Abstract
Every profession has its own conflicts of interests, ethical issues and relativities. As a sociologist and, more particularly, as a criminologist, I have encountered a few. Although they were not excessively troublesome and may not even have bothered some of my colleagues, they nevertheless did cause me to be cautious. Among such encounters were those related to my role as a social scientist testifying as an “expert witness” for civil rights causes.
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Notes
F. Supp. 710 (E.D. Ark. 1966 ).
F. Supp. 401 (S.D. Cal. 1970 ).
iii See Wolfgang and Riedel, Race, Judicial Discretion, and the Death Penalty,in BLACKS AND THE LAW (J. Greenberg ed. 1973).
M. Meltsner CRUEL AND UNUSUAL, The SUPREME COURT AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT (1973).
Id. at 100–01.
Id. at 98.
See, de Cani, The Role of the Statistician in Jury Discrimination Cases 65 J. CRIM. L. and C. 234 (1974).
vii 257 F. Supp. 710 (E. D. Ark. 1966), cited by Meltsner supra note 4, at 322.
Fora history of the use of the research data, see Meltsner supra note 4, at 73–105.
See Chambliss and Nagasawa, On the Validity of Official Statistics-A Comparative Study of White, Black, and. Japanese High School Boys,6 J. Res. CRIME and DELINQUENCY 111 (1969).
See Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972); G. MYRDAL, THE NEGRO PROBLEM AND MODERN DEMOCRACY (1962). Myrdal’s An American Dilemma (1944) is one of the important sociological studies referred to in Brown v. Board of Education, 347.U. S. 483, 495 n. 1l (1954).
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Wolfgang, M.E. (2002). The Social Scientist in Court. In: Silverman, R.A., Thornberry, T.P., Cohen, B., Krisberg, B. (eds) Crime and Justice at the Millennium. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-4883-3_22
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-4883-3_22
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