A Mixture Model for the Number of Gunshot Residues Found on Suspects' Hands

Quantifying the strength of gunshot residue (GSR) evidence requires scientific knowledge about the number of particles expected to be found on individuals who were or were not involved in a shooting. However, controlled experiments demand expensive resources in terms of microscope time and labor, which restricts the data of most studies to only a small group of individuals. We suggest a novel method that exploits data collected routinely on suspects during the daily work of forensic laboratories. These observational data relate to both persons who were involved in a shooting and innocent individuals. We suggest a mixture approach with different models for the number of gunshot residue particles in each group and develop an iterative algorithm to estimate the probabilities of observing the evidence under the defense proposition that the suspect is innocent and under the prosecution assumption that he is not. The method is applied to data of more than 500 suspects collected by the Israel National Police Division of Identification and Forensic Science. The analysis shows that the probability of finding three or more GSR particles on the hands of innocent suspects is very small, less than 1.5 in 1000 cases. Our new method enables researchers to use data on real cases, possibly supplemented by experimental data, in order to estimate the probabilities of a given GSR finding under the defense and prosecution propositions.     

Are Science and Religion Complementary Perspectives?

Eugene Goodheart provides an eloquent defense of the non-literalist, religious imagination before the aggressive atheism of several of today’s leading neo-Darwinists. But the position that he takes—that science and religion represent “complementary perspectives” serving different, yet equally permanent needs—is undermined by two fundamental problems. First, the claim that science can only tell us how the natural world works, while religion offers meaning, value, and moral guidance, may hold true when science is understood on the model of mathematical physics, but not when evolutionary biology and its derivatives are considered. Even Stephen Jay Gould, whose famous defense of science and religion as “nonoverlappling magisteria” resembles Goodheart’s, acknowledges that the case of evolutionary biology is profoundly different. Here evolutionary fact and moral values bleed together obscuring the boundary between science and religion. Second, religion and legacy of the religious imagination embedded in our culture, lose their ability to provide meaning, morals, and consolation when core elements of religious teaching are no longer believed to be true.

Developments in criminal law and criminal justice

Conclusion It follows from what has been said above that history, principle, and authority combine to compel the conclusion that § 80's guarantee of trial by jury precludes a verdict of guilty being returned in a trial upon indictment of an offence against a law of the Commonwealth otherwise than by the agreement or consensus of all the jurors. That being so, § 57 of the Juries Act, 1927, cannot, consistently with § 80, operate to authorize the conviction of either of the appellants by a majority verdict. Their convictions were unconstitutional and must be set aside.The appeal should be allowed. The orders of the South Australian Court of Criminal Appeal should be set aside and in lieu thereof it should be ordered, in the case of each appellant, that the appeal to that court be allowed, that the conviction be quashed and a new trial ordered.B.A., Columbia University 1972; J.D., Hofstra University 1975.