{"id":1192,"date":"2012-01-19T17:51:29","date_gmt":"2012-01-19T22:51:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www3.law.harvard.edu\/journals\/hlpr\/?p=1192"},"modified":"2015-10-02T15:24:50","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T15:24:50","slug":"the-csi-effect-playing-in-a-jury-room-near-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/2012\/01\/19\/the-csi-effect-playing-in-a-jury-room-near-you\/","title":{"rendered":"The CSI Effect: Playing in a Jury Room Near You?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Frank Housh<\/em><\/p>\n

Social science continues to tell us that eyewitness testimony is flawed and is responsible for a lot of innocent people getting convicted.\u00a0 In light of this increasing body of evidence, criminal defense attorneys have argued that absent expert testimony or procedural safeguards, such flawed eyewitness testimony should not be considered by a jury.\u00a0 This issue came to a head in October 2011 when the United States Supreme Court granted cert in\u00a0Perry v. New Hampshire<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0I wrote about the issue in this journal then<\/a>, and I write now to report on\u00a0the Supreme Court\u2019s January 11, 2012 decision<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"forensic_scientist_john_manlove_gives_evidence_in__1511387819\"<\/a>According to current law, eyewitness identification is the subject of a judicial hearing only when the state arranged the identification.\u00a0 That is, if the witness identified the victim in a police lineup or photo array, the Court could exclude the identification on Constitutional grounds if the identification procedure was too suggestive.\u00a0 The plaintiff in\u00a0Perry v. New Hampshire<\/em>\u00a0asks, given what we know about the fallibility of eyewitness testimony, why shouldn\u2019t the trial court screen\u00a0all<\/em>\u00a0identifications including those in which the police had no involvement?\u00a0 Such identifications are just as likely to be false as police-arranged ones.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court wasn\u2019t buying it.\u00a0 In an 8-1 decision, Justice Ginsburg held close to the principle of the supremacy of the jury as the determiner of facts.\u00a0 A defendant is protected from unreliable eyewitness identification by a skilled defense attorney\u2019s cross-examination and the common sense of a jury.\u00a0 The testimony of jailhouse snitches is allowed despite their questionable reliability, the Court reasoned.\u00a0 Jurors aren\u2019t stupid.\u00a0 The Court said:<\/p>\n

The fallibility of eyewitness evidence does not, without the taint of improper state conduct, warrant a due process rule requiring a trial court to screen such evidence for reliability before allowing the jury to assess its creditworthiness.<\/p>\n

Still, I sense the broader issue of science for the jury is still being developed.\u00a0 I discussed the \u201cCSI Effect\u201d\u00a0<\/em>in writing in 2004, and this phenomenon has diminished not at all.\u00a0 Forensic science programs proliferate at higher education institutions all over the United States and, to an increasing degree, jurors expect issues of fact to be presented with accompanying forensic proof.\u00a0 If such proof is not forthcoming, they often regard the government\u2019s case as \u201cweak.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Marg-Helgenberger-CSI-Las-Vegas-9x04-Let-It-Bleed-csi-2537258-1707-2560\"<\/a>Thus, prosecutors increasingly are allowed to present \u201cscientific evidence\u201d such as blood spatter patterns and footprint analysis to juries which are not merely immature disciplines, but junk science or even bald speculation.\u00a0 Indeed, in 2009 no less an authority than the\u00a0National Academy of Sciences\u00a0<\/a>published\u00a0Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: a Path Forward<\/em><\/a>\u00a0warning that \u201cthere are serious issues regarding the capacity and quality of the current forensic system; yet, courts continue to rely on forensic evidence without fully understanding and addressing the limitations of different forensic science disciplines.\u201d<\/p>\n

In\u00a0Perry v. New Hampshire<\/em>, the court had no use for science related to the fallibility of eyewitness testimony, as it regarded such issues squarely within the province of the jury.\u00a0 Let\u2019s hope it casts a similar critical eye when ruling on the veracity of other questionable science in the courtroom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Frank Housh Social science continues to tell us that eyewitness testimony is flawed and is responsible for a lot of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZQka-je","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1192\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}