Unidentified remains of of crime victim commonly disappear from police or coroner’s record keeping due to many factors. California has a statute requiring dental data and DNA samples be preserved and sent to the Department of Justice in Sacramento for testing.
https://www.forensicmag.com/news/2017/10/police-try-exhume-mob-victim-they-cant-find-remains
Bitemarkers had cases overturned in the 90’s. Doubt’s about this pseudo-science claiming “uniqueness” started in the 1970’s ( See Gianelli ). No courts paid attention by their claiming “case acceptance” by similar brethren was overwhelming. We now know acceptance by a few incentivised practitioners is no substitute for multi-variate and empirical testing. The damage in many such cases is unrecoverable. As in this Canadian case, the people getting paid to purvey their junk forensics just kept on lying and making money. Above is Fr. Torquemada of the Sp. Inquisition. Father T. had all the necessary reference material about witchcraft in this once-revered tome. Innocents paid the price. In the thousands. This article is about one court’s take-down of a fraudulent crime lab over 20 years ago. The damage from this fraud is yet to be fully assessed.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/motherisk-colorado-court-case-1.4364862
Putting innocent crime victims in jail crosses the moral line into the grotesque Inquistorial traditions of torture and victim humiliation.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/why-are-prosecutors-putting-innocent-witnesses-in-jail
Plus the judge is not very happy. Ouch. In a double murder case in South Africa. The cross examination on her voir dire left alot of criticism to her creds and behavior on the case. It appears she only got a small snapshot on the case due to “dwindling resources.” That probably means the defense ran out of money to pay her hourly rate.
False eyewitness testimony put him in prison.
The DA said original case lacked evidence that now is available.
Intentional tampering cases in forensic drug case going beyond the original few hundred originally published.
She said: ‘The organisation concerned held accreditation to the appropriate quality standard, but the malpractice was not discovered by the usual quality checks.
‘This raises a number of questions, including: a, whether or not malpractice is more widespread than at one organisation; and b, whether or not the quality standards need to be strengthened.’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4980962/Forensics-scandal-hits-10-000-cases.html
Steve Lund and Hari Iyer are stat guys from the National Institute of Standards and Technology. They bring forth a broader look at the ever popular use of “likelihood ratios” to support personal and scientific opinions of “match” probabilities.
https://phys.org/news/2017-10-nist-urges-caution-courtroom-evidence.html
Worth a look. A forensic pathologist present AT THE CRIME SCENE testifies in a murder trial on his use of tell-tale bits of info from the death scene. Smart cops called him into the investigation. I can’t wait to see the defense version of the facts
http://ewn.co.za/2017/10/12/forensic-pathologist-susan-rohde-s-murder-possibly-staged
A twitter stream narrative of more of his testimony. Definitely a candidate for Crime Scene 101.
https://www.enca.com/south-africa/susan-rohde-strangled-and-death-staged-forensic-expert
Locard’s Principle comes into play in this interview with a noted DNA analyst and author. Things like “transference,” and “persistence” of these little molecules create obstacles and pitfalls for their unfettered use in courtrooms and police stations. It is not just criminals who leave their DNA everywhere, it is all of us.
https://www.propublica.org/article/putting-crime-scene-dna-analysis-on-trial
FORENSICS and LAW in FOCUS @ CSIDDS | News and Trends 