The Impact of Police Body-Worn Cameras on the Plea-Bargaining Process

by Katelyn N. Ringrose

This note, in Part I, looks to the history of law enforcement’s adoption of [body-worn cameras (BWCs)] and their contemporary use. In Part II, I analyze the likely impact of BWCs on the plea-bargaining process, including both positive and negative implications. In Part III, I catalog efforts to mitigate potential ill-effects of BWC use on the plea bargaining process, including intra-office administrative mandates, with an eye toward the general trajectory of real-time data collection. In conclusion, this paper warns courts and administrative bodies to undertake research looking into the implications of BWC use on the plea-bargaining process before allowing the technology to influence pleas. Furthermore, agencies, both state and federal, should look into creating an impartial agency to hold BWC footage, and grant the defense access to that footage prior to trial and prior to acceptance of a plea.

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Seeking Comparable Transactions in Patent and Tax Law

by Susan C. Morse

In their article, Tax Solutions to Patent Damages, Jennifer Blouin and Melissa Wasserman argue that tax transfer prices can provide some of the data needed to set patent litigation damages.  One could also ask the converse, which is whether patent litigation outcomes can provide some data that tax transfer pricing needs. . . .  Blouin and Wasserman argue that parties and courts should make use of the large body of tax transfer price information to help support reasonable royalty calculations in patent damages cases.  Perhaps so.  But transfer pricing data is messy.  Using tax transfer prices sets for parties and courts the challenging task of understanding the prices in context.  The risk exists that the analysis will fail because of the weight of its own complexity.