Planted Poison and Wrongful Convictions in Colonial South Asia

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Apr 6. 5PM. Mitra Sharafi, University of Wisconsin Law School, Madison. “Planted Poison and Wrongful Convictions in Colonial South Asia.” Research website: https://salh.law.wisc.edu/#

RECORDING

Abstract: This talk explores a preoccupation of state toxicologists in colonial South Asia during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries: planted poison, or poisoning by one person made to look like poisoning by another. Searching for signs of false poisoning involved subtle technical challenges for the chemical examiners, the military physicians who tested forensic samples for the criminal justice system. It also triggered debates over the risk of wrongful convictions. Before the late colonial-era Indianization of the forensic professions, the focus on planted poison reflected a belief in “native mendacity,” and particularly, in poisoning as a South Asian specialty. Offering a non-US prequel to the late 20^th-century history of the Innocence movement, the talk shows that efforts to identify planted poison in India presented an alternative configuration for how racial bias, false evidence, and the desire to avoid wrongful convictions could interlock.

April 6, 2022

Time: 5PM

Presenter: Mitra Sharafi

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