Forty new problems have been added to this edition. Many concern the range of issues created by the Supreme Court's new approach to confrontation in Crawford v. Washington. A number have been added for expert testimony and revisions have been made regarding DNA evidence.
Others deal with character evidence in criminal cases, including other crimes evidence and prior sexual assaults in both civil and criminal cases. Some examine the challenges presented by new technology when evidence comes from cell phones and computer hard drives. A new problem also raises issues that the new federal rule concerning "inadvertent disclosure" of privileged attorney-client material can help resolve.
Long-time users of this Problem Book will find some of the questions in what we believe are more logical locations. Scientific expert testimony has been moved from Chapter 8, which concerns the relevancy concept, to Chapter 12 with other aspects of expert testimony.
Conversely, problems concerning the rape shield principle haves been moved from Chapter 12 to Chapter 8 where other aspects of character evidence are examined.
As with earlier editions, the Fifth Edition provides citations to the McCormick hornbook to make it convenient for the two books to be used together. It is also coordinated with Broun, Mosteller, and Giannelli, Cases and Materials in Evidence (7th ed. 2006).