EXPERTS, INFERENCE AND INNOCENCE A Symposium in Honor of the Work of D Michael Risinger October 27 to 28, 2017 Program Friday, October 27 8:00 am: Registration & Continental Breakfast 8:30 am: Dean’s Welcome Kathleen M Boozang, Dean and Professor of Law, Seton Hall University School of Law 8:40 am: Introductory Remarks and Ground Rules 8:50 - 10:15 am: Panel One: The structure of forensic science reform: From SDOs to TWGs to SWIGS to Cacophony—progress or the illusion of progress? The 2009 National Academies of Science report STRENGTHENING FORENSIC SCIENCE IN THE UNITED STATES—A PATH FORWARD identified many weaknesses in American forensic science, from problems of validity and lack of uniform standards, to structural problems in the way forensic science results are generated, to problems in the way those results are communicated to juries This panel will examine the current state of forensic science and the idea of progress as it applies to forensic science, both before the NAS report and since Simon A Cole, Professor of Criminology, Law and Society and Director of the Newkirk Center for Science & Society, University of California, Irvine Jennifer L Mnookin, Dean and David G Price and Dallas P Price Professor of Law, and Co-Director, Program on Understanding Law, Science & Evidence, UCLA School of Law David S Caudill, Arthur M Goldberg Professor of Law, Villanova University Widger School of Law Andrew Sulner, Document Examiner, Andrew Sulner M.S., J.D., Forensic Document Examinations, LLC, New York, New York 10:15 – 10:30 am: Break 10:30 – 12:15 pm: Panel Two: What expert results are valid enough to be fit for purpose? This panel will address what it means to have the results of forensic expertise be sufficiently validated to be fit for the consideration of juries in different contexts Problems of validation both under ideal conditions and under the conditions prevailing in practice will be addressed D Michael Risinger, John J Gibbons Professor of Law, Seton Hall University School of Law Michael J Saks, Regents' Professor - College of Law and Department of Psychology, and Faculty Fellow, Center for Law, Science & Innovation, Arizona State University Dan Simon, Richard L and Maria B Crutcher Professor of Law and Psychology, USC Gould School of Law David L Faigman, Chancellor & Dean, and John F Digardi Distinguished Professor of Law, U.C Hastings College of the Law Jules Epstein, Professor of Law and Director of Advocacy Programs, Temple University Beasley School of Law 12:15 – 1:15 pm: Lunch 1:15 – 2:30 pm: Panel Three: Getting ordinary humans to understand the meaning of expert results: What the current research suggests doesn’t work, and what might work This panel will address the problem of how to express technical results from various forensic science disciplines to ordinary humans such as judges and jurors, so that they understand the validity and diagnosticity of the evidence sufficiently not to either underweigh or overweigh its probative value William C Thompson, Professor of Criminology, Law, and Society; Psychology and Social Behavior; and Law, University of California, Irvine Richard D Friedman, Alene and Allan F Smith Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School Barbara A Spellman, Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law 2:30 – 2:45 pm: Break 2:45 – 5:00 pm: Panel Four: The Weight of Burdens: Decision thresholds and how to get ordinary people to operationalize them the way we want them to This panel will address the fundamental problem of how to conceptualize the level of certainty represented by standards of proof, and how then to instruct juries to get them to understand what we want from them in that regard D Michael Risinger, John J Gibbons Professor of Law, Seton Hall University School of Law Ronald J Allen, John Henry Wigmore Professor of Law, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law Dale A Nance, John Homer Kapp Professor of Law, Case Western Reserve University School of Law Michael S Pardo, Upson Sims Professor of Law, University of Alabama School of Law Kevin M Clermont, Robert D Ziff Professor of Law, Cornell Law School Edward K Cheng, Professor of Law and current FedEx Research Professor, Vanderbilt University Law School Saturday, October 28 8:30 am: Continental Breakfast 9:00 – 10:30 am: Panel Five: If the “science” changes, when should the convicted get relief? This panel will address the increasingly common problem of cases in which a criminal defendant was convicted in whole or in part on forensic science testimony that is now discredited, either wholly, or in the form in which it was presented to the jury The ethical problems this presents to prosecutors and to judges faced with such cases, and to the legal system as a whole, will be considered Edward J Imwinkelried, Edward L Barrett, Jr Professor of Law Emeritus, U.C Davis School of Law Aviva A Orenstein, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs; Professor of Law and Val Nolan Faculty Fellow, Indiana University Maurer School of Law JoAnne A Epps, Provost, Temple University, and former Dean, Temple University Beasley School of Law Alex Stein, Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School 10:30 – 10:45 am: Break 10:45 am – 12:30 pm: Panel Six: Costs, benefits and trade-offs involved in freeing the innocent and convicting the guilty This panel will consider the fundamental moral problem of how much worse it really is to convict a factually innocent person than it is to let one or more guilty people escape justice for the same or a similar crime, and what factors should go into that calculus It will also consider whether the calculus ought to be different in a post-conviction setting, and the ethical problems this presents to prosecutors and to judges faced with such cases, and to the legal system as a whole Larry Laudan, Lecturer, University of Texas Law School Keith A Findley, Associate Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin Law School, and Co-founder and Senior Advisor, Wisconsin Innocence Project Marvin Zalman, Professor, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Wayne State University Erik Lillquist, Associate Provost for Academic Projects, Seton Hall University, and Professor of Law, Seton Hall University School of Law Roger Koppl, Professor of Finance, Whitman School of Management, Syracuse University Paul G Cassell, Ronald N Boyce Presidential Professor of Criminal Law and University Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Utah S.J Quinney College of Law