September 1, 2016

POS 282 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN LAW
In class today, Thursday 9/1, I distributed two handouts: the template for case briefs, and my version of the Mahmoud case brief. We began by going over briefly the proper citation format, the parties involved, the Plaintiff's objective and cause of action, and the trial court defense. We then went into a fair amount of detail about the prior proceeding, because we need in this case to understand what instructions were proposed and which were actually given in the trial court in order to understand the issues in the Maine Supreme Court. We then started with the Supreme Court's discussion of the issues. We began with whether jury instructions on eyewitness identification would be allowed at all, in light of the fact that this exact issue had been decided by the Maine Supreme Court in 1989. We then went over the question of whether there was enough evidence of an improperly suggestive identification, and left off with the question of whether the proposed instruction on "stress" was sufficiently covered by the instruction on "circumstances". We'll finish next week with the issue of the correlation between witness confidence and reliability. Along the way, we also discussed the difference between questions of fact versus questions of law, and why the Supreme Court in this case viewed the facts in the light most favorable to the state. We discussed good lawyering and why the defense attorney proposed jury instructions, but didn't object to the introduction of the eyewitness identifications in the first place.
The assignment for Tuesday 9/6 is to review the Mahmoud opinion, as well as today's handouts, and to read in addition pp 1-15 of the textbook.