Cognitive-psychology expertise and the calculation of the probability of a wrongful conviction
Cognitive psychologists are familiar with how their expertise in understanding human perception, memory, and decision-making is applicable to the justice system. They may be less familiar with how their expertise in statistical decision-making and their comfort working in noisy real-world environmen...
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Published in | Psychonomic bulletin & review Vol. 25; no. 6; pp. 2380 - 2388 |
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Main Authors | , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
New York
Springer US
01.12.2018
Springer Nature B.V |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Cognitive psychologists are familiar with how their expertise in understanding human perception, memory, and decision-making is applicable to the justice system. They may be less familiar with how their expertise in statistical decision-making and their comfort working in noisy real-world environments is just as applicable. Here we show how this expertise in ideal-observer models may be leveraged to calculate the probability of guilt of Gary Leiterman, a man convicted of murder on the basis of DNA evidence. We show by common probability theory that Leiterman is likely a victim of a tragic contamination event rather than a murderer. Making any calculation of the probability of guilt necessarily relies on subjective assumptions. The conclusion about Leiterman’s innocence is not overly sensitive to the assumptions—the probability of innocence remains high for a wide range of reasonable assumptions. We note that cognitive psychologists may be well suited to make these calculations because as working scientists they may be comfortable with the role a reasonable degree of subjectivity plays in analysis. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 1069-9384 1531-5320 |
DOI: | 10.3758/s13423-018-1465-2 |