In this seminar, Professor Katherine Biber discusses her paper 'The afterlife of criminal evidence', which explores what happens to criminal evidence after the conclusion of the trial. Formally regarded as part of the court record, and subject to the rules of evidence within the trial, beyond the trial this material has aroused the interest of artists, publishers, historians, curators and journalists who wish to access and use this material for a wide range of purposes, some of which might be transgressive, dangerous or insensitive. 

The presentation will explore criminal evidence now experiencing a cultural afterlife, drawing examples from museums, archives, the news media, private collections, strange hobbies and retired detectives’ garages. In its afterlife, criminal evidence gives rise to new uses and interpretations, many of which are creative and transformative of crime and evidence. It allows us to see not only the probative value of evidence, but also its ethical, affective and aesthetic dimensions.

The paper will trace what happened to the evidence presented in the criminal and coronial proceedings following the death of Azaria Chamberlain; it will examine efforts to manage the voluminous evidence gathered by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia; it looks at the work of a criminal record Expungement Clinic in Philadelphia; amongst other examples. Based on my book, In Crime’s Archive: The cultural afterlife of evidence, this paper asks what is at stake when evidence survives the criminal proceedings in which it was adduced: what can it do, and what should we do with it?