Gold versus platinum: Do jurors recognize the superiority and limitations of DNA evidence compared to other types of forensic evidence?

2008 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel D. Lieberman ◽  
Courtney A. Carrell ◽  
Terance D. Miethe ◽  
Daniel A. Krauss
Keyword(s):  
Forensic Evidence ◽  
Dna Evidence

scholarly journals Forensic evidence: Materializing bodies, materializing crimes

2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 363-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corinna Kruse
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Theoretical Point ◽  
Sociocultural Context ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Forensic Evidence ◽  
Dna Evidence ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Point Of Departure

Based on an ethnographic study of fingerprint and DNA evidence practices in the Swedish judicial system, this article analyses the materialization of forensic evidence. It argues that forensic evidence, while popularly understood as firmly rooted in materiality, is inseparably technoscientific and cultural. Its roots in the material world are entangled threads of matter, technoscience and culture that produce particular bodily constellations within and together with a particular sociocultural context. Forensic evidence, it argues further, is co-materialized with crimes as well as with particular bodily and social constellations. Consequently, the article suggests that an analysis of how forensic evidence is produced can contribute to feminist understandings of the inseparability of sex and gender: understanding bodies as ongoing technoscientific-material-cultural practices of materialization may be a fruitful approach to analysing their complexity, and the relationships in which they are placed, without surrendering to either cultural or biological determinism. Taking a theoretical point of departure not only in an STS-informed approach, but also in material feminist theorizations, the article also underlines that the suggested theoretical conversations across borders of feminist theory and STS should be understood as a two-way-communication where the two fields contribute mutually to each other.

The Use of Forensic Evidence in Sexual Assault Investigations

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 399-425 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tasha A. Menaker ◽  
Bradley A. Campbell ◽  
William Wells
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Assault ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Police Department ◽  
Sexual Assaults ◽  
Forensic Evidence ◽  
Dna Evidence ◽  
Potential Value ◽  
Houston Police Department ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The Way

Despite the potential value of DNA evidence for criminal investigations and prosecution, we have a limited understanding of the way forensic evidence is used and its impact on case outcomes. This study uses qualitative data to describe the way investigators from the Houston Police Department use DNA evidence during investigations of sexual assaults. Results show DNA evidence has limited influence during investigations, and the value of DNA evidence is shaped by other evidentiary factors. The findings provide insight into the utility of DNA evidence, instances when DNA evidence is least and most useful, the importance of DNA evidence in comparison with other evidence, and the likely aggregate impact of DNA evidence across sexual assault cases.

scholarly journals Multi-Layer Feature Based Shoeprint Verification Algorithm for Camera Sensor Images

Sensors ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (11) ◽  
pp. 2491
Author(s):  
Xinnian Wang ◽  
Yanjun Wu ◽  
Tao Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Error Rate ◽  
Feature Matching ◽  
Similarity Score ◽  
Challenging Problem ◽  
Equal Error Rate ◽  
Forensic Evidence ◽  
Dna Evidence ◽  
Verification Algorithm ◽  
Forensic Practice ◽  
Feature Based

As a kind of forensic evidence, shoeprints have been treated as important as fingerprint and DNA evidence in forensic investigations. Shoeprint verification is used to determine whether two shoeprints could, or could not, have been made by the same shoe. Successful shoeprint verification has tremendous evidentiary value, and the result can link a suspect to a crime, or even link crime scenes to each other. In forensic practice, shoeprint verification is manually performed by forensic experts; however, it is too dependent on experts’ experience. This is a meaningful and challenging problem, and there are few attempts to tackle it in the literatures. In this paper, we propose a multi-layer feature-based method to conduct shoeprint verification automatically. Firstly, we extracted multi-layer features; and then conducted multi-layer feature matching and calculated the total similarity score. Finally, we drew a verification conclusion according to the total similarity score. We conducted extensive experiments to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method on two shoeprint datasets. Experimental results showed that the proposed method achieved good performance with an equal error rate (EER) of 3.2% on the MUES-SV1KR2R dataset and an EER of 10.9% on the MUES-SV2HS2S dataset.

Rethinking the Reliability of Eyewitness Memory

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 324-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
John T. Wixted ◽  
Laura Mickes ◽  
Ronald P. Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Eyewitness Memory ◽  
Memory Test ◽  
Forensic Evidence ◽  
Wrongful Convictions ◽  
Testing Procedures ◽  
Dna Evidence ◽  
Academic Psychology ◽  
Police Lineup ◽  
Prevailing View

Although certain pockets within the broad field of academic psychology have come to appreciate that eyewitness memory is more reliable than was once believed, the prevailing view, by far, is that eyewitness memory is unreliable—a blanket assessment that increasingly pervades the legal system. On the surface, this verdict seems unavoidable: Research convincingly shows that memory is malleable, and eyewitness misidentifications are known to have played a role in most of the DNA exonerations of the innocent. However, we argue here that, like DNA evidence and other kinds of scientifically validated forensic evidence, eyewitness memory is reliable if it is not contaminated and if proper testing procedures are used. This conclusion applies to eyewitness memory broadly conceived, whether the test involves recognition (from a police lineup) or recall (during a police interview). From this perspective, eyewitness memory has been wrongfully convicted of mistakes that are better construed as having been committed by other actors in the legal system, not by the eyewitnesses themselves. Eyewitnesses typically provide reliable evidence on an initial, uncontaminated memory test, and this is true even for most of the wrongful convictions that were later reversed by DNA evidence.

Sem/X-Ray Applications to the Forensic Science Field

1976 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 390-391
Author(s):  
K. Culbreth
Keyword(s):  
Forensic Science ◽  
Depth Of Field ◽  
Surface Phenomena ◽  
Criminal Cases ◽  
Forensic Evidence ◽  
Science Field ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Hit And Run ◽  
Evaluation Of Evidence ◽  
Scanning Electron

The introduction of scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive x-ray analysis to forensic science has provided additional methods by which investigative evidence can be analyzed. The importance of evidence from the scene of a crime or from the personal belongings of a victim and suspect has resulted in the development and evaluation of SEM/x-ray analysis applications to various types of forensic evidence. The intent of this paper is to describe some of these applications and to relate their importance to the investigation of criminal cases.The depth of field and high resolution of the SEM are an asset to the evaluation of evidence with respect to surface phenomena and physical matches (1). Fig. 1 shows a Phillips screw which has been reconstructed after the head and shank were separated during a hit-and-run accident.

The effect of DNA evidence on individual jurors' verdicts

1997 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bonnie Klentz ◽  
Kevin Salera ◽  
Susanne Morrone ◽  
Jolee Ferreira ◽  
Christine Waite ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Dna Evidence

Miscarriage by Expert

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 245
Author(s):  
Susan Glazebrook
Keyword(s):  
Careful Consideration ◽  
Expert Evidence ◽  
Forensic Evidence ◽  
Miscarriage Of Justice

This article examines the role expert evidence plays in court and some of the risks surrounding such evidence. Through the examination of several tragic cases of miscarriage of justice, this article warns of the dangers of relying unquestionably on expert evidence and calls for a careful consideration of the evidence as each case comes before the courts. The value of good forensic evidence in the investigation and prosecution of crime is nevertheless recognised.

Forensik und Fiktion. Zur Geschichte von Indizien zwischen Wahr-Werden und Wahrscheinlich-Sein

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-55
Author(s):  
Antonia Eder
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
Circumstantial Evidence ◽  
Forensic Evidence

Abstract The ambivalent status of circumstantial evidence has been intensively discussed since the 18th century, in both fiction and forensics. (Forensic) evidence is both hermeneutic and material – a phenomenon of ambiguity: the conclusions to be drawn from clues are generated by an amalgam of enlightened promises of objectivity and the opaque materiality of the surface. According to the forensic and juridical hope associated with circumstantial evidence, neutral things do not lie, but show (evidentia) as pars pro toto the actual facts in nuce. Yet every fact, every thing remains tied back to a closing instance, to the investigative and hermeneutic conclusions of thought: this opens the operational field of literature. Poetic dynamics enable literature to simultaneously cope with indexed ambiguity and indeterminacy, both by producing them, and by reflecting on them by means of detective-investigative self-observation.

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