Take a look at this short op-ed about how the highest US court handles junk police forensics. This time the subject is dog sniffing dogs as probable cause for the police to ransack your house. Lawyers need more Science 101 in their training. Unfortunately, they only learn about “stare decisis.” (AKA: don’t change from the past).
A striking example of how serial murderers cross the country killing their victims. It also clarifies how nationwide genealogy DNA databases connect police departments separated geographically and the inadequacies of the US federal CODIS system.
Scientists around the world will be celebrating the 150th birthday of the periodic table this week. Here’s the backstory of how the table came together.
— Read on www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-periodic-table-150-birthday-20190131-story.html
Finally. Something I remember from high school.
“At the heart of the matter is the role of reviewing courts. We all are taught in high school about how the system of appellate review in this country is supposed to weed out mistakes at trial. But over time, the system has devolved to the point where it tolerates, even encourages, unjust results. With one piece of legislation, Georgia could make it easier for defendants like Gates to establish their right to a new trial. Eliminate the need for a defendant to prove the new evidence “probably” would have generated a different result. Redefine what “due diligence” means where, as in Gates’s case, prosecutors or police are hiding evidence.”
Forensic science is only as good as the equipment and the people who calibrate it, some high-profile cases indicate. Thousands of innocent people have been harmed. Here’s how.
— Read on theconversation.com/how-corruption-in-forensic-science-is-harming-the-criminal-justice-system-108975
Forensic misconduct is a real event. The police crime lab consortium takes little notice and denies innocent defendants populate US prisons.
A bill to help people wrongfully convicted by flawed forensic science is under consideration in Virginia, helped by a man who spent more than three decades in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
— Read on www.cbs19news.com/content/news/Exonerated-man-testifies-for-forensic-science-bill-504840491.html
Bitemarks leads the list of junk science in proposed Virginia bill to expand criminal conviction appeals. Only California and Texas have similar protections. The federal system totally ignores the damage produced from forensic quacks and exaggerators.
The misapplication of forensic science is a contributing factor in 45% of the 362 wrongful convictions overturned by DNA evidence.
— Read on www.innocenceproject.org/probative-value-forensic-science-conclusions/
Tell this to all your dentists who do bitemark comparisons. They refuse to admit any of this.
‘We are going backward’: How the justice system ignores science in the pursuit of convictions
— Read on www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna961256
Good look at the shutdown of scientific progress in police forensics by the powers in control of the labs and criminal justice in the US. The resistance is froom the police and prosecutors.
“Grits” runs us the story on the enormous effort undertaken in Texas to teach judges and prosecutors that bitemarks are the spawn of the alchemists and soothsayers among us.
Grits for Breakfast legal blog
The timeline of getting TX courts to include “junk forensics” as legitimate grounds for appeal.
As usual in these innocence cases, it took decades to overcome the inequities of flawed and exaggerated forensic experts. In this case, Steven Chaney is has been finally declared “actually innocent” and will receive $2.5 million for his decades in prison. The bitemarkers who still sing their practices of “matching” patterns in human skin were hoisted on their own petard by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. The Court reaffirmed the findings of the 2009 NAS Report and numerous real scientists which rejected their years of posing as “dental scientists.”
Here is the CCA holding on bitemarks. Chaney CCA
