DNA Fingerprinting: Law and Science in Criminal Processes

DNA 指纹识别：刑事诉讼过程中的法律与科学

• 批准号: 9312183
• 负责人: Sheila Jasanoff
• 金额: $ 15.1万
• 依托单位: Cornell University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1993
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1993-09-15 至 1996-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9312183&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: DNA; Fingerprinting; Law; Science; Criminal

9312183 Jasanoff Scientific evidence, reports, and testimony play an increasing role in decisionmaking, ranging from the actions of individuals and private organizations, to those of the courts and other public authorities. This study investigates different aspects of a controversy that has developed in recent years over the use of DNA fingerprinting evidence in U.S. criminal trials. The objective is to describe and explain how the legal setting frames a controversy over the design and dissemination of a scientific technique. The study will examine how claims about scientific facts, consensus, expert authority, and technical reliability are presented and evaluated in different research contexts, in the courts and in the science press. To place the current controversy in a legal and historical context, the study will examine the history of relevant legal decisions and legislation, and will compare DNA fingerprinting with the cases of (non-DNA) fingerprinting and polygraph analysis. The study will combine ethnographic interviews, analyses of texts and court testimony, and legal and historical scholarship. The interviews will explore the understandings of the techniques and controversies from the points of view of different participants, including: population geneticists and other university scientists; staff scientists, case examiners and administrators at the FBI laboratories; and research staff and managers at a private forensics firm. Records of court cases and transcripts of testimony will be analyzed to show how expertise, consensus, and technical reliability are represented in the legal setting. Preliminary evidence indicates that researchers from different disciplines and in different contexts design the "same" molecular biological techniques in very different ways, and find them more or less reliable under different organizational circumstances. These differences, and others related to the social construction of authority, may influence discrep ant assessments about the techniques made by judges and juries, when scientists appear as expert witnesses in trials. Few studies of scientific and technological controversies have explored questions on how the legal setting constructs scientific controversy, by providing a forum in which expert testimony is solicited in adversary disputes about the reliability of techniques. Besides contributing information about how parties in these controversies construe the legitimate and ethical use of expert authority, as well as the cultural commitments with which the divergent positions are infused, the present study will reveal substantive implications and differences in the development of scientific and social consensus, and in the negotiations over boundaries in science and the law, and over what constitutes expertise. ***

9312183 Jasanoff科学证据、报告和证词在决策中发挥着越来越大的作用，从个人和私人组织的行动到法院和其他公共当局的行动。 这项研究调查了近年来在美国刑事审判中使用DNA指纹证据的争议的不同方面。 其目的是描述和解释如何法律的设置框架的设计和传播的科学技术的争议。 该研究将研究如何在不同的研究背景下，在法院和科学出版社中提出和评估有关科学事实，共识，专家权威和技术可靠性的主张。 为了将目前的争议置于法律的和历史背景下，这项研究将审查相关法律的决定和立法的历史，并将DNA指纹鉴定与（非DNA）指纹鉴定和测谎仪分析的情况进行比较。 这项研究将结合联合收割机人种学访谈，文本和法庭证词的分析，以及法律的和历史的奖学金。 访谈将从不同参与者的角度探讨对技术和争议的理解，这些参与者包括：人口遗传学家和其他大学科学家;联邦调查局实验室的科学家，案件审查员和管理人员;以及私人法医公司的研究人员和管理人员。 法庭案件的记录和证词的抄本将被分析，以显示如何专业知识，共识和技术可靠性在法律的设置表示。 初步证据表明，来自不同学科和不同背景的研究人员以非常不同的方式设计“相同”的分子生物学技术，并发现它们在不同的组织环境下或多或少可靠。 当科学家作为专家证人出现在审判中时，这些差异以及其他与权威的社会建构有关的差异可能会影响法官和陪审团对技术的不同评价。 很少有关于科学和技术争议的研究探讨了法律的环境如何通过提供一个论坛来构建科学争议的问题，在这个论坛上，在关于技术可靠性的对抗性争议中征求专家证词。 除了提供有关这些争议中的各方如何解释专家权威的合法和道德使用的信息，以及不同立场所注入的文化承诺之外，本研究还将揭示科学和社会共识发展的实质性影响和差异，以及关于科学和法律边界以及专业知识构成的谈判。 ***