………or do not turn over the forensics at all. It’s as if they never went to law school and took Evidence 101. DAs rarely get sanctioned or disciplined afterwards although recently, a Long Island DA got fired.
Mistrial granted on Brady violation.
Kindly ignore the survey that pops-up.
Two experienced legal commentators take a comparative look at expert witness presenting science in both civil and criminal proceedings. No surprise they pick on the bitemarkers. See the weak criminal courts exercise of pre-trial ‘scientific review’ when the judges are ex-prosecutors. It is all about precedent of the past rather than legit scientific analysis.
“The authors believe that these dynamics are more insidious than questionable individual prosecutorial or judicial behavior in this context. Not only are judges likely to be former
prosecutors, prosecutors are “repeat players” in criminal litigation and, as such, routinely support reduced pretrial protections for defendants.”
Here is a telling reference to the corporal theme of this 17 page article which is linked below.
D. Michael Risinger, Navigating Expert Reliability: Are Criminal Standards of Certainty Being Left on the Dock?, 64 ALB. L. REV. 99, 100 (2000); see also David A. Sklansky & Stephen C. Yeazell,
Comparative Law Without Leaving Home: What Civil Procedure Can Teach Criminal Procedure, and Vice Versa, 94 GEO. L. J. 683, 714–15 (2005) (explaining that “[c]ivil litigators who venture into criminal cases tend to be stunned and often outraged by their inability to depose government witnesses or even to file interrogatories or requests for admissions”). [bold added]
Other than from the people who are tasked to identify and search for missing citizens of the US, I heard little protest from anyone when this article first came out. I suppose It’s understandable as the missing and dead have no corporate lobbyists in DC.
This is the battle-ground involving local law enforcement and the White House rollicking pro incarceration and criminalization of DACA recipients. It is “do it our way, or loose’ funding” for LEO infrastructures. This of course involves Sheriff’s crime labs. The fall-out, (of course #2), will fall on local and state taxpayers.
Expect alot more of this. The Feds and GOP harp on “crime waves” in the US (which isn’t true), yet the crime lab system scrounges for funding for personnel, equipment and OT. Couple that with increased incarceration policies (2.3 million currently in custody) no wonder there are wrongful convictions from flawed forensic methods. DOJ Sessions says all is well, however.
As now is so commonly seen, police ‘tools’ to ‘protect and serve’ can be twisted into use against groups selected for their ‘criminal lifestyles.’ The current definition of ‘criminal’ has become as wide as the Mississippi depending on what LEO is talking. DOJ Sessions prosecutes old ladies who scoff at him in public.
To be more explicit, they can be weaponized. Things such as tasers, rubber bullets shot from a 5 foot distance, militarized chemicals, sound generators, and genetic profiling databases cast a wide swath and violently collide with people who are not guilty of any criminal acts. Read about the LAPD and the latest commercial algorithm enabled software being branded as a means to shut down crime at the point before a crime as been committed. That leaves little wiggle room for any of us to avoid being falsely considered a suspect.
Thanks to the Charles Smith Blog.
I was wondering how long someone in the forensic arena would counteract the MSM overblown headlines declaring faces can be predicted by a commercial motivated DNA businesses. That will not stop unregulated law enforcement and the public from taking this premature method into their investigations and then into the courtroom. The past tells us that false positives from non-validated (meaning: one-off and not replicated ) will be overwhelmed by prosecutorial enthusiasm.
“In the paper1, published on 5 September in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Venter and colleagues at his company Human Longevity, Inc. (HLI), based in San Diego, California, sequenced the whole genomes of 1,061 people of varying ages and ethnic backgrounds…..”
Here are some of the articles touting this “advance” in criminal investigation.
Building a Face and a Case….NY Times
Accurately predicting the appearance….Parabon Lab
Cops admit the process is “not perfect” but use it anyway.
It is a very measured and short strike-back and is interspersed with personal and organizational pride. The ME says that the DNA methods recently criticized by the NY Times here, have also been used to exonerate the innocent. I’m beginning to wonder what the middle ground exists in all these media and op-ed reports.
Would you choose: 1) immediate freedom as a murderer, or 2) call the DA’s bluff, refuse the deal, and pray for DNA? In this one, the DNA was already on the table when the DA threatened a retrial. San Bernardino, CA DA Michael Ramos did the a similar trick in Bill Richards’ exoneration case 2 years ago.
https://www.propublica.org/article/what-does-an-innocent-man-have-to-do-alford-plea-guilty
Very short but profound talk about the differences between real science and ‘police-forensic science.” From a NIST meeting on Forensic Error. Lynn Garcia from the Texas Forensic Commission sums up the organic differences:
“That culture of fighting and not giving an inch, of trying to discredit people, makes it really hard to do the proactive work that’s needed to advance and improve forensic science,” Garcia said.
http://www.imperialvalleynews.com/index.php/8-news/12053-speaking-of-error-in-forensic-science.html
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