Volume 52 (2020) Issue 3 (Fall)

Valena E. Beety* Full Article. Introduction Arizona is nationally recognized as a leader in forensic science. Our state court judges serve on the Legal Resource Committee for the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) and provide guidance to NIST’s Organization of Scientific Area Committees for Forensic Science.[1] Our Phoenix lab analysts and lab directors have national reputations.[2] And Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law has been home to many leading academics in the field of forensics and the law, among them Michael Saks, David Kaye, and Jay Koehler.[3] We have a robust forensic science community in Arizona and in Phoenix in particular. Thus, this Article identifies the strengths of the current system in Arizona and proposes innovative reforms appropriate for labs that are already leaders in…

Michael Serota* Full Article. All government decisions matter. But few matter more—or are more consequential for society—than those involving the criminal justice system.[1] That’s because we depend upon the criminal justice system to perform two of the government’s most critical functions: securing justice and promoting public safety. To achieve these goals, we afford those who operate the criminal justice system great authority: the power to investigate and monitor, to arrest and detain, to convict and punish. But with this delegation of power comes great vulnerability: we must trust that the government officials who make criminal justice decisions will exercise their authority responsibly, in a manner that respects individual rights, preserves communities, avoids undue delay, and conserves limited societal resources. Today, there is an emerging societal consensus that the U.S. criminal…