News
New Mexico Supreme Court Raises Eyewitness ID Standards
The New Mexico Supreme Court recently cited Wilson Center research in a unanimous opinion that raises the standards for eyewitness identification under the state constitution. The opinion in State v. Martinez affirmed a man’s convictions for killing two Santa Fe teenagers and adopted a new standard for determining whether eyewitness identification of a criminal suspect […]
Tags: Brandon Garrett, evidence, eyewitness, eyewitness evidence, Manson Test, New Mexico Supreme Court, research
December 14, 2020
Judge Releases Order Appointing Thomas Maher to COVID-19 Prison Litigation
Wake County Superior Court Judge Vince Rozier released the order today appointing Wilson Center Director Thomas Maher as a special master in ongoing litigation in how the state is handling COVID-19 in prisons. You can read more about the case and the appointment here and read the full order below. 20 CVS 500110 Order Appointing […]
Tags: courts, COVID-19 in prisons, NAACP v. Cooper, prison, special master, Thomas Maher
December 11, 2020
Researchers Propose Reforms on Police Use of Force in U.S. in new Article
Wilson Center Director Brandon Garrett and Vanderbilt Law School Criminal Justice Director Christopher Slobogin released a new article today in the German Law Article, “The Law on Police Use of Force in the United States.” The Abstract: Recent events in the United States have highlighted the fact that American police resort to force, including deadly […]
Tags: Brandon Garrett, Christopher Slobogin, federal police laws, police reform, police use of force, qualified immunity
December 10, 2020
Wilson Center Executive Director Appointed Special Master in NC COVID Litigation
Wilson Center Executive Director Thomas Maher has been appointed special master in the North Carolina litigation over the state prison system’s handling of COVID-19. NAACP v. Cooper was filed earlier this year on behalf of several civil rights organizations, including the North Carolina NAACP and ACLU, as well as several incarcerated individuals. The plaintiffs have […]
Tags: ACLU, COVID-19, litigation, NAACP, North Carolina, prisons, public safety, Thomas Maher
December 4, 2020
Eyewitness Conference Examines Importance, Pitfalls of Evidence
By: Sydney Gaviser Eyewitness testimony is one of the oldest and most basic forms of trial evidence. If a witness sees a person commit a crime, reports to the police, and is able to identify the culprit in a lineup procedure, the system must have worked. Unfortunately, research tells us that eyewitnesses can and do make […]
Tags: criminal legal system, eyewitness, eyewitness testimony, judges
November 30, 2020
Swartz: Closing Coverage Gaps to Promote Successful Prison Reentry for Persons with Mental Illness
Dr. Marvin S. Swartz, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke and a faculty member at the Wilson Center for Science and Justice at the Duke School of Law recently wrote a piece for Care4Carolina about a key element of successful reentry programs for individuals with severe mental illness: ongoing […]
Tags: Behavioral Health Core, health insurance, Medicaid, mental illness, reentry
November 25, 2020
Wilson Researchers to Bail Working Group: Durham Jail Population Down after Reforms but we Need Better Data
Researchers from the Wilson Center for Science and Justice have been scraping jail data in Durham in an effort to analyze pretrial policies and practices concerning the use of cash bail. Wilson Center Research Director William E. Crozier, Center Director Brandon L. Garrett, and PhD. candidate Arvind Krishnamurthy wrote “The Transparency of Jail Data,” an […]
Tags: bail, bail policies, cash bail, decarceration, jail, judges, prosecution
November 24, 2020
Upcoming Paper Encourages Redistribution of Police Power
By De’Ja Wood Over the summer, the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, sparked national protests and discourse about the need for radical police reform. Organizers across the nation called on their local and state governments to defund the police, invest in community resources that address the conditions that create violence within communities, and […]
Tags: Black Lives Matter, Defund the Police, George Floyd, police, Police Reform through a Power Lens, policing, research
November 20, 2020