This is absolutely wild. There’s a guy out there who’s been teaching these courses for over 10 years, telling police that if someone says “I don’t know” on a 911 call it’s a sign they might have committed the crime.
It sounds like some judges throw this out of court, but people have been convicted based on this stuff.
My takeaway is that if you are ever on trial for a crime you didn't commit, you need to make sure that your defense attorney knows about this junk science and has a good and usable plan to tear it to shreds, or the jury will listen to some random cop talk about the quaver of your voice and accept that hunch as all of the evidence needed to show that you're guilty.
“Look mam. I've been a police officer for thirty years. I've seen things that you can't imagine. I've seen serial killers, child rapists, and whatnot. I know a criminal when I look them in the eye. When I hear them talk, there's no doubt.”
Investing in an acting coach to help you convince the jury that you are the victim might be a better strategy than teaching science to flat earther jurors.
I imagine you're probably kidding, but as an actor:
There is little an acting coach can do to make you believable. It will likely make you less so. First, you won't be any good to start, and your instincts will get in your way. Second, the kind of things you do to act don't look good in real life. Even the most natural acting is actually highly stylized, and looks good only to a camera or an audience who has suspended disbelief.
You'd do better just winging it and hoping for the best. Your lawyer might give you instructions on how to manipulate a jury, but they will probably just tell you to be honest and let them do the work of putting it into context for a jury.
Acting is a specialized skill that is superficially easy and deeply hard. Crossing from one to the other is an aggravating process of suppressing all the things that make a good naive actor succeed and replacing them with things that feel completely wrong.
Until the prosecution find outs. "Why would the defendant hire an acting coach to prep them for the trial if they were innocent?" Another piece of meaningless circumstantial evidence that will be held up as a definitive proof of guilt.
Why would an innocent defendant need a lawyer. Why would someone innocent refuse to answer the question. Why would an innocent person object to their DNA being taken?
Prisons filled with resting bitch faces and unlikeable, awkward people, the jury system does not produce better justice, just different injustices close aligned to the prejudices of the jurors. Still improvement over the deals.
Conspiracy theorists and people who believe in non-mainstream things (like Flat-earthers) are the last people prosecutors want on juries because they're sympathetic to people who allege to have the system wrongfully working against them.
It's the well to do types who've only ever lived their life in nice places, never stepped out of line and never had much if any adversarial interaction with government systems that prosecutors want on the jury.
It does not actually matter, as you do not get to decide what is admissible in court. You can not simply present any arbitrary line of reasoning or questioning in a criminal trial in the US. A judge could reasonably decide that this junk science is admissible, but that your criticism is not.
Which improves your chances of getting a retrial. Judges do get almost complete domain over their courtrooms, but if they make an error in judgement that sways a jury to a "potentially unjust" verdict, that is grounds for retrying your case.
Allowing an expert witness to testify and refusing to allow a dissenting expert witness to testify is one of those situations.
While I agree with you in principle, it doesn't necessarily hold true. You need to ask another court to declare a mistrial or for other kind of appeal. They can also refuse. You are effectively asking one judge to tell another that they are ignorant of common law.
You also have to be able to afford this procedure, or figure out some way to represent yourself. You might think you can afford it. While inmates are legally afforded access to law libraries, it's basically a joke from my understanding. Something like no more than 1 hour a week.
It sounds like some judges throw this out of court, but people have been convicted based on this stuff.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23556915-911-cops-sc...