The Innocence Project’s Chris Fabricant, the Director of Strategic Litigation, presents its determination to lead and support forensic reform in the US Criminal Justice Systems. US Senator Blumenthal has choice words for bitemark analysts.

The scope of the piece is that this new FBI lab scandal is only a glimpse of the total picture.

MSNBC interview

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Sherlock Holmes is surely a myth according to this Atlantic expose’. The author really amps up the shock wave passing in front of the public’s eyes since last week’s announcement about the failures of the  FBI crime lab.  Article 

My particular interest being pattern analysis, I am particularly interested in what is said in response to these journalists. It generally concedes nothing other than blaming the problem on someone or something else.

Here’s a couple comments from some bitemark advocates concerning the recent WashPost continuing slam on their credibility and self-acclaimed (neither published nor successful) accuracy.

1) This is a garden variety diss at the Innocence Project and an ignorant statement that  “LARGE PERCENTAGE OF THE CASES” (this bunch has 24 of their own cases picking innocents being the criminal) occurs from bad-lawyering. Im sure he hasn’t read the summaries of the IP’s over 300 exons cases regardless of what he claims.

“I believe from keeping up with the IP’s work, the IP intends to go afterall the various comparison disciplines–hair analysis, firearms & toolmarks, foot wear and tire tread, etc., and even at some point, fingerprintcomparison. Of course, they do conveniently overlook the “ineffective assistance of counsel” (i.e. bad lawyering) issue that comes up in a largepercentage of the cases….”

2) A respondent to (1) comes up with:

“Cannot agree more with Dr. XXX. Not having an opposing expert or even minimally qualified one at the time of the original trial is a part of theproblem. Throw a ton of $$ at a case (OJ trial an extreme but you get my idea) and the outcome may be different.”

I expect the ABFO-heavy bitemark committee of the National Forensic Science Commission to say nothing less. If they don’t like it, it will remain unpublished as well.