The New York Times  and ProPublica presents:

Thousands of Criminal Cases in New York Relied on Disputed DNA Testing Techniques

Once again we look at the tenuous reliability of forensic expertise in US criminal courts. This time it is New York’s famous crime lab. 

“The day of reckoning is going to come,” Scheck told his fellow commissioners, some of whom rolled their eyes, a video of the meeting showed. “Someday people are going to review this,” he continued. “It’s an Ebola. It is a cancer here that could be spreading. We are all on notice.”

Backstory

“As its reputation spread, the lab processed DNA evidence supplied not only by the New York police, but also by about 50 jurisdictions as far away as Bozeman, Montana, and Floresville, Texas, which paid the lab $1,100 per sample.”

“A coalition of defense lawyers is asking the New York State inspector general’s office — the designated watchdog for the state’s crime labs — to launch an inquiry into the use of the disputed analysis methods in thousands of criminal cases.”

Here is the kicker. 

“The medical examiner’s office “has engaged in negligent conduct that undermines the integrity of its forensic DNA testing and analysis,” the Legal Aid Society and the Federal Defenders of New York wrote the inspector general on Friday.”

Sounds to me as similar to rumblings seen with the FBI lab’s scorched history of using unwarranted forensic methods and prosecutors in all 50 state’s still using biased and incompetently trained bitemark “scientists.”

https://www.propublica.org/article/thousands-of-criminal-cases-in-new-york-relied-on-disputed-dna-testing-techniques?utm_campaign=sprout&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_content=1504538780