Final Exam

(I highly recommend drawing out the chain of events.)

The Goldbergia police department is trying to stop a final exam cheating ring, perpetuated mainly by John and Paul.  Members of the GPD put a recording device on John’s best friend George.  The police record a conversation in George’s home where John admits to masterminding the cheating ring.  “Imagine all the people….living life in peace,” he says of his utopian plan to rid the world of grading.  John also mentions, on the recorded conversation, that Ringo is responsible for collecting the money from students looking for exam cheating help.

After hearing this conversation, the police immediately place a GPS tracker on Ringo’s car.  The tracker marks Ringo going to Yoko’s house on ten different times over the course of two days.  As a result of this discovery, police point a device at Yoko’s house from across the street that measures a specific stress hormone associated with illegal activity (and usually only illegal activity) that emanates off the walls of Yoko’s apartment building, in order to determine if illegal activity is happening inside.  The stress hormone levels coming from Yoko’s building are consistent with residents being worried about detection by the police.  The police do not get warrants for any of their investigative activities.

The Goldbergia police then call Yoko and ask her to come to the station.  Yoko agrees.  Upon her arrival, the police say to Yoko, “do you know why you’re here?  Tell us about the cheating ring with John, Paul, and Ringo.”  Yoko looks away quickly but says nothing.  The police then arrest Yoko, Mirandize her, and demand that she sign a form indicating that she understands her Miranda rights.  Yoko signs the form.  The police use this handwriting sample to compare it to the handwriting of one of the masterminds of the cheating ring.

John, Ringo, Yoko, and Paul are indicted for running a final exam cheating ring.  Paul’s attorney does not call any character witnesses, assuming that all of Paul’s friends are shady people.  Instead, she employs a strategy of claiming that Paul is too idealistic and just wants everyone to be happy and let it be, and is thus too insane to form the requisite mens rea to be convicted of running a cheating ring.  She adopts this strategy because there is so much evidence that Paul was running the cheating ring.

A court must make the following decisions.  Analyze what a court is likely to do, covering multiple possibilities for hard, open issues.

1. A court would like to admit the evidence of John and George’s recorded conversation against every single defendant. Which defendant or defendants, if any, will the court likely admit this evidence against.
2. A court would like to admit the evidence produced by the GPS tracker against every single defendant. Which defendant or defendants will the court likely admit this evidence against?
3. A court would like to admit the stress hormone detection evidence against every single defendant. Which defendant or defendants will the court likely admit this evidence against?
4. A court would like to admit against Yoko her looking away, and her silence, during police questioning. Will a court likely allow this evidence to come in against Yoko?
5. A court would like to admit the handwriting sample against Yoko? What decision will it likely make?
6. What decision is a court likely to make about the representation in this case, and how will it analyze the issues?

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