Demonstrative Evidence and the Use of Algorithms in Jury Trials

We investigate how the potential use of algorithms and demonstrative evidence may affect potential jurors' feelings of reliability, credibility, and understanding of expert witnesses and presented evidence. The use of statistical methods in forensic science is motivated by a lack of scientific validity and error rate issues present in many forensic analysis methods. We explore how this new method may be perceived in the courtroom - where individuals unfamiliar with advanced statistical methods are asked to evaluate its use in order to assess guilt. In the course of our initial study, we discovered issues in scale compression of responses and survey format. We visually compare participants' notes to the provided transcript by highlighting phrase frequency based on collocations.