Professor Slobogin’s new book, Proving the Unprovable, is the most provocative evidence text that I have read in years. In the book, he argues in favor of a more relaxed standard for admitting psychologists’ and psychiatrists’ testimony about a person’s prior mental state. He contends that a person’s earlier mental state is essentially unprovable and that it is impossible to gauge the validity ...

TESTIMONY This product is part of the RAND Corporation testimony series. RAND testimonies record testimony presented by RAND associates to federal, state, or local legislative committees; government-appointed commissions and panels; and private review and oversight bodies. The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit research organization providing objective analysis and effective solutions that address...

Tyler Burge offers a theory of testimony that allows for the possibility of both testimonial a priori warrant and testimonial a priori knowledge. I uncover a tension in his account of the relationship between the two, and locate its source in the analogy that Burge draws between testimonial warrant and preservative memory. I contend that this analogy should be rejected, and offer a revision of ...

This article provides a primer on forensic voice comparison (aka forensic speaker recognition), a branch of forensic science in which the forensic practitioner analyzes a voice recording in order to provide an expert opinion that will help the trier-of-fact determine the identity of the speaker. The article begins with an explanation of ways in which human speech varies within and between speak...

Introduction Evolutionary biologists have emphasized the deceptive ploys that are likely to emerge in animal signaling systems (Dawkins & Krebs, 1978). In the context of human testimony, the risks of being misled are, if anything, even more pervasive: the testifier could be making an honest mistake, telling a deliberate lie, or presenting speculation as fact. In principle, children might deal w...

Although psychologists and psychiatrists often testify in court, we know relatively little about the extent to which jurors value the testimony they hear from these experts. We surveyed 161 jurors who rendered opinions in 14 sex offender civil commitment trials after hearing testimony from psychologists and psychiatrists serving as expert witnesses. Most jurors reported that the experts they he...

This paper studies some classic cases of the fallacy of begging the question based on appeals to testimony containing circular reasoning. For example, suppose agents a, b and c vouch for d’s credentials, and agents b, d, and e vouch for a’s credentials. Such a sequence of reasoning is circular because a is offering testimony for d but d is offering testimony for a. The paper formulates and eval...

What do the courts want from expert testimony, and how do judges assess professed expertise? These questions form the core of this meticulously written and thought-provoking book on the role of expert evidence in courts of law. Rather than presenting a criticism of the abuses of expert testimony (Hagen, 1997), a practical guide to the task of being an expert witness (Brodsky, 2004), or an overv...

This study assesses whether mock jurors’ perceptions of eyewitness expert testimony vary based on the level of ecological validity—video or transcript trial presentation medium. In Experiment 1, 496 jury-eligible mock jurors were presented a simulated trial. Each served in one condition in a 3 (no expert or eyewitness expert either with or without prosecution rebuttal witness) 2 (trial presenta...

What do the courts want from expert testimony, and how do judges assess professed expertise? These questions form the core of this meticulously written and thought-provoking book on the role of expert evidence in courts of law. Rather than presenting a criticism of the abuses of expert testimony (Hagen, 1997), a practical guide to the task of being an expert witness (Brodsky, 2004), or an overv...