Defense lawyers increasingly are dealing with cellphones and location issues. Per Call Measurement Data files provide an estimate of the location of a cellphone. (Call Detail Record files, on the other hand, provide the location of the cell tower that served a call.) Richard Miletic explains the technology used, the error rate, and the basis to exclude PCMD under Daubert.

Although voluntariness is a mainstay of the U.S. legal system, voluntariness and its flip side, coercion, are ill-defined. Likely because of this ambiguity, admissibility decisions for contested confessions have been inconsistent. Some modern-day, often-used interrogation techniques (e.g., investigators feigning friendship) are coercive, even if they appear innocuous and non-adversarial.

Letter to the Judicial Conference Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure regarding proposed changes to procedures in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Brief of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers as Amicus Curiae in Support of Respondents.

Argument: The Daubert standard is superior to Frye for ensuring the reliability of expert evidence and preventing wrongful convictions. Unlike Frye, expert testimony under Daubert must be based on more than “pure opinion.” Unlike Frye, which is limited to considering the expert’s methodology, Daubert evaluates the reliability of an expert’s methodology, reasoning and opinions. Unlike Daubert, which applies to all expert testimony, Frye only applies to “new or novel” scientific techniques. A number of unreliable forensic techniques are admitted under Frye because they are no longer new or novel. The Frye standard, which measures general acceptance by the insular community in question, exacerbates the problem of junk science.