An important issue in forensic science is the question whether the method was reliably applied to the facts. In 2017, an appeals court in North Carolina did something largely noticed but remarkable: the court found that it was an error to admit fingerprint evidence in a criminal case. Twenty-six leading forensic analysts, statisticians, and researchers signed an amicus brief in the case, calling for stronger examination of the reliable application of fingerprint and other expert evidence. The goal was to emphasize to the state supreme court that only expert work that is reliably applied to the facts should be admitted at trial. The brief describes how wrongful convictions can and have resulted when forensic methods are poorly applied in criminal cases. Last Friday, the state supreme court declined review, allowing the appellate ruling in the case to stand.
The first instance judgment in re La Manada, still subject to judicial review and already discussed by prominent scholars in this blog, puts on the table the question of a possible reform of the sex crimes in Spain. In this post the author examines some reasonable, and some less reasonable, reform proposals.
Evidence to date suggests that the intermediate hearing in Chilean criminal proceedings has failed to fulfil its institutional role of verifying the admissibility of evidence that will later be presented to the trial court. There are many factors to indicate that poor quality evidence is being admitted to trial without an adequate evidence-filtration process. This post examines the reasons behind this shortcoming and invites foreign academics to consider comparable institutions in their own countries, in a combined effort to identify workable solutions.
A brief commentary on the judgment by the Spanish Supreme Court delivered on 28th June 2018. In particular, the post criticises the Court’s reasoning behind the alleged necessity for a corporation to adopt compliance programs, in order to prevent the commission of offences within the corporation itself.
Ten years after Juan Bustos Ramírez’s (1935-2008) death this short post explores the highlights of his career. The author, an avid disciple, illustrates the greatness of Bustos’s achievements as an academic, politician and human rights lawyer in spite of the difficult historical and personal circumstances in which he worked.
At a seminar co-organised on 23th-24th August 2018 in Santiago (Chile) by the Alberto Hurtado University and the Universidad de Chile to mark the 10th anniversary of the death of Juan Bustos Ramírez (1935-2008), one of his former students recalls an episode that took place in one of Bustos’s Santiago lectures in 1996. This serves as a starting point for reflection on the extraordinary personality of the Chilean criminal law scholar, who had been one of Hans Welzel’s followers in Bonn and later became a distinguished professor at the Universitat Autónoma of Barcelona.
The post deals with liability for omissions under Article 11 of the Spanish criminal code, and discusses under which condition a defendant can be held criminally liable for an offence requiring the causation of a result, if he or she… has not done anything at all.
This working paper, presented at a seminar on “Constitutional Criminal Law” organised at the Toronto University on 14-15 September 2018 by Malcolm Thornburn and Christoph Burchard, is a response to a recent work by Javier Wilenmann, where he argues inter alia that constitutional judicial review of criminal legislation is ineffective and, when fully exercised by the courts, is in fact counter-productive. This paper reasons to the contrary that: i) judicial control of criminal legislation can be effective, and historically in many instances has been shown to be so; and ii) from a political and institutional viewpoint, there are sound reasons to justify the exercise of judicial control, provided that certain criteria are met.
In the early hours of 7 July 2016, five strong young men aged between 23 and 28 had sex with a 18 years old girl they had just met. This case arouse great social condemnation and an in-depth legal debate to understand if the girl agreed to have sex, or rather the five guys assaulted her and committed a group sex offence. Such facts induced the Spanish legislator to consider a reform of the criminal code, nowadays distinguishing between sex assault (by means of violence or threats under articles 178 and 179) and a less serious sex abuse (perpetrated without the said means, under article 181), similarly to the sex crime provided for by article 609-bis of the Italian criminal code.
The case "La Manada", a group sexual assault on a young woman during the Festival of San Fermin in Pamplona, triggered a huge debate about sex offences in Spain, as well as protests and feminist mobilisation. This paper analyses the facts and the legal reasoning of the first instance judgment, pointing out the reasons for a thorough reform of the crimes at issue.