This book draws on ethnographic research in Milwaukee’s courts to show that contemporary sexual assault adjudication relies on new technologies and science to tell old stories about sexual violence, race, crime, and gender. The book shows how forensic technology and forensic science fail to resolve questions of guilt and innocence. Instead, science interweaves with cultural narratives about sexual violence and race. Attorneys included forensic evidence in their cases, such as expert testimony and corroborating material evidence, including DNA, simply because jurors expected it. The copious tim ... More

This book draws on ethnographic research in Milwaukee’s courts to show that contemporary sexual assault adjudication relies on new technologies and science to tell old stories about sexual violence, race, crime, and gender. The book shows how forensic technology and forensic science fail to resolve questions of guilt and innocence. Instead, science interweaves with cultural narratives about sexual violence and race. Attorneys included forensic evidence in their cases, such as expert testimony and corroborating material evidence, including DNA, simply because jurors expected it. The copious time and energy spent on explaining the presence or absence of forensics to the jury effectively reproduced localized cultural narratives about rape, race, sexuality, and respectability. Courtroom adjudication and its reliance on science and expertise are thus crucial sites of legal storytelling, cultural reproduction, and historical artifact that disproportionately sexualize and criminalize Black and brown communities.