Honors Project for FIS 20500

Description: For my Honors contract in FIS 20500: Concepts of Forensic Science I, I will explore different cases where people were wrongfully committed and how the ethical issues within forensic science has a role in that. For this project, I will be writing a 10 page paper about the connection between the ethical issues within forensic science and people being wrongfully convicted. In class we have discussed some of the ethical issues in the history of forensic science, but we do not talk much about how it can affect people in recent years, especially people from marginalized groups. It has been statistically proven that there is a lack of diversity within forensic scientists and I would like to see if those statistics can cause racial biases. A popular case that I think of is the Central Park jogger case, where five male teenagers of color were tricked into confessing to the assault and murder Trisha Meili. There was not a lot of evidence proving that they were the suspects, but they all happened to be around the area when the assault and murder happened. The teenagers would be known as the Central Park Five and served between six to thirteen years in prison before Matias Reyes finally confessed to the murder and the last of the Central Park Five was released since the DNA matched Reyes. I want to look into how this error could have happened and what can be done to prevent unethical practices like this in forensic sciences.

Timeline:
August 30 - Discuss Honors project in class
August 31 - Submit Honors Contract
September 8 - Honors Contracts due
September 15 - Start finding references
October 1 - Start draft of paper
October 15 - Paper outline and at least 3 reference due at midterm
December 1 - Final draft finished -- use campus resources for editing and revision
December 11 - Honors Contract due

Skills:
- Research: I will be reading scholarly and peer-reviewed articles and journals to gather information. I will then write a paper with the knowledge I gathered to answer my research question.
- Communicator: I will be communicating my research through a 10-page paper.
- Problem Solving: I will be looking into how the ethical practices changed within forensic science and discuss what steps can be taken to prevent biases and discrimination.
- Community Contributor: I will be gaining more knowledge on a topic within forensic science that we do not discuss in class.