S.F. Police Chief Greg Suhr during a news conference speaks about an audit of the crime lab’s DNA unit, which has come under fire for faking results, as well as other police misconduct, at the Hall of Justice, Friday, April 3, 2015, in San Francisco, Calif.
“My crime lab is maxed out.” SF Police chief won’t apply for grants to test rape kits older than 2003.
He’s probably spending too much on assault weapons. This is the same city where the mayor last week refused to put in budget allocations for a police and DA joint commission to study “use of force” complaints and other misconduct against its citizens.
“The old kits can’t lead to prosecutions because the statute of limitations in California for rape is 10 years. But the district attorney and women’s advocacy groups say the kits still have value in court and can lead to peace of mind for victims.
The crime lab has been plagued by problems in recent years — from the 2010 theft of cocaine evidence by a drug tester that led to the dismissal of 1,700 criminal cases to revelations in March that a lab technician and supervisor failed a DNA proficiency exam, jeopardizing hundreds more cases.”
Additional sources say that the grant for rape sit testing was worth $2 million. This chief ain’t gonna be around much longer. Wonder who will replace him?
Pablo Neruda poisoning doubts fuel[l]d by new forensic tests
The discovery this week of “unusual” bacteria in the bones of Pablo Neruda has reopened the possibility that one of the 20th century’s greatest poets was poisoned in a Chilean hospital.
The announcement was made by a forensic team in Spain four months after a Chilean judge declared that the investigation had run its course and the body should be reburied.
Neruda, who won the 1971 Nobel prize for literature, died on 23 September 1973, just 12 days after General Augusto Pinochet seized power in a military coup. Neruda’s chauffeur, Manuel Araya, told the Mexican magazine Proceso in 2011 that the poet, a longtime member of Chile’s communist party, had been murdered by an injection to his stomach by political enemies as he lay in his hospital bed in the country’s capital, Santiago.
The “two prints on a door knob” cold case. Read more…
Bartlett Allegedly Wrapped Victim’s Body In Plastic
A State Police forensic investigator told jurors alleged murder victim Betty Babcock’s decomposing body was wrapped in clear plastic and sealed with tape.
The investigator then said the body was wrapped in a blanket an entombed in a wood and concrete box in Robert Bartlett’s backyard.
Bartlett is in the fourth day of his murder trial in St. Lawrence County Court.
Forensic Identification Unit Investigator Brendan Frost identified more than a dozen photographs of the victim’s remains, the alleged crime scene and the crudely made coffin-like box that was unearthed by police in March 2014 in Bartlett’s backyard on May Road in Stockholm.
Forensic pathologist gives evidence in Wyoming mutilation murder
CODY, Wyo. –During a Wednesday preliminary hearing in Park County Circuit Court for Sandra Garcia the court found probable cause to transfer her case to district court. She is charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and aiding and abetting first-degree murder as an accessory before the fact.
REBOOT reports that Sandra Garcia, 27, is one of three people charged for the murder of Juan Antonio Guerra-Torres, 30, whose decapitated body was found by hunters on January 9, 2014 on Little Sand Coulee Road about 1.5 miles west of Highway 294 east of Clark, Wyo.
Guerra-Torres’ body was also missing the right hand and entire left arm. Sandra was Guerra-Torres girlfriend at the time of the murder, and is the mother of four of his children.
See the face of a man who lived in England 1,000 years ago.
FORENSICS and LAW in FOCUS @ CSIDDS | News and Trends 
Reblogged this on FORENSICS in FOCUS @ CSIDDS | News and Trends and commented:
“Expert witness “fiction” case is occurring. Murder case could set precedent in so-called ‘junk science’ writs.”
Explaining journalism:
A writ is a criminal appeal to a higher court. One new type of “junk science” writ is intended on overturning previous “science” evidence testimony that has either been decommissioned by its forensic practitioners or ruled by some court to be flawed. The last time THAT happened by a court was in 1923 dealing with lie detectors.
All shady science forensic examiners generally never admit their scams or mistakes (it took the FBI 20 years regarding its hair matchers; 16 years to fess up about its boggy DNA mathematics; the bite mark matchers consider the known 24 innocent people convicted or jailed to be collateral damage to their other wise brilliant forensics).
These writs are rather toothless, unless an examiner(s) recants their own previous testimony. This is what happened in TX, although the bill to allow the writ must still be signed by the TX governor.
A parallel case in CA is further along. A “junk writ” bill has been made law. It is derived from the William Richards bitemark conviction exoneration litigation. In Richards, a couple dentists have come forward to now disagree with their prior testimonial selves from 1997. (For more info, search this blog for RICHARDS). The CA “junk writ” will soon be tested before the CA Supreme Court. Stay tuned.
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Murder-case-could-set-precedent-in-so-called-6305565.php