Looking at law enforcement’s “excited delirium syndrome” deaths from a medical perspective.

Posted on May 22, 2016 by csidds

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Here is another forensic conundrum.

The AMA doesn’t recognize it, neither does the World Health Organization, nor a host of other “learned” medical groups.

Taser Inc does. So do police unions representing LEOs in wrongful death litigation.

Welcome to the “excited delirium syndrome” (ExDS) which to some is documented as occurring when only police are present.

Others call it, “prone restraint asphyxia” or similar,  but that’s usually the families of the deceased inmates or police detainees who died in the presence of law enforcement in a manner arguably seen nowhere else.

The veteran blogger Texan Grits for Breakfast lays out in depth the history of police custody deaths being considered a syndrome by public legal speakers, some docs and litigation sensitive for-profit corps in the LE equipment business.

Grits states that even if the two word term is just a trumped up excuse, the numbers of in-custody deaths can be seen as possibly mobilizing LE agencies to reconsider  how they interact with non-compliant, drug OD’d and/or dangerous members of the citizenry. Here is some of that. 

Amnesty International has gone public debunking ExDS’ usage by some medical examiners. 

Here is a trio of young ER docs on the FBI Bulletin website talking about it being a serious health issue.

The National Institute of Health did 2011 a review narrating about ExDS, although not recognized in the medical literature lexicons, warning  “that a lack of recognition of the condition in the context of law enforcement activities does not negate the significance of the behavioral and physical signs referred to as EXD.” The article goes but is internally contradictory about where the deaths actually occur. The available data seems incomplete at best. It may mean that some patients ( from the ER POV ) are already dead when they get to the ER and there were no docs around to witness the onset, etc. of death of this maybe “clinical spectrum of one disease.” I think THAT’s wishful thinking. Sometimes in medical data analysis, incomplete information can lead to suppositions rather than conclusions. On the research front…

I can’t imagine a comparative clinical study of supposed ExDS  collecting data of asphyxial deaths in suicides, drug overdoses and non police attended death scenes being studied anytime soon. My perspective has the prone restraint death assertions being separated from the clinical diagnostics information brought forth by the medical emergency folks. The docs only see the aftermath of those arriving non-responsive from custody.

Here is more from the ER environment. The popular linking of symptoms into a “triad” is in this one. Hmmm. So does SBS. Coincidence? Not really as linkages of symptoms is a rudimentary tool of medical investigation.

A final reference is from a LEO publication describing ExDS as “rare.” 

I doubt that any of this is reassuring to families of the deceased who started in the jail lock-up and ended up dead.

 

 

 

 

Posted in police custody deaths | Tagged , | 2 Comments

The Judiciary’s public shaming of trial prosecutors as a means to achieve justice?

Posted on May 20, 2016 by csidds

This is a 48 page legal paper, but the author puts into the clear about what’s going on between federal appeals courts and the prosecutors who end up on their hit list. With no empowerment to reverse convicts, the fed justices resort to very public proclamations of prosecutorial shenanigans or worse.

Full article

Thanks to the Wrongful Conviction Blog

Posted in Perjury by Prosecutors, prosecutorial misconduct | Tagged , | Leave a comment

The Mississippi Sting operation that uncovered Michael West’s bitemark bunk

Posted on May 19, 2016 by csidds

One of the extraordinary defense presentations at the recent EL Howard hearing in Columbus MS was given by the Honorable Chris Plourd (pictured above), the presiding Judge of Imperial County, CA Superior Court.

Judge Plourd rose to the bench in 2012 after a notable career as a criminal defense attorney and an early (in the 1990s) forensic DNA expert. He has a remarkable history of being involved in US national workings groups on science and forensics.

He was chief defense counsel for Ray Krone in the 1990s when Mr. Krone was twice convicted of the murder of Kim Acona in AZ. His guilt was also sealed by another infallible bitemark expert, Dr. Raymond Rawson, an ex-state Senator from Nevada. With Plourd and Krone’s family members continuing help, Krone’s DNA exoneration occurred in 2002.

Judge Plourd’s involvement in Howard is based on Plourd’s ad-hoc ( e.g. for a specific purpose) evaluation of  bitemark experts which included Dr. Michael West, the state’s star witness in Howard’s two death penalty convictions. This evaluation and West’s performance was used as character evidence unfavorable to Dr. West in these current Howard proceedings. Special Attorney General Jason Davis objected to admitting the testimony, saying the test” was subterfuge” and “a sting.”  He was overruled by Judge Howard (no relation to the defendant).

In Plourd’s direct testimony, he describes the exam as “an external blind proficiency study” he planned to extend to other members of West’s bitemark group in a neutral setting in order to test their reliability. Plourd had produced an exact simulation of how self-employed forensic experts are commonly offered cases by members of the public.

Dr. West, not knowing (i.e. “blinded) the evidence sent him was from a person masquerading as a party to a bitemark case, readily accepted to review the case treated it as an actual case.  West accepted his $750 fee and produced a 20 minute video of his brand of bitemark analysis.

Full story with all the forensic science background to the”sting.” 

 

Posted in AAFS, ABFO, Bitemarks, costs of wrongful convictions, Crime lab scandal, Dr. Michael West, exoneration, Ray Krone bitemark case, wrongful convictions | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Advances of science affects some convictions – so far bitemarks aren’t included

Posted on May 18, 2016 by csidds

The resounding inconsistencies in how US courts “handle” forensic expertise is brain-numbing. The Mississippi Supreme Court and the state attorney General Jim Hood’s go to chief appellate guy, Jason Davis (pictured above), are still investing in the now bitemark rejecting Michael West (pictured below) to preserve EL Howard’s death penalty conviction.  This makes no sense.

west

 

Here’s what’s happening in TX regarding fingerprint technology getting a man out of prison after 19 years.

“Advances in science and technology are helping to make criminal prosecutions more accurate,” said Reagan Wynn, who served as local counsel for Nolley.  “Mr. Nolley’s case affirms the Texas legislature’s decision to recognize that these same advances can be meaningful in exposing injustice where that advanced technology wasn’t previously available, by giving the wrongly convicted a way to get back into court and present that new evidence.”

Full article from the Innocence Project Blog

Posted in AAFS, Bitemarks, criminal justice, criminal justice reform, forensic science reform | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

DNA “falsifiability” gets some airtime, CRIME LAB chaos in MA, “vigorous debate’ in SBS

Posted on May 18, 2016 by csidds
The latest in scientific quandaries within forensics from the NY Legal Aid Society Newsletter.

Fool’s Gold:

Legal Aid Society DNA Unit featured in Atlantic Magazine article about the increasing use of unreliable DNA “science” in the criminal justice system

DNA analysis has always been the “golden child” in the forensic science family—whereas most forensic sciences were created by law enforcement to solve crimes, DNA science was developed by, well, scientists. But when DNA analysis left the lab and moved into the courtroom, it left a lot of the science behind.

Unlike medical DNA testing, forensic DNA relies on samples from crime scenes that are often degraded, contaminated or mixtures—“alphabet soups” of genetic information from different contributors. And while clean, single source DNA samples are easy to analyze, the science of DNA mixtures is shaky at best: “The analyst must determine how many contributors are involved, and which alleles belong to whom. If the sample is very small or degraded—the two often go hand in hand—alleles might drop out in some locations, or appear to exist where they do not. Suddenly, we are dealing not so much with an objective science as an interpretive art.”

To complicate things further, most DNA mixtures are now analyzed by “black box” software programs with secret algorithms, or as DNA expert William Thompson quips: “The data goes in, and out comes the solution, and we’re not fully informed of what happened in between.”

The Atlantic features quotes from Legal Aid Society DNA Unit attorneys Jessica Goldthwaite and Clinton Hughes—members of the Frye team that, in 2011, succeeded in challenging the admissibility of low-copy DNA evidence and the Forensic Statistical Tool (FST)—another black box software used to analyze DNA evidence at the NYC OCME. Despite both the OCME and courts denying defense access to FST’s source code, the DNA Unit has reverse-engineered the FST program with a team of computer science interns in order to show the software’s flaws.
Forensics in the News

MA-ACLU lawsuit reveals over 24,000 drug cases tested by forensic analyst Annie Dookhan resulted in convictions or “had other adverse dispositions” (ACLU)

In response to an ACLU lawsuit, Massachusetts prosecutors have disclosed (after nearly six years) lists of the 24,000 drug cases worked on by Annie Dookhan during her decade-long tenure at the Hinton State Lab. According to the ACLU, “Dookhan cases appear to account for an astounding 25 percent of all drug prosecutions that led to conviction in the seven counties that used the Hinton State Lab during Dookhan’s tenure, and one in six of such drug prosecutions in the Commonwealth over a 10-year period.”The majority of “Dookhan defendants” were not sent any official notice that evidence in their cases may have been tampered with: many defendants have remained incarcerated and others have even been deported. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has yet to release the names ofcases affected by forensic chemist Sonja Farak, who was sentenced to 18 months prison time after she admitted to tampering with evidence and stealing drugs while working on nearly 30,000 cases.

Federal judge rejects handwriting analysis “science” and expert testimony in forgery case (New York Law Journal)

Judge Jed Rakoff of the Southern District of New York has dismissed the case of Almeciga v. Center for Investigative Reporting, granting the defendant’s motion to exclude expert testimony on handwriting analysis because of its unreliability as a “science.” In his opinion, Judge Rakoff—who was appointed by President Obama to the National Commission on Forensic Science in 2015—found that “handwriting analysis in general is unlikely to meet the admissibility requirements of Federal Rule of Evidence 702,” and that “there are no studies, to this Court’s knowledge, that have evaluated the extent to which the angle at which one writes or the curvature of one’s loops distinguish one person’s handwriting from the next. Precisely what degree of variation falls within or outside an expected range of natural variation in one’s handwriting—such that an examiner could distinguish in an objective way between variations that indicate different authorship and variations that do not—appears to be completely unknown and untested.”

Expert witness and TrueAllele software creator Dr. Mark Perlin accused by defense counsel of “cherry-picking” results in death penalty murder trial for “financial reasons” (WTAE News)
Related: Allen Wade Trial Summary (Ongoing)

Human Genome Project scientists convened “closed-door meeting” at Harvard to discuss the future of gene-editing amidst concerns about possible ethical violations that would occur with genetic engineering (NY Times)
Related: Newsweek

Scientists fight new White House initiative that would require researchers to obtain patients’ consent to use biological samples, even if identifying information is removed (STAT)

Virginia Department of Forensic Science to review 200 blood-typing cases between 1982 and 1990 after errors were found in recent wrongful conviction case (Richmond Times-Dispatch)

Ninth Circuit denies writ petition in Gimenez v. Ochoa for defendant convicted of killing his daughter based on a “Shaken Baby Syndrome” theory. The panel held that, while a petitioner can allege a constitutional violation stemming from flawed expert testimony at trial, here the evidence presented by the petitioner only indicated a “vigorous debate” in the medical community regarding the validity of the triad-only “shaken baby” diagnosis.
Related: Caselaw Summary, Ninth Circuit Blog
Opinions and Commentary

From the Grits For Breakfast blog: “The [Texas] Forensic Science Commission last month found ‘professional negligence’ occurred in the ballistics analysis at the Southwest Institute of Forensic Science (SWIFS). The examiner attributed too much significance to small striations on a bullet and inappropriately chose different ammunition for test firing. SWIFS believes that ‘confirmation bias’ and ‘expectancy bias’ contributed to errors by both the examiner and the technical reviewer.”

An Editorial from My SanAntonio explains the lack of remedies for defendants who have been wrongfully convicted because of junk science in Texas by examining the case of the San Antonio 4

Fauxrensics Video Series: DNA Evidence

From the National Forensic Science Technology Center: “The Fauxrensics video series is designed to ask the question, ‘Real or Faux?’ about forensic science and investigative techniques regularly shown in popular television crime dramas. They are commonly misrepresented and these short, fun videos help educate viewers on how the science works in the real world.”

Click the picture to play the Fauxrensics episode about DNA Evidence!

Subscribe to the DNA Newsletter for the latest on forensic news. 

Check out previous editions of the DNA Newsletter!

Feedback, articles, and suggestions pertaining to the DNA Newsletter can be emailed directly to Celia Givens.
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Posted in AAFS, criminal justice, criminal justice reform, CSI, DNA mixtures, DNA profiling, forensic science misconduct, forensic science reform | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Forensics: Focus on bitemark beliefs and “The Syndrome”

Posted on May 16, 2016 by csidds

Dr. Death

While spending nearly a full May 5th springtime time day listening to the “Country Dentist” Dr Michael West lavish a Mississippi courtroom with his god-like powers of forensic observation aided by a blue light flashlight, I began to reflect on his statements in his previous courtroom narratives.

A short review.

Dr. West brings the power of religious faith into the court to bolster his forensic conclusions. He commonly he has done this in homicide cases involving the death penalty. West eagerly admits to testifying in 81 criminal cases as an expert. Literally using his beliefs and superior accuracy metaphors in combination with describing crime scene evidence and bitemark matching, Dr. West impresses the jury and clearly intimidates defense counsel with his incredible forensic fervor. Some of his favorite remarks show up in trial transcripts and recent testimony as……..

“In deed and without a doubt.”

“Something less than my belief in the Lord Jesus Christ.”

“He was a child-trafficker taking a 3 year-old girl from her bedroom at midnight. What else could it be?”  This is Dr. West testifying at the recent Howard hearing about MS exoneree Levon Brooks, whom he mistakenly identified, as he also did with exoneree Kennedy Brewer and others. He uses a blue flashlight and supposed two-toothed bitemark bruises.

This was also at the hearing: “I used to think bitemarks were like fingerprints.”

Did I say Mr. Brooks and his fiance were sitting in the gallery during some of these declarations?  Special Attorney General Jason Davis‘s courtroom opening statement when Dr. West took the stand accused Innocence Project’s  co-founder Peter Neufeld of calling West a murderer in the court hallway. Davis ignored mentioning Dr. West’s scurrilous ethnic epithets soon revealed by Mr. Neufeld’s immediate standing objection to the judge. West soon called Mr. Howard’s co-counsel Chris Fabricant a “sociopath” in open court. His laced a repetitive rant through out the remaining hours about “conspiracies” against forensic science and the court’s now unrealistic needs for certainty that he cannot provide.

Well, at least that last is partly true. He can’t even get photographs of the evidence he used to help convict Howard twice. All he brings is talk of “certainty.”

The court adjourned in the pm and continued the hearing until October 2016 with Dr. West still saying he only “identified the biters, not the murderers.”

In contrast to his religious certainties and notorious ad hominem antagonistic demeanor, Dr. West, his Howard gallery buddy, the non-certified forensic pathology guy Steven Hayne, and now unseated county DA Forrest Allgood have had some catastrophic criminal investigation failures. For example, working together as public servants, all missed a serial child murderer living within their midst by convicting two innocent men.

Similar evocative tactics, easily described as zealous, over-enthusiastic or fabricated, appear in cases of other court proceedings considering charges of child homicide.  Experts expound forms of testimony that elicit or border religious beliefs or at least righteous moral indignation. The 1990s come to mind…..

“The Syndrome” documentary is about the forensically questionable  “triad” of Shaken Baby assertions and gives us an analogous situation to Howard:

“The Syndrome” tells the tale of how this new category of crime appeared seemingly out of nowhere in the mid-1990s. Goldsmith found that some of the same doctors who had actively promoted the Satanic Panic of the early ’90s — accusing daycare workers of things like sacrificing animals in the classroom and raping the tots in Satanic rites — abandoned that narrative when people started doubting its plausibility.”

“In its wake, those doctors found a new horror to focus on: shaken baby. As Goldsmith puts it, “They medicalized Satan.” Attention, donations and research money flooded in.”

It is no secret that legal rules of evidence are silent regarding invoking religious beliefs into criminal testimony (a real hot potato with any jury). Neither are the these rules absolute in dismissing weakly circumstantial medical opinions which evolved within each state’s list of convictions.

Courts being unaware or in recent years ignoring broader empirical proofs or non-proofs of “expert” testimony have brought us both the “Country Dentist” and “The Syndrome.”

 

 

 

Posted in Bite Marks, Bitemarks, criminal justice reform, CSI, death penalty, Dr. Michael West, exoneration, forensic testimony | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ballistics runs aground in TX. Its Forensic Comm ferrets out another mini-scandal

Posted on May 13, 2016 by csidds

TxForSciComm copy

This all started from a complaint filed by a solo lawyer from Texas. The complaint sounds strikingly similar to the Steve Chaney bitemark complaint that led to the shoot-down of the dentists training and teaching bitemarks at UTSA and elsewhere.

‘Professional negligence’ found in ballistics misidentification
The Forensic Science Commission last month found “professional negligence” occurred in the ballistics analysis at the Southwest Institute of Forensic Science (SWIFS). The examiner attributed too much significance to small striations on a bullet and inappropriately chose different ammunition for test firing. SWIFS believes that “confirmation bias” and “expectancy bias” contributed to errors by both the examiner and the technical reviewer.

Full 256 page TXFORSCICOMM Report

Thanks to Grits for Breakfast

Posted in criminal justice reform | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Another crime lab scandal arises from Virginia : Old school blood-typing failures

Posted on May 12, 2016 by csidds

On the heels of Keith Allen Harward’s 33 years of wrongful incarceration, Virginia is now tackling hundreds of cases over the decades containing more questionable forensic “science.” Harward’s erroneous identification from a bitemark is only the beginning.

“The Innocence Project said the same former serologist, David A. Pomposini, who worked for the department from 1981 to 2012, also did blood typing in the case of Troy Webb, wrongfully convicted of a Virginia Beach rape, imprisoned in 1988 and cleared by DNA in 1996.

Brandon Garrett, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law who has studied wrongful convictions, said Pomposini also failed to exclude Webb, who should have been excluded, as the perpetrator in that case.”

Full article

Posted in Crime lab scandal, criminal justice, criminal justice reform | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Taking a look at forensic science fakery – The Country Dentist

Posted on May 10, 2016 by csidds

Lets get real, the connection between rigorous multiple studies in forensic science and what is done “in the field” can be described as inconsistently applied. Ive been exposed to a single Journal of Forensic Science article from 1984 that was touted for 30 years as the linchpin for the uniqueness of the human dentition relevant to bitemark injuries.

The following is an anecdotal sample of two contrasting reveals on science:

Here is a 20 minute monologue from @The DailyShow’s John Oliver talking about science in regards to less than rigorous proofs and sometimes completely misleading press releases promoting some ridiculous conclusions for the public’s consumption.

 

Now lets look at the forensic marvel Dr. Michael West fabricating his own “proofs’ in an actual forensic case that sent Leigh Stubbs to MS prison for 44 years.

Further explanation and context comes from this Huffington Post expose. 

 

 

Posted in AAFS, criminal justice reform, CSI, Dr. Michael West, Forensic Science, forensic testimony, junk forensic science | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

MS Court hears substantial testimony about why bitemark conviction from 1992 was flawed

Posted on May 9, 2016 by csidds

 

The following May 5th, 2016 newspaper article from the Columbus MS Dispatch outlines the dynamics of last week’s hearing in which Superior Court Judge Howard accepted voluminous evidence requested by the MS Supreme Court regarding bitemark and DNA evidence relevant to death row inmate Eddie Lee Howard’s case. This information came from both MS State Attorney General’s Jason Davis and Howard’s attorneys from the Innocence Projects in MS and New York (pictured above).

On Wednesday, Professor Iain Pretty from the the UK gave substantial support for the argument towards the consideration that bitemark experts’ opinion of identification was lacking basic empirical testing since the time of their nation-wide acceptance in 1975.

On Friday the 8th, the court heard Dr. Michael West, the State’s bitemark expert, expound on his copious experience as an elected county coroner, the innovator of”alternate light” photography in forensic science and current rebirth as a resounding advocate of banning bitemark evidence from the courts.

The court’s record will also reveal Dr. West’s opinions declaring conspirators are attacking forensic scientists and their methods, sociopathic defense lawyers were present in the courtroom with him, bitemarks’ similarity to fingerprints, and the court system’s unrealistic demands for forensic accuracy.

The court adjourned at 4:30 pm with Dr. West still on the stand. The hearing will continue at a date to be determined later.

Eddie Lee Howard also went back to death row at Parchman prison.

The Dispatch

 

Posted in AAFS, ABFO, Bite Marks, Bitemarks, criminal justice reform, Dr. Michael West, junk forensic science | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment