Symposium afterthoughts

Today’s Research Symposium was organised by the Division of Business, Law and Information Sciences (basically a long winded name for “everything that’s important for universities”). Titled, “DNA Evidence: The CSI Effect”, it turned out slightly more interesting than i anticipated, and also slightly different from what i thought.

The CSI Effect is a term given to a trend where with the present day law dramas, such as Crime Scene Investigation (therefore CSI) and Law and Order unintentionally blurs the reality for television watchers such that they believe that technology, particularly that of DNA evidence, is highly advance and reliable. In the seminar though, the focus of the majority of the speakers were strongly on CSI alone, rather than a combination of other law dramas. This would prove to be interesting, at least to me, because if one is to blame CSI, then one should blame all i had think. Particularly because if you look at the statistics as a whole there are many law/police/detective and similar genre dramas that are watched by people the world over. With similar type of concepts, backgrounds, storylines and scenes in these dramas, people can be equally influenced by all these dramas to start thinking that perhaps, DNA as an evidence is 99-100% reliable.

but i am getting ahead of myself.

One of the cases used as an example by the first few speakers (mostly from the local law scenes) was that of Robert Blake and the killing of his wife. While acquitted, it was noted that it was because of lack of physical evidence (DNA), which resulted in a comment from one of the jury, “if she (the prosecutor) would’ve had all the information, he would’ve been guilty.” This also resulted in a comment by the District Attorney into saying that Robert Blake was a “miserable human being” and that the jurors were “incredibly stupid”. And it’s not hard to see why.

Considering the evidences raised by the witnesses, short of an actual weapon with all the “dna evidence” the jury wanted to see, he was pretty much guilty beyond reasonable doubt, at least for me. to be acquitted at that point, is like agreeing to violence against women, plotted or otherwise.

Back on topic though, this raised an interesting point as well for people working on forensic sciences. with such television shows, dramas, movies and what not, juries are affected by the possibility of the reliability of DNA evidence. While helpful, sometimes DNA evidence is altogether unnecessary. besides that, there’s always the 1%-4% lab error rate, which can be fairly big considering the number of people that might possibly be a DNA fit.

Furthermore, juries, from studies, have shown to have unreasonable expectations of forensic evidence. a study of juries that were in a particular case, raised quotes like, “you can find DNA anywhere! therefore, it shouldn’t be hard to get the evidence we need!” or ” Everything should be sampled! where’s the soil, the hair, the blood, the saliva…” one juror even questioned, “how did people get charged before the advent of DNA?” (at this point, my head kind of went “dot dot dot” and i am sure everyone laughing did too)

The problem behind all those thoughts by the jurors is that they fail to compute all the costs that goes into DNA testing, as well as find out more about the technology. DNA testing could be picking out 10 points on a strand to see if they match. some evidences may not even make it into the court because they are not necessarily important to the case. if those are admissible evidence, if those 10 points were any different, the accused might have been someone else instead. Similarly, companies that provides the chemicals for DNA testing aren’t non-profit or government organisations either. As such, chemicals can get costly, and the more they test so as to “convince” the jury base on their idea of quantity over quality, the more the tax money flows outwards.

The other failures that juries sometimes fail to see or understand, is that science can only go so far as to prove that that item was indeed a part of the defendant/victim. DNA can transfer, and also, depending on the relationship between the 2 parties, there can be so much evidence it can be overwhelming. Furthermore, science can sometimes be unable to prove/tell how an item/evidence get to be at the scene, nor how long “it” had been there. Also, DNA evidence can be contaminated, rendering the evidence either useless, or incorrectly displaying another identity that might not have been involved in the crime.

on the other side of the law, because of such drama shows, there’s also a possibility of criminal minds working their way around those possibilities of being found out. from wiping out evidence, to the possibility of planting false evidence. obviously then, it would be harder to prove, materially, that the right person has done it. and if a jury is going to depend on such material evidences of criminal actions, they would not be getting any or they will get one that will colour their judgement.

All it boils down to is that the jury will have to fall back on good old common sense, something which, as one of the speakers pointed out, is sorely lacking in some trials. The jury needs to have a clear understanding of the mechanism of forensic sciences: the fallacies of it and the possibilities of admitting other forms of evidence into their mindsets. The idea of “reasonable doubt” can not be speculative, which is made possible by the possibility of errors in forensic sciences, so that justice can indeed be served.

Someone then questioned, should the judicial system consider eradicating the needs for jurors then, since they might need better education, information and understanding of the technology, something which might need too much time? However, one of the key speakers pointed out, everyone has a certain bias. when all these different biases are put together on the table, they might prove to be a fairer justice that a person is being subjected to, than that of a singular person.

My own conclusion:

Consider the impact of how “violent games and movies influence children”. While obviously children would have more malleable, gullible minds than adults, it is also true that constant exposure to such ideas presented by the television might make it harder to seperate fact from fiction. consider the book by Dan Brown, “Da Vinci Code”. The uproar caused by it was partly due to the fact that few people were able to differentiate between what are the facts in the book, and what are the fiction. They question the Church about the existence of this “family” and the Society’s existence.

and these are adults.

While i am not a psychologist, i have personally felt that: when being put alongside news, and other fact giving programmes on the television, it can sometimes be hard to differentiate the facts from the fiction, particularly when the trend is repeated across different dramas in the same genre. The media is often viewed as an information giving source, and dependency on the media can result in believing most of what happens on the media. While consciously realising that parts of it can be fiction, e.g the story line being presented, part of it might be subconsciously “recognised” as a fact, e.g the background to this storyline.

beyond all that, jurors are important to a legal proceedings though. admittedly, while it is a flawed system, it would be better and fairer a justice than subjecting people to the bias and opinion of just one person. So, perhaps, to remedy this problem of the CSI Effect, educating and informing the jurors will be better than just eradicating the need for jurors altogether. Also, perhaps if there’s a way to do this, the process of forensic sciences needs to be more transparent. E.g, reflecting the costs, the time it needs, the amount of information it can generate, both useless and useful, the lab error rates and finally - what makes this evidence NECESSARY to the trial.

technorati tags:law, CSI, CSI Effect, symposium, thoughts, jury, reasonable doubt, university, school, homework