Keith S. Taber
I realised that there was something fascinating about the forensic nature of legal proceedings some years ago (1985) when I saw a television dramatisation of the tribunal into the death of Steve Bantu Biko in police custody in (then still apartheid) South Africa. Although this was a re-enactment, it used actual transcripts to present a reconstruction.
Although like most people I was disgusted with apartheid, I probably would not have known about Steve Biko if it had not been for Peter Gabriel's (1980) anthem ('Biko') protesting his killing – that was the hook that got me to take a look at the film. Although expecting I might find it dry or distressing – it was fascinating. Something that I intended to watch almost out of a sense of liberal duty was totally engrossing.
I have recently spent some time looking at footage of the trial of former police office Derek Chauvin regarding the death of George Floyd. (A case which of course has parallels with Biko's death.) This came from discovering I had access to a whole TV channel (currently) dedicated to showing the court case. I have largely moved from that (as I had less interest in all the commentary which added little to the court 'action'*) to reviewing some of the daily footage from the courtroom available on line.
[Read 'Do nerve signals travel faster than the speed of light?']
(* I was especially unimpressed by the trailers for forthcoming cases in U.S. States with the death penalty, where the show anchor gleefully told viewers we could watch verdicts where we would see the the accused as they found out if they were to live or die.)
The application of science
In this particular case there is a good deal of physics, chemistry and biology (and indeed their interactions) being presented and argued over. I am not sure I would encourage children to watch (and certainly not to approach as an alternative form of entertainment) such serious proceedings – but any who are watching the expert testimony being presented may appreciate a lot about the nature of science (and in particular how data does not become evidence in isolation ). There is a potential counter here to all those TV shows where the whole history of the universe is unproblematically pieced together from some DNA collected by a detective offering a suspect a drink of water. (Okay, I exaggerate, if only a little.)
I initially, accidentally, fell upon coverage of pre-trial arguments about what evidence might be admissible in the forthcoming trial – and started to see how the defence may be offering a story quite inconsistent with the widely accepted narrative (based on the much shared film of the incident). I realised that despite thinking I was the kind of person who tries to always look at different perspectives and seek alternative understandings, and reserve judgement until it is due, I had (without being aware of it) already decided what had happened in this case, and in my own head the presumption of innocence had not really been applied.
This then led to me watching some of the footage of jury selection. This is a process I had been aware of, but had not considered in that much detail – and had certainly not fully appreciated why it might take so much time. After all, if I already had a pretty strong assumption of guilt, and I do not even live on the same continent, selecting people from the local area who have lived through the aftermath (protests and riots) and could put aside everything they had previously learnt, to focus purely on what was presented at trial, was not going to be easy.
There is a television programme, 'Would I lie to you?', where celebrities are given tall autobiographical tales to tell, some of which are true (though I suspect sometimes embellished in the telling) and where points are awarded to the two sides according to whether a person on one team misleads the other team into incorrectly determining 'truth or lie'. This came to mind in watching jury selection.
As the potential jurors were interviewed I found myself forming hunches of when the judge might excuse someone (who clearly was not going to be able to be fair to both sides) or when one of the attorneys might ask for a potential juror not to be selected to sit. Of course, there is a very big difference in nature between a popular entertainment show where some people act out the telling of a 'lie' (which is not really a lie, as there is no intention to mislead beyond the point of reveal within the game), and the very serious matter of jury selection, but the process of thinking about 'what will they think about this person's presentation?' in observing these different events seemed very similar.
Clearly, the Chauvin prosecution is a very high profile case, given the viral video of the incident and its importance (especially given its wider context as just one more in a continuing sequence of incidents with similar outcomes) in triggering worldwide condemnation of racism and the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement.
However, my interest was piqued less by the highly charged public interest in this particular case (important as it is even in its own terms – a man has died in police 'care'; another may be incarcerated for 20 years or more depending on the verdict) than as the window into a real court. I was fascinated by aspects of the legal process. One feels very familiar with the U.S Court system though fictional works (Ally McBeal, The Good Wife/The Good Fight, etc.) but that is entertainment, and accounts of the legal process are very much condensed.
Interpreting data as evidence for a theory
I have always felt an interest in the law, and I think that is not surprising, given that the law acts as a set of formal guidelines (on process, and what is admissible and so forth), and the legal process is forensic, and evidence based, and adopts arguments to suggest how data can be construed as evidence within particular narratives of events.
This all seems parallel to science, and research more generally.
I have even used the law as an analogy in my teaching to suggest how one difference between the kind of theory-directed research which offers generalisable findings and is suitable for publication and context-directed research that may inform a practitioner's day-to-day decisions in the classroom as these can be seen to have a different burden of proof akin to the difference between criminal and civil courts (Taber, 2013). That is:
- theory-directed research (claimed to be generalisable and worth reporting in the research literature) – should make its case beyond reason
- context-directed research (such as action research carried out to address a local issue) – should make its case on the balance of probabilities, that is, (local) action should be informed by what the evidence suggests is most likely the case
Moreover, in many cases (and certainly very much in the Chauvin trial) science is heavily involved in making arguments and developing the cases for prosecution and/or defence.
The examination of witnesses in trials has a strong, if warped, parallel with research interviewing. The warping comes in because in research an interviewer should look to be unbiased and should be seeking 'the truth' as their informant understands it. In a trial, however, the lawyers for the two sides are each seeking to build a case, and so to ask questions that seek answers most in keeping with the scenario they are looking to establish as best representing the actual situation around an alleged crime.
So, there is much of interest in terms of how science is applied in expert testimony, but perhaps also some lessons from the advocates in how not to do science by seeking to re-shape all the data to fit one's hypothesis.
Work cited:
- Taber, K. S. (2013). Classroom-based Research and Evidence-based Practice: An introduction (2nd ed.). London: Sage.