If it Please the Court Sociologist as Expert Witness in a Civil Rights Case

Abstract

This article looks at the role sociologists can play as expert witnesses in the court of law. It does so by examining Agran vs. City of New York (1995), a federal civil rights case wherein original social research was undertaken specifically to establish whether the defendant did damages to the plaintiff. While the establishment of damages was secondary to the primary question of whether the plaintiff's civil rights were violated, this use of primary research in a civil case provides an interesting example of what possibilities exist for applied social researchers. Sociologists have increasingly become involved in courtroom appearances as expert witnesses. While at times their testimony is used to challenge the knowledge claims of medicine and psychology or attempts to define the limits of moral accountability of defendants (Jenkins and Kroll-Smith 1996), more often sociologists draw on their personal expertise to humanize defendants and/or help to clarify defendants 'criminal culpability (Yablonsky 2002).