Comics In Court? These Researchers Have Novel Ways To Explain Science To Jurors

Well, reality is often trickier to deal with. Rather than being easy to follow, forensic science presented in court to juries can be damn right confusing. For instance, DNA evidence presented by an expert is described as matching the defendant’s profile. Great, case closed. But then the expert adds that the sample is actually partially degraded. Okay, what does that mean for the judgment? Just as your doubts are setting in, the expert adds that there is a one-in-a-billion probability that other people could match the identified genetic profile.

How does all this information affect your verdict? Can you say you now have confidence that the DNA evidence implicates the defendant? If not, you’re not alone.

“We know that jury members in criminal cases sometimes struggle to understand forensic science techniques and how much forensic evidence can be relied on to decide whether someone is guilty or not,” Dr Andy Ridgway, Senior Lecturer in Science Communication at the University of the West of England, UWE Bristol, and Dr Heather Doran, Public Engagement Manager at the Leverhulme Research Centre for Forensic Science, University of Dundee, told IFLScience.

“They hear about the forensic evidence from experts who describe it in court and that’s a lot to take in.”

This is especially true if the jury members have little to no scientific experience, lacking prior knowledge of the types of expertise they are expected to use to inform their decisions. This, Ridgway, Doran, and colleagues believe, is a widespread issue.

The Evidence Chamber, an interactive experience where participants become jury members to scrutinize evidence related to a fictional criminal case, was established at the University of Dundee to explore how non-experts understand scientific evidence in these legal contexts.

In the team’s new study, around 100 volunteers participated as “jurors” in mock trials. The participants took part in an interactive experience involving different types of evidence and listened to expert witness testimony focusing on DNA analysis and gait analysis (the study of a person’s walking pattern for identification).

The would-be jurors discussed the case in two phases.

“First, they received the expert witness testimony. They then discussed it and indicated whether they believed the defendant was guilty or not guilty at that point. After that, they were given access to the comics,” Doran added in a statement.

This allowed the researchers to see how comics might influence the jurors’ previous discussions and whether they could provide useful additional information. The analysis was carried out by a team from UWE Bristol, including Izzy Baxter, an MSc Science Communication student at the time. 

“The comics were created in a collaboration between the Leverhulme Research Centre for Forensic Science and the Comics Studies Creative Research Hub at the University of Dundee, they involved forensic scientists, science communicators and artists,” Doran told IFLScience.

“The content for the comics came from the judicial primers project which involves the judiciary, the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. These primers are designed to assist the judiciary when handling scientific evidence in the courtroom and were written by leading scientists, peer reviewed by scientists and legal practitioners, and approved by the Councils of the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh.”

In order to transform the content into a comic, the forensic scientists, science communicators, and comic creators, Doran explained, “sat down together to make the script and consider how it can be brought to life in a comic. We really spent a lot of time considering how the artwork could enhance the meaning of the text and how they both could create a narrative.”

The researchers analyzed the discussions among jurors after the expert testimony in court and immediately after they read the comics. To assess whether the comics provided an advantage in comprehension, during the experimental phase, one group only received the expert witness testimony while the other had access to both testimony and the comics.

The analysis demonstrated the effectiveness of comics. Participants who read the comics discussed the evidence in greater detail and showed greater confidence in their reasoning and conclusion. Those who read the comics were also able to make more explicit references to scientific concepts and demonstrated a better ability to connect forensic science with their decisions.

In contrast, those who did not receive the comics but relied only on the expert witness testimony showed more misinterpretations of the evidence, with misunderstandings concerning the meaning of probability and margins of error. It seems the comics helped clarify these concepts for jurors.

In addition, jurors who had access to the comics also held more balanced discussions with greater participation and interaction among their group.

Courtrooms are serious places and on the face of it, comics don’t seem to be an obvious choice. But the comic format has a lot to offer in terms of allowing clear communication of forensic science.

Dr Andy Ridgway and Dr Heather Doran

“Jury deliberations take place in secret in the UK and research on a jury is not possible, but all juries are made up of members of the public. What we found is that the science comics really do seem to work. Our jurors said they understood gait analysis and DNA analysis – the two techniques the comics were about – better after reading the comics. The illustrations in comics seem to help with that. There’s also the fact that the forensic science comics break information down into chunks which are easier to digest,” Doran and Ridgway told IFLScience.

“If you asked someone whether comics could be used to explain forensic science in a courtroom, they’d probably say ‘what really?’”

“There’s a question about public acceptance. Courtrooms are serious places and on the face of it, comics don’t seem to be an obvious choice. But the comic format has a lot to offer in terms of allowing clear communication of forensic science.”

The paper is published in the Journal of Science Communications.