Bodies in Evidence: Race, Gender, and Science in Sexual Assault Adjudication
Description
Uncovers how the process of sexual assault adjudication reinforces inequality and becomes a public spectacle of violence For victims in sexual assault cases, trials rarely result in justice. Instead, the courts drag defendants, victims, and their friends and family through a confusing and protracted public spectacle. Along the way, forensic scientists, sexual assault nurse examiners, and police officers provide their insight and expertise, shaping the story that emerges for the judge and jury. These expert narratives intersect with the stories of victims, witnesses, and their communities to reproduce our cultural understandings of sexual violence, but too often this process results in reinscribing racial, gendered, and class inequalities. Bodies in Evidence draws on observations of over 680 court appearances in Milwaukee County’s felony sexual assault courts, as well as interviews with judges, attorneys, forensic scientists, jurors, sexual assault nurse examiners, and victim advocates. It shows how forensic science helps to propagate public misunderstandings of sexual violence by bestowing an aura of authority to race and gender stereotypes and inequalities. Expert testimony reinforces the idea that sexual assault is physically and emotionally recognizable and always leaves material evidence. The court’s reliance on the presence of forensic evidence infuses these very familiar stereotypes and myths about sexual assault with new scientific authority. Powerful, unflinching, and at times heartbreaking, Bodies in Evidence reveals the human cost of sexual assault adjudication, and the social cost we all bear when investing in forms of justice that reproduce inequality and racial injustice.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2021-11-09
- 312 pages
- Paperback
- NYU Press
Similar books
-
Property Law: Rules, Policies, and Practices
By Joseph William Singer, Bethany R. Berger, Nestor M. DavidsonSee also Country Community Timberlake Village v. HMW Special Utility District of Harris, 438 S.W.3d 661 (Tex. Ct. App. 2014) (holding that a neighboring ...
-
Entertainment Law and Business
By William D. Henslee, Elizabeth HensleeAfter Justin Timberlake exposed Janet Jackson's pierced nipple on national television for 9/16ths of a second, the FCC received over 540,000 complaints.
-
The Common Law in Colonial America: Volume III: The Chesapeake and New England, 1660-1750
By William E. NelsonVolume III: The Chesapeake and New England, 1660-1750 William E. Nelson ... Decision of Law, Surry County Ct. 1673/74, in Eliza Timberlake Davis ed., ...
-
The Indiana State Constitution
By William P. McLauchlanE. Edwards v. California, 314 U.S. 160 (1941), 66 Edwards v. Housing Authority of City of ... Timberlake, 148 Ind. 38,46 N.E.339 (1897), 69,70 Graves v.
-
Child Support Guidelines: Interpretation and Application
By Laura W. MorganFitzgerald, 4.08[B][2], 5.05[D] Fitzgerald v. ... Mastrapa-Font, 7.03[A][3] Fontaine, In re, 5.05[D] Fontenette v. ... Frost, 5.05[A] Formato v.
-
Maritime Fraud and Piracy
By Paul ToddThe sole remedy is avoidance, however; damages cannot be claimed under s. ... 17, it places a great deal of power in the hands of insurance companies to ...
-
Principles of the Carriage of Goods by Sea
By Paul ToddNormally, a mate«s receipt would later be given up for a bill of lading, ... they necessarily prejudice the rights of those who deal in the goods ...
-
Maryland Employment Law
By Stanley Mazaroff, Todd Horn27 257 U.S. 184, 42 S. Ct. 72, 66 L. Ed. 189 (1921). ... 38 Argensinger, “Right to Strike”: Labor Organization and the New Deal in Baltimore, 78 MD . HIST .
-
Contract Law in New Zealand
By Stephen Todd, Jeremy Finn704 Contract and Commercial Law Act 2017, s. 80. 705 Leith v. Gould [1986] 1 NZLR 760. It is not clear how a New Zealand court would deal with a case such ...
-
Tort Law in New Zealand
By Stephen Todd... to meet the reasonable expectations of claimants about how the corporation should deal with them, by, inter alia, ... 7 Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975, s.