NACDLPress Seeks Authors
Have an idea for a legal treatise? Interested in getting published through NACDLPress? Please submit proposals to Gerald Lippert at glippert@nacdl.org.
Current NACDLPress PUBLICATIONS
Defender’s Guide to Federal Evidence: A Trial Practice Handbook for Criminal Defense Attorneys (2nd Ed.) - 2024 2nd Edition Now Available!
By Rene L. Valladares
This Guide to Federal Evidence is the only federal evidence handbook written exclusively for criminal defense lawyers. The Guide analyzes each Federal Rule of Evidence and outlines the main evidentiary issues that confront criminal defense lawyers. It also summarizes countless defense favorable cases and provides tips on how to avoid common evidentiary pitfalls. The Guide contains multiple user-friendly flowcharts aimed at helping the criminal defense lawyer tackle evidence problems. A Defender’s Guide to Federal Evidence is an indispensable tool in preparing a case for trial, and an invaluable resource during trial. The newly updated 2nd Edition was released in January 2024.
NACDL's Cross-Examination Encyclopedia - 2024 Edition Now Available!
Every cross-examination question collected by NACDL has been organized into this ultimate quick-reference guide for criminal defense lawyers! Over 4,000 sample cross questions written by seasoned criminal practitioners from real-life scenarios have been analyzed, sorted and alphabetized into a multi-layered Encyclopedia designed to give you FAST access to practical sample cross-examination questions for almost every type of criminal case. No narrative, no filler, just sample questions to inspire your next cross-examination!
Who Says You Can't? Strategies and Tactics for Becoming a More Creative Criminal Defense Lawyer
By Jon May
"Who Says You Can't...?" is about challenging rules, decisions, and even the assumptions and advice of more experienced lawyers who say you can't do something. Because with the right mindset, hard work, and creativity, you can. This is not a treatise on criminal practice. It is a first of its kind publication which demonstrates both the theory and practice of finding creative ways to go about solving seemingly intractable problems in the defense of an individual accused of a crime. This guide discusses how to become more creative, adopting a mindset that will help you to prevail in cases that look impossible to win; and how to help your client come out a winner even when you lose the case. It is not only based on the evolution of Jon May’s thinking and approach to solving problems, but also includes the approaches and mindsets taken by some of the most successful criminal defense lawyers in the country. Each chapter demonstrates how to look at a problem the way a geologist looks at a rock. Holding it up to a light, turning it, looking at its various facets, seeing how the light reflects of its surface, noting its different minerals, and taking a hammer to it.
Just in the Nick of Time
By David B. Savitz
A 19-year-old accused of killing his parents is diagnosed with an unusual psychiatric disorder and spends a torturous six years in the Colorado judicial and mental health systems before his case experiences an unexpected end...
Pattern Cross-Examination for DNA & Biological Evidence: A Trial Strategy and Resource Guide
By Michael Waddington, Alexandra González-Waddington, and Dean Wideman, MSc
In a criminal trial, cross-examination of the prosecution’s DNA expert may make the difference between victory or defeat. Prosecutors often use faulty biological evidence, biased experts, and incompetent investigators to win convictions. Some DNA experts will do whatever it takes, including misleading jurors and misapplying scientific research to bolster the prosecution’s case. For the sake of justice, defense lawyers must be able to cross-examine and nullify DNA experts effectively. This book will help defense lawyers neutralize such experts, and assist in scoring points when cross-examining forensic experts in cases involving DNA and biological evidence. This resource contains thousands of questions that will help defense lawyers cross-examine challenging witnesses without reinventing the wheel with each new case. It includes pattern questions that can be used to dominate prosecution DNA experts and level the playing field at trial. The sample cross-examination questions can be easily modified and used in a variety of cases. The questions provided serve as a starting point. Because every case is different, the cross-examiner should modify the questions based on the facts of their case. This Trial Guide is not a textbook on the theories of cross-examination. Instead, it provides sample questions based on fact patterns commonly encountered when dealing with DNA and biological evidence in various trials.
Cross-Examination of the Analyst in Drug Prosecutions (2nd Ed.)
By James M. Shellow
Now in its second edition with some new material, James M. Shellow’s book offers what its title promises: ways of thinking about cross-examining the forensic analysts in drug cases. But the book is so much more than that. It offers a look inside the mind of one of the finest cross-examiners and defense lawyers the United States has produced in the last seventy years. Shellow’s psychological insights, his grasp of chemistry (which he shares with readers), his style, his recognition of the parallels between criminal trials and jazz, his fierce devotion to intellectual clarity and to deep preparation: all of these qualities guide us well beyond any particular class of witness or any type of criminal charge. Read thoughtfully, this small book can inspire and direct you in making big changes in the way you defend your clients and think about the entire project of trying any case. It is a magnum opus in miniature, a gift to the busy lawyer, from one of the nation’s preeminent trial lawyers.
Defense Counsel Playbook for Eyewitness Identification Cases
By Lisa J. Steele
This brand new NACDLpress publication is THE must-have Eyewitness ID resource for every criminal defense practitioner's legal reference library. NACDL's Defense Counsel Playbook for Eyewitness ID Cases was, in part, written to help counsel use existing case law to its strongest advantage, and to create a framework for appellate challenges urging courts to adopt leading cases from Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon, and more. This Playbook is not a scientific treatise, but a practice guide to preparing and litigating an identification case from discovery to post-conviction with pointers to statutes, reports, and leading cases from across the country. This outstanding resource will take counsel through the most common perception and memory problem: the witness who mistakenly identifies an innocent person as the culprit in a crime. It is not limited just to identification cases. In every case, counsel confronts witnesses who saw or heard things in the past and want to testify about them in the present.
Pattern Cross-Examination of Expert Witnesses: A Trial Strategy and Resource Guide
By Michael Waddington and Alexandra González-Waddington
In a criminal trial, cross-examination of the prosecution’s forensic expert may make the difference between victory or defeat. More and more, aggressive prosecutors are relying on forensic psychiatrists, toxicologists, and other experts to help obtain convictions. Some expert witnesses will do whatever it takes, including misapplying scientific research to bolster the prosecution’s case. For the sake of justice, defense lawyers must be able to cross-examine and nullify forensic experts effectively. In the second Bill Cosby trial and Harvey Weinstein’s New York trial, both sides prominently used forensic experts. In these cases, counterintuitive victim behavior experts played a vital role in the prosecution’s trial strategy. This book will help defense lawyers neutralize such experts. NACDL’s Pattern Cross-Examination of Expert Witnesses will assist criminal defense practitioners in scoring points when cross-examining forensic experts. This resource contains thousands of questions that will help defense lawyers cross-examine challenging witnesses, using scientific research, without having to reinvent the wheel with each new case. It contains pattern questions that can be used to dominate prosecution experts and level the playing field at trial, and the sample cross-examination questions can be easily modified and used in a variety of cases. The questions provided serve as a starting point. Because every case is different, the cross-examiner should modify the questions based on the facts of their case. This Trial Guide is not a textbook on the theories of cross-examination. Instead, it provides sample questions based on fact patterns commonly encountered when dealing with forensic experts in a variety of trials. There are hundreds of citations included for scientific research, so lawyers can readily impeach opposing experts using the learned treatise exception.
Quest for Justice: Defending the Damned (2nd Ed.)
By Richard S. Jaffe
Richard S. Jaffe’s explosive second edition of Quest for Justice: Defending the Damned affirms the vital role criminal defense lawyers play in the balance between life and death, liberty and lockup. It is a compelling journey into the legal and human drama of life or death criminal cases that often reads more like hard to imagine fiction, yet these cases are real. Quest for Justice invites readers into the courtroom and into the field with Richard Jaffe, a powerhouse Alabama defense attorney with more than four decades of experience, who has successfully defended hundreds of individuals accused of murder, including more than seventy cases where the defendant faced the death penalty, including the Olympic bomber Eric Robert Rudolph. According to the Equal Justice Initiative, in Alabama, nine people have been exonerated from death row—Jaffe represented four of them: James Willie “Bo” Cochran, Randal Padgett, Gary Drinkard, and Wesley Quick. Though every chapter reveals more alarming, gut-wrenching cases, and impediments to justice, Jaffe’s unwavering determination, hope, and strategies in the courtroom yield many momentous victories for his clients and the cause of justice. In Quest for Justice: Defending the Damned, Richard Jaffe offers all audiences an accessible, page-turning perspective borne out of a life representing the damned in America’s criminal justice system.
Collateral Consequences of Criminal Convictions: Law, Policy and Practice (2021 Edition)
By Margaret Colgate Love, Jenny Roberts & Wayne Logan
OUT OF PRINT - Order on Amazon below
This volume is a comprehensive resource for practicing lawyers, judges and policymakers on the legal restrictions and penalties that result from a criminal conviction over and above the court-imposed sentence. This book covers general types of collateral consequences, attorney's duties regarding consequences, constitutional challenges to consequences, access to and the use of criminal records, regulation of employment and occupational licensing, and restoration of rights after a conviction. Historical background and future trends are discussed. Guidance is provided for defense counsel, prosecutors and judges in charging, counseling, plea negotiation and sentencing.
The Feminine Sixth: Women for the Defense
By Andrea D. Lyon
OUT OF PRINT - Purchase on Amazon below
The Feminine Sixth: Women for the Defense probes the non-fiction accounts of being a woman criminal defense lawyer. Set at a fictional symposium held during Women’s History Month, nine accomplished lawyers reveal the unique ways in which they experience the criminal defense office, the courtroom, and their relationships with clients. With detailed insight into their personal and professional lives, this book illuminates the vital role and immense contributions of women in the profession. Each page invites the reader to travel through moments of justice and injustice, sorrow and joy, and failure and success. The Feminine Sixth: Women for the Defense offers an intimate story of those who tirelessly represent people accused of crime.
Not Guilty: The Unlawful Prosecution of U.S. Senator Ted Stevens
By Rob Cary
Written by one of the lead attorneys for U.S. Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, Not Guilty: The Unlawful Prosecution of U.S. Senator Ted Stevens describes the litigation before, during, and after the trial charging Stevens with corruption. Stevens was found guilty by a jury, but the judgment was immediately overturned following revelations of gross violations of Brady and other misconduct by the prosecution team of the Public Integrity Section of the Department of Justice. The verdict, however, led to Stevens' loss of his seat in the Senate. The book is instructive in its intricate detailing of defense strategies and prosecutorial missteps, particularly in regards to Brady discovery, and author Rob Cary notes that less-privileged defendants commonly face challenges similar to those in the Stevens trial. Cary also comments on the Schuelke Report, a special investigation of the Public Integrity Section ordered by the trial court and released in 2012. As a result of his experience during the trial, Cary prescribes a number of initiatives to level the playing field between criminal defendants and the government, particularly with respect to discovery, handling of witnesses, and ways to address prosecutorial misconduct.
Disrobed: An Inside Look at the Life and Work of a Federal Trial Judge
By Frederic Block
Written for the legal community and the general public, this book explains in practical terms, the perspective behind some of the most newsworthy and sensational cases of the last 20 years. Few, if any, judges have commented on the cases that have appeared before them. Judge Block critiques some of the historical practices of the legislature and the bench; educates readers about the death penalty, racketeering, gun laws, drug laws, discrimination laws, race riots, terrorism, and foreign affairs; and intimates the more humble aspects of being on the bench, e.g. the choice to use humor, death threats against members of the bench, brushes with celebrities, witnessing how popular sentiment can override the facts of a case, racist underpinnings of the drug laws, and more.
