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Background Workplace violence is a widely recognised problem within the ambulance service context. The causes of workplace violence have often been attributed to patient- or situation-related risk factors. However, there is a lack of research on workplace violence from the offender’s perspective. Aim To explore workplace violence directed toward ambulance services from the offender’s perspective. Methods An explorative qualitative study was conducted using inductive thematic analysis of trial transcripts from cases tried in court between 2013 and 2023. Plaintiffs in these cases were ambulance personnel or the ambulance service itself. Offenders were those convicted of committing or attempting any of the following acts: threats, theft, assault, molestation or murder. Results Twenty-three trial transcripts were analysed, and four themes were found: (I) the offender was misunderstood , which included communication problems and other misunderstandings; (II) the offender was disrespected , which described perceived unprofessional behaviour and unpleasant or painful treatment by ambulance personnel; (III) the offender was vulnerable , which described the state of the offender (i.e., being under the influence of alcohol or drugs); and (IV) the offender had unmet expectations , which included perceived unreasonable waiting time and conflicting expectations of ambulance care. Conclusion The analysis of trial transcripts revealed four themes from the offender perspective: feelings of being misunderstood, disrespected, vulnerable, and having unmet expectations. It is important to view these results critically, as they are based on trial transcripts in which the offender was found guilty of a crime and may have been attempting to defend his or her actions during the trial. Despite this caveat, healthcare professionals need also to recognise that their behaviour may influence the risk of workplace violence. This knowledge can be harnessed to develop training programs for ambulance personnel.

The federal court system and the Federal Rules of Evidence are designed around the English language. As the United States becomes increasingly diverse and multicultural, however, a growing number of Americans speak a primary language other than English. The federal courts and the Federal Rules of Evidence must accommodate parties, witnesses, and evidence presented in a foreign language, notwithstanding their English-only orientation. Federal Rule of Evidence 1002, known more colloquially as the Best Evidence Rule, assumes that evidence will come in only one, English flavor, however. The Best Evidence Rule is powerful and straightforward, ensuring that jurors have access to original writings and recordings in order to evaluate their meaning accurately. When applied to English-language writings and recordings to require that juries examine originals, the Best Evidence Rule improves accuracy. But when rigidly applied by federal courts to require English-speaking jurors to evaluate foreign-language recordings for themselves, the rule and its rationale break down. If the plain language of the Best Evidence Rule mandates such a result, as one federal circuit court recently held, the Federal Rules of Evidence should be amended to remove foreign-language recordings from its orbit, lest accuracy suffer and the import of foreign-language recordings get lost in translation. This Article offers concrete amendment alternatives that would exempt foreign-language writings and recordings from the Best Evidence Rule and pave the way for the efficient and meaningful consideration of foreign-language content by American juries. But this Article also charts a novel and detailed course through the existing Federal Rules of Evidence allowing for the admissibility of English transcripts of foreign-language recordings outside the Best Evidence Rule. Should federal courts unite around this common-sense interpretation of the Best Evidence Rule that allows for the fair and effective presentation of ubiquitous foreign-language evidence, costly amendments to the Federal Rules of Evidence can be avoided. If the federal courts do not interpret the existing Federal Rules of Evidence in a manner that offers a workable solution for burgeoning foreign-language evidence in the federal court system, however, the Best Evidence Rule should be amended to reflect our multicultural reality and to release foreign-language writings and recordings from its rigid constraints.

A puzzle is raised by cases of false confessions: How could an innocent person convincingly confess to a crime? Postconviction DNA testing has now exonerated over 250 convicts, more than forty of whom falsely confessed to rapes and murders. As a result, there is a new awareness that innocent people falsely confess, often due to psychological pressure placed upon them during police interrogations. Scholars increasingly examine the psychological techniques that can cause people to falsely confess and document instances of known false confessions. This Article takes a different approach, by examining the substance of false confessions, including what was said during interrogations and how the confession statements were then litigated at trial and postconviction. Doing so sheds light on the phenomenon of confession contamination. Not only can innocent people falsely confess, but all except two of the exonérées studied were induced to deliver false confessions with surprisingly rich, detailed, and accurate information. We now know that those details could not have likely originated with these innocent people, but rather must have been disclosed to them, most likely during the interrogation process. However, our constitutional criminal procedure does not regulate the postadmission interrogation process, nor do courts evaluate the reliability of confessions. This Article outlines a series of reforms that focus on the insidious problem of contamination, particularly videotaping interrogations in their entirety, but also reframing police procedures, trial practice, and judicial review. Unless criminal procedure is reoriented towards the reliability of the substance of confessions, contamination of facts may continue to go undetected, resulting in miscarriages of justice.

A large, ever-expanding corpus of unpublished transcript rulings issued by the Delaware Court of Chancery address all aspects of corporate law litigation. Practitioners regularly cite them. Written decisions are influenced by them. Yet, the juridical status of these transcript rulings is unsettled. Several years ago, then-Chancellor Strine proclaimed that transcript rulings have no inhibiting effect on future decisions. In 2020, members of the Court of Chancery issued written decisions describing in different ways how transcript rulings are of lesser status compared to written rulings. In this article, I argue that the categorical disregard or demotion of transcript rulings decreases judicial accountability, increases uncertainty, and diminishes a repository of judicial wisdom. Transcript rulings should be considered law, just as written opinions of the Court of Chancery are law: They are thoughtful judgments by expert jurists that warrant consideration in similar, subsequent cases, especially if their reasoning is persuasive. Their status as law does not mean that they must be followed. A future judge may reject or distinguish a transcript ruling or interpret it narrowly or broadly. I further argue that the interplay between transcript rulings and legal doctrine is worthy of study. In the Introduction, I note how transcript rulings can presage future written opinions. In Part I, I discuss the background and import of three transcript rulings that gave rise to three recent written decisions questioning the precedential value of transcript rulings. In Part II, I discuss the implications of a heated debate two decades ago between two leading federal appellate judges (among many others) about court rules that prohibited the citation of unpublished federal appellate decisions and deemed them non-precedential. In Part III, I discuss four transcript rulings of Leo Strine denying motions to dismiss. These rulings are performances of equity. They create exceptions to rules and illustrate how transcript rulings can raise questions about the breadth, vitality, slipperiness, and direction of black letter law.

Who speaks and with what authority, who is believed, what evidence is introduced, and how it is presented are all informed not only by the substantive law and the rules of evidence but also by the rituals of the trial. It is from this legal process as a whole that a judge or jury determines the (legal) 'truth' about a woman's allegation of rape. A sexual assault complainant's capacity to be believed in court, to share in the production of meaning about an incidence of what she alleges was unwanted sexual contact, requires her to play a part in certain rituals of the trial. Many of these rituals are hierarchical, requiring complainants to perform subordinate roles that mirror the gender-, race-, and socio-economic status-based societal hierarchies in which the problem of sexual violence is rooted. Relying on the work of Robert Cover and interdisciplinary work on ritual for its conceptual framework, this article pursues two objectives. First, it attempts to depict, through the use of trial transcripts, the brutality of the process faced by sexual assault complainants. Second, it exposes some of the institutionalized practices, as manifested through courtroom rituals, that contribute to the inhospitable conditions faced by those who participate in the criminal justice response to sexualized violence.

The present study presents one of the first investigations of the effects of accomplice witnesses and jailhouse informants on jury decision-making. Across two experiments, participants read a trial transcript that included either a secondary confession from an accomplice witness, a jailhouse informant, a member of the community or a no confession control. In half of the experimental trial transcripts, the participants were made aware that the cooperating witness providing the secondary confession was given an incentive to testify. The results of both experiments revealed that information about the cooperating witness' incentive (e.g., leniency or reward) did not affect participants' verdict decisions. In Experiment 2, participant jurors appeared to commit the fundamental attribution error, as they attributed the motivation of the accomplice witness and jailhouse informant almost exclusively to personal factors as opposed to situational factors. Furthermore, both experiments revealed that mock jurors voted guilty significantly more often when there was a confession relative to a no confession control condition. The implications of the use of accomplice witness and jailhouse informant testimony are discussed.