Uploaded May 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
The innumeracy of wrongful convictions and exonerations:
How probabilistic concepts and epidemiologic data and methods are misused in the prosecution and defense of criminal matters
This event was organised by the UCL Centre for Criminal Law and took place on Thursday 8 May 2025 at UCL Faculty of Laws (Bentham House).
A talk by Professor Michael Freeman, Royal College of Physicians
Chaired by Professor David Ormerod, UCL Laws
About the speaker:
Prof. Michael D Freeman
Michael Freeman is the Editor in Chief of the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, and the David Jenkins Professor and Chair of forensic and legal medicine with the Royal College of Physicians (London), in the Faculty of Forensic and Legal Medicine (FFLM) of the Royal College of Physicians (London), as well as a tenured associate professor of forensic medicine and epidemiology at Maastricht University Medical Center (NL), and an affiliate professor of forensic psychiatry at Oregon Health & Science University School of Medicine (US). He is a consultant in forensic medicine, specializing in the application of epidemiologic data and methods to legal issues (forensic epidemiology). Prof. Freeman is a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists, the FFLM, and the American College of Epidemiology, and is a fellow in forensic pathology with the Academy of Forensic Medical Sciences (UK), among others. He has provided expert testimony more than 1,600 times in a wide variety of civil and criminal cases, including injury and death litigation, automotive and other product liability, toxic tort litigation, life expectancy, and medical negligence cases, as well as in homicide, assault, and other criminal matters. He has served as an expert to multiple attorneys general in the US for death in police custody cases, including for the prosecution of the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota. Prof. Freeman has published more than 230 scientific papers, books, and book chapters, primarily focusing on issues relating to forensic applications of epidemiology and general and specific causation, and is the co-editor and co-author of the authoritative text on forensic applications of epidemiology; Forensic Epidemiology: Principles and Practice (Elsevier).
The innumeracy of wrongful convictions and exonerations:
How probabilistic concepts and epidemiologic data and methods are misused in the prosecution and defense of criminal matters
This event was organised by the UCL Centre for Criminal Law and took place on Thursday 8 May 2025 at UCL Faculty of Laws (Bentham House).
A talk by Professor Michael Freeman, Royal College of Physicians
Chaired by Professor David Ormerod, UCL Laws
About the speaker:
Prof. Michael D Freeman
Michael Freeman is the Editor in Chief of the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, and the David Jenkins Professor and Chair of forensic and legal medicine with the Royal College of Physicians (London), in the Faculty of Forensic and Legal Medicine (FFLM) of the Royal College of Physicians (London), as well as a tenured associate professor of forensic medicine and epidemiology at Maastricht University Medical Center (NL), and an affiliate professor of forensic psychiatry at Oregon Health & Science University School of Medicine (US). He is a consultant in forensic medicine, specializing in the application of epidemiologic data and methods to legal issues (forensic epidemiology). Prof. Freeman is a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists, the FFLM, and the American College of Epidemiology, and is a fellow in forensic pathology with the Academy of Forensic Medical Sciences (UK), among others. He has provided expert testimony more than 1,600 times in a wide variety of civil and criminal cases, including injury and death litigation, automotive and other product liability, toxic tort litigation, life expectancy, and medical negligence cases, as well as in homicide, assault, and other criminal matters. He has served as an expert to multiple attorneys general in the US for death in police custody cases, including for the prosecution of the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota. Prof. Freeman has published more than 230 scientific papers, books, and book chapters, primarily focusing on issues relating to forensic applications of epidemiology and general and specific causation, and is the co-editor and co-author of the authoritative text on forensic applications of epidemiology; Forensic Epidemiology: Principles and Practice (Elsevier).





![Regulatory Models for Algorithmic Assessment: Robust Delegation or Kicking The Can?
A UCL Laws lecture recording from 25 April 2024.
Speakers: Prof. Margot Kaminski (University of Colorado Law School), Associate Prof. Michael Veale (UCL Laws) and Assistant Prof. Jennifer Cobbe (University of Cambridge).
Chair: Andrew Strait (Ada Lovelace Institute)
Recent years have seen a surge in regulation targeting algorithmic systems, including online platforms (Online Safety Act [UK], Digital Services Act [EU]), artificial intelligence (AI Act [EU], AI Executive Order [US]), and the application and extension of existing frameworks, such as data protection, to algorithmic challenges (UK and EU GDPR, California Consumer Privacy Act and Draft Automated Decisionmaking Technology Regulations [USA]). Much of the time, these instruments require regulated actors to undertake or outsource some form of assessment, such as a risk assessment, impact assessment or conformity assessment, to ensure the systems being deployed have desired characteristics. On first glance, all these assessments look like the same regulatory mode — but are they? What are policymakers and regulators actually doing when they outsource the analysis of such systems to actors or audit ecosystems, and under what conditions might it produce good regulatory results? Is the AI Acts conformity assessment really the same kind of beast as the Digital Services Act or Online Safety Acts risk assessment, or the GDPRs data protection impact assessment? Is this just kicking the can on value-laden issues, like fairness or transparency, representativeness or speech norms, down to other actors, because legislators dont want to do it?
In this discussion, three scholars of these systems will compare and contrast different regulatory regimes concerning AI with a focus on how actors within them can understand the systems around them. Does the outsourcing of the analysis of how AI systems work make sense, and is it given to actors with the position and analytic capacity to do it, or might it lead to regulatory arbitrage or even failure? Regulatory Models for Algorithmic Assessment: Robust Delegation or Kicking The Can?](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/lbVEgSLO3iY/mqdefault.jpg)




