Denying defendants the benefit of a reasonable doubt: Federal Rule of Evidence 609 and past sex crime convictions.: An article from: Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

This digital document is an article from Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, published by Northwestern University, School of Law on January 1, 2010. The length of the article is 14102 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

From the author: For jurors in a criminal trial to fulfill their duty of determining whether a person is guilty of a particular act beyond a reasonable doubt, they must not be diverted from that task by intense dislike for a defendant who has previously been convicted of a sex crime. Legislatures and courts should adopt a rule that prior sex crime convictions are presumptively inadmissible to impeach credibility.

Citation Details
Title: Denying defendants the benefit of a reasonable doubt: Federal Rule of Evidence 609 and past sex crime convictions.
Author: Julia T. Rickert
Publication:Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 2010
Publisher: Northwestern University, School of Law
Volume: 100 Issue: 1 Page: 213(29)

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