MATHEMATICAL TECHNIQUES IN THE LEGAL PROCESS

state also devotes rough one fifth of his article to attacking the use of mathematical models "in the design of trial systems as a whole," an mood which has non gained much acceptance since Tribe's article appeared, and which will be dealt with briefly near the end.

Tribe's article is chiefly aimed at the arguments mature in an article by Finklestein and Fairley which advocated greater use of prospect type secern at trial. In that article, Finklestein and Fairley pose the pursuit hypothetical. A woman is found dead, the victim of a dig attack. Her boy friend, who is known to have struck her on other(a) occasions and with whom the deceased had a violent quarrel the nighttime before her body was found, is indicted for her murder. Entered into evidence is a knife which contains on its handle a right hand palm mark similar to the defendant's. The prosecution wishes to introduce testimony of a measure up statistical expert which shows (based on certain assumptions) that only intimately one in a thousand individuals would leave much(prenominal)(prenominal) a palm chump. Should the statistical evidence be allowable at trial? Finklestein and Fairley say the answer to that question is yes because such evidence is relevant to the issue of whether the palm print on the knife belongs to the defendant and because, taken together with other evidence, i

C. E. Kingston and P. L. Kirk, The Use of Statistics in Criminalistics, 55 (n.s.), 514-521 (n.d.).

Tribe final and most impassioned argument against permitting statistical-probability evidence to be admitted at trial is that to do so would take down the criminal umpire process. Juries he says are an institution " wellhead calculated, at least potentially, to mediate between 'the law' in the elevate and the human needs of those affected by it. Guided and by chance intimidated by the seeming inexorability of numbers, induced by the persuasive force of formulas and the precision of decimal points, [juries will] perceive themselves as performing a largely mechanical and automatic role.

" silver-tongued as this statement is, it ignores or discounts the reality the advances of modern learning are coming into the courtroom and may enable the justice system to render more justice than would otherwise be the case. The recent spate of reports of wrongly convicted individuals being released from prison on the basis of results from DNA analysis which would not have been realizable a few years ago underline this point.

Tribe never really gives any evidence for the truth of this assertion. He, however, makes a good point in his rebuttal when he points bulge out that Finklestein and Fairley themselves used language which implies that they believed that the probability evidence helps establish the viciousness of the defendant when all it does is help establish that their palm print was left at the scene of the crime. He says that if the experts made such errors and attribute to statistical probabilities a potency and relevance it does not have, what chance do mere mortals have? He says the expert's " come-on to focus on readily quantifiable variables to the exclusion of . . . 'soft variables,' [is] a temptation to which less sophisticated users of Bayesian analysis would be even more susceptible."

t may assist the dialog box in arriving at a rational verdict as to the defendant's guilt or innoce
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