This paper explores responses to scientific evidence from a lay person accused of murder. These responses are examined with reference to the specific (here legal) contexts in which they were offered. This paper will provide some analysis of the motivations or goals behind some particular lay understandings of scientific evidence, and the function which representations of these understandings were designed to fulfill as the accused attempted to prove her innocence. The specific contexts will be seen to influence the shaping and configuring of scientific knowledge as well as the manner in which various audiences attend to that knowledge and its perceived implications. The discussion will also raise the appropriateness of maintaining a rigid dichotomy between lay and expert knowledges. In conclusion I will emphasize the importance of a more symmetrical and sociologically informed analysis of both expert and lay approaches to scientific knowledge.
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References
1.
When evidence is used, I do not suggest that there is some non-problematic collection of facts or knowledge which can be used to support particular orientations in all circumstances. Rather, evidence is considered in terms of the context, desired outcome, and particular claims and interpretations made and/or held by various participants. What counts as adequate evidence, and what that evidence means, are likely to be some of the very issues that are actively contested in legal arenas. See W. Twining, Rethinking Evidence (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990).
2.
B. Wynne, “Public Understanding of Science,” in S. Jasanoff, G. E. Markle, J. C. Petersen, and T. Pinch, eds., Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1995), 361-388.
3.
M. Mulkay, “Misunderstanding Science? The Public Reconstruction of Science and Technology,”Science, Technology & Human Values22 (1997): 254-264.
4.
G. Edmond and D. Mercer, “Scientific Literacy and the Jury: Reconsidering Jury `Competence',”Public Understanding of Science6 (1997): 1-29.
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M. Michael, “Lay Discourses of Science: Science-in-General, Science-in-Particular, and Self,”Science, Technology & Human Values17 (1992): 313-333.
6.
G. Edmond, “Azaria's Accessories: The Social (Legal-Scientific) Construction of Guilt and Innocence,”Melbourne University Law Review (1998) (forthcoming).
7.
M. Michael, “Ignoring Science: Discourses of Ignorance in the Public Understanding of Science,” in Misunderstanding Science? The Public Reconstruction of Science and Technology, ed. A. Irwin and B. Wynne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 107-125.
8.
J. Potter, Representing Reality: Discourse, Rhetoric, and Social Construction (London: Sage, 1996).
9.
N. Gilbert and M. Mulkay, eds., Opening Pandora's Box: A Sociological Analysis of Scientists Discourse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
10.
Traditional epistemologies would allow such a sociology (while disallowing a sociology of expert knowledge). What they would not do is grant status to lay understandings.
11.
G. Edmond and D. Mercer, “The Secret Life of (Mass) Torts: The `Bendectin Litigation' and the Construction of Law-Science Knowledges,”University of New South Wales Law Journal20 (1997): 666-706.
12.
B. Campbell, “Uncertainty as Symbolic Action in Disputes among Experts,”Social Studies of Science15 (1985): 440.
13.
Where it is not there are often defenses such as insanity and automatism. I note that “murder” can be the interpretation given to previously ambiguous or uncertain behavior.
14.
Edmond, “Science in Court.”
15.
Northern Territory of Australia Coroners Court, no. 107 of 1980. In the Matter of an Inquest into the Death of Missing Child Azaria Chantel Loren Chamberlain at Ayers Rock on 17 August 1980. Transcript of proceedings before the coroner, Mr. D. J. Barritt SM, Alice Springs on Monday, 15 December 1980 (hereafter, Barritt Inquest), 993.
16.
Barritt Inquest, 996.
17.
Northern Territory of Australia Coroners Court, no. 107 of 1980. In the Matter of an Inquest into the Death of Missing Child Azaria Chantel Loren Chamberlain at Ayers Rock on 17 August 1980. Transcript of proceedings before the coroner, Mr. Galvin CSM, Alice Springs on Monday, 14 December 1981 (hereafter, Galvin Inquest), 362.
18.
The prosecution is not obliged to produce a motive just to prove an intention (mens rea) to perform the illegal act (actus reus).
19.
I have employed the terms “Prosecution” and “Defense” throughout this account. Traditionally prosecution and defense refer to the counsel employed during trials. Strictly, the counsel at the inquests were not prosecution nor defense but counsel assisting the coroner and the Chamberlains' personal counsel respectively. However, because of the alignment and ease of presentation I have retained this nomenclature. Much of the evidence presented by lawyers at the inquests was presented in similar fashion at the trial, many of the same witnesses appeared and, as in a trial, the Chamberlains' counsel were allowed to cross-examine the witnesses called by the coroner. Many of the lawyers were involved in more than one of the proceedings.
20.
While new tests had been undertaken by the beginning of the Morling Royal Commission much of the evidence presented during the Commission was available at the trial. The Royal Commission was a form of legal escalation. Many more experts testified than at the trial. Most of the experts testifying at the Commission contributed to the case for the Chamberlains. The major piece of new evidence between the trial and Royal Commission was the discovery of a matinee jacket which the Chamberlains alleged Azaria had been wearing and which the Prosecution had claimed was merely a misleading fabrication.
21.
Lindy Chamberlain, from the Galvin Inquest, 225.
22.
Wynne, “Public Understanding of Science.”
23.
Michael, “Ignoring Science.”
24.
H. Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. and ed. G. Barden and J. Cummins (New York: Continuum, 1975), 269-277.
25.
B. Wynne, “Misunderstood Misunderstandings: Social Identities and Public Uptake of Science,” in Misunderstanding Science? The Public Reconstruction of Science and Technology, ed. A. Irwin and B. Wynne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 19-47.
26.
Barritt Inquest, 40, 51 (italics added).
27.
Barritt Inquest, 40.
28.
Galvin Inquest, 96.
29.
Supreme Court of the Northern Territory SCC Nos A/s 19-20 of 1982. Between The Queen and Alice Lynne Chamberlain, Michael Leigh Chamberlain. Transcript of Proceedings before the acting Chief Justice and a jury of twelve at Darwin on Monday, 13 September 1982 (hereafter, Trial), 2157.
30.
Trial, 41.
31.
Barritt Inquest, 41.
32.
Trial, 555.
33.
Trial, 495, 505.
34.
W. Wagenaar, P. van Koppen, and H. Crombag, Anchored Narratives: The Psychology of Criminal Evidence (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993).
35.
Galvin Inquest, 579.
36.
Ibid., 217.
37.
Trial, 1286 (italics added).
38.
Barritt Inquest, 94.
39.
Galvin Inquest, 186.
40.
Trial, 31, Barker.
41.
Galvin Inquest, 209.
42.
Ibid., 214.
43.
Jones, Expert Witnesses, 194-223.
44.
Trial, 483, 492-93, 508, 511-12. This illegal action extended to police interactions with Chamberlain's friends: “Mrs. Ransom, did this friendly jocular policeman Boag tell you he was secretly tape recording your telephone conversation?... No, at no time....” (Trial, 440).
45.
Trial, 483.
46.
Ibid., 487.
47.
Ibid., 2169.
48.
Ibid., 488.
49.
R. Eggleston, “The Philosophy of Proof,”Australian Law Journal65 (1991): 130-148.
50.
S. Shackley, and B. Wynne, “Representing Uncertainty in Global Climate Change Science and Policy: Boundary-Ordering Devices and Authority,”Science, Technology, & Human Values21 (1996): 277. Shackley and Wynne note that uncertainty includes negotiations over who possesses the authority to make judgments about uncertainty or the degree of certainty required or uncertainty existing.
51.
Edmond and Mercer, “Keeping `Junk' History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science out of the Courtroom.”
52.
Campbell, “Uncertainty as Symbolic Action in Disputes Among Experts,”447, 450.
53.
Trial, 3187.
54.
C. Nesson, “Reasonable Doubt and Permissive Inferences: The Value of Complexity,”Harvard Law Review92 (1979): 1187-1225.
55.
Shackley and Wynne, “Representing Uncertainty in Global Climate Change Science and Policy,”276.
56.
Barritt Inquest, 73.
57.
S. Solomon and E. Hackett, “Setting Boundaries between Science and Law: Lessons from Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc.,”Science, Technology & Human Values21 (1996): 131-156.
58.
Galvin Inquest, 210.
59.
For an example of this tendency consider P. Huber, Galileo's Revenge: Junk Science in the Courtroom (New York: Basic Books, 1991), 223.
60.
Barritt Inquest, 958.
61.
Trial, 3166.
62.
T. Pinch, “The Sun-Set: The Presentation of Certainty in Scientific Life,”Social Studies of Science11 (1981): 138-154.
63.
Gilbert and Mulkay, Opening Pandora's Box.
64.
B. Latour and S. Woolgar, Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1979).
65.
Shackley and Wynne, “Representing Uncertainty in Global Climate Change Science and Policy,”281.
66.
A. Irwin, Citizen Science: A Study of People, Expertise and Sustainable Development (London: Routledge, 1995), 126.
67.
Michael, “Ignoring Science,”111.
68.
Ibid., 118, 120, 121.
69.
J. Turner and M. Michael, “What Do We Know About Don't Knows?' Or, Contexts of `Ignorance',”Social Science Information35 (1996): 15-37, on 24.
70.
Ibid., 27.
71.
Trial, 2180.
72.
Potter, Representing Reality, 12.
73.
Wynne, “Establishing the Rules of Laws,”32, 35-36, 49.
74.
R. Smith, “The Trials of Forensic Science,”Science as Culture4 (1988): 80.
75.
S. Yearley, “Bog Standards: Science and Conservation at a Public Inquiry,”Social Studies of Science19 (1989): 432.
76.
H. Collins and T. Pinch, The Golem: What Everybody Should Know About Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 147-148.
77.
Jasanoff, Science at the Bar, 20.
78.
S. Jasanoff, “Beyond Epistemology: Relativism in the Politics of Science,”Social Studies of Science26 (1987): 394, 399, 400.
79.
S. Jasanoff, “What Judges Should Know About the Sociology of Science,”Jurimetrics Journal32 (1992): 348.
80.
H. Collins, Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice (London: Sage, 1985), 16, 25-27.
81.
[Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook 9], ed. T. Shinn and R. Whitley (Dordrecht/Boston: D. Reidel, 1985), 61-77.
82.
Barritt Inquest, 71-72.
83.
Trial, 2102.
84.
Gieryn, “Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of Science from Non-Science.”
85.
Barritt Inquest, 73 (italics added).
86.
H. Collins and T. Pinch, “The Construction of the Paranormal, Nothing Unscientific Is Happening,” in “On the Margins of Science,” ed. R. Wallis, Sociological Review Monograph (University of Keele) 27 (1979): 239-240.
87.
Barritt Inquest, 76 (italics added). See also Trial, 2133: “I don't prefer to speculate in court.”
88.
S. Shapin, “Pump and Circumstance: Robert Boyle's Literary Technology,”Social Studies of Science14 (1984): 484, 508. There appear to be structural similarities between a narrative approach shaped by legal settings and the “social technology” described by Shapin “which laid down the conventions natural philosophers should employ in dealing with each other and considering knowledge-claims” in the context of the seventeenth century Royal Society. Law courts, like the Royal Society, are special forms of “public space.”
89.
C. Goodwin, “Professional Vision,”American Anthropologist96 (1994): 606.
90.
R. Allen, “A Reconceptualization of Civil Trials,”Boston University Law Review66 (1986): 401-437.
91.
Trial, 660-61 (italics added).
92.
Trial, 545.
93.
Trial, 2098 (italics added).
94.
Barritt Inquest, 17.
95.
Galvin Inquest, 216-17.
96.
Trial, 2215 (italics added).
97.
Trial, 2123.
98.
Trial, 2123.
99.
Consider K. Scheppele, “Just the Facts, Ma'am: Sexualized Violence, Evidentiary Habits, and the Revision of Truth,”New York Law School Law Review37 (1992): 123-172.
100.
Consider also: “It is easy to romanticize `folk science' and it often can be erroneous. Nevertheless, the indigenous knowledge of the laity can at times represent a valid challenge to the scientific knowledge offered by `experts',” D. Layton, E. Jenkins, S. Macgill, and A. Davey, Inarticulate Science: Perspectives in the Public Understanding of Science and Some Implications for Science Education (Driffield: Studies in Education Ltd, 1993), 24.
101.
Irwin, Citizen Science, 118.
102.
S. Jasanoff, 1997, “Public Knowledge, Private Fears (book review),”Social Studies of Science27 (1997): 354.
103.
M. Mulkay, “Misunderstanding Science (book review),”Science, Technology & Human Values22 (1997), 257.
