Brendan Cox Discusses Defending Cases Amid Science Distrust in Recent Law360 Article

Brendan Cox was quoted in a recent Law360 article, “What To Do When Jurors Don’t ‘Trust the Science.'”

The article discusses declining trust in science and regulatory agencies and how that complicates jury trials. Recent stats show that attorneys report that regulatory approval, which once carried significant weight with jurors, no longer has the same impact.

Cox addresses how scientific skepticism particularly affects defense attorneys. He shares that in the criminal defense context, juries that are less likely to accept scientific evidence as an open-and-shut case may be a boon to attorneys working within the context of a “reasonable doubt” standard. He states: “I think 15 years ago, 20 years ago, if you had DNA, if you had fingerprints, that carries the day because there is an assumption that educated, smart, scientific people did the base research and then did the specific analysis for that particular matter, and science is science.” He continues: “At a very high level, there has been a sea change in how juries view scientific information.”