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Utilitarianism In Hair Follicle Analysis

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Utilitarianism in Hair Follicle Analysis Four men with the last names Sledge, Odom, Tribble, and Gates were wrongfully convicted of crimes of manslaughter and rape. These individuals and their stories were featured in a video titled, The Fault Lines. The Fault Lines presented the idea that many innocent people are facing prison sentences for crimes they did not commit based on faulty hair follicle analyses. The idea that innocent people are being convicted for crimes they did not commit signifies an ethical dilemma on its own. Though another ethical dilemma is exemplified by other evidence being left out of court, the admission of inaccurate hair follicle analysis data as legitimate evidence in court proceedings is the central dilemma presented. The utilitarianism ethical system can be used to resolve the main dilemma in The Fault Lines. …show more content…

It is a teleological ethical system in that its focuses on consequences of actions (Barry, 1985: 65; p. 35). Utilitarianism is categorized in the forms of act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism. Act utilitarianism determines the greatest good by studying the utility of a specific act without paying attention to future actions. Rule utilitarianism determines the greatest good by studying the utility of an action as a rule for behavior (Barry, 1985: 65; p. 36). Utilitarianism is the most appropriate ethical system to use for solving the central dilemma of allowing hair follicle analysis as reliable evidence in court

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The brevity of forensic evidence pointed to a man that would be like Briscoe, but not him indefinitely; the forensic scientist, for instance, upon examining hair found at the scene stated that the hair was similar to Briscoe’s qualitatively, but had no quantitative evidence to prove the relation to the two hairs and therefore founded his conclusions on an inherent prejudice (The Innocence Project). In the end, after many long years, forensic evidence that was deemed by officials to be no longer existent was found, tested, and was found to prove Briscoe’s innocence all along. This case cost Briscoe 23 years of his life, and while faulty evidence was one of the causes of his wrongful conviction, if this case was viewed from the lens of sociology then many other factors begin to play a role in this

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Apparently, the jury understood the evidence, because on February 27, 1982, Wayne Williams was convicted of the two murders which he was tried for and he was sentenced to life in prison, at which point Atlanta’s police commissioner closed twenty-one other murder cases. In 1998, after Williams’s lawyers argued that prosecutors had withheld evidence in the case, Judge Hal Craig upheld the conviction and termed the fiber evidence in the case, the strongest scientific link in this case. Since then, the DNA from two human hairs found inside one of the victim ’s shirt excludes ninety-eight percent of the people in the world, yet it is consistent with the DNA of Wayne Williams (Nickell, 2011). When Wayne Williams went to trial in the two deaths DNA, testing was not as a common courtroom science and now it has grown significantly.

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Also, it should be depend on the type utilitarianism because it is more important to examine actions and rules

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A 2009 study by Mcquiston-Surrett and Saks looked at how forensic evidence is presented, rather than the actual evidence. How evidence is presented can have a large impact on how the jury feels about the evidence. There were 425 participants in this study, which included 128 judges and the rest jurors (Mcquiston-Surrett & Saks, 2009). Forensic experts gave different versions of the same hair comparison evidence in a murder trial and then they compared the outcomes of each version. The expert would switch things up like offering his own opinion in this testimony to saying that the hair was an exact match with the defendant’s hair.

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The people that you least expect to make a difference, could make a huge impact. Not many people stand up for themselves, so they get walked on most of the time. The book Of Mice and Men showed the importance of being courageous and sometimes having to draw the line, even if it could do harm to others. Lennie, Crooks, and George go through so much and show courageousness for standing up for themselves. Lennie may seem like a strong man with a sensitive personality, who has realized not to do physical harm to anyone.

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Utilitarianism is the moral theory that the action that people should take it the one that provides the greatest utility. In this paper I intend to argue that utilitarianism is generally untenable because act and rule utilitarianism both have objections that prove they cannot fully provide the sure answer on how to make moral decisions and what will be the ultimate outcome. I intend to do this by defining the argument for act and rule utilitarianism, giving an example, presenting the objections to act and rule utilitarianism and proving that utilitarianism is untenable. Both act and rule utilitarianism attempt to argue that what is right or wrong can be proven by what morally increases the well being of people. Act utilitarianism argues that

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Bernard Williams’ essay, A Critique of Utilitarianism, launches a rather scathing criticism of J. J. C. Smart’s, An Outline of a System of Utilitarian ethics. Even though Williams claims his essay is not a direct response to Smart’s paper, the manner in which he constantly refers to Smart’s work indicates that Smart’s version of Utilitarianism, referred to as act-Utilitarianism, is the main focus of Williams’ critique. Smart illustrates the distinction between act-Utilitarianism and rule-Utilitarianism early on in his work. He says that act-Utilitarianism is the idea that the rightness of an action depends on the total goodness of an action’s consequences.

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Forensic evidence is obviously a strong force for conviction because no one is going to argue with the science. Thus, when the jury and the judge see a forensic examiner testify that hair matches with the suspect, they will most likely lean more toward conviction. One way that a case like this could be prevented in the future is by “Supporting judicial training and other efforts to ensure that future decisions in admissibility consider the validity of a forensic test in general, and the validity

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Introduction Animals testing have significantly contributed to the advancement of scientific knowledge in general and to biomedical progress specifically. Many example showing that laboratory animals in medical development and other aspects have significantly influenced human health and reduced suffering, for example improved diagnosis of infectious disease (Hau, Jann, Schapiro & Steven, 2002). But since 1960s and 1970s, animals testing protests has gained prominence and strength, people start to argue is it moral to continue “cruel” animal testing. Animal Testing is a Moral Act In the rest of this article, I shall apply different concept under utilitarianism try to discuss whether animal testing are moral acts. It is important to notice that (1) in this article, applying the general idea of utilitarianism which is “the greatest happiness of greatest number” and (2) the animals testing under the rules and regulations.

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An ethical dilemma today in society is that of abortion, which one would define as a deliberate end to a pregnancy. Various arguments exist questioning if an abortion is morally justifiable. Some say the state should decide on the legality of an abortion, some politicians say the federal government should decide, and many believe it should be up to the women since it pertains to their body. In this paper, I will analyze what a utilitarian’s perspective on abortion would be. First, let’s get a clear understanding of utilitarianism.

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In this essay, I compared Utilitarianism and Deontology, and argued that Deontology is a better ethics system than Utilitarianism because, while Utilitarianism focuses solely on results, Deontology considers humans as more than just a means to an end and provides for a system of generally accepted

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The Act Utilitarianism is Judges an act in terms of the consequences

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Commonly, ethical systems are categorized into two major systems. The deontological approaches or normative ethical position which judges an action based on the adherence of the action to certain rules and the teleological approaches which judges primarily based on the consequences of an action (Hare, 1964). The Utilitarianism is assigned to the teleological approaches, as it does not evaluate an action by itself but by it’s

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