Stefan Timmermans
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226803982
- eISBN:
- 9780226804002
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226804002.003.0008
- Subject:
- Sociology, Health, Illness, and Medicine
This chapter discusses the future of forensic authority. It identifies the threats to forensic authority and explains that a loss of trust in authority may bring down a career in forensics, the ...
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This chapter discusses the future of forensic authority. It identifies the threats to forensic authority and explains that a loss of trust in authority may bring down a career in forensics, the workings of an office or the entire profession. This chapter suggests strengthening forensic investigation by tailoring investigation methods to death categories and involving more constituencies in order provide an opportunity to produce comprehensive knowledge which can then be subjected to extensive review.Less
This chapter discusses the future of forensic authority. It identifies the threats to forensic authority and explains that a loss of trust in authority may bring down a career in forensics, the workings of an office or the entire profession. This chapter suggests strengthening forensic investigation by tailoring investigation methods to death categories and involving more constituencies in order provide an opportunity to produce comprehensive knowledge which can then be subjected to extensive review.
Stefan Timmermans
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226803982
- eISBN:
- 9780226804002
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226804002.003.0006
- Subject:
- Sociology, Health, Illness, and Medicine
This chapter discusses forensic investigation of the cause of infant death. The work of medical examiners in these cases involves simply conducting an autopsy to document the damage of the trauma and ...
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This chapter discusses forensic investigation of the cause of infant death. The work of medical examiners in these cases involves simply conducting an autopsy to document the damage of the trauma and to rule out alternative, natural explanations. The only challenge lies in infants who are brought to the morgue with few or no signs of trauma. This chapter suggests that the investigation of infant deaths constitutes a prime site for observing forensic authority at work because these unexpected deaths require careful balancing of the sources of legitimacy underlying medical examiners' authority.Less
This chapter discusses forensic investigation of the cause of infant death. The work of medical examiners in these cases involves simply conducting an autopsy to document the damage of the trauma and to rule out alternative, natural explanations. The only challenge lies in infants who are brought to the morgue with few or no signs of trauma. This chapter suggests that the investigation of infant deaths constitutes a prime site for observing forensic authority at work because these unexpected deaths require careful balancing of the sources of legitimacy underlying medical examiners' authority.
Stefan Timmermans
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226803982
- eISBN:
- 9780226804002
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226804002.003.0002
- Subject:
- Sociology, Health, Illness, and Medicine
This chapter examines issues surrounding the determination of the cause of death as being heart disease in forensic investigation. It presents an observation about medical examiners who often wrote ...
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This chapter examines issues surrounding the determination of the cause of death as being heart disease in forensic investigation. It presents an observation about medical examiners who often wrote arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) on death certificates. ASCVD implies that a hardening and narrowing of the arteries around the heart has caused or contributed to the death. This chapter explains the mechanism through which forensic authority operates and suggests that medical examiners' work procedures favor a particular set of causes of death.Less
This chapter examines issues surrounding the determination of the cause of death as being heart disease in forensic investigation. It presents an observation about medical examiners who often wrote arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) on death certificates. ASCVD implies that a hardening and narrowing of the arteries around the heart has caused or contributed to the death. This chapter explains the mechanism through which forensic authority operates and suggests that medical examiners' work procedures favor a particular set of causes of death.
Stefan Timmermans
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226803982
- eISBN:
- 9780226804002
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226804002.003.0007
- Subject:
- Sociology, Health, Illness, and Medicine
This chapter discusses the conflict between forensic investigation and organ and tissue transplantation organization in relation to postmortem manipulation. At stake in conflicts with organ and ...
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This chapter discusses the conflict between forensic investigation and organ and tissue transplantation organization in relation to postmortem manipulation. At stake in conflicts with organ and tissue procurement organizations is the issue of who contributes most to the public good. Medical examiners have tradition and the law on their side, but organ procurers have more resources, political power, and vocal public support. This chapter suggests that in cases of conflict medical examiners can simply rely on their legal mandate to conduct a full postmortem when the argument of their altruism is unconvincing.Less
This chapter discusses the conflict between forensic investigation and organ and tissue transplantation organization in relation to postmortem manipulation. At stake in conflicts with organ and tissue procurement organizations is the issue of who contributes most to the public good. Medical examiners have tradition and the law on their side, but organ procurers have more resources, political power, and vocal public support. This chapter suggests that in cases of conflict medical examiners can simply rely on their legal mandate to conduct a full postmortem when the argument of their altruism is unconvincing.
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226498065
- eISBN:
- 9780226498089
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226498089.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This chapter discusses inquiries made by several administrative agencies in the United States in the 1990s to determine whether or not forensic uses of DNA profiling techniques were acceptable to the ...
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This chapter discusses inquiries made by several administrative agencies in the United States in the 1990s to determine whether or not forensic uses of DNA profiling techniques were acceptable to the larger scientific community, and not just to a narrower community of forensic specialists. These inquiries assumed that the molecular biological principles behind forensic DNA testing were unproblematic. The main issue of investigation was whether the conditions of forensic investigation were a source of problems that did not arise in other contexts of use since it was originally developed in biomedical research and testing.Less
This chapter discusses inquiries made by several administrative agencies in the United States in the 1990s to determine whether or not forensic uses of DNA profiling techniques were acceptable to the larger scientific community, and not just to a narrower community of forensic specialists. These inquiries assumed that the molecular biological principles behind forensic DNA testing were unproblematic. The main issue of investigation was whether the conditions of forensic investigation were a source of problems that did not arise in other contexts of use since it was originally developed in biomedical research and testing.
Sameena Mulla
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479800315
- eISBN:
- 9781479878901
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479800315.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Medical Anthropology
Every year in the United States, thousands of women and hundreds of men participate in sexual assault forensic examinations. Drawing on four years of participatory research in a Baltimore emergency ...
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Every year in the United States, thousands of women and hundreds of men participate in sexual assault forensic examinations. Drawing on four years of participatory research in a Baltimore emergency room, this book reveals the realities of sexual assault response in the forensic age. It analyzes the ways in which forensic nurses work to collect and preserve evidence while addressing the needs of sexual assault victims as patients. The book considers how blending the work of care and forensic investigation into a single intervention shapes the ways that victims of violence understand their own suffering, recovery, and access to justice. As nurses race the clock to preserve biological evidence, institutional practices, technologies, and even state requirements for documentation undermine the way in which they are able to offer psychological and physical care. Yet most of the evidence they collect never reaches the courtroom and does little to increase the number of guilty verdicts. The book illustrates the violence of care with painstaking detail, illuminating why victims continue to experience what many call “secondary rape” during forensic interventions, even as forensic nursing is increasingly professionalized. Revictimization can occur even at the hands of conscientious nurses, simply because they are governed by institutional requirements that shape their practices. This book challenges the uncritical adoption of forensic practice in sexual assault intervention and post-rape care, showing how forensic intervention profoundly impacts the experiences of violence, justice, healing and recovery for victims of rape and sexual assault.Less
Every year in the United States, thousands of women and hundreds of men participate in sexual assault forensic examinations. Drawing on four years of participatory research in a Baltimore emergency room, this book reveals the realities of sexual assault response in the forensic age. It analyzes the ways in which forensic nurses work to collect and preserve evidence while addressing the needs of sexual assault victims as patients. The book considers how blending the work of care and forensic investigation into a single intervention shapes the ways that victims of violence understand their own suffering, recovery, and access to justice. As nurses race the clock to preserve biological evidence, institutional practices, technologies, and even state requirements for documentation undermine the way in which they are able to offer psychological and physical care. Yet most of the evidence they collect never reaches the courtroom and does little to increase the number of guilty verdicts. The book illustrates the violence of care with painstaking detail, illuminating why victims continue to experience what many call “secondary rape” during forensic interventions, even as forensic nursing is increasingly professionalized. Revictimization can occur even at the hands of conscientious nurses, simply because they are governed by institutional requirements that shape their practices. This book challenges the uncritical adoption of forensic practice in sexual assault intervention and post-rape care, showing how forensic intervention profoundly impacts the experiences of violence, justice, healing and recovery for victims of rape and sexual assault.
Trais Pearson
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781501740152
- eISBN:
- 9781501740176
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501740152.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This chapter identifies distinct registers of different semantic projects focused on the corpse. State interventions—including vernacular forms of forensic investigation and the “verdicts” rendered ...
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This chapter identifies distinct registers of different semantic projects focused on the corpse. State interventions—including vernacular forms of forensic investigation and the “verdicts” rendered by the Ministry of the Capital—conflicted with subaltern forms of care and concern for the dead. Reading against the grain of the state archive, the chapter recovers fragments of subaltern lives and voices, as well as evidence of their efforts to resist the imposition of state-mandated forms of medicolegal concern as the forensic regime of “suspicious” death overcame sociocultural concerns for “inauspicious” death. Here, the chapter is concerned primarily with the nature of this transition as documented in and through the archives. It looks at how early state interventions into the realm of death looked like, and how they related to traditional forms of concern for the dead. The chapter considers what these forms of forensic concern can tell us about the nature of authority within the Siamese bureaucracy, and what implications, if any, they had for Siamese political life.Less
This chapter identifies distinct registers of different semantic projects focused on the corpse. State interventions—including vernacular forms of forensic investigation and the “verdicts” rendered by the Ministry of the Capital—conflicted with subaltern forms of care and concern for the dead. Reading against the grain of the state archive, the chapter recovers fragments of subaltern lives and voices, as well as evidence of their efforts to resist the imposition of state-mandated forms of medicolegal concern as the forensic regime of “suspicious” death overcame sociocultural concerns for “inauspicious” death. Here, the chapter is concerned primarily with the nature of this transition as documented in and through the archives. It looks at how early state interventions into the realm of death looked like, and how they related to traditional forms of concern for the dead. The chapter considers what these forms of forensic concern can tell us about the nature of authority within the Siamese bureaucracy, and what implications, if any, they had for Siamese political life.
Marianne Wesson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814784563
- eISBN:
- 9780814784570
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814784563.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
One winter night in 1879, at a lonely Kansas campsite near Crooked Creek, a man was shot to death. The dead man's traveling companion identified him as John Wesley Hillmon, a cowboy from Lawrence who ...
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One winter night in 1879, at a lonely Kansas campsite near Crooked Creek, a man was shot to death. The dead man's traveling companion identified him as John Wesley Hillmon, a cowboy from Lawrence who had been attempting to carve out a life on the blustery prairie. The case might have been soon forgotten and the apparent widow, Sarah Quinn Hillmon, left to mourn, except for the $25,000 life insurance policies Hillmon had taken out shortly before his departure. The insurance companies refused to pay on the policies, claiming that the dead man was not John Hillmon, and Sallie was forced to take them to court in a case that would reach the Supreme Court twice. The companies' case rested on a crucial piece of evidence: a faded love letter written by a disappeared cigarmaker, declaring his intent to travel westward with a “man named Hillmon.” This book re-examines the long-neglected evidence in the case of the Kansas cowboy and his wife, recreating the court scenes that led to a significant Supreme Court ruling on the admissibility of hearsay evidence. It employs modern forensic methods to examine the body of the dead man, attempting to determine his true identity and finally put this fascinating mystery to rest. The book combines the drama, intrigue, and emotion of excellent storytelling with cutting-edge forensic investigation techniques and legal theory.Less
One winter night in 1879, at a lonely Kansas campsite near Crooked Creek, a man was shot to death. The dead man's traveling companion identified him as John Wesley Hillmon, a cowboy from Lawrence who had been attempting to carve out a life on the blustery prairie. The case might have been soon forgotten and the apparent widow, Sarah Quinn Hillmon, left to mourn, except for the $25,000 life insurance policies Hillmon had taken out shortly before his departure. The insurance companies refused to pay on the policies, claiming that the dead man was not John Hillmon, and Sallie was forced to take them to court in a case that would reach the Supreme Court twice. The companies' case rested on a crucial piece of evidence: a faded love letter written by a disappeared cigarmaker, declaring his intent to travel westward with a “man named Hillmon.” This book re-examines the long-neglected evidence in the case of the Kansas cowboy and his wife, recreating the court scenes that led to a significant Supreme Court ruling on the admissibility of hearsay evidence. It employs modern forensic methods to examine the body of the dead man, attempting to determine his true identity and finally put this fascinating mystery to rest. The book combines the drama, intrigue, and emotion of excellent storytelling with cutting-edge forensic investigation techniques and legal theory.
Pablo Piccato
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780520292611
- eISBN:
- 9780520966079
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520292611.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
This chapter looks at policemen and detectives in postrevolutionary Mexico. It discusses the weakness of forensic methods and the lack of prestige of police and private detectives. It examines the ...
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This chapter looks at policemen and detectives in postrevolutionary Mexico. It discusses the weakness of forensic methods and the lack of prestige of police and private detectives. It examines the use of torture and extrajudicial violence against suspects.Less
This chapter looks at policemen and detectives in postrevolutionary Mexico. It discusses the weakness of forensic methods and the lack of prestige of police and private detectives. It examines the use of torture and extrajudicial violence against suspects.
Fiona Gabbert and Lorraine Hope
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190612016
- eISBN:
- 9780190612030
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190612016.003.0003
- Subject:
- Psychology, Forensic Psychology
Due to the constructive nature of memory, recollections for events are easily contaminated or distorted by information encountered after the event took place. People can therefore mistakenly report ...
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Due to the constructive nature of memory, recollections for events are easily contaminated or distorted by information encountered after the event took place. People can therefore mistakenly report information that has been suggested to them, but that they have not in reality experienced. In light of this well-documented memory fallibility, the current chapter explores how memory can be distorted during the investigative and legal process. Key factors affecting the reliability of eyewitness statements are discussed, including stress and arousal, intoxication, and individual differences in vulnerability to suggestion. The chapter examines when people are most likely to be vulnerable to suggestion and focuses, in particular, on how memory can be distorted during the investigative process as a result of poor interviewing practice and co-witness contamination. The chapter concludes with consideration of how best to minimize the negative effects of suggestibility for the criminal justice systemLess
Due to the constructive nature of memory, recollections for events are easily contaminated or distorted by information encountered after the event took place. People can therefore mistakenly report information that has been suggested to them, but that they have not in reality experienced. In light of this well-documented memory fallibility, the current chapter explores how memory can be distorted during the investigative and legal process. Key factors affecting the reliability of eyewitness statements are discussed, including stress and arousal, intoxication, and individual differences in vulnerability to suggestion. The chapter examines when people are most likely to be vulnerable to suggestion and focuses, in particular, on how memory can be distorted during the investigative process as a result of poor interviewing practice and co-witness contamination. The chapter concludes with consideration of how best to minimize the negative effects of suggestibility for the criminal justice system
