Non-unanimous jury verdict of death and junk science at SCOTUS

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Petition for Certiorari to SCOTUS: Sireci v. Florida

Issue(s): Whether a state court violates a petitioner’s federal due process rights when it denies a new trial and DNA testing in an actual innocence case in which newly discovered evidence demonstrates that the only physical evidence linking the petitioner to the crime scene was based upon inaccurate forensic science and false expert testimony.

Multiple sentences of death by Florida juries than were not in total agreement. Postconviction DNA testing refusal.

Forty years on death row. Sierci has organic brain disease.

The case summary starts on page 11 of this pdf.

FBI hair analysis used to convict on page 16.

Extensive use of NAS Report on “Improving Forensic Science” page 22.

Crime Lab Society and FBI 2013 position on ethical obligation for accurate forensic testimony. page 25.

 

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Witness a total breakdown of justice in these arguments about Dookhin lab scandal

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The MA Supremes are quivering about what kind of ‘justice’ defendants to massive crime lab fraud monumental scale deserve after 4 years after this became public. The link requires a non fee “signup” to the Boston Globe.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/11/16/sjc-hear-arguments-dookhan-crime-lab-scandal/bIg0k9QwoKg3lfsopqKTCM/story.html

From the NY Legal Aid Society DNA Newsletter

Denise McWilliams, Executive Director of the New England Innocence Project, has written an Op-Ed in the Boston Herald arguing that the state’s Supreme Judicial Court should vacate and dismiss all defendants’ cases involved in the Annie Dookhan crime lab scandal:

“Most of the ‘Dookhan defendants’ were convicted of petty drug crimes. In 62 percent of the cases, the only drug convictions were for mere possession; 90 percent of cases were handled in district court. But even minor convictions have far-reaching consequences in terms of employment, housing, loans, and immigration status…Justice requires asking the state to bear the burden of doing whatever can still be done to fix this problem. If prosecutors believe they have enough untainted evidence to maintain some fraction of these convictions, let them choose those cases and try. But we cannot reward an injustice on this scale with the benefit of the doubt.”

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“Claw-like” skull fracture matching shows up at retrial for murder

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Besides the shape of the skull breakage, there are defense claims that the crime scene recovery and storage of DNA was botched. The state claims a fall down stairs is not what killed her. It’s reasons for homicide at Peterson’s first trial also didn’t agree with then defense expert Henry Lee regarding blood pattern (spatter) evidence.

It’s the Mike Peterson retrial in Durham NC. His first conviction was overturned in 2011.

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/crime/article114680608.html

More info on the case which originally was trie in 2003 from the source of truth and veracity. Wikepedia It gives a good chronology of this decades long process.

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The Nor Cal Innocence Project’s costs to cleanup ONE wrongful conviction

Cost of Wrongful Conviction Table 1 - Align Right

Of course, many DAs in this state do not believe that such things like convicting the innocent occurs. That’s the direct implication of their successful death penalty bill that won 52-48 percent of CA voters.

Read the numbers about how much the NCIP spends in time and equivalent costs for ONE exoneration. Full article. 

You might multiply these 5,100 hours x the NY Innocence Project’s current number of DNA exonerations of 347. The Registry of Exonerations shows over 1800 exonerations in total.

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Crime lab’s woes after Forensic Commission’s audit – Texas

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Austin’s lab affecting 120 criminal cases. Most defendants still in jail.

Austin crime lab shut down in June

Crime lab scrambles

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A California DA looks at racial component to filings and crime in Santa Clara

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Over 60 pages with many pie charts and graphs. Little in the way of firm conclusions and remedies although he touches on over representations of specific racial groups, income, and education dropout rates.

Why did you study Race and Prosecutions and what were you trying to find out?

This report is an effort to answer the questions the community has been asking and that we have been asking ourselves. We wanted to know – not estimate, not guess, not assume -how many people of diffsrent races and ethnic goups we are prosecuting. And we wanted to share that information with the public. Our ability to do this kind of study is relatively new. In2}ll, the Santa ClaraCounty District Attorney’s Office began entering the race and gender data received from police reports and booking information into our electronic case management systøn for all felonies and most misderneanors. Before that, our knowledge of the race of adult criminal defendants was limited to our own anecdotal knowledge and the more limited collection of that data on some teams like the Family Violence Team. Santa Clara County has studied race and the Juvenile Justice Syston annually since2012. This is an effort to take a similar lons of inquiry and analysis and turn it on ourselves to try to answer a key set of questions about race and our prosecutions of adults. Of course, answering some questions aþout race and prosecutions leads to the asking of more questions. This study is the beginning of what will be an ongoing review of these issues.

https://www.sccgov.org/sites/da/newsroom/newsreleases/Documents/Race%20and%20Prosecutions%20Report.pdf

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Musings about Trump and Science from the ‘Journal of Nature’

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The slate is largely blank, except for PEOTUS’ climate change rhetoric.

http://www.nature.com/news/the-ultimate-experiment-how-trump-will-handle-science-1.20971?WT.ec_id=NEWSDAILY-20161114

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Taking decades to uncover lost DNA: California will execute in 5 years

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Needle-in-a-haystack hunt for evidence in old Virginia murder case required endurance, luck

But what may prove the toughest obstacle was overcome two years ago by a private investigator and a persistent University of Virginia Hospital employee who scaled warehouse ladders searching shelves and poking into long-closed boxes with a flashlight in a hunt for a microscope slide almost a half-century old.

“When I found it, I got it out of the drawer, I said, ‘Yes!’” recalled Kimberly Crawford, an administrative assistant in the hospital’s pathology department.

Full article

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Read about the last $$ spent on bitemark research- A waste of $700K

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The now lame-duck President’s Council on Sci Tech tried to lay this junk to rest in 2016. The NIJ funded $700K in 2006 to have these two guys study pig skin bitemarks and to make something called “Tom’s toolbox.”

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/science/2008-05-14-3530693888_x.htm

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Fingerprints tell the tale – Bitemarks are a forensic joke

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These prints have no relationship to the above case.

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A bitemark that still has J Kunco  in prison for a over a quarter of a century. Two pictures of one bitemark. Taken at different times.

Kunco -1990-91 copy

The bitemark experts recently restated their opinions from the original trial. In 1990 they said this evidence lead to a “positive” identification of Kunco as the biter. This year they reaffirmed the value of the skin injury as being valuable pattern evidence for including or excluding someone with adult teeth. Kunco now “cannot be eliminated” according to the bitemark experts. Do they know more than we do? I doubt it. Give it a try.

Just how much information can YOU see? Don’t be confused.

Here is a hint: The BW (1991) pic (‘improved’ by UV light) needs to be rotated 90 degrees CW to be compared  to the color photo. They didn’t do that.

Here are Kunco’s teeth from the time of trial. Remember upper front teeth are twice the size of lower front teeth. Hint: Their courtroom exhibit has the upper front teeth at the bottom of the image.

 

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