Kind Of Testimony Research Articles

Proving Forgery from the Point of View of Sharia and the Penal Code of Afghanistan

This article is about the proof of Qazf in a comparative manner between Islamic Sharia and the Afghan Penal Code, which can be summarized as follows: Proving Qazf consists of special methods and tools that distinguish this crime from other limits from the point of view of proof. Another way to prove Qazf is to prove to the judge that a person has accused another person of adultery. Therefore, according to the advanced Hanafi jurists, Qazf is proved in court by the confession of the Qazf (accuser) or the testimony of the Qazf's witnesses (accused) or by the knowledge of the judge, but according to the late Hanafi jurists and the Afghan Penal Code, only by the confession of the Qazf and testimony. It is proved that the witnesses are rejected. The proof of Qazf compared to other limits depends on the demand and filing of a lawsuit, therefore, confession in Qadzf is the same as some cases of confession in other limits, and in some cases, it is different; This kind of testimony in Qazf in some cases will not be the same as testimony in other areas. The jurists disagree about the proof of qadhf through oath; According to the Hanafi jurists, it is not proven, according to the Shafi'is and Hanbalis, Qazf Dariya is proven, but Maliki's scholars. They differ on this matter.

УЧАСТИЕ ОБВИНЯЕМОГО В СУДЕБНОМ РАЗБИРАТЕЛЬСТВЕ

In the trial, the accused is a participant on the part of the defense, who has all the rights of a party in the process and has the right to participate in the study of all the evidence presented by the participants in the trial during the investigation of the circumstances of the case. In carrying out his defense, the accused can not only actively participate in the trial, but also take a passive position. On the other hand, his testimony is evidence in a criminal case, including an accusatory one. In this case, "the evidence base of the prosecution can be formed with the participation of the accused himself," while the participation of the accused in the study and presentation of evidence should not be made dependent on his consent or refusal to testify. In foreign practice, in particular in the criminal proceedings of England and the USA, the testimony of the accused is a kind of testimony that has certain specifics. This is manifested in the following. In the United States, the accused can: refuse to testify; act as a defense witness without an oath (in this case, his testimony is not given the force of evidence); testify under oath. In England, the accused must either remain silent (refuse to testify), or act as a witness. Both in England and in the USA, if the accused decides to testify, he is interrogated as a witness under oath, may be cross-examined when the prosecution, the court will be able to ask questions incriminating the accused of committing a crime, he is also responsible for giving false testimony.

Silent Witnesses: The Testimony of Objects in Holocaust Poetry and Prose

Silent Witnesses:The Testimony of Objects in Holocaust Poetry and Prose Leora Bilsky (bio) and Vered Lev Kenaan1 (bio) The Holocaust brought about a crisis of testimony that led to critical engagement with the limits of representation by lawyers, historians, psychoanalysts, and poets. This question was first addressed by the architects of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg (1945) who preferred incriminating documents produced by the perpetrators themselves over the testimony of their victims. A reversal was brought about 15 years later in the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem (1961), where the testimony of Holocaust survivors took center stage. In the last two decades another transformation has occurred, known as "the material turn"—the rising interest in material objects (from artworks to everyday objects) in anticipation of the death of the last survivors. This material turn was accompanied by a wave of restitution litigation over artwork looted by the Nazis. In this article we offer a new theoretical perspective on the complicated issues raised by the material turn in Holocaust memory. What kind of testimony or voice can we attribute to objects? How can the testimony of objects change the relationship between law and literature in representations of the Holocaust? At the center of our discussion are three Jewish-Polish poetic testimonies written by Zuzanna Ginczanka, Władysław Szlengel, and Rachel Auerbach during the war in Poland, under Nazi occupation. Anticipating the crisis of testimony brought about by the new crime of genocide, these writers give voice to everyday objects and assign them the role of witnesses in an imagined future trial, held after the extinction of their communities. By introducing inanimate objects as privileged witnesses in an imagined Holocaust trial, we argue that these authors problematize the notion of courtroom testimony. By adopting and employing the rhetorical figure of the testifying object, these Jewish authors respond to the rich Western humanist [End Page 379] tradition of testament poetry, while at the same time performing acts of intervention. Our reading shows that these texts disrupt the continuity of the European convention of the testament poem, precisely by ascribing the testifying voice to Jewish things. Preface "The Telephone" With my broken and sick heart,with thoughts on the other side,I sat in the eveningBy my telephone. I thought: I will callsomeone on the other side,when there comes my turnto sit by the telephone. And soon I realize—God, there's nobody to call,I went another wayIn 1939. Our ways have parted,Friendships became stuckAnd suddenly, here I am,Without anybody to call. (Szlengel, 1943, pp. 38–41) "The Telephone" was written in Polish by the Polish-Jewish poet Władysław Szlengel (1943/1987) in the Warsaw ghetto (Oneg Szabat Program, 2021). Szlengel's poem is about the dreadful loneliness caused by being forced to move to the Warsaw ghetto away from the familiar habitus. Drawn back to the other, forbidden part of Warsaw where all his Polish acquaintances continue to live, the speaker longs to reconnect with old friends and neighbors. Yet his wish soon resolves into bitter realization: [End Page 380] "God, there's nobody to call." Here the poem shifts from the lyric mode to the satirical. Looking for some other channel of communication, the poet turns to the telephone's speaking clock as a substitute for familiar interlocutors. Szlengel thus produces a Jewish variation of Cocteau's (1928) La Voix Humaine by conducting an imaginary conversation with an automated female voice.2 Associating a broken human voice choked with tears and the voice of the machine, Szlengel conveys the loss of trust between the ghetto's Jews and their former Polish neighbors. When Szlengel (1943/1987) writes, "It will be easier on the heart, knowing that when I call, someone on the other side will listen to me quietly," the voice he craves to hear from the other side is of someone who shares memories of their hometown and is not afraid to talk with one who was cast out of it. In 1939 the telephone could still provide a means of communication to overcome the ghetto walls. Notwithstanding this technical possibility, such an effort is doomed to...

Features of Obtaining, Evaluating and Using of Testimony of a Person Questioned in a Criminal Case of an Accomplice

Under Article 56.1 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation, an individual in whose respect the criminal case was separated into a separate proceeding due to the conclusion of a pre-trial cooperation agreement among the participants of the Russian criminal proceedings has appeared. This results in intensification of the discussion of the legal status of not only this individual, but also of a number of other actually existing similar participants. They include, inter alia, a convicted person questioned in the case of his accomplice previously allocated to a separate proceeding due to suspension for one reason or another and subsequently resumed; the person against whom the criminal case has been dismissed, etc. All of them are united by the fact that they are involved in criminal investigations against the accomplices to testify against their wrongful actions. This kind of testimony is of considerable specificity, as it is given by persons with the privilege against self-incrimination and interested in the outcome of the case. This predetermines significant nuances of the procedure of obtaining, evaluating and using such testimonies.

Who owns the sky? Aerial resistance and the state/corporate no-fly zone

“Who owns the sky” is not a new question but a persistent one. For more than three centuries it emerges as a social, legal, technological, and geopolitical problem. Indeed, the aerial is not something that is simply above our heads but an element that fluctuates in and out of the body. And while the air and the body are inseparable, the aerial has been turned directly against the body in various ways since the beginning of the 20th century. This paper explores the unsettled frontiers of the fly-zone, looking into the interrelated occupations, exploitations, and democratizations of the aerial. It sketches the emergence of the state/corporate no-fly zone (NFZ) through the emergence of small-scale civilian drones, which developed into a sophisticated industry that negotiates new forms of state power to technology corporations. This new configuration of aerial control and management complicates the established, state-imposed, regulatory NFZ and suggests the development of a new techno-cultural assemblage of spatial closures through the air. Against this backdrop, I discuss two case-studies of aerial resistance through the use of do-it-yourself (DIY) aerial-photography in Israel/Palestine. I show how DIY tactics and tools offer a distinctive kind of evocation and provocation that challenge the conceptual and material boundaries of the NFZ and direct the attention to the ruptured links between the aerial and the human body. Finally, I discuss how DIY aerial-photography is also a particular kind of testimony and a methodological mediation that allows questioning the very premise of knowledge production through technosocial, activist engagement.

Achilles Unbound: Multiformity and Tradition in the Homeric Epics by Casey Dué

Reviewed by: Achilles Unbound: Multiformity and Tradition in the Homeric Epics by Casey Dué Louise Pratt Achilles Unbound: Multiformity and Tradition in the Homeric Epics. By Casey Dué. Hellenic Studies 81. Cambridge, MA and London, UK: Harvard University Press, 2019. Pp. xiii + 204. Paperback, $27.50. ISBN 978-0-674-98736-4. This book offers Casey Dué’s spirited argument on behalf of the Homer Multitext project that she has been working on for eighteen years together with multiple collaborators; its publication is occasioned by the completion of the group’s digital edition of the Venetus A manuscript of the Iliad. Though much of the argument depends on work that she and her primary collaborators have already published, as well as on the work of Parry, Lord and others, the book is written in a clear and conversational style that will make it a useful introduction to the issues for those unfamiliar with earlier scholarship on an oral Homer; it is also a valuable resource for more advanced scholars who want a fuller account of the Homer Multitext project and its implications than is available elsewhere. The preface gives an overview of the project, its aspirations and methods. Like the rest of the book, it confidently asserts the project’s fundamental value in providing scholars with a “much greater understanding of the history” of the Iliad’s evolution and the multiformity of the tradition of composition in performance in which the Homeric epics were created (xii), but is modest in reach, “being merely preliminary to the very necessary work that has now become possible” (x). Dué is eager here and throughout to acknowledge her collaborators, and though I wearied of the frequent, clubby references to them by name in the text, it was inspiring to see a research project in the Humanities bring together scholars of Homer, specialists in digital humanities, undergraduates and many others in such an apparently congenial and fruitful way. The introduction and first chapter offer a succinct summary of the essential scholarship that underlies the project's aims and method. Dué focuses on the concept of multiformity and its relationship to the tradition and describes the Iliad’s evolution over time from the oral performances of its earliest phase to contemporary printed editions. This long evolution, Dué argues, is a primary justification for the Multitext project, which aims to provide an accurate picture [End Page 506] of the complexity and fluidity of the Iliad's transmission rather than futilely seeking to recreate an authoritative version of a non-existent original, as most previous editors of the Iliad have done. The arguments are presented clearly with excellent supporting details; it provides a useful starting place for the more complex discussion that follows. Chapters 2–4 each treat several examples of a different kind of testimony from successive stages of the Iliad's transmission: Chapter 2 discusses four ancient quotations of Homer, Chapter 3 variants found in the Homeric papyri and Chapter 4 those in medieval manuscripts, particularly Venetus A. Chapters 2 and 3 illustrate points using relatively short passages; Chapter 4 has a broader scope, discussing the role of Briseis, the Catalogue of Ships, the Doloneia and Achilles’ shield. Some of the arguments are dense, and, despite Dué’s notable efforts to be clear, she may lose some readers in the thicket; unfortunately, it is not easy to track multiple versions of longer passages simultaneously. Nonetheless, her overall argument is clear and persuades that multiform versions of the Iliad existed at all stages of its transmission, and that at least some of the alternative readings not represented in earlier editions are interesting, at least to specialists, and should be taken into account when discussing the text and its interpretation. Most interesting to me was her discussion of two multiforms of the Iliad’s ending attested in papyri that suggest that the encounter between Achilles and Penthesilea was sometimes told immediately following the burial of Hector. Using Nagy's arguments about the name of Penthesilea, a doublet of Achilles’ own, Dué intriguingly imagines ancient versions of the Iliad that made much more of Achilles as a lover. Yet, however interesting this alternative might be, it...

HOW TO BE AN OPTIMIST ABOUT AESTHETIC TESTIMONY

AbstractAn ongoing debate concerns whether agents can come to know that a particular piece of art is beautiful on the basis of someone's say-so. This debate concerns the epistemology of aesthetic testimony. Pessimists of various stripes claim that testimony-based knowledge of aesthetic propositions is impossible; optimists of various stripes claim that such testimony-based knowledge is possible. In this paper, I defend an optimist position: agents can come to know aesthetic propositions on the basis of testimony. Moreover, agents come to gain this knowledge quite readily. I make my case by considering a parallel debate in epistemology regarding assertions based on a particular kind of testimony, cases of what Jennifer Lackey (2011, 2013) has called “isolated second-hand knowledge” (ISHK). I argue that assertions based on isolated second-hand knowledge are appropriate, and hearers can come to know aesthetic propositions via testimony.

Activism and Inwardness

Activism and Inwardness Nathan Schneider The genre of testimony is one that a serious writer would do best to avoid. By testimony I mean a very particular subset of first‐person narrative—this isn't autobiography (of one's life as such), or reportage (of one's adventures), or confession (of one's misadventures), or testimonial (of one's experiences with certain products). Each of those genres can be adapted, free of cringing, to a modern, literary, secular voice. One can write in them, post the result on the Internet, then afterward live to write another genre. Testimony is different. That's because writers are supposed to be in control, aware of themselves and those around them. Supremely so—that's why we're the writers. But testimony doesn't permit this. Whether one testifies from the stand in a courtroom or the sanctuary of a church, testimony is about forces beyond one's control or comprehension. In court, testimony takes place in the midst of an imposing and perplexing and grinding process by which justice is purported to be done, and over which the witness has as little control as the lawyer class can make possible. Such a testimony can be only part of the story, and it will be heard only through a mysterious combination of performative and bureaucratic filters. Testimony coming from a Christian has similar features. This kind of testimony is a story about what God has done in one's life; the main character in such a story is supposed to be God, but since the testifier is a human being and not God, God's activities present themselves only through what the testifier claims God has done in her or his life. A writer conveying such experience has little opportunity to take credit for anything important that takes place, yet all the while implicitly asserting the fact of being a subject of God's particular concern. Testimony is thus both pious and submissive, two gigantic no‐nos of the modern writerly voice. Christian testimony is also typically evangelistic, which is to say propagandistic, and that is supposed to be even worse. The following is a testimony. It feels like testimony to me, anyway; by charting the progress of certain flighty, troublesome sensations upon which my sense of self seemed to depend, I mean to describe the nature and activity of Something Else. I hope it is also a little propagandistic. After that little preface, on to the introduction. It dwells on a passage from Iris Murdoch's Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, a book that has been a consistent companion to me ever since I discovered it in a used bookstore while a student. The passage struck me with particular force as I was first formulating this essay in April 2013, when armored people and vehicles were rolling through the deserted streets of Cambridge hunting down, and eventually shooting, the perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombing. Murdoch considers some words from the Book of Romans: “The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.” And so it goes: The spectacle of the terrible suffering of others may prompt not only sympathy but also a sense of guilt which may be overwhelming. (This was felt by many people in relation to the Holocaust.) So it may be felt that not only “personal spirituality,” but also moral philosophy and traditional theology are out of place in a world tormented by poverty, misery and cruelty: that old‐fashioned generalisations, or calm reflections upon inwardness, are too abstract and dreamy and indeed selfish to be true for a post‐Hitler post‐Stalin overpopulated nuclear planet. Such an attitude may make benevolent social fanatics, or could lead to terrorism, where a particular cause, idolised as just, produces a callous indifference to other values. But one does not have to choose between activism and inwardness or feel that one is bound to swallow the other. A morality of axioms needs the intuitive control of a more widely reflective and general morality. In a good society these ways of thinking, while always in tension, know their roles and places, and when they have rights against each other. “Activism...

Activism and Inwardness

T he genre of testimony is one that a serious writer would do best to avoid. By testimony I mean a very particular subset of first-person narrative—this isn’t autobiography (of one’s life as such), or reportage (of one’s adventures), or confession (of one’s misadventures), or testimonial (of one’s experiences with certain products). Each of those genres can be adapted, free of cringing, to a modern, literary, secular voice. One can write in them, post the result on the Internet, then afterward live to write another genre. Testimony is different. That’s because writers are supposed to be in control, aware of themselves and those around them. Supremely so— that’s why we’re the writers. But testimony doesn’t permit this. Whether one testifies from the stand in a courtroom or the sanctuary of a church, testimony is about forces beyond one’s control or comprehension. In court, testimony takes place in the midst of an imposing and perplexing and grinding process by which justice is purported to be done, and over which the witness has as little control as the lawyer class can make possible. Such a testimony can be only part of the story, and it will be heard only through a mysterious combination of performative and bureaucratic filters. Testimony coming from a Christian has similar features. This kind of testimony is a story about what God has done in one’s life; the main character in such a story is supposed to be God, but since the testifier is a human being and not God, God’s activities present themselves only through what the testifier claims God has done in her or his life. A writer conveying such experience has little opportunity to take credit for

Testimony in John’s Gospel: The Puzzle of 5:31 and 8:14

Testimony is a central theme in John’s Gospel and he has a developed view on how it works. This paper makes two contributions. First, I show the complexity and sophistication with which John handles different kinds of testimony in his narrative; this constitutes a category of evidence for the centrality of testimony not noted hitherto. Second, I address the central puzzle, namely the prima facie contradiction between 5:31 and 8:14. At issue is whether Jesus’ testimony about himself requires corroborating testimony for it rationally to be believed. I argue that 8:14 has interpretative priority: according to John, no such corroboration is required.

Testimony in John’s Gospel: The Puzzle of 5:31 and 8:14

Testimony is a central theme in John’s Gospel and John has a developed view on how it works. This paper makes two contributions. First, I show the complexity and sophistication with which John handles different kinds of testimony in his narrative; this constitutes a category of evidence for the centrality of testimony not noted hitherto. Second, I address the central puzzle, namely the prima facie contradiction between 5:31 and 8:14. At issue is whether Jesus’ testimony about himself requires corroborating testimony for it rationally to be believed. I argue that 8:14 has interpretative priority: according to John, no such corroboration is required.

La Escenificación de una Mirada y el Testimonio de los Cuerpos en el Teatro Documental de Vivi Tellas

RESUMEN En este artículo recorreremos algunos enfoques teóricos para analizar la propuesta artística de la directora argentina Vivi Tellas materializada en su proyecto de teatro documental Archivos, el cual se enmarca dentro de su macro-proyecto Biodrama. Analizaremos distintas claves que definen su modo particular de trabajar con aquellos materiales reales con los que construye sus espectáculos, reflexionando sobre las posibles implicancias éticas y estéticas de este trabajo. Un lugar privilegiado tendrán en esta reflexión las ideas de Giorgio Agamben respecto principalmente de la noción de testigo, que nos permitirán acercarnos a una hipótesis sobre el tipo de testimonio que brindan los cuerpos - de personas comunes y corrientes - y también los objetos/documentos que Tellas lleva a escena.

No need to toss a coin: conflicting scientific expert testimonies and intellectual due process

This paper focuses on the question of how decision makers with no relevant scientific background can (if at all) legitimately evaluate conflicting scientific expert testimonies and determine their relative reliability. Skeptics argue that non-experts can never reach justifiable conclusions regarding the merits of conflicting expert testimonies because they lack the fundamental epistemic capacity to make such judgment calls. In this paper, I draw on works on epistemology, philosophy of practical reasoning, philosophy of science, science and technology studies, and legal theory in order to scrutinize recent proposals to solve the problem of conflicting scientific expert testimonies. Addressing this question is of ultimate importance due to the idea that immanent in the idea of rule-of-law there is an intellectual due process norm, which articulates that epistemically arbitrary legal decisions are also not legally justified.This paper is divided into two parts. In Part I, I describe the basic philosophical inquiries underlying the debate about expert testimony. In particular, I first elaborate on the philosophy of testimony and its epistemic justifications, then move to the idea of epistemic deference, and finish with philosophical accounts of expertise. Part II presents the problem of conflicting scientific expert testimonies and analyzes recent attempts to solve it as formulated by Ward Jones, Alvin Goldman, and Scott Brewer. I argue that there is no single criterion (or set of criteria) upon which the non-expert could rely in order to make a rationally justified decision in each and every case in which he faces conflicting scientific expert testimonies. The alternative view here defended is to stop looking for an epistemic panacea and accept the idea that testimonial reliability operates differently within different kinds of testimony – and differently within the same kind of testimony at different times.

No Need to Toss a Coin: Conflicting Scientific Expert Testimonies and Intellectual Due Process

This paper focuses on the question of how decision makers with no relevant scientific background can (if at all) legitimately evaluate conflicting scientific expert testimonies and determine their relative reliability. Skeptics argue that non-experts can never reach justifiable conclusions regarding the merits of conflicting expert testimonies because they lack the fundamental epistemic capacity to make such judgment calls. In this paper, I draw on works on epistemology, philosophy of practical reasoning, philosophy of science, science and technology studies, and legal theory in order to scrutinize recent proposals to solve the problem of conflicting scientific expert testimonies. Addressing this question is of ultimate importance due to the idea that immanent in the idea of rule-of-law there is an intellectual due process norm, which articulates that epistemically arbitrary legal decisions are also not legally justified.This paper is divided into two parts. In Part I, I describe the basic philosophical inquiries underlying the debate about expert testimony. In particular, I first elaborate on the philosophy of testimony and its epistemic justifications, then move to the idea of epistemic deference, and finish with philosophical accounts of expertise. Part II presents the problem of conflicting scientific expert testimonies and analyzes recent attempts to solve it as formulated by Ward Jones, Alvin Goldman, and Scott Brewer. I argue that there is no single criterion (or set of criteria) upon which the non-expert could rely in order to make a rationally justified decision in each and every case in which he faces conflicting scientific expert testimonies. The alternative view here defended is to stop looking for an epistemic panacea and accept the idea that testimonial reliability operates differently within different kinds of testimony – and differently within the same kind of testimony at different times.

DOKUMEN NON-ARAB TENTANG BERITA KERASULAN MUHAMMAD DAN AWAL ISLAM

In the era of the beginning of Islam, Arabia was situated among great imperial countries which are intellectually and culturally more developed as a result of development of religious life especially Jews and Christianity. So, it is not surprising if lots of written artifacts concerning with the emergence of new religion and its Prophet, Muhammad, are found in Arabia. The documents are of course very meaningful in the his­torio­graphy of Islamic history and tradition on its formative period, since the sources proportionally can also be completed by obtaining information from documents of non-Arabic Islamic chronicles. The non-Arabic contemporary sources of this primitive Islam may offer different kinds of account to study on how Islam has developed to the present form, since this kind of testimony is a comparative historical entity rather than a conventional one. The non-Arabic sources concerning Islam imply non-Islamic points of view, nevertheless they are certainly of valuable meaning in the study of any history.

Factors Used in U.S. Circuit Court Judges’ Admissibility Decisions in Psychological/Psychiatric, Toxicology, Damages, and Engineering Cases

Content analysis was performed on a systematic sample of 400 U.S. District Court cases published on Lexis between July 1, 1993 and March 1, 2010 in which the admissibility of expert testimony was at issue. These cases were selected from the four most frequently occurring kinds of testimony (clinical psychological/psychiatric, toxicology, damages, and engineering). One-hundred cases from each category were systematically selected by decision date so that they spanned the period of time from the July 1993 Daubert decision to the present. Significant differences were found in the number of expert qualifications, Daubert factors, and non-Daubert factors evaluated by judges. Significant main effects for admissibility ruling were found for the mean number of expert qualifications, the mean number of Daubert factors, the mean number of Daubert factors minus general acceptance, the mean number of mentions of general acceptance, and the mean number of non-Daubert factors evaluated by judges. Significant main effects for admissibility standard were also found for the mean number of Daubert factors and the mean number of Daubert factors minus general acceptance. The admissibility of the evidence was significantly predicted by the number of negative expert evaluations, the number of negative Daubert factor evaluations, the number of positive and negative non-Daubert factor evaluations, the admissibility standard, and the category of evidence. Findings are discussed in the context of the social construction of the admissibility of expert testimony.

407 and All That: Insular Late Roman Historiography and the Literary-Historical Turn

1492, 1789, 1919. There are dates so heavy with their sequels, they swallow the events that gave them meaning, and speak by themselves for whole histories. This quality of date-as-synecdoche was memorably exploited in the classic spoof-history 1066 and All That , with resonances of empires lost that can still be heard faintly but distinctly echoing in contemporary British histories of the Fall of Rome. The deixis of “and all that,” however, is not only historiological. As a totalizing figure of inference and allusion, it also gestures toward the kind of testimony that has counted in the past as fictional, merely figurative and literary. This study evokes the unmemorably big date of 407 (?) CE in order to posit a common antecedent for the respective “and all thats” of insular terminal-Roman historiography and of what has been called literature. The antecedent would be the late (not to say prematurely post-) Roman history-cum-fiction of Jerome’s Chronici canones (or Chronicle ).

Factfinders' Judgments Concerning Forensic Identification Science Testimony

Forensic identification science rests upon the notion that certain attributes of inanimate objects, persons, or even the residuum of certain behavior contain so much variability that it is possible to associate evidence from a crime scene with the source of that evidence. But serious scientists have long realized that, for reasons physical, statistical and psychological, such credulousness reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of these techniques. Outside of DNA typing, forensic identification has no random match probability data to share with factfinders, and such experts generally assert that their examination indicates that the crime scene evidence and the defendant's sample share a common source, or some comparable formulation. Our research is concerned with the effects of the kind of testimony that is given, or which could be given, for the numerous other forensic identification sciences that have been in existence much longer than DNA typing (e.g., fingerprints, handwriting, microscopic hair comparison); these fields have no scientific basis of the sort that DNA typing does, and must stand instead on the foundation of the personal experience and judgment of their practitioners, who must support their claims in court not with empirical data but with testimonial assurances. How would such expert testimony be received if it included more complete and candid descriptions of how they reached their findings and the more limited meaning of those findings? In three experiments we examined the impact on judges and jurors of different ways of expressing the meaning of a forensic match. Overall, the data revealed that what factfinders conclude from the evidence varied as a function of the ways in which the expert's findings were expressed and whether or not the limitations of the accuracy of forensic identification science were presented.

Helpful tools for criminal prosecution in domestic violence cases: Some ideas from the United States of America

In this paper author presents three instruments that have been proven helpful in domestic violence prosecutions in the United States, particularly in California: (1) laws, (2) inter-agency protocols, and (3) victim support services. Prosecutors have found that certain laws have been helpful in domestic violence prosecutions. These include restraining orders, criminal penalties for violations of restraining orders, and evidence code provisions permitting certain kinds of testimony. Second, many jurisdictions in California have drafted inter-agency protocols. The purpose of these protocols is to help law enforcement, health care workers, and social workers in gathering evidence relating to domestic violence cases. Finally, most victims are not familiar with the criminal justice system many are nervous about going to court for domestic violence cases, for a variety of reasons. As a result, many jurisdictions have established victim support services.

Portrait of the Self

Portrait of the Self