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Full-Text Articles in Law

Using Dna To Free The Innocent, Susan Rutberg, Janice Brickley Nov 2005

Using Dna To Free The Innocent, Susan Rutberg, Janice Brickley

Publications

No abstract provided.


A Brave New World Of Criminal Justice: Neil Gerlach's Genetic Imaginary, Stephen Coughlan Jan 2005

A Brave New World Of Criminal Justice: Neil Gerlach's Genetic Imaginary, Stephen Coughlan

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In this well written and intriguing book, Neil Gerlach asks why the criminal justice system has accepted DNA evidence in much the same way that our Anglo-Saxon predecessors accepted trial by ordeal. Why have we not instead shown the same caution we show polygraph evidence? To be sure, he does not present the issue in those terms, and might shudder at the analogy. Still, the central issue he pursues in the book is the question of how DNA evidence has managed to assume its current aura of infallibility, as evidence which is somehow uniquely objective and "true": how it has …


A Brave New World Of Criminal Justice: Neil Gerlach's Genetic Imaginary, Steve Coughlan Jan 2005

A Brave New World Of Criminal Justice: Neil Gerlach's Genetic Imaginary, Steve Coughlan

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In this well written and intriguing book, Neil Gerlach asks why the criminal justice system has accepted DNA evidence in much the same way that our Anglo-Saxon predecessors accepted trial by ordeal. Why have we not instead shown the same caution we show polygraph evidence? To be sure, he does not present the issue in those terms, and might shudder at the analogy. Still, the central issue he pursues in the book is the question of how DNA evidence has managed to assume its current aura of infallibility, as evidence which is somehow uniquely objective and "true": how it has …


Exonerations In The United States 1989 Through 2003, Samuel R. Gross, Kriten Jacoby, Daniel J. Matheson, Nicholas Montgomery, Sujata Patil Jan 2005

Exonerations In The United States 1989 Through 2003, Samuel R. Gross, Kriten Jacoby, Daniel J. Matheson, Nicholas Montgomery, Sujata Patil

Articles

On August 14, 1989, the Cook County Circuit Court in Chicago, Illinois, vacated Gary Dotson's 1979 rape conviction and dismissed the charges.1 Mr. Dotson-who had spent ten years in and out of prison and on parole for this conviction-was not the first innocent prisoner to be exonerated and released in America. But his case was a breakthrough nonetheless: he was the first who was cleared by DNA identification technology. It was the beginning of a revolution in the American criminal justice system. Until then, exonerations of falsely convicted defendants were seen as aberrational. Since 1989, these once-rare events have become …