Corinna Kruse

Legal storytelling in pre-trial investigations: arguing for a wider perspective on forensic evidence

Forensic evidence, and most prominently DNA evidence, is often understood as particularly reliable and “objective.” However, just as other evidence, forensic evidence must be interpreted and thus made meaningful in order to “say” something about a defendants culpability. This paper discusses how meaning is created from and around forensic evidence: in criminal trials, evidence is placed in legally meaningful narratives that draw upon well-known cultural scripts and categories and that associate (or disassociate) a defendant with legal categories and consequences. The paper will demonstrate that these stories are not only told in court as a means of arguing a case, but are also continuously told and re-shaped during pre-trial investigations, as evidence in a case is assembled and assessed. Consequently, I argue that, in order to understand forensic evidence, it is just as important to pay attention to pre-trial investigations as it is to study forensic laboratories and courtroom interactions.

The Bayesian Approach to Forensic Evidence – Evaluating, Communicating, and Distributing Responsibility

This article draws attention to communication across professions as an important aspect of forensic evidence. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the Swedish legal system, it shows how forensic scientists use a particular quantitative approach to evaluating forensic laboratory results, the Bayesian approach, as a means of quantifying uncertainty and communicating it accurately to judges, prosecutors, and defense lawyers, as well as a means of distributing responsibility between the laboratory and the court. This article argues that using the Bayesian approach also brings about a particular type of intersubjectivity; in order to make different types of forensic evidence commensurable and combinable, quantifications must be consistent across forensic specializations, which brings about a transparency based on shared understandings and practices. Forensic scientists strive to keep the black box of forensic evidence – at least partly – open in order to achieve this transparency.

Forensic Evidence : Materializing Bodies, Materializing Crimes

Based on an ethnographic study of fingerprint and DNA evidence practices in the Swedish judicial system, this article analyses the materialization of forensic evidence. It argues that forensic evidence, while popularly understood as firmly rooted in materiality, is inseparably technoscientific and cultural. Its roots in the material world are entangled threads of matter, technoscience and culture that produce particular bodily constellations within and together with a particular sociocultural context. Forensic evidence, it argues further, is co-materialized with crimes as well as with particular bodily and social constellations. Consequently, the article suggests that an analysis of how forensic evidence is produced can contribute to feminist understandings of the inseparability of sex and gender: understanding bodies as ongoing technoscientific-material-cultural practices of materialization may be a fruitful approach to analysing their complexity, and the relationships in which they are placed, without surrendering to either cultural or biological determinism. Taking a theoretical point of departure not only in an STS-informed approach, but also in material feminist theorizations, the article also underlines that the suggested theoretical conversations across borders of feminist theory and STS should be understood as a two-way-communication where the two fields contribute mutually to each other.

Approaching ethical, legal and social issues of emerging forensic DNA phenotyping (FDP) technologies comprehensively: Reply to 'Forensic DNA phenotyping: Predicting human appearance from crime scene material for investigative purposes' by Manfred Kayser

In a recent special issue of the journal on new trends in forensic genetics, Manfred Kayser contributed a review of developments, opportunities and challenges of forensic DNA phenotyping (FDP). In his article he argues that FDP technologies – such as determining eye, hair and skin color – should be considered as akin to a “biological witness” with the potential of providing more accurate information than traditional eye witnesses [1]...In this letter, we add some of these missing dimensions to the proposals made by Kayser, embedding our response to his paper into a wider discourse of forensic genetics studies, and addressing the wider community of forensic geneticists, practitioners and policy makers.

Approaching ethical, legal and social issues of emerging forensic DNA phenotyping (FDP) technologies comprehensively

In a recent special issue of the journal on new trends in forensic genetics, Manfred Kayser contributed a review of developments, opportunities and challenges of forensic DNA phenotyping (FDP). In his article he argues that FDP technologies – such as determining eye, hair and skin color – should be considered as akin to a “biological witness” with the potential of providing more accurate information than traditional eye witnesses [1]...In this letter, we add some of these missing dimensions to the proposals made by Kayser, embedding our response to his paper into a wider discourse of forensic genetics studies, and addressing the wider community of forensic geneticists, practitioners and policy makers.

Letter: Approaching ethical, legal and social issues of emerging forensic DNA phenotyping (FDP) technologies comprehensively: Reply to Forensic DNA phenotyping: Predicting human appearance from crime scene material for investigative purposes by Manfred Kayser in FORENSIC SCIENCE INTERNATIONAL-GENETICS, vol 22, issue , pp E1-E4

In a recent special issue of the journal on new trends in forensic genetics, Manfred Kayser contributed a review of developments, opportunities and challenges of forensic DNA phenotyping (FDP). In his article he argues that FDP technologies – such as determining eye, hair and skin color – should be considered as akin to a “biological witness” with the potential of providing more accurate information than traditional eye witnesses [1]...In this letter, we add some of these missing dimensions to the proposals made by Kayser, embedding our response to his paper into a wider discourse of forensic genetics studies, and addressing the wider community of forensic geneticists, practitioners and policy makers.