Tag: crime

Eye, eye, sir!

It’s not very often that one runs across a scientific study whose methodology consisted largely of watching the Fox TV show COPS. But that was how Mardi Kidwell, assistant professor of communication at the University of New Hampshire, went about her research on “the role of gaze in the interactional management of hysteria by the …

Continue reading

Fifty-two million words’ worth of crime, punishment…and raw humanity

On this day in 1718… Peter Atyon , of St. James’s Westminster, was indicted on two indictments; one for stealing a Pocket and a Head-dress, val.2 s. of Margaret Davis , the 12th of April last. The Prosecutor deposed, as she was going along the Street she was thrown down, and her pocket pulled off, …

Continue reading

Is this the face…

…of Jack the Ripper?

Lie detectors

Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a machine that could tell you when someone is lying?  Some people believe that there is.  It’s called a “polygraph”–popularly known as a “lie detector”–and it’s been in the news lately, both in Washington and in Regina.  Other people, however, will tell you that the polygraph is a fraud, no …

Continue reading

Fingerprints

“Your Honor, the accused’s fingerprints were found at the scene of the crime.” In how many novels, movies and TV shows have those words, or variations on them, spelled doom for a criminal? Of all the tools available to criminal investigators, fingerprinting is probably the one most familiar to the public at large. That’s not …

Continue reading

DNA fingerprinting

One place science and society frequently interact is within the courtroom. Seldom has that interaction been more dramatic than in the past few days, with the exoneration of Guy Paul Morin, who had served 18 months in jail for a murder he didn’t commit, and with the start of the murder trial of a certain …

Continue reading

Easy AdSense Pro by Unreal