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NACDL is committed to enhancing the capacity of the criminal defense bar to safeguard fundamental constitutional rights.
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NACDL’s mission is to serve as a leader, alongside diverse coalitions, in identifying and reforming flaws and inequities in the criminal legal system, and redressing systemic racism, and ensuring that its members and others in the criminal defense bar are fully equipped to serve all accused persons at the highest level.
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The NACDL Task Force on Risk Assessment Tools commissioned Dr. Melissa Hamilton to produce a comprehensive analysis of how risk assessment tools are developed and applied. This report is a significant contribution to the body of scholarship and resources concerning risk assessment tools. It is an in-depth and accessible resource for practitioners, policymakers, advocates, and indeed all system actors in the nation’s criminal legal apparatus. It is designed to provide the information and guidance necessary to properly assess various risk assessment tools. [Released November 2020]
The decision to credit a client’s remorse may make a difference at sentencing, but remorse is difficult to assess. People are overconfident in their ability to interpret mental states and sincerity: accuracy rates are no better than chance. Because the decision whether to believe an expression of remorse is subjective, it is a fertile area in which implicit bias can flourish. Professor Eve Hanan suggests steps that advocates can take to counteract bias in remorse assessments.
A report detailing the issues of bias in eyewitness accounts, begins with exemplar case recounting a rape victim pointing out the perpetrator in a photospread, but choosing someone else during a live lineup.
Brief of Amici Curiae National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and Tennessee Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Filed In Support of the Defendant/Appellee
Joint Statement on Risk Assessment Instruments from the American Council of Chief Defenders, Gideon’s Promise, the National Association for Public Defense, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and the National Legal Aid & Defender Association. March 2019
The ABA Model Code of Judicial Conduct (CJC), Rule 2.11: Disqualification, provides: “A judge shall disqualify himself or herself in any proceeding in which the judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned. …”1
