Article

Forensic Radiology and the Testimony of Shadows

Marc Trabsky and Averyl Gaylor have co-authored a journal article for Social & Legal Studies that examines how radiological images became accepted by courts as visual evidence of death in the 20th century. Initially conceived as a speciality of photography, X-rays confounded courts, eliciting a range of judicial responses, from outright refusal to consider the images as any kind of evidence, to mocking them as cheap parlour tricks for an unwitting public, to recognising them as more reliable than the testimony of the expert witness. The article contends that courts moved towards recognising X-rays as proof of death only by both affirming forensic radiology's promise of ‘mechanical objectivity’ while acknowledging its reliance on the fallibility of ‘human subjectivity’. It suggests that this history has broader implications in socio-legal studies for comprehending how the invention of novel optical techniques continues to problematise legal epistemologies of death in the 21st century.

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