Category Archives: criminal justice

Forensics: Politicos and Prosecutors run amuck protecting their interests in running US crime labs

A fully developed expose’ by William C. Thompson of the  University of Irvine. He expounds the ‘sub rosa’ motivations of the DC big wigs who this year fired the managers and legal counsel of one of the first independent crime … Continue reading

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A USC alum and faculty who is a “Dental Detective” – The Ostrow School of Dentistry

This article starts on the school’s Trodent Summer 2015 digital magazine on page 17.  

Posted in AAFS, Bad Forensic Science, Crime, criminal justice, CSI, Forensic Dentistry | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Forensics: More judicial illiteracy about scientific principles

Somewhere there must be an appellate judge who understands something about reliability. The 7th US Circuit sure needs some help. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/08/04/federal-appeals-court-drug-dog-thats-barely-more-accurate-than-a-coin-flip-is-good-enough

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Flickering Examples of Science getting into Forensics | From Science and the DNA Newsletter

Forensic labs and experts considering blind testing to remove potential context bias  At the NIST “Error Management” Conference earlier this month, experts agreed that “a key problem…is that people who evaluate evidence from crime scenes have access to information about … Continue reading

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Bad actors and negligent experts in Crim Justice still immune.

This follows up previous blogs about how citizens, damaged by CJ incompetence (including some lawyers) and bad acts, run afoul of legal interpretations of immunity for state employees and their minions. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/07/30/people-wronged-by-the-criminal-justice-system-face-a-long-road-to-compensation (copyright 2015 Dental and Forensic Services LLC )

Posted in AAFS, ABFO, Civil rights, costs of wrongful convictions, criminal justice, criminal justice reform, CSI, Exoneration costs, expert testimony, forensic science misconduct | 1 Comment

First US DNA exoneree from 1993 gets political

http://www.innocenceproject.org/news-events-exonerations/kirk-bloodsworth-urges-congress-to-fund-dna-testing-and-innocence-efforts

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The National Registry of Exons. When convictions go wrong, the price in human suffering can’t be ignored

  Read this excerpt first….. “The registry receives four or five letters a week from prisoners who claim to be innocent. They’re heartbreaking. Most of the writers are probably guilty, but some undoubtedly are not. We tell them that we … Continue reading

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Forensics: A BIG dust up in AUSTRALIA over 400 opines of a state Medical Examiner

This all started with a recent judicial (last year) opinion on a 20 year-old case dealing with “murder in a bathtub.” The government’s path guy, Dr. Colin Manock, got clobbered in a book about this case and which seems to … Continue reading

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More DNA PR on hair from Australia. Why don’t we hear about the data?

Once more, we get  a university talking about “great breakthroughs” in forensic analysis. This one is abut collecting “trace” DNA from hair shafts (i.e “shed hair”) which “improves success rates” not seen using prior methods. My main gripe is that these … Continue reading

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Forensics: From the New York Legal Aid Society’s DNA UNIT – The latest and the best news

Connect with them @LegalAidNYC   A New York Trial Court precludes LCN and FST evidence after extensive Frye Hearing litigated by the Legal Aid Society’s DNA Unit (New York Law Journal)Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Mark Dwyer issued a written decision precluding … Continue reading

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