Spatters and Lies: Technologies of Truth in the Sam Sheppard Case, 1954-1965
| Dates: | 6 February 2018 |
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| Times: | 16:00 - 17:30 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | School of Law |
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| Who is it for: | University staff, Adults, Alumni, Current University students, General public |
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| Speaker: | Professor Ian Burney |
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CCCJ Seminar Programme 2017/18
(in collaboration with Methods@Manchester)
In this talk I focus on the contrasting forensic regimes involved in the celebrated 1955 trial
and 1965 re-trial of Dr Sam Sheppard for the murder of his wife Marilyn. The first regime
cohered around the Cleveland Coroner Dr Sam Gerber, who took charge of the scene
investigation, conducted a highly publicized inquest, and provided sensational trial
testimony which included his claim to have recognized the pattern of a ‘surgical instrument’
impressed on Marilyn’s bloody pillow. A second regime began to develop in the weeks
following Sheppard’s conviction and centred on the eminent Berkeley criminologist Paul
Leland Kirk. Kirk provided an alternative, but equally striking, reading of the blood evidence:
where Gerber saw qualitative, holistic shapes, Kirk deployed a pioneering (and since
celebrated) exercise in spatial reasoning based on the emerging discipline of blood spatter
analysis. The acquittal of Sheppard at his 1965 retrial could be seen as an instance of
modern forensic technique as a catalyst for justice – with analytical and objective methods
overcoming judgements based on mere common sense and local interest. I will suggest that
this simple story obscures the more interesting – and surprising – route taken by those
seeking to establish Sheppard’s innocence in the decade following his incarceration. In this
campaign it was the polygraph rather than spatter analysis, and the detective writer Erle
Stanley Gardner and the flamboyant defence attorney F Lee Bailey rather than Kirk, that
took centre stage. This twist, I will suggest, allows us to reflect on the complex relationship
between forensic knowledge and the broader context in which it is produced and deployed.
Speaker
Professor Ian Burney
Role: Director of the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine
Organisation: University of Manchester
Travel and Contact Information
Find event
2.220
University Place
Manchester
