When the medical examiner seems to be, well, a bit off during his dotage, but still works.

Posted on August 18, 2016 by csidds

Body of Evidence: Forgotten Forensics

What’s clear are the DAs from this state acting as if  that they can “handle” an expert with arguably diminished memory. Wanna bet it depends if his opinion benefits their prosecution? I also doubt that a gatekeeper judge would have precedent to fall onto in regarding an expert who still was licensed, had to his best “ability” participated in so many serious cases, yet had recanted on some of his own previous statements. So, who has the oversight regarding the mental capacity of experts?

What is ironic, is that the criminal justice system uses experts to determine mental capacities of defendants charged with serious crimes. Looking at persons who testify as experts giving “credible” courtroom information is not a huge step.

Imagine the lawyers arguing this one during death penalty litigation.

Meet forensic pathologist Roberto Bayardo

“Nobody knew, either, that Bayardo would go on to make critical missteps, walk back autopsy findings and have an unexpected impact on several major murder cases in the years to come. And nobody knew Bayardo would keep testifying in court after his retirement, and that his memory could potentially present problems in court.”

Full article

 

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Forensic Science commentaries and articles for the week – starts off with Prosecutors

Posted on August 17, 2016 by csidds

 

Joshua Sudock/ZUMA Press/Newscom

Opinions and Commentary and the Bad Side of Criminal Justice

California Bill Would Make It a Felony for Prosecutors to Withhold Evidence

Spurred by a series of botched murder cases  and little accountability, a California lawmaker wants to rein in prosecutorial misconduct. Californian’s so disposed should talk with their state reps. I have.

Full article

Blood Left at Scene Can Indicate Criminal’s Age (nothing wrong with this if the validity testing runs true).

Blood biomarkers could help investigators narrow down a pool of suspects more quickly

Scientific American 

Poll Shows Millenials Increasingly Worried about Police brutality and Criminal Justice (Good)

We can assume wrongful convictions (50% helped by forensic wits) are included in the CJ category.

Full article

Stealing from the drug locker (bad)

A forensic scientist admitted Monday in U.S. District Court that she stole as many as 700 pills from 50 separate specimens of evidence submitted to Oregon State Crime labs over two years.

Nika Elise Larsen, 36, pleaded guilty to two counts of obtaining a controlled substance by misrepresentation, fraud and deception.

Larsen, who began working for the state in May 2007, admitted that she stole drugs, including morphine, hydrocodone, methadone and methamphetamine, while processing and overseeing cases. An investigation found Larsen took the pills in Umatilla County between December 2013 and November 2014, and in Deschutes County between November 2014 and Aug. 27, 2015.

Thanks to the NY DNA Legal Aid Society @celiagivens

Following the 2014 NY State Police crime lab scandal, the Albany Times-Union writes: “Citing an unrelated lawsuit brought by some former lab employees, State Police won’t talk about the backlog… That backlog, says a retired lab director, stems from the agency’s refusal to implement new computer software for DNA analysis, for reasons that are unclear. Among the possibilities that have been offered is a concern that the new, more precise DNA process could refute previous work at the lab, jeopardizing some convictions.”

Responding to the Iowa forensic analyst who was fired for racial bias, the Midwest Innocence Project wrote a Letter to the Editor in the Des Moines Register, stating: “This is an opportunity to ask for measures to protect forensic scientists by incorporating blind forensic testing in protocols, which will protect results from racial or social bias (intentional or not), and from the natural functions of the brain that seek to make sense of our observations. This assures unbiased analysts do not have to work in the shadow of mistrust. Blind results can let science speak for itself.”

From the Orange County Register: “We should not be encouraging police to take DNA evidence from everyone they encounter and building a massive biometric database, particularly with evidence from innocent citizens…Police officers are not scientists, but even if the Rapid DNA system is easy enough for anyone to use, experience with the roadside drug tests has shown that the results can be far from reliable, resulting in the incarceration of innocent people. Until greater accuracy of such testing can be verified, Congress and local police should not even consider authorizing or using them.”

Scientists lack consensus on accuracy of fingerprint and voice recognition technology. Phys.org notes, “The widespread and strongly held belief in the uniqueness of human voices and other physical features characterizes and exacerbates a chronic general problem: people misunderstand the nature and significance of quantitative scientific evidence.” (Phys.org)

Privacy battle continues after FBI Director James Comey announces plans to address Congress about 650 locked phones that law enforcement cannot access because of encryption (Ars Technica)

In his remarks to the American Bar Association last week, Comey stated: “We have never had absolute privacy in this country. Cars, safe deposit boxes, our apartments, our houses, even the contents of our minds—any one of us, in appropriate circumstances, can be compelled to say what we saw.”  Mar Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) offered a counterpoint address to the gathering, noting “I will concede Mr. Comey has a problem with his 500 phones, but he should be concerned that consumers have a problem with their 3 million phones that would be subject to misuse [without strong encryption].”
Related: New Technique Could Help Law Enforcement Collect Smartphone Data

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The remembrance of lynchings in Alabama contrasted with US politics

Posted on August 11, 2016 by csidds

Is it clear what a difference a few years make in Alabama?

How big was the crowd at Donald Trump's Alabama rally?

How big was the crowd at Donald Trump’s Alabama rally?

“It was one of the greatest events Mobile ever put on aside from Mardi Gras,” said Colby Cooper, Mayor Sandy Stimpson’s chief of staff.

Now for a recent remembrance (250 people) of Alabama’s connection to racial violence. 

Between the Civil War and World War II, thousands of African Americans were lynched in the United States. Lynchings were violent and public acts of torture that traumatized black people throughout the country and were largely tolerated by state and federal officials. EJI has documented more than 4000 racial terror lynchings in 12 Southern states between the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and 1950 — more than 400 of these victims were lynched in Alabama.

Read more:

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Gideon redux. Elite lawyers avoid Supreme Court criminal cases. Leave it to novices.

Posted on August 11, 2016 by csidds

Tony Mauro

How Bad is Criminal Defense Advocacy at the Supreme Court?

A long-simmering problem in U.S. Supreme Court practice is gaining new attention: the allegedly sorry state of advocacy at the court on behalf of criminal defendants. As the Supreme Court relies more and more on the specialized Supreme Court bar, criminal defendants are still represented mainly by “novice” advocates. Some dispute the magnitude of the problem, and any possible remedy may run up against the long-standing culture of resistance by criminal defense lawyers who are loath to give up cases they have handled for years. READ MORE »
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Shocking. How long it took to debunk the FBI’s use of hair – Brandon Garrett

Posted on August 10, 2016 by csidds

Santae Tribble is just one of many hundreds of victims of junk forensic testimony.

Its a long read, but this journal article (in Litigation of the American Bar Association) by Professor Brandon Garrett runs the true story about the decades of effort it took to get rid of the debunked (to most of us) use of innocent people’s hair to falsely convict them of crimes. The piece is a tribute to those who advocate the sustainable use of “science” in criminal courts. Nothing short of a national system of command and control of forensic testimony is needed.

Bad Hair- Garrett

A here is another example of the effects of over-blown optimism of people who call themselves forensic “scientists” without showing scientific protocols.

NJ sent people to jail with junk science. Now we owe them justice | Editorial 

Dion Harrell wrongly convicted of rape in 1988 has the charge appears in court to have the charge exonerated. After 27 years trying to clear his name, Harrell has the conviction thrown out with the results of the DNA test. Harrell appeared before Superior Court Judge Ronald Lee Reisner in Monmouth county in Freehold. August 3, 2016

The Star-Ledger

 

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Forensic racism suggests “blinding” case details as a cure.

Posted on August 9, 2016 by csidds

Here’s a new level of nastiness. The above is an example of scientific racism reported from the forensic anthro post Ancestry, Race and Anthropology.

A new example from Iowa.

From the Desmoines-Register

A thistle to former state forensic scientist Amy Pollpeter, who expressed blatantly racist sentiments on social media sites, and an accompanying rose to the Iowa Department of Public Safety for acting quickly, and publicly, in firing Pollpeter. To its credit, the department not only dismissed Pollpeter, but is now conducting a review of her work to make sure none of her criminal cases were compromised. There’s one other step the department should consider: the adoption of “blind” testing procedures in which details of a case are withheld from forensic scientists to prevent the possibility, or even the perception, that personal biases influence their work on DNA samples, fingerprints and other evidence. The National Commission on Forensic Science, which is part of the U.S. Department of Justice, has endorsed the practice.

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A critical look at the Pistorius case and its phony forensic experts

Posted on August 9, 2016 by csidds

From the NEWS HUB:

excerpt:

State witness Mangena- Not an expert at all
Police captain Chris Mangena said Pistorius was standing on his stumps nearly three metres from a locked toilet door when he opened fire and killed his girlfriend. Mangena told the Pretoria court he started in the control room at forensics and has been working in ballistics for 19 years. That was the sum total of his CV. Peculiar that no one questioned the lack of details concerning his academic career, especially the Prosecutor who really pulled the other expert witnesses’ CV’s apart and condemned their applicable experience and qualifications. I also found during research that he did a 3-year course to qualify him in his field as an apparent ballistic expert. Mangena never doubted his evidence in the Oscar Pistorius murder trial even though High Court judge, Judge Masipa, initially did. The sensational murder trial that was televised across the world has seen Mangena’s career catapult, creating exciting new opportunities for him and his unit. Mangena, who has since become the go-to person for criminal investigations, said he was unfazed by the High Court not taking into account his testimony about the four bullet holes in the door of the toilet cubicle where Pistorius’s girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp was shot and killed.
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When crime labs go rogue. Safety suffers. Honesty seems more doubtful.

Posted on August 8, 2016 by csidds

Max Houck
‏@maxmhouck
@csidds The more I read about the NY Lab issue, the more questions I have. With lawsuit, probably won’t see the documents for some time.

csidds's avatarFORENSICS and LAW in FOCUS @ CSIDDS | News and Trends

houck copy

Max Houck (@maxmhouck) used to run the Washington DC Forensic Science facility which then boasted as being “independent” a la Houston’s Forensic Science Center. Above is his Twitter response to and post about police managers refusing an open and transparent scientific disclosure of their methods and results. During Houck’s tenure at the DFS , access to forensic results and methods was non-confrontational (e;g; not limited to prosecutors). Since then, after his having been dismissed/resigned, the doors have been shut tight by the DC mayor and District Attorney’s new appointee, an ex-FBI lab manager. This raises barriers to fair justice as this type of forensic lab “protectionism” is akin to police body-camera non-disclosures or deletions.  Most recent examples in Chicago and North Carolina.

This is not merely a theory. It is a common forensic occurrence.

If you are are not transparent, then it isn’t science that you are practicing. It…

View original post 487 more words

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When crime labs go rogue. Safety suffers. Honesty seems more doubtful.

Posted on August 8, 2016 by csidds

houck copy

Max Houck (@maxmhouck) used to run the Washington DC Forensic Science facility which then boasted as being “independent” a la Houston’s Forensic Science Center. Above is his Twitter response to and post about police managers refusing an open and transparent scientific disclosure of their methods and results. During Houck’s tenure at the DFS , access to forensic results and methods was non-confrontational (e;g; not limited to prosecutors). Since then, after his having been dismissed/resigned, the doors have been shut tight by the DC mayor and District Attorney’s new appointee, an ex-FBI lab manager. This raises barriers to fair justice as this type of forensic lab “protectionism” is akin to police body-camera non-disclosures or deletions.  Most recent examples in Chicago and North Carolina.

This is not merely a theory. It is a common forensic occurrence.

If you are are not transparent, then it isn’t science that you are practicing. It is an ultra- simple concept but it roils against what is spun at national forensic science meetings. Science demands both testing AND reproducibility testing results. This has to occur In real time when actual cases are in progress. Not years after a conviction. Non disclosure blocks these principles and is dishonest. Science without any real accountability for errors and omissions isn’t “real” science. Science isn’t perfect, but it at least has mechanisms in place that thwart the worst of the worst. My opine is that crime lab certifications aren’t predictive of consistently reliable crime lab forensic practices either. At best they are snap shots of testing compliance and are too closely aligned with the public rancor over “self policing” seen in the law enforcement community.

In another context, these stories keep getting worse and worse. Media scrutiny is at high alert because of wrongful conviction litigation, debunked forensic examiners and their methods. All speak poorly of law enforcement led “science-based” crime lab management. This behavior sadly parallels  police-unions’ defensive agendas which include denials, retribution, threats and mis-information.

More of the same from New York state.

ALBANY — Hundreds of crimes are going unsolved, and some innocent people may have been wrongly convicted, because the State Police refused to implement a new computer software program that has transformed DNA analysis, according to a former longtime director at the State Police crime laboratory.

Barry Duceman, who abruptly retired in 2014 after working 26 years as the director of biological science at the State Police Forensic Investigation Center, said in a recent series of interviews that key State Police officials, including the lab’s new director, worked to scuttle the agency’s use of the program, TrueAllele, and may have used a cheating scandal that implicated 15 scientists as an excuse to kill the project. TimesUnion.

One of the fallouts is that the state’s top DNA lab has a backlog of about 1,400 cases, up from more than 800 less than two years ago. The time it’s taking to process evidence in criminal cases has also doubled to more than 30 days, according to people briefed on the lab’s caseload reports.

A State Police spokesman last week declined to respond to Duceman’s comments, citing an unrelated federal civil rights lawsuit filed by three scientists who claim they were wrongly targeted for termination two years ago when the agency accused them of cheating on training exams. The agency also declined to provide information about the lab’s caseload.

Ray A. Wickenheiser, director of the State Police crime laboratories since 2013, acknowledged last year in a deposition that several people within the State Police, including Steve Hogan, a deputy general counsel, and Julie Pizziketti, an assistant director in the DNA lab, “had significant concerns” about using TrueAllele. Wickenheiser declined a request to be interviewed for this story. TimesUnion.

Here’s the backstory.

Ex NY crime lab scientists sue claiming retribution. 

 

 

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False forensic testing adds to growing mistrust of cops, their labs and prosecutors

Posted on July 25, 2016 by csidds

A couple of telling articles call again for the public to understand how the relationship between cops , their crime labs and prosecutors lead to false convictions via intimidating suspects into pleading guilty via misused field testing kits.

Barry Scheck talking………

“……..innocent people pleading guilty in drug possession cases across the country based on false positive presumptive field tests reveals such miscarriages of justice are far more common — tens of thousands of cases — than even the most cynical suspected.”

Read more

A shocking reminder on how reliant prosecutors are reliant on plea deals. 95% of their convictions never go to trials. Added motivators to “plea out” are  prosecutors’ consistent use of “over-charging” for those indicted of crimes. Read The Marshall Project‘s “The Gatekeepers.”

The forensic crime lab connection.

“Want to know just how much our criminal justice system relies on plea-bargaining and how rarely prosecutions result in the kinds of jury trials we see on TV? Look no further than the story of Annie Dookhan, the disgraced Boston-area drug laboratory chemist whose egregious corner-cutting over a decade of work may have compromised more than 24,000 convictions in Massachusetts”

Read more

As an add on to these topics are two US Congressional bills going towards a federal commission on forensic standards and “best practices” standards. Peter Neufeld has this to say about HR 5795 and S 325. How this would affect state based crime lab practices and testimony is a conundrum to say the least.

“We applaud Senator Blumenthal and Congresswoman Johnson for taking the lead in ensuring that the forensic tools used by law enforcement across the nation are based on the best possible science and are guided by meaningful and consistent standards.  Providing law enforcement with scientifically backed forensic tools that aid in accurately identifying the real assailants is the best way to protect everyone’s safety while also insuring that innocent people are not wrongly accused and convicted of crimes they didn’t commit.  We look forward to working with Members of both chambers to pass this critical legislation.”

 

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