Are Two Heads Better than One? Mathematics and the Amanda Knox Case

In yesterday’s New York Times , “Leila Schneps, a mathematician and mystery writer, and her daughter Coralie Colmez” wrote an op-ed entitled...

In Press: Confronting Science: Expert Evidence and the Confrontation Clause

The coming volume of the University of Chicago's Supreme Court Review will include an assessment of the Supreme Court's trilogy of ...

In Press: The Database and the Dictionary

An improved (I hope!) version of an earlier post on the Ohio Supreme Court's opinion in State v. Emerson will be published in Jurimetr...

Hot Off the Presses: Beyond Uniqueness

The Birthday Problem, a classic puzzler of probability theory, has a counter-intuitive answer. Statisticians on the National Academy of Scie...

Hot Off the Presses: Chimeric Criminals

Nearly two years ago, I raised a question about the depth of the documentation and analysis in the book Genetic Justice by Sheldon Krimsky...

Hot Off the Presses: On the 'Considered Analysis' of Collecting DNA Before Conviction

The final version of On the 'Considered Analysis' of Collecting DNA Before Conviction , mentioned three months ago , is now publish...

BSides New Orleans Speaker Lineup Published

We are writing to announce that the BSides New Orleans speaker lineup is now released. For those unaware, BSides New Orleans is a free, all...

The Oral Argument in Maryland v. King -- Part V

It is time to sum up and read the tea leaves that are in the transcript of the February 26th oral argument in Maryland v. King . Previous po...

The Oral Argument in Maryland v. King — Part IV

The previous installment of this series described counsel’s answers to questions as to how DNA profiling is different from fingerprinting. ...

The Oral Argument in Maryland v. King — Part III

At the oral argument in Maryland v. King , the Justices wanted to know why DNA collection and databases were more personally intrusive or de...

The Oral Argument in Maryland v. King — Part II

As noted yesterday , the argument that DNA profiling and database trawling for past crimes is or will be useful for pretrial release determi...

The Oral Argument in Maryland v. King — Part I

Oral argument before the Supreme Court in Maryland v. King took place on Tuesday, Feb. 26. 1 / Alonzo King, Jr., had been arrested in 2009...