Criminalistics and Forensic DNA

Faculty of Law

Criminalistics and Forensic DNA

Full course description

Criminalistics deals with forensic evidence in criminal cases. Students will take a legal perspective to achieve an overview of the most relevant methods of forensic sciences with a focus on DNA evidence. The course provides students with a broad understanding of criminalistics and forensic science and stimulates critical reflection on forensic methods. Its practical aim is to enable future judges, prosecutors and defence lawyers to ask the right questions to forensic experts in court. Fallacies and biases resulting in wrongful convictions or inadmissibility of evidence in court will be discussed.

Course objectives

Students should be able to:

have a basic understanding of several areas of criminalistics and their application in legal practice;
have a basic understanding of the weaknesses and fallacies of criminalistics methods and how forensic expertise can be refuted in criminal court;
recognize prosecutors and defence fallacies in interpreting forensic results;
have basic understanding of police investigations and crime scene analysis including red flags of crime scene staging and various risks of biases
understand the opportunities and risks of criminalistics being depicted in contemporary popular culture (e.g. CSI-effect);
understand basic scientific methods and their connection to admissibility of evidence in court;
understand logically correct reasoning (Bayesian reasoning) and how this applies to forensic science;
know the essentials of forensic DNA research and evaluation of DNA fingerprint comparison;
achieve a basic understanding of wrongful convictions and related legal and societal consequences;

Criminalistics and Forensic DNA