Ah, the evolution of a forensic news release about a “breakthrough” into the world of validation. It shouldn’t be done afterwards. But as this says, backwards is how bitemarks and hair shaft comparisons got their start. And that turned out to be a criminal justice disaster.
There is a trend within the forensic science media is the that the millennial generation is ripe to populate and continue the glory of crime detection. I certainly experienced a version of that in the 1970’s (all before CSI, but Quincy, M.E. was a hit). This latest gen of adults possesses much more tech savvy (of a digital flavor), but their STEM equivalency may be much less and has been described as an educational “gap.” I would suggest that all the young folks I have seen at forensic science meetings, having seen their post presentations, etc. and obvious basic science training are certainly in this category.
This is brief a look (first page searches on Google) into various content that recognizes and promotes bringing new blood into the realm of an industry predominately controlled by police, prosecutors and politicians. All are done with the best of intentions, but the professional promotions on forensic sciences are very conservative and rather stiff when regarding critical outside influences.
I became curious when considering all the news about what some call “forensic science reform.” So I googled: “forensic science and young aspiring scientists.” The webpages I looked at are currently silent to the battle of wills being thrown about in the daily media’s focus on the forensic standards’ debate. The news reflects either advocates of more scientific rigor or a push-back declaring this a monumental attack on the walls of a sacrosanct criminal justice (see below for references).
You may can pick one side or the other because, as yet, no one is acting as a “mediator of moderation” or “conciliator of conflict” after the President’s Council on the forensic equivalent of STEM elected to re-up what the National Academies of Sciences promulgated for a “safer” use of forensic expert types back in 2009. Today the AAFS News Alert put out a link to the President’s Council of Science and Technologies Report titled “Forensic Science In Criminal Courts: Ensuring Scientific Validity of Feature-Comparison Methods.” Here is a link to a .ppt on the scientific method.
For a much simpler talking point, just reflect on wrongful convictions (See: The Registry) and their underlying presence of forensic weaknesses.
Opinions range broadly on the contribution of forensics to bad convictions. It is almost 50% by the Innocence Project 324+ cases. The Registry puts it around 30%. These are versus exonerations being just a “fraud” and almost zero according to reportage by @crimelabreport.
The President’s Council and others say that ” feature-comp-forensics” (aka: impression marks on objects and people) of fingerprints, footwear, some ballistics, and bitemarks) do not deserve a “scientific pass” or exemption about their validity. The following links to governmental groups are either claiming they deserve one or they have it covered. All the links refer to PCAST response by law enforcement agencies and a crime lab certification business.
The IAI: A police lab society,
The FBI,
USDOJ: See: The FBI and DOJ Vow to Continue Using Junk Science,
ASCLD: This is a crime lab certifying company and has no PCAST position that I can find. The Phelps pic is from their @ascld twitter account and as you can see, they do throw out some “shade” from time to time.
and NDAA: the prosecutor association.
Google search terms: millennials, forensic science. All are in original page ranking .
1. Unbelievable, but true. Millennials in the Lab. “Ducks and water. Birds and sky. Squirrels and trees. Some things just fit their environments perfectly. Similarly, with their technological savvy, millennials could be considered the perfect fit for the laboratory, according to the lab managers we spoke with.”
2. The AAAS is the mainstream PR of general science. Here is its encouraging PR piece. “The U.S. R&D enterprise needs more support, but millennials, born near the end of the 20th century, share characteristics that will serve them well if they become scientists, S. James Gates Jr. said at the AAAS-Hitachi lecture.”
3. Millennials will advance as the majority working in 2030 crime labs. This article is all about workplace systems and job flow. It also has data graphics. At the end it mentions exonerating the innocent within the crime lab system. #PCAST’s rationale clearly implies here is need for these labs, their directors and certain forensic organization to be more precise.
Google search terms: young forensic science scientists
4. Young Forensic Science Forum (YFSF) has premier presence in this search thread and is sponsored by the AAFS. It is linked to a nice FAQ Q&A that puts in a “CSI Effect” definition among others.
That’s accurate. The news and opinion media is also showing people perceiving others than just the CSI actors doing some exaggerating.
The full website highlights its annual meeting speakers for 2017 and has their mission statement as, in part:
“Participants of YFSF come from all sections and membership levels of the AAFS. YFSF provides an amazing opportunity for new forensic scientists to interact with and become part of the established forensic science community. This is accomplished through meetings and educational sessions at the annual AAFS conference, the YFSF newsletter, and this website.”
A look at their September newsletter shows its 2017 meeting’s general info about the speakers the AAFS invites to their sessions (congrats to RT Kennedy! @liquiturdotcom), basic job interview hints including a great one on “hide your tattoos” plus its pledge to: “….engage and provide guidance and support to our generation of students and professionals throughout the entire year.”
This is quite commendable. Good luck to all and…..
Please read the PCAST Report. It is 178 pages of good advice and facts worthy of discussion at the AAFS meeting in February 2017. Do this even if the AAFS doesn’t have its own PCAST response by then.
41,000 conviction cases. 24,000 are comprised. In ONE state.
Significant web-buzz is counter balancing the “Law and Order” industry’s (police, prosecutors, police crime labs, and various Crim Justice talking heads) howling that their self-assessed forensic integrity is just fine.
Well, let’s see what they say about this from Slate. I’m sorry its just a blog. (a hint for the Crime Lab “Congress.”
LEO responses draw little depth from their platitudes about outliers, wrongful conviction denials, etc. As shown in this Annie Dookhan crime lab disaster, corrections to her shredding the integrity of Massachusetts convictions had to be “solved” through ACLU directed litigation. The MA Conviction Integrity Unit (or its equivalent) as a “vanguard of criminal justice reform” must have been on vaca. In fact, I can’t find out if MA even has a CIU in any of its jurisdictions.
List of 20 CIUs up to 2015
The MA State Attorney General’s Appeals Division looks to be the closest thing, but its mandate seems to be rather pro-prosecution as it “defends convictions” within the state.
Proof of the all these matters is that public trust in the “CSI effect” is in major reversal mode. Shock is consistently coming from recent followups on the US AG Loretta Lynch and other law enforcement sounding like MS attorney General Jim Hood defending the “bitemark king” Michael West.
20 somethings are at risk from the over blown confidences of prosecutors’ bragging that they can bring bogus evidence against you in criminal courts.
This falls in the same category of recent news from the CA_Innocence #FreeTheCA12 clients. 8 are still in prison. Kimberly Long and Bill Richards experienced the same kind of time of death scamming.
Here’s what’s going on in Orange County courts. It’s interesting that Riverside, San Bernardino and Orange homicide cops, DAs and crime lab folks just can’t stay outa the negative light of the media.
Excerpt: “At issue are divergent, sworn statements Senior Forensic Scientist Mary Hong made in People v. Lynn Dean Johnson in 2008 and People v. Wendell Patrick Lemond the following year, according to records filed Sept. 23 in Orange County Superior Court.”
In the body of the news article, you will read the expert waffling non sequiturs on her reasons ( without a fair limiting explanation) surrounding an area of DNA “ageing” that really is just guessing. She explains limitations, but absolutely ignores their obvious influence on the low confidence level that should directly result. Mum. These partial and incomplete posits is what is “called expert exaggeration” in the media and in the PCAST report linked below.
At closing arguments, the DAs generally firm up the favorable part of the expert’s opinions and the jury is ignorant on how these “changes” not uncommonly (sorry, a double negative) are from influence on the examiner via pressure by her LEO employer. “Re-tested” evidence is a clue to this happening unless analytics (as in “touch” DNA ) have advanced.
In this era of “pattern-matching-features” expertise taking hits from the President’s Council of Advisors, the public is learning that “re-testing” can be nothing more that using an eyeball [aka “imaging” ] to look at evidence “features” that have not been researched out for supportive or contradictory data on how often they occur. Its a daily thing for courtroom experts to testify to how often things/objects/molecules/nucleics occur in the “world” we live in.
Interesting story for a few reasons:
[excerpt]
“On Thursday, the 57-year-old Tampa resident [the nefarious expert] was arrested in Polk and charged with five counts of lying under oath about his educational background, professional certifications, military service and time spent working on sensitive government projects. He specialized as a defense witness in cases involving sexual abuse and child pornography.”
From their lock-step superficial response, I doubt many of these “dissenter” blokes read the entire PCAST report. DOJ Loretta Lynch included. .
See their grumpy cat at:
https://csidds.com/2016/09/22/crime-lab-congress-disses-pcast-forensic-report/
From: The Washington Post
A White House advisory council on Tuesday issued a report urging federal prosecutors and judges to tread cautiously around forensic science on bullet markings, bite marks, tire tread marks and complex DNA samples, saying the science on them has not been proven by testing and research. The Post’s Spencer Hsu has the full story here, including strongly dissenting views from police and prosecutors’ groups, and the report from the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology is included at the bottom.
University of Virginia law professor Brandon L. Garrett, who has written a book on flawed forensics and wrongful convictions, titled, “Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong,” argues that the council’s report is well-founded and supports a 2009 National Academy of Sciences report that much of forensic evidence used in criminal trials is “without any meaningful scientific validation.”
By Brandon L. Garrett
“They weren’t looking for…
View original post 588 more words
Projections and accusations of deceit, lying, financial gain, and undermining the criminal justice system are now flowing through the media from law enforcement types who are pointing at “forensic science reformists” getting viral positive attention in the press and legal literature. The LEOs are not happy. See the above brag from the National District Attorneys Association.
My goodness, the National Academy of Science, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, and the National Judicial College may never be the same after such thrashing.
Take heed to another example of “academic vitriol.” This time from Professor Lowell Thomas Johnson of Marquette University. [below in italics]. He calls his reform opponents scientists yet they are “unethical,” “disagreeable” agendaistas, anti-forensic science with “no background,” “misleaders” of the American Board of Forensic Odontology, and ignorers [my sic] of massive amounts of unbridled scientific support for bitemark matchers fighting crime. Un-nice rhetoric for a Professor. Now a bit of background.
Johnson is now retired from Marquette University.
He is also similarly critical of Robert Lee Stinson’s bitemark conviction being quashed a few years ago by post conviction DNA evidence from a brutal rape case in Wisconsin. Stinson was in prison for 23 years. Radley Balko at the Washington Post covered this case as a glaring example of the legally approved and entrenched “bitemark expertise ” mythology. Stinson (and the other bitemark exoneration cases) show this as a failed misadventure of something claimed to be “science.”
Robert Lee Stinson’s release after 23 years in prison
Stinson has received $90,000 since his release. Dr. Johnson and Dr. Ray Rawson teamed upgainst Stinson. Rawson put Ray Krone on death row in Arizona. Krone got $4.4 million.
This week, Dr.Johnson articulates his science in the public forum once again, and bolsters his claims with his research as being the penultimate data telling the truth of bitemark science.
“Ethical scientists don’t always agree with each other’s opinions, but they disagree agreeably. Unethical scientists cannot accept an opinion that doesn’t agree with their own. They resort to demeaning the opinions and work of those who disagree with them, using terms such as “junk science,” blogging unsupported and misleading statements, and ignoring the vast amount and years of published research in support of the opposing opinion.
There is a judicial and social activist group composed of members of the criminal defense bar, law school professors, and academics with no background in forensic science who are being showcased as “experts in forensic science” by willing and misguided journalists in the mainstream media. News reports about alleged forensic science malpractice frequently include the comments and opinions of these unqualified “experts.”
Not all of the Diplomates of the American Board of Forensic Odontology are buying into the disinformation being disseminated on the Internet.
Below is a link to a video produced by ScienCentral describing the early research at Marquette University under awards from the Midwest Forensic Resource Center, Ames Laboratory, Iowa State University to develop software and methodology that enable the quantification of seven individual characteristics of the teeth in the anterior dental arches.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thfHB5e51q8
Several peer reviewed papers derived from three research awards from the Midwest Forensic Resource Center, Ames Laboratory, Iowa State University were published in the Journal of Forensic Identification.” [JFI]
JFI (at www.theiai.org) has nothing to do with forensic odontology and is all about police fingerprinters and crime scene folks (photography, computers, foot prints, and so forth). Too bad the ABFO wasn’t capable of using Dr. Johnson’s efforts [more than one paper was rejected elsewhere] in any empirical way that could have changed the outcomes for the dozens of men and women who have lost hundreds of years of freedom like RL Stinson.
The science of Dr. LT Johnson.
All this cost $712,000 and according to the President Council’s forensic report published last Tuesday, I would expect this will be the last money ever spent on forensic bitemarks and sadly maybe anything dealing with forensic dentistry.
Some folks are holding their collective inhalation about what the AAFS will do after the recent PCAST demolition of bitemark analysis. The President’s Science Council invoked the same rationale used by the National Academy of Science’s “Forensic Sciences…A Path Forward” report in 2009.
We have heard a bunch from some crime labbers, national da people, the us department of justice boss, and so forth gathering in a clump in objection.
Nothing from the AAFS so far. That’s a good thing, since everyone in its leadership have real day jobs and thankfully did not mimic other “knee jerk” folks who launched themselves into a tizzy before the final PCAST paper was formally published. It was leaked by some dentist calling him/herself “Dr4ensic.”
Here’s is what the AAFS said in 2009 about that report from the NAS.
In part……the AAFS promised……..
“Whenever a credible concern is brought to the Board of Directors of the AAFS regarding the scientific basis of a forensic science technique, the President will charge the President-elect to chair, and the appropriate section chair to co-chair a committee to assess if the challenge is legitimate. The committee shall consult with members of the relevant section(s), other professional organizations, and certifying bodies recognized by the Forensic Specialties Accreditation Board (FSAB).”
The full 2009 AAFS position statement on the NAS is here.
Might the PCAST report be sufficient “concern” for the AAFS committee led system to activate this promise? Their topic should be bitemarks and …………much more besides.
