AI, Due Process, and Scientific Evidence

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NACDL invites you to join us for a discussion exploring Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the criminal legal system featuring Duke Law Professor Brandon Garrett, author of Defending Due Process: Why Fairness Matters in a Polarized World. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session led by NACDL President-Elect, Andrew Birrell.

AI is increasingly used to make important decisions that affect individuals, including in criminal justice settings. Due process rights are typically heightened in criminal cases, in which a person’s life, liberty, and public safety can be at stake. In criminal investigations, uses of AI have proliferated in areas such as: DNA mixture interpretation; facial recognition; recidivism risk assessments; and predictive policing. The program will discuss four issues that arise in these settings:

  • Whether due process ensures some access to discovery and information concerning how those technologies work, in criminal cases
  • Whether the AI is interpretable, or whether the factors and weights that it relies on is available to lawyers and judges
  • Reliability-related questions about whether the AI has been scientifically tested, and if so, what is the research available concerning its reliability and performance 
  • Whether under Daubert and related rules regarding experts, whether experts may testify about those types of technology
  • Date: Friday, April 18th, 2025
  • Time: 3:30 - 5:00 pm ET | 12:30 - 2:00 pm PT
  • Cost: FREE, but registration is required
  • CLE: No CLE is being offered for this program.

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*Note: To encourage open discussion and dialogue, we will be following the Chatham House Rule. This allows attendees, including media representatives, to use the information shared during the program, but they cannot reveal the identity or affiliation of the speaker. For any questions regarding this policy, please contact Bonnie Hoffman, NACDL Director of Public Defense. 

Presenters:

Brandon L. Garrett, L. Neil Williams, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law, Duke University School of Law

Brandon L. Garrett, a leading scholar of criminal justice outcomes, evidence, and constitutional rights, is the inaugural L. Neil Williams, Jr. Professor of Law and director of the Wilson Center for Science and Justice at Duke Law, an initiative that brings together faculty and students to improve criminal justice outcomes.

Garrett’s current research and teaching interests focus on evidence, forensic science, constitutional rights, habeas corpus, corporate crime, and criminal law. He is the author of six books: Autopsy of a Crime Lab: Exposing the Flaws in Forensics (University of California Press, March 2021); The Death Penalty: Concepts and Insights (West Academic, 2018) (with Lee Kovarsky); End of its Rope: How Killing the Death Penalty Can Revive Criminal Justice (Harvard University Press, 2017); Too Big to Jail: How Prosecutors Compromise with Corporations (Harvard University Press, 2014); Federal Habeas Corpus: Executive Detention and Post-Conviction Litigation (Foundation Press, 2013) (with Lee Kovarsky); and Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong (Harvard University Press, 2011). These books have been translated for editions in China, Spain, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. For more information, visit Garrett’s website.

In addition to numerous articles published in leading law reviews and scientific journals, Garrett's work has been widely cited by courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, lower federal courts, state supreme courts, and courts in other countries. Garrett also frequently speaks about criminal justice matters before legislative and policymaking bodies, groups of practicing lawyers, law enforcement, and to local and national media. He has been involved with a number of law and science reform initiatives, including the American Law Institute’s project on policing, for which he serves as Associate Reporter, and a National Academy of Sciences Committee concerning eyewitness evidence. Garrett serves as co-director of CSAFE (Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence.) He also serves as the court-appointed monitor in the ODonnell v. Harris County misdemeanor bail reform consent decree. 
Garrett maintains online data sets relating to his research. These include:

Garrett received his BA in 1997 from Yale University. He received his JD in 2001 from Columbia Law School, where he was an articles editor of the Columbia Law Review and a Kent Scholar. After graduating, he clerked for the Hon. Pierre N. Leval of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and then worked as an associate at Neufeld, Scheck & Brustin LLP in New York City. Before joining Duke Law in 2018, Garrett was the White Burkett Miller Professor of Law and Public Affairs and Justice Thurgood Marshall Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia. In 2015, he was a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford University.

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Andrew S. Birrell, President Elect, NACDL

Andy Birrell is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers—an honor limited to the top 1% of lawyers in the State. He is a Fellow of the American Board of Criminal Lawyers. He is the former Chairperson of the Minnesota State Bar Association Criminal Law Certification Board and was the first lawyer in Minnesota to be certified by the Minnesota State Bar Association as a Board Certified Criminal Law Specialist. Andy is a Board Certified Criminal Trial Advocate by the National Board of Trial Advocacy. He is a past President of the Minnesota Association of Criminal Lawyers. In addition to being selected a perennial Super Lawyer, he has four times been named one of Minnesota's Top 100 Super Lawyers most recently in 2022. Andy is the second Vice President of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. He also is the Secretary of the Board of Trustees of the NACDL Foundation for Criminal Defense.

Andy represents clients in all phases of criminal law and related matters from grand jury investigations through appeals in federal and state courts throughout the United States. He represents clients in matters implicating the most significant and difficult white collar criminal law matters, including those involving: RICO, money laundering, conspiracy, tax charges, mail and wire fraud, bank fraud and other related allegations.

Andy is an accomplished and seasoned appellate lawyer. He has argued before the United States Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., has successfully argued before the United States Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit and has won reversals of convictions and orders for new trials in the Minnesota Court of Appeals and Supreme Court.

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