Sueur Nicolas
Laboratoire de Recherches historiques Rhône Alpes, Institut des Sciences de l'Homme.
Can Bull Med Hist. 2019;36(1):158-183. doi: 10.3138/cbmh.247-022018. Epub 2019 Mar 22.
This paper focuses on the role of expertise in the trial of Marie Lafarge, accused of poisoning and killing her husband Charles Pouch-Lafarge on 14 January 1840. Historians have argued that testimonial evidence remained dominant in French criminal law throughout the nineteenth century, thus minimizing the part taken by expert testimony. Lafarge's case provides an opportunity to revisit this claim. Instead of generating certainty, expert opinion in this case created doubt and opened up new questions. Despite the contradictions of expert opinion, Lafarge was convicted. Doubt has been little discussed in the scholarship on expertise, but it is more frequently invoked in the context of agnotology - the making of culturally induced ignorance. The controversy surrounding the Lafarge case serves to illuminate the mechanisms by which doubt could arise, how people reacted to it, and how doubt was configured within an emerging medicolegal expertise.
本文聚焦于专业知识在玛丽·拉法尔审判案中的作用。1840年1月14日，玛丽·拉法尔被指控毒害并杀害了她的丈夫查尔斯·普什-拉法尔。历史学家认为，在整个19世纪的法国刑法中，证人证言证据一直占据主导地位，从而使专家证言所起的作用降至最低。拉法尔案为重新审视这一说法提供了契机。在本案中，专家意见并未带来确定性，反而引发了怀疑并提出了新问题。尽管专家意见存在矛盾，但拉法尔仍被定罪。在关于专业知识的学术研究中，怀疑很少被讨论，但在无知学（即文化诱导性无知的形成）的背景下，它却被更频繁地提及。围绕拉法尔案的争议有助于阐明怀疑可能产生的机制、人们对此的反应，以及怀疑在新兴的法医学专业知识中是如何被构建的。
