Criminal Evidence Midterm

Criminal Evidence Midterm

In this essay I will be establishing the different witnesses and testimonies that are involved in the U.S court proceedings. These topics are privileges, lay witnesses, hearsay and witnesses competence. These topics are all very important, in that they can make or break a case.

Privileges are the communications that are exchanges of confidential information between persons who are in a privileged relationship. These privileges come in handy when a person is in possession of information gained as a result of certain confidential relationships and with the privileges is allowed to keep those secrets exchanged in those relationships themselves. These privileges lift the fear that is involved with revealing confidential exchanges in court.

There are many privileges to name such as lawyer-client which is one that protects certain communications between a client and his/her attorney and keeps those communications confidential. Then there is the child-parent privilege which protects parents and children from testifying against each other when one is a defendant in any criminal procedure. Also there is the clergy-communicate privilege which protects confidential communications between clergy and communicates. The identity of informer privilege is another that protects military and state secrets established by the common law. Next there is the marriage privilege which disqualifies each other as witnesses for or against each other and the other is the communication privilege amongst each other. Finally there is the news reporter-news source privilege that protects reporters from giving up there sources.

Lay witnesses are those that are non-experts whose testimony is in the form of opinion and are based on rational inference from facts observed. When considering the admissibility of a lay witness the attorney should show the facts that are cohesive with the witness opinionated testimony. The six main topics that lay witnesses are often utilized...