Publications

This amicus brief, filed on behalf of scholars of criminal, constitutional law, poverty law and access to justice, describes the importance of conducting a robust due process and equal protection analysis when examining the imposition of sanctions on persons without regard to their ability to pay.

In over 1.72 million cases total – and 120,000 cases each year criminal courts in North Carolina have imposed fees that a person cannot or does not pay. A failure to comply with the court order to pay, or an “FTC,” is then entered in the case. This report sheds light on the scope of the FTC phenomenon in North Carolina. (2020)

By: Michele M. Easter, Jeffrey W. Swanson, Allison G. Robertson, Lorna L. Moser, and Marvin S. Swartz – Journal of Mental Health (2020)

“Equal process” claims arise from a line of Supreme Court and lower court cases in which wealth inequality is the central concern. That equal process connection is at the forefront of a wave of national litigation concerning some of the most pressing civil rights issues of our time, including: the constitutionality of fines, fees, and costs; detention of immigrants and criminal defendants for inability to pay cash bail; loss of voting rights; and a host of other ways in which the indigent face both unfair process and disparate burdens. This article argues that an intersectional “equal process” approach to these cases better reflects both longstanding constitutional doctrine and the practical stakes in such litigation. If courts properly understand this connection between inequality and unfair process, they will design more suitable and effective remedies. By: Brandon L. Garrett – William & Mary Law Review (2019-2020)

This article assesses the adoption of police eyewitness identification policies in Virginia. Policymakers were focused on this problem, in part, due to a series of DNA exonerations in cases involving misidentifications. To remedy this problem, in 2011, the state law enforcement policy agency drafted a detailed model policy on eyewitness procedure. An earlier 2013 study found those practices were only haltingly being adopted. This 2018 study, however, found near universal adoption of these best practices. By: Brandon Garrett — Virginia Law Review (2019)

This amicus brief, filed by the Amicus Lab team on behalf of researchers, argued that the blood pattern evidence introduced in two Texas murder trials was unreliable, based on more recent scientific research.

This amicus brief, filed on behalf of scholars representing a variety of disciplines, including law, psychology, neuroscience, and statistics, describes the importance of not relying solely on in-court identifications by eyewitnesses.

Anne Metz, John Monahan, Brandon Garrett, Luke Siebert in Journal of Community Psychology (2019).

This article, co-authored by Faculty Director Brandon Garrett, explored the use of the Nonviolent Risk Assessment (NVRA) used in Virginia when judges sentenced people convicted of drug and property crimes.

Using a nationally representative sample of American adults, this stydt examined the impact of proficiency testing information on the weight given to the opinions of fingerprint examiners by mock jurors considering a hypothetical criminal case. By: Gregory P. Mitchell and Brandon L. Garrett – Behavioral Science and Law (2019)

This amicus brief, described in this story, was filed on behalf of 26 leading forensic analysts, statisticians, and researchers, who advocated for careful analysis of the reliable application of fingerprint methods to the facts in a case.