Forensic Facial Comparison: Issues of Admissibility in the Development of Novel Analytical Technique

Much contemporary debate in forensic science concerns validity and admissibility of scientific evidence in court. In this paper, three current approaches to facial identification—image superimposition, photogrammetry, and morphological analysis—are considered with regard to criteria for scientific evidence in the United States, and England, and Wales. The aim of the paper is to assess the extent to which facial image comparison meets criteria of admissibility in these jurisdictions. The method used is a comparative evaluation of the methods of facial image comparison and their underlying premises against the range of admissibility criteria reported in court rulings and relevant judicial and scientific inquiries in the United States and the United Kingdom. While the techniques of facial image comparison are generally accepted within their practitioner communities, they are not tested, and their error rates are unknown. On that basis, the methods of facial image comparison would appear not to meet the anticipated standards. They are, nevertheless, admitted in court in the United States, and England, and Wales. This paper concludes that further research in science and law will be necessary to more definitively establish admissibility of facial image comparison evidence, as it will for other nascent and novel methods that are potentially influential in court proceedings.     

妇产科医疗纠纷司法鉴定82例分析

目的研究妇产科医疗纠纷鉴定案件的一般规律及其医疗过失的特点．为法医学鉴定提供理论支持。方法对2002--2008年在华西法医学鉴定中心鉴定的82例妇产科医疗纠纷医疗过失案例进行回顾性分析。结果妇产科医疗纠纷司法鉴定案例逐年增多;发生纠纷的医院以市（区）级与县级医院为多见,发生纠纷的案件中又以分娩和手术者为多见;医疗过失的主要原因为医疗技术缺陷与医疗管理缺陷。结论法医学鉴定时应参照临床医疗规范,考察医师义务履行情况,重点观察有无医疗技术缺陷或管理缺陷。     

美国专家证言的可采性研究——以美国判例与立法的互动为中心

美国对专家证言的可采性经历了弗赖伊判例"普遍接受标准"的限定到《联邦证据规则》对专家证言"关联性"和"有用性"的立法扩张,催生了达伯特判例的"综合观察标准",又因"乔因纳"、"锦湖轮胎"判例对达伯特判例的冲击,引发了涉及科学、技术和经验知识专家证言可采性的多种判断标准的纷争,导致《联邦证据规则》作出了限缩性的修正。判例与立法的互动背后演绎着专家证言可采性的判断权由"科技社群"向"法官"移转,最终法官扮演了专家证言进入法庭"守门人"的角色。美国专家证言可采性判断标准迷失于判例促发立法的互动,为我国法官如何走出依赖原有内部设立鉴定人积习提供了有益的启迪和可借鉴的经验。     

从亲子鉴定的问题看标准化规范化管理的重要性

近年来,亲子鉴定技术在我国发展较快,越来越多的人应用这一鉴定手段维护了自己的合法权益.但我们发现,我国目前对鉴定部门的管理却相对滞后,主要表现为实验室缺乏规范化管理、鉴定机构良莠不齐、技术标准不够完备以及缺乏实验室的质量检测体系等.这些问题如不解决,将不适应司法体制改革的趋势,阻碍鉴定技术科学、公正地为司法实践服务.因此,我们呼吁有关部门对这一问题加以重视、加强协作,使科学鉴定早日走上标准化、规范化管理的道路.     

刑事诉讼专家辅助人的倾向性及界限

刑事诉讼专家辅助人的倾向性,指专家辅助人帮助委托方参与刑事诉讼鉴定意见的质证、提出专家意见所体现的一种职业上的偏向。新《刑事诉讼法》及其司法解释并未明确专家辅助人的倾向性,不利于其属性的完整。因此,应当比较外国为平衡专家制度属性所进行的相关制度设计,定位我国刑事诉讼专家辅助人的＂相对二元化倾向性＂及其法律界限、科学界限、道德界限,以及这些界限的制度保障。     

人工智能时代精准人才管理探析

人才是组织获得长远发展的第一资源。随着人工智能时代的到来,如何运用人工智能技术对人才进行精准化地选、用、育、留、储,是组织探索解决人才管理瓶颈的关键。研究从人工智能时代精准人才管理的挑战与机遇入手,指出基于"合不合"理论以构建智能化精准人才管理系统,并探讨了"AI人才管理专家系统"的具体运用情况,以期为各类组织进行精准人才管理提供帮助。     

Perceptions of coercion in interrogation: comparing expert and lay opinions

ABSTRACT

When confessions are entered into evidence in criminal courts, issues of coercion and voluntariness are important and often contested matters. Occasionally, defense attorneys proffer expert witnesses to testify about the coercive pressures of an interrogation and the risk of a false confession. Such testimony is often ruled inadmissible on the grounds that it does not inform the jury beyond its common knowledge. In our effort to test this judicial assumption about common knowledge, we surveyed jury-eligible laypeople (n?=?67) and social scientists specializing in interrogation and confessions (n?=?54) regarding their opinions about the coerciveness of prohibited interrogation tactics, maximization techniques, minimization techniques, and suspect risk factors and compared their ratings with a set of independent t tests. Laypeople gave lower ratings to the coerciveness of all sets of items representing interrogation techniques, and lower ratings to the vulnerabilities associated with suspect risk factors, as compared to social science experts. The disparities between laypeople’s and experts’ perceptions of coercion in interrogations demonstrate that such issues are not fully within the common knowledge of prospective jurors, and suggest the need to provide jurors with expert witness guidance when tasked with evaluating confession evidence.     

Firearm examination: Examiner judgments and computer‐based comparisons

Forensic firearm examination provides the court of law with information about the source of fired cartridge cases. We assessed the validity of source decisions of a computer‐based method and of 73 firearm examiners who compared breechface and firing pin impressions of 48 comparison sets. We also compared the computer‐based method's comparison scores with the examiners' degree‐of‐support judgments and assessed the validity of the latter. The true‐positive rate (sensitivity) and true‐negative rate (specificity) of the computer‐based method (for the comparison of both the breechface and firing pin impressions) were 94.4% and at least 91.7%, respectively. For the examiners, the true‐positive rate was at least 95.3% and the true‐negative rate was at least 86.2%. The validity of the source decisions improved when the evaluations of breechface and firing pin impressions were combined and for the examiners also when the perceived difficulty of the comparison decreased. The examiners were reluctant to provide source decisions for "difficult" comparisons even though their source decisions were mostly correct. The correlation between the computer‐based method's comparison scores and the examiners' degree‐of‐support judgments was low for the same‐source comparisons to negligible for the different‐source comparisons. Combining the outcomes of computer‐based methods with the judgments of examiners could increase the validity of firearm examinations. The examiners' numerical degree‐of‐support judgments for their source decisions were not well‐calibrated and showed clear signs of overconfidence. We suggest studying the merits of performance feedback to calibrate these judgments.     

刑事鉴定存在的问题及其规则研究

关于刑事鉴定的问题已受到人们越来越多的关注。这不仅是因为作为刑事证据之一的鉴定结论对法官的裁判活动 ,心证的形成 ,对当事人双方主张的确认都有着关键有时甚至是决定性的作用 ,更因为我国目前的鉴定制度、鉴定体制存在严重缺陷 ,它已给人们带来比法官裁判不公更令人感到不公正的痛苦。对刑事鉴定有关问题进行研究以及立法就鉴定问题作出必要的完善 ,已是迫在眉睫。     

谈我国司法鉴定制度的完善

司法鉴定是指在诉讼活动中侦查、检察、审判机关依法委托鉴定机构或具备鉴定资格的专业人员,对专门性问题所作的认定或判断。司法鉴定在司法审判工作中发挥着重要作用。然而我国的司法鉴定活动由于缺乏立法的规范,在实践中还存在许多问题,未能真正发挥其应有的作用。文章试通过介绍司法鉴定制度,审视我国现有立法规范的不足,进而提出了完善我国司法鉴定制度的具体措施。