Court Criminal Term Library (New York County) is pleased to announce a major enhancement regarding access to those Temporary Commission on Revision of New York Penal Law and Criminal Code (1961-1970) papers held by the New York Supreme Court Criminal Term Library (New York County). During the past year we in the library have been working with professional interns, archivists, and especially Philip Yow and his web design team at the State of New York Unified Court System to find ways to preserving these materials, many of which were beginning to deteriorate significantly. After confronting various obstacles, technical and otherwise, we settled on digitizing the material as a number of separate and searchable pdf files and then placing all of them on the library website with an overlay of google searchability. Although this may not be perfect it does make the documents accessible on the web in a cost effective manner.
A word of further explanation. these papers primarily consisting of documents submitted to and documents produced by the Temporary Commission on Revision of Penal Laws and Criminal Code (1961-1970) were collected by our former Administrative Judge Peter Mcquillan who served on the staff of the Commission. Justice Mcquillan left the Papers in my custody when he retired and we first put up an index to the papers on the web and now the full text of these materials. In addition we have included The Proposed New York Criminal Procedure Law of 1969 because in addition to the text of the proposed law, it includes valuable additional materials related to the work of the Commission and derivation tables for use in comparing the current Code with the earlier Code. Special permission was obtained from Thomson Reuters before publishing the latter segment.
Until a few weeks ago before receiving a telephone call I had never heard of Ron Arons. During that call Mr. Arons explained that he had been following postings on this blog and wondered if I would be interested in reviewing two of his books. After some discussion I agreed to either review them myself or ask some of my colleagues to review them for posting on the Criminal Law Library blog, with the understanding that the books provided for reviewing would be added to the library collection of the New York Supreme Court Criminal Term Library of New York County and not given to me personally.
We are fortunate that two colleagues, both experienced book reviewers, were available and eager to take on these assignments. Pepper Hedden who has worked with me on special projects and reviews materials regularly for the Law Library Association of Greater New York (LLAGNY) will graduate December 2010 from St. John’s University with an MLS degree. She is a reference librarian in the law library of the New York County District Attorney’s office and is reviewing The Jews of Sing Sing the first of Mr. Arons’ books listed below. Ted Pollack who is reviewing Wanted! U.S. Criminal Records: Sources & Research Methodology, also by Mr. Arons, is the Senior Law Librarian at the New York County Public Access Law Library. Ted continues to review legal materials for both the New York Law Journal and the Library Journal.
Since I am not writing any of the reviews below I will only say that as a law librarian who is always looking for useful sources of criminal records, I have already found Mr. Arons book Wanted! U.S. Criminal Records: Sources & Research Methodology useful in identifying criminal records in other jurisdictions. Unfortunately I have not yet found time to read The Jews of Sing Sing–but I will. Now on to the book reviews:
To view the full-text of cases you must sign in to FindLaw.com. All summaries are produced by Findlaw
November 8-12 2010.
United States Fourth Circuit, 11/12/2010
US v. Ide, No. 09-4833
District court’s grant of government’s petition to revoke defendant’s term of supervised release originally imposed in May 2002 as part of his sentence on a federal charge, claiming that defendant’s commission of an additional state offense, along with his failure to file monthly reports, violated the conditions of his supervised release, is affirmed as, under the circumstances, a defendant’s supervised release term is tolled under 18 U.S.C. section 3624(e) during the period that he spent in pretrial detention awaiting trial on the state charge for which he later was convicted. ..
United States Fifth Circuit, 11/09/2010
US v. Jackson, No. 09-10850
Defendant’s conviction and sentence, following a jury trial, for conspiring to possess with intent to distribute more than five kilograms of cocaine, are vacated where certain notebooks introduced into evidence were not sufficiently authenticated, the error violated defendant’s rights under the Confrontation Clause, and the error was not harmless.
United States Fifth Circuit, 11/09/2010
US v. Flores-Gallo, No. 09-40882
Defendant’s sentence for unlawful reentry into the U.S. is affirmed where the district court properly found that defendant’s prior Kansas aggravated battery offense was a “crime of violence” for sentencing purposes and imposed an enhancement accordingly.
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October 20, 2010
October 20, 2010 Computer Expert Pleads Guilty to Hacker Stock Scheme (Bloomberg)
On social media bad news spreads quickly.
When off-duty Baltimore Police Detective Brian Stevenson was killed Saturday night after being struck in the head by a piece of concrete, word spread quickly through police circles and spilled onto Facebook, where the officer’s young daughter learned of his death before relatives could break it to her in person.
See complete article by Justin Fenton in the October 20, Baltimore Sun.
October 2009 – September 2010.
Issued October 2010
New York State fully implemented changes to its drug laws on October 7, 2009. This report provides a preliminary update of the impact during the first year. More comprehensive reports will be issued in the coming months. The preliminary review shows that because of the drug law changes:
To view the full-text of cases you must sign in to FindLaw.com. All summaries are produced by Findlaw
October 11-15 2010.
United States First Circuit, 10/11/2010
US v. Brown
Defendant’s conviction for possession of cocaine base with intent to distribute is affirmed where: 1) although the district court’s factual findings and the inferences made from those findings, which formed the basis of its conclusion that reasonable suspicion existed to stop a car, are not compelled by the record or by the facts, both are nonetheless reasonable and therefore pass constitutional muster; 2) the affirmance of the district court’s finding that the officers had reasonable suspicion to stop the car forecloses the need to address defendant’s challenge to the district court’s alternate conclusion that the car was not seized when the officers first approached; and 3) there was no abuse of discretion in the district court’s denial of defendant’s motion to suppress evidence without an evidentiary hearing.
United States First Circuit, 10/14/2010
US v. Kinsella
Conviction of defendant for conspiring to possess and distribute oxycodone, possessing oxycodone with intent to distribute, and willfully failing to appear in court as required, as well as a 97-month sentence, are affirmed where: 1) defendant’s claim of multiple instances of prosecutorial misconduct is rejected; and 2) the district judge did not clearly err in his drug-quantity calculations.
United States First Circuit, 10/15/2010
Statchen v. Palmer
In plaintiff’s 42 U.S.C. section 1983 suit against police officers, claiming that they used excessive force in arresting him for public intoxication and in transporting him from a station house to jail, district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of defendants on the basis of qualified immunity is affirmed as the district court had no basis for sending the case to a jury because plaintiff’s own deposition provided no evidence to indicate that the force exerted was unnecessary, or that a reasonable police officer would have thought otherwise. .
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In the October 15, 2010 Wall Street Journal, Dionne Searcey reports that “after numerous record-shattering fines and executive prosecutions in recent years, the government’s crackdown on violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act shows no signs of slowing.
So far this year, the U.S. Justice Department has carried out a dozen prosecutions, after 19 prosecutions in 2009. That doesn’t include civil cases brought under the law by the Securities and Exchange Commission.” To see Ms. Searcey’s complete article, go to:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704634104575552583836621938.html?mod=dist_smartb
Criminal Law Library Blog