Slightly Inclement Weather Ahead

Greetings,



This being the end of my first week of 2L year I felt compelled to throw out another blog post. This weekend comes with a chance of very bad weather as Hurricane Irene is bearing down on Hampton Roads. It is my first Hurricane in the area and I am officially excited, which probably is not a good thing. I do believe though that I have taken the correct precautions and made a solid Costco trip to ensure my survival. For all those being affected by the Hurricane, be safe and God bless.



On to more legal things. This week in Evidence we spoke about the judge being the ultimate fact-finder in jury cases and that a judge is less likely to be swayed by inadmissible evidence than a jury. When a jury hears inadmissible evidence, it usually is very bad for whoever proffered that evidence. The judge cannot "unring" that bell, so to speak. I had heard this term used before and thought it would be an interesting read for anyone who is likes federal evidence procedure (who doesn't?). This summer I was following the Roger Clemens perjury trial. Being a die-hard Yankees fan it came naturally to follow the proceedings, even if my opinion of Clemens definitely took a major hit when he was named in the Mitchell Report for possibly using performance enhancing drugs. So, long story short, Clemens is on trial for lying to Congress about using steroids. The prosecutors have a rather good case against him. However, after the judge TWICE tells them not to play a video in front of the jury containing inadmissible evidence, the prosecutors do it anyway. And the judge declares a mistrial, saying he cannot "unring" the proverbial bell. It was a very current example of our discussion and I was glad that my ESPN addiction seemed to give me a better understanding of a topic.



Here is a link to the story for those interested:



http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/6768625/roger-clemens-trial-judge-declares-mistrial



It is very interesting and raises a lot of questions about why so much taxpayer money was used to prosecute a sports figure when perhaps that money could have been better used elsewhere. That is a discussion for another time.



Baton down the hatches,

David