Need some tips about the excessive hope in digital comparisons of a person’s language dialect? This has been going on in the EU for years. Linguist’s now use it for their opinions on refugee status. Who tests them for reliability? The government of course.
Short article making some good points about all this being junk.
Here’s a look at police crime labs around the US abilities to produce timely rape kit testing. One might infer that DNA testing of other crimes and the ‘war on drugs’ has sapped funding capabilities. I don’t hear the US DOJ chief Jeff Sessions pointing this out when he fake news talks on the ‘rise in US crime rates.’
“Utah isn’t unique in its long wait for DNA results — other states are dealing with similar delays as police send in more evidence for testing and new laws mandate testing of all sexual assault kits.
In Idaho, the average turnaround time to test evidence is 352 days, according to laboratory system director Matthew Gamette. It’s taking the lab there about 72 days to screen cases for potential DNA, he said, with an additional 280 days on average at the DNA lab.”
Full article from the Salt Lake Tribune
‘Junk forensic science’ topics continue to show up in the media in conjunction with the growing numbers of overturned convictions assisted by forensic experts. See: The Registry of Exonerations.
Here’s a couple of recent articles. The first talks about the FBI’s disparaged hair matching unit and another about what the top five junk forensic practices are ( includes hair characteristic comparison which is NOT mitochondrial DNA from hair).
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/21/fbi-jail-hair-mass-disaster-false-conviction
This second article runs a short synopsis about bite marks, handwriting analysis, Shaken Baby Syndrome, penile arousal testing, and a few more.
http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2015/09/top-5-junky-forensic-sciences-or-why.html?m=1
Bite marks are still in play within the US Criminal Justice system.
Judges receive Science Commission training about junk bitemarks
Nothing is more poignant than to talk to and read about exonerees who had to put up with malingering prosecutors who live their lives as if wrongful convictions do not exist. One might consider this California prosecutor the poster child for the current politicos inhabiting the WH micro climate who have doubled down on this mind set.
Read about thousands of cases in MA that are getting the prosecutorial due process cold-shoulder.
“Prosecutors have made Massachusetts’ drug lab scandal much much worse.“
Thursday marked the official transfer of location of the NRE to the UC Irvine (CA) Newkirk Center for Science and Society. Here are a series of live streaming presentations that represent the purpose and future plans for the NRE. It will continue to do groundbreaking research and criminal justice policy influencing. Here’s is Brandon Garrett’s take on the NRE’s value.
“The National Registry Exonerations is a model for scholarship that can change the world by collecting an sharing information. It is a resource, it has helped countless researchers, and it has helped countless lawyers. Before the Registry, it was hard for anyone to learn of cases that had been reversed on innocence grounds., outside of DNA exonerations as least. Now we have in the U.S. the most remarkable archive of information about exonerations that exists anywhere in the world.”
Speakers:
Samuel Gross, Elizabeth Loftus, Mons Lynch, Shero Thaxton, William Thompson, Maurice Possley, Jon Eldan, Alexandra Natapoff, Barry Scheck, Henry Weinstein, Barbara O’Brien, Erwin Cherminsky, Simon Cole, Rob Warden, Franky Carillo, Brian Banks, Denise Foderaro.
The LiveStream presentations: (1 hour 33 minutes)
https://livestream.com/accounts/867536/events/7109801
Rudin Votes “No” on ‘Office of Forensic Sciences.”
Nora Rudin is a DNA pioneer in the US who has some very pointed comments on the issue of forensic science needing to be independent of prosecutorial and police governmental management influences. Despite what many current police science pundits say to the contrary.
This is from Joe who commented to this blog:
Thousands of Colorado DUI convictions could be in doubt amid forgery allegations:
Colorado lawyers specializing in drunken-driving cases are questioning the validity of thousands of convictions after a technician who certified the state’s breath-test machines said his signature was forged on more than 100 records in 2013.
In addition, a former laboratory director’s signature is still being used on some certificates more than a year after she left the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment in July 2015. Those certificates are being used in DUI trials to prove machines were recording accurate blood-alcohol content.
“This is the lab we’re asking to go into court and testify to the veracity of their machines,” said Darren Cantor, president of the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar. “It really makes me question whether the CDPHE is capable of doing that.”
http://www.denverpost.com/2017/03/14/colorado-dui-convictions-forgery-attorneys/
Being poor keeps innocent people in jail and generally ruins lives of many who are not accused of serious crimes. Missouri’s underfunded public defender office forces the poor to languish in jail https://interc.pt/2lThu4T by @chronic_jordan. But the @JusticeDept Sessions tells LEOs “good hunting.”
More “I don’t care’ DAs. How junk arson science convicted a mother of killing her own daughters https://interc.pt/2mpY6vj by @lilianasegura. (Long read).
Save the Nat’l Comm’n on Forensic Science- it has done more a great deal to increase reliability of evidence. @ErinMurphysLaw
Putting lawyers and cops in charge of science at the very highest levels. Traditionally, not a great idea. @maxmhouck
With Sessions being AG, I’m sure anti-forensic sci reformers will flock to this. http://www.thecfso.org/advocacy/20170214_CFSO_OFS_Proposal_Rev.pdf …
The NRA loves J Beauregard Sessions: “Going to right the ship at the DOJ’ of Obama’s neglect of the police and prosecutors causing increase in violent crime.
Bone by bone, Iraqis unearth a mass grave: ‘We will be out there digging until no one is left.’ LA Times.
University of Tennesse – Knoxville: Please contact medical and dental program with concerns on the ‘science of bitemark comparisons’ training in their dental curriculum. @utgsm
From The Marshall Project:
We spend $100 billion on policing and we have no clue about what works. We need good data to undertake the cost benefit analysis necessary for good policy. THE WASHINGTON POST
More: We have to investigate the police even if Jeff Sessions won’t. THE WASHINGTON POST
California Innocence Project Director Justin Brooks and exoneree Brian Banks in 2012.
Irvine, Calif., March 14, 2017 — The University of California, Irvine Newkirk Center for Science & Society is now the institutional home for the National Registry of Exonerations, the internationally recognized repository of information and research on exonerations of innocent defendants convicted of crimes in the U.S.
Excerpt:“This is an important milestone for UCI and the Newkirk Center for Science & Society,” said Simon Cole, professor of criminology, law & society and director for the Newkirk Center for Science & Society. “The registry is a dynamic project that enhances our longstanding tradition of research and teaching in the area of wrongful convictions and strengthens our commitment to studying the interaction between science and social justice across disciplines, including law, criminology and literary journalism.”
FORENSICS and LAW in FOCUS @ CSIDDS | News and Trends 
More evidence of police ‘oversight’ of forensics, regardless of certification by the commercial crime lab industry, is fraught with agenda conflicts and lack of fairness.