I understand a number of you have already encountered this article in section, but I wanted to send it out to everyone. As we reflect on "Benge," and the intersection of magic, randomness, and complete conviction in legal processes, it's helpful to have perspective on the ways in which American "crime labs" are perhaps more fallible that CSI suggests. In general, American popular culture certainly represents crime scenes as clearly quantifiable -- not just CSI but Dexter, Bones, etc. -- and producing clear obvious knowledge. On of my favorite little factoids about this is that apparently American juries are now less likely to convict people based on "DNA evidence" that only puts the chances of the guilt in the 1 in 1,000s. Because many people on American juries are used to seeing crime dramas on TV that represent DNA evidence as leading to 0% doubt -- something absurd like a video still of the killer reflected in the victims eyeballs -- now people are less like to find real evidence convincing.



Full article is here.