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Alana Miro
PID:6046752
1.) Which expert witness (Arpad Vass or Kenneth Furton) did you trust more? Which expert
witness presented more reliable scientific information? Are these the same person? Why
or why not?
2.) What effect does testimony have on the weight of forensic evidence in a court case? How
does that affect the outcome of the trial?
On July 16th, 2008, mother of Caylee, Casey Anthony, was arrested for child neglect after
it had recently been discovered that Caylee had been missing for almost a month prior to
Casey’s arrest. Three months later Casey is indicted on capital murder and multiple other
charges in which Anthony pleads not guilty to. On May 24th, 2011 the actual trial starts and
the prosecutor and defense attorney deliver the beginning statements to get the trial started.
As the trial progresses one of the first expert witnesses to come to the stand is forensic
expert Dr. Arpad Vass. Vass works in a forensics laboratory in which he analyzes the odor of
death by working with cadavers. Now although Vass is in the credible line of work to be
considered an expert witness to this case the integrity of not only his analysis of the air in
Casey’s trunk is in question but also whether his opinion itself is trustworthy to the jury. To
begin with, Vass’s odor analysis technique is new to forensics and has never been tested by
the courts and normally new techniques are not accepted by the courts due to the lack of
reliability with the odor analysis. However, the judge allowed him to continue his testimony
in which Vass then claimed that with his technique he discovered that the air sample from the
trunk had components that can detect whether a decomposing body was in the trunk. There
