Doctoral Dissertation: Manner of Death Categories and their Impact on Forensic Research and Death Visibility

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY

Investigators

Abstract

This project examines how 'manner of death' categories are constructed and used in forensic science. Forensic scientists are required to use a standardized set of categories when determining how a person dies, however, many forms of death are uncertain or occur in situations that challenge official categories. As a result, forensic scientists must often relate causes of death in ways that defy the actual nature of the death under investigation. This process shapes related social outcomes, such as the nature of potential criminal investigations and insurance claims and can lead the justice system to function in ways that obfuscate the collection of valid scientific knowledge. Understanding how manner of death categories are constructed and how they might be changed could lead to more accurate conceptions of death categories, particularly for socially vulnerable categories of people, and a to improvements in the justice system. This is a multi-method investigation of 'manner of death' categories as they are employed in forensic science, and how these matter for jointly shaping science, medicine, and the criminal justice system. Data come from documentary analyses of policy documents at the federal, state, and local levels, and of forensic science textbooks. These will be complemented by ethnographic observations and interviews at forensic science departments, and at the offices of coroners and medical examines. The main goal of the project is to show how academic research practices and seemingly mundane forms of scientific typologies and categorizations affect legal practices and the effective functioning of the criminal justice system. In doing so, it helps build on existing scholarship in science studies indicating that science and technology not only assist in resolving legal disputes, but can also actively produce them. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.