No abstract

Several forensic sciences, especially of the pattern-matching kind, are increasingly seen to lack the scientific foundation needed to justify continuing admission as trial evidence. Indeed, several have been abolished in the recent past. A likely next candidate for elimination is bitemark identification. A number of DNA exonerations have occurred in recent years for individuals convicted based on erroneous bitemark identifications. Intense scientific and legal scrutiny has resulted. An important National Academies review found little scientific support for the field. The Texas Forensic Science Commission recently recommended a moratorium on the admission of bitemark expert testimony. The California Supreme Court has a case before it that could start a national dismantling of forensic odontology. This article describes the (legal) basis for the rise of bitemark identification and the (scientific) basis for its impending fall. The article explains the general logic of forensic identification, the claims of bitemark identification, and reviews relevant empirical research on bitemark identification—highlighting both the lack of research and the lack of support provided by what research does exist. The rise and possible fall of bitemark identification evidence has broader implications—highlighting the weak scientific culture of forensic science and the law's difficulty in evaluating and responding to unreliable and unscientific evidence.

In June of 1993, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., rejected the Frye “general acceptance” rule under which evidence proffered as scientific had long been evaluated for admissibility by Federal Courts and most state courts. In the body of the following paper, we argue that Daubert was a disastrous decision and one reflecting a general lack of understanding of the scientific/technical enterprise. We argue that, far from achieving the goal of excluding bogus expert testimony, Daubert invites it. We also argue that the bad result that is Daubert arose from addressing a non-question: whether the Federal Rules of Evidence superseded Frye. In the section on The Scientific Evidence Standards in the States in the Wake of Daubert to the paper we provide an annotated listing of the scientific evidence standards governing the courts of the 50 states one year after Daubert issued, by which time many state high courts had had an opportunity to enunciate their respective states' approach to scientific evidence with the guidance of Daubert. That summary indicates as of that time which state courts were governed by Frye and which ones by Daubert. It also shows that many state high courts show a confusion that is traceable to the phrasing of Daubert. More happily, this summary also shows that a number of state high courts have a very good grasp of scientific evidence and have enunciated readily-applied rules by which their trial courts are to evaluate it. It is to be fervently desired that these state decisions or the thought processes producing them lead to widespread judicial rules for evaluating would-be scientific evidence, rules which will readily exclude “junk science” from the courtroom while not raising unreasonable barriers to valid expert testimony.

This paper examines how many of the states have changed their respective scientific-evidence admissibility standards under the influence of the United States Supreme Court's 1993 Daubert decision. The authors offer a definition of what constitutes a Daubert state, and using this definition classify the fifty states into three categories. These are: Frye states (15 states, 10 with codified evidence rules patterned after the Federal Rules of Evidence (FRE)); Daubert states (26 states, 24 with FRE-based rules), and non-Frye/non-Daubert states (9 states, 7 with FRE-based rules). The authors discuss how the reliability requirement varies among the non-Frye states, and examine how particular types of evidence have fared in the Daubert era. Finally, the authors offer some predictions for the scientific evidence trends of the states.

Few medico-legal matters have generated as much controversy-both in the medical literature and in the courtroom-as Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS), now known more broadly as Abusive Head Trauma (AHT). The controversies are of enormous significance in the law because child abuse pediatricians claim, on the basis of a few non-specific medical findings supported by a weak and methodologically flawed research base, to be able to "diagnose" child abuse, and thereby to provide all of the evidence necessary to satisfy all of the legal elements for criminal prosecution (or removal of children from their parents). It is a matter, therefore, in which medical opinion claims to fully occupy the legal field. As controversies flare up increasingly in the legal arena, child abuse pediatricians and prosecutors now respond by claiming both that there is actually no real controversy about SBS/AHT, and that it is a purely medical "diagnosis" and not a legal conclusion, so testimony in support of the SBS hypothesis should not be challenged in court. This article, coauthored by four law professors, two physicians, and a physicist, demonstrates that there is very much a live controversy about the SBS/AHT hypothesis and maintains that, under traditional principles of evidence law, physicians should not be permitted to "diagnose" abuse in court (as opposed to identifying specific symptoms or medical findings).