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Curtis E. Renoe, "Seeing is Believing?: Expert
Testimony and the Construction of Interpretive Authority in an American
Trial", International Journal for the Semiotics of Law IX/26
(1996), 115-137: This article explores how two expert witnesses in a high
profile American criminal trial came to radically different interpretations
of the same evidence, even though they used the same procedures and relied
upon the same text to inform their judgments. Through a detailed analysis
of the linguistic interactions which occurred at trial, these two mutually
exclusive accounts are analyzed with attention focused on how the jury arrived
at a decision when faced with conflicting stories. By highlighting the interpretive
task faced by jury in this case, this article makes an argument for looking
at the details by which social reality is produced as an emergent product
from the specific interactions taking place in the courtroom context. The
interpretation of the evidence by the experts, the subsequent evaluation
of this testimony by the jury, and the reception of the controversial result
by the public are all discussed in an attempt to understand how the decision
was reached and what can happen as ordinary people are placed in a situation
where they begin to rely on the authority of experts to supplement their
judgment of the facts. Such a reorientation toward "fact" and
the process by which the jury is systematically brought to see the evidence
in new and sometimes startling ways provide the basis for much of the analysis.
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