Forensic Evidence

Forensic Psychology – Evidence and Courtrooms

In this course, Professor Ciaran O’Keeffe walks through two vital parts of the legal system process – evidence collection and courtroom psychology. In the first lecture, we think about the range of biases that can arise in the collection and processing of forensic evidence. In the second lecture, we focus on fingerprint analysis as a type of forensic evidence. In the third lecture, we move on from forensic evidence and begin to explore techniques of jury persuasion, targeting three key models of persuasion. Next, three defendant characteristics which can impact jury decisions of guilt or innocence are outlined: regional accents, race, and crime type. In the fifth lecture, we continue this discussion, broadening to characteristics of gender, age, and attractiveness. In the sixth and final lecture, Professor O’Keeffe brings to light an issue which has been documented back to the mid nineteenth century, but presents itself as increasingly important in the modern age of internet access – pre-trial publicity.

Forensic Evidence

In this lecture, we think about forensic evidence, focusing in particular on: (i) the broad range of potential biases which may lead to miscarriages of justice, including confirmation bias, the hidden perpetrator effect, the serial error effect, the naïve investigator effect, the association fallacy, and the compound error effect; (ii) four key methods by which these biases might be reduced as information access, order of information presentation, comparisons between multiple samples, and replication of findings.