Speaking of Evidence: An Empirical Study of the Reporting of Forensic Conclusions in US Criminal Trials

14 Pages Posted: 6 Aug 2009 Last revised: 19 Sep 2009

See all articles by Simon A. Cole

Simon A. Cole

University of California, Irvine - Department of Criminology, Law and Society

Date Written: August 3, 2009

Abstract

This paper uses trial transcript data to try to determine the empirical reality of expert testimony in actual US criminal trials about a variety of forensic techniques, including latent prints, firearms and toolmarks, forensic document analyses, and forensic DNA profiling.

Keywords: forensic, expert, evidence, fingerprint, testimony, transcript

Suggested Citation

Cole, Simon A., Speaking of Evidence: An Empirical Study of the Reporting of Forensic Conclusions in US Criminal Trials (August 3, 2009). CELS 2009 4th Annual Conference on Empirical Legal Studies Paper, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1443630 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1443630

Simon A. Cole (Contact Author)

University of California, Irvine - Department of Criminology, Law and Society ( email )

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HOME PAGE: http://www.seweb.uci.edu/faculty/cole/

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