Scientific and Legal Developments in Fire and Arson Investigation Expertise in Texas v. Willingham

The forensic sciences, as a form of professional knowledge, are changing with new advancements in technology and continuing research and development. With the National Academy of Science’s recent call for more research and testing of the forensic sciences, the criminal justice system is faced with the challenges of handling cases where convictions are based on outdated or discredited evidence. In light of technological advancements in the field, this article examines the evolution of fire- and arson-investigation knowledge over the course of a highly publicized capital murder case. The history of arson investigation is discussed, as is the legal admissibility of such expert testimony. Arson investigation expertise stems from non-scientific or experience-based origins, yet is conveyed in court as scientific fact. The article identifies the dangers of admitting such testimony into court without scrutiny. The lack of scientific validation of investigative methods, overreaching scientific claims based on case facts and witness statements, and fire investigators’ susceptibility to contextual bias are discussed. The article raises questions as to whether and how the legal system has propagated the misuse of arson investigation testimony and how outdated understandings of evidence may impact the identification of future miscarriages of justice

Should Judges Worry About the “CSI Effect”?

These days it still seems like everyone is talking about the “CSI effect.” Attorneys seem to talk about it all the time. The 258 different articles using the term between 2002 and 2008 that we found through a LexisNexis search are undoubtedly only the tip of the iceberg of media mentions of this supposed phenomenon. Even academics are writing about it— already a handful of books, several dissertations in progress, and numerous scholarly journal articles detail the topic

Evaluating Negative Forensic Evidence: When Do Jurors Treat Absence of Evidence as Evidence of Absence?

Two jury simulation experiments tested participants’ sensitivity to variations in the probative value of a piece of negative forensic evidence: failure to find gunshot residue (GSR) on a defendant alleged to have fired a gun. Experiment 1 found that if no GSR was detected, juries (N = 115) of undergraduates were appropriately less likely to convict a criminal defendant when the probability of detecting GSR was high than when it was low. Participants were unaffected by contextualizing expert testimony that emphasized either the value of the negative evidence for making inductive inferences or that the negative evidence was inconclusive for making deductions. Experiment 2 used a sample of venire jurors (N = 420) and manipulated the probability of detecting GSR (0 percent, 50 percent, 60 percent, 90 percent, or 100 percent) given that a gun was fired. Consistent with the first experiment, venire jurors were more likely to convict when the probability of detection was 0 percent or 50 percent than when it was 100 percent, but verdicts did not differ between the middle groups. This pattern of results suggests that jurors may evaluate negative evidence according to a fairly crude metric—giving it no weight if the probability of detection is zero, a great deal of weight if the probability of detection is 100 percent, and moderate weight if the probability of detection is somewhere in between.This is a manuscript of an article published as Thompson, William C., Nicholas Scurich, Rachel Dioso‐Villa, and Brenda Velazquez. "Evaluating Negative Forensic Evidence: When Do Jurors Treat Absence of Evidence as Evidence of Absence?." Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 14, no. 3 (2017): 569-591. Posted with permission of CSAFE.</p

The movement and translation of drug policy ideas: The case of ‘new recovery’

Introduction: 'New recovery' can be conceptualised as both a social movement and a broader policy agenda to restructure treatment service systems towards 'recovery-oriented systems of care'. Emerging initially out of the United States, new recovery has gained currency as a policy agenda in other jurisdictions - perhaps most distinctly in the United Kingdom. In 2012, the ideas behind 'new recovery' were debated in the Australian alcohol and other drug field as the Victorian government sought to incorporate recovery principles into policy and service design. This paper uses the policy transfer and policy translation literature to understand how international policy ideas about 'new recovery' were negotiated in the Australian context, focusing specifically on the role of non-government actors in the process. Methods: This paper draws on an analysis of policy documents, organisational documents and interviews with representatives from the Australian non-government alcohol and other drug sector to consider how new recovery was translated into Victorian drug policy. Results: The interactions between organisations and actors — including bureaucrats, governmental agencies and policy entrepreneurs — facilitated the circulation and translation of policy ideas in the Victorian context. Despite this, the analysis suggests that policy transfer was largely a symbolic exercise: overall, some of the key features of new recovery policy from the United States and the United Kingdom, such as encouraging peer-led recovery and mutual aid, were not incorporated in the Victorian policy. NGOs resisted what they considered to be some of the more problematic elements of 'new recovery', and informed the local translation of the policy. Discussion: The results have implications for understandings of the relationship between social movements, non-government organisations and the state, as well as the dynamics of knowledge transfer in drug policy.</p