CAREER: Towards a Systems Analysis of the Utilization of Scientific Evidence in the Criminal Law

职业：对刑法中科学证据的运用进行系统分析

• 批准号: 0347305
• 负责人: Simon Cole
• 金额: $ 40.28万
• 依托单位: University of California-Irvine
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2004
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2004-02-01 至 2012-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0347305&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Towards; Systems; Analysis; Utilization

This project has three intertwined research objectives. First, investigators will engage in systemic analysis of the role of scientific evidence in the production of criminal justice errors. Second, investigators will develop a better understanding of the commonalities and differences between various types of expert knowledge deployed in criminal law and how they are understood by their practitioner, lawyers, courts, and the public. This better understanding will, in turn, inform the development of a provisional taxonomy of expert knowledge that may be useful for better assessing expert knowledge that is offered in court. An implicit storyline is already being constructed around the spate of exposed wrongful convictions in which an idealized "science" plays the white knight exposing the foibles of incompetent or corrupt humans as well as obsolete science. Such a storyline belies and obscures the point, well established in Science and Technology Studies, that fraudulent science does not look fraudulent except in retrospect. If a more nuanced portrait of the role of scientific knowledge in law is to be sustained, rigorous and persuasive research will be needed which documents the ways in which scientific knowledge, human actors, and legal rules have interacted in actual miscarriages of justice. At the same time, the debate over scientific evidence has descended into a debate between naive falsificationist and STS scholars who deny the possibility of ever saying anything meaningful about the legitimacy of claims to expert knowledge. This project will move forward the agenda of those scholars who seek to devise new ways of assessing and better understanding expert knowledge while remaining true to the insights developed by STS. DNA-generated exonerations have created a historic moment in which errors in the criminal justice system can be attested to with a cultural authority (of science) that is very difficult to resist. At the same time, legal developments have created great uncertainty about the use of scientific evidence in the law. Instead, this project seeks to use this historic moment to promote a better understanding of scientific evidence itself, rather than merely replacing one mythologized science with another. This project will enable the coalescing of a cluster of faculty around the broad area of science and law and the role of science in miscarriages of justice, attract graduate students, and facilitate doctoral research in this area. The project's research will be used to enrich undergraduate course offerings in the areas of forensic science, law and society, miscarriages of justice, and the death penalty.

该项目有三个相互交织的研究目标。首先，调查人员将对科学证据在产生刑事司法错误中的作用进行系统分析。其次，调查人员将更好地了解刑法中部署的各种类型的专家知识之间的共性和差异，以及他们的从业人员，律师，法院和公众如何理解它们。这种更好的理解反过来又将为专家知识的临时分类法的制定提供信息，这种分类法可能有助于更好地评估法院提供的专家知识。 一个隐含的故事情节已经围绕着一系列被揭露的错误信念而构建起来，在这些错误信念中，一个理想化的“科学”扮演着白色骑士，揭露了无能或腐败的人类以及过时的科学的弱点。这样的故事情节掩盖和掩盖了科学和技术研究中已经确立的观点，即欺诈性科学除非在回顾时才看起来是欺诈性的。如果要对科学知识在法律中的作用进行更细致的描述，就需要进行严格和有说服力的研究，记录科学知识、人类行为者和法律的规则在实际的司法不公中的相互作用方式。与此同时，关于科学证据的争论已经演变成天真的证伪主义者和STS学者之间的争论，他们否认有可能对专家知识的合法性提出任何有意义的说法。该项目将推动那些寻求设计评估和更好地理解专家知识的新方法的学者的议程，同时忠实于STS开发的见解。 DNA产生的免责声明创造了一个历史性的时刻，在这个时刻，刑事司法系统中的错误可以用一个非常难以抗拒的文化权威（科学）来证明。与此同时，法律的发展给科学证据在法律中的使用带来了很大的不确定性。相反，该项目旨在利用这一历史性时刻来促进对科学证据本身的更好理解，而不仅仅是用另一种科学来取代一种神话般的科学。 该项目将使一群教师围绕科学和法律的广泛领域以及科学在司法不公中的作用合并，吸引研究生，并促进这一领域的博士研究。该项目的研究将用于丰富法医学、法律与社会、司法不公和死刑等领域的本科课程。