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Across the FieldAmicus Brief on Probabilistic DNA Analysis
Emily Paul, Logan Koepke, Urmila Janardan, Aaron Rieke, and Natasha Duarte
Amicus briefWorking with the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard Law School, we filed a brief with the Superior Court of New Jersey in New Jersey v. Pickett supporting the defense’s request to fully examine TrueAllele, the probabilistic DNA analysis software used in the case, in order to assess its reliability.
TrueAllele has not been validated through independent studies and its source code has never been independently reviewed. Our brief argued that each aspect of TrueAllele must be subject to independent and adversarial review and that the Court must fulfill its gatekeeping function and not allow the makers of TrueAllele to shield it from such a review.
Related Work
We filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, arguing that the Court should not order the implementation of a pretrial risk assessment instrument as a bail reform measure in Philadelphia.
Criminal CourtsBail reform is rapidly underway. But at the same moment that jurisdictions work to reduce the true risks of pretrial release through reform policies, jurisdictions across the country are also adopting statistical tools that will blindly predict such risks remain as high as ever.
Criminal CourtsWe find that at least 20 of the nation’s 50 largest police forces have used a predictive policing system, with at least an additional 11 actively exploring options to do so. Vendors shield the technology in secrecy, and informed public debate is rare. Early research findings suggest that these systems may not actually make people safer.
PolicingNewly released data shows that almost 400,000 people are on Chicago’s “heat list.” Of that group, almost 290,000 have scores that the CPD says will lead to more scrutiny. Our analysis also shows that the most important factor in a person’s score was their age.
Policing