International POV on Forensic Medicine as a “dying profession.” No pun intended.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/1056144/forensics-day-forensic-medicine-is-a-dying-profession/
“Fundamentally flawed” forensic path opinion in Canada.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/maria-shepherd-conviction-1.3468706
Scotland: Sacked forensic fingerprint expert asks for job back.
THE NATIONAL Registry of Exonerations declared Wednesday that “by any reasonable accounting, there are tens of thousands of false convictions each year across the country, and many more that have accumulated over the decades.”
The researchers found that only 17 percent of last year’s exonerations (N=149) were due to DNA evidence, and they documented only 65 instances of official misconduct, mostly in homicide cases. These figures imply another sort of unacceptable error: of honest police, prosecutors and juries failing to give defendants the presumption of innocence, as the law requires.
This article highlights the research of Mary and Peter Bush at the U of Buffalo which will again be presented at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences annual meeting in Lost Wages, NV.
Peter and a few others (including me) will be presenting this Thursday and Friday in the Odontology and Jurisprudence sections regarding the foundation evidence and empirical research that prompted the Texas Forensic Science Commission to recommend the Texas courts decline its use in criminal trials.
Remember, that the AAFS is a hotbed of bitemark promoters. Members of the news media and criminal justice public interest groups will be watching with fascination as to what they have to say in retaliation and in denial to the results in Texas. What is interesting is that many of these few believers left are from Texas and surrounding southern states.
Looking closely at the NY State emblem, the lady onn the right, balancing justice, is supposed to be blindfolded. Some say its not really like that.
These wrongful termination lawsuits are always quite illuminating when the plantiffs reveal the type of environment they were employed and tasks they were supposed to accomplish for the prosecution. Speaks loudly to the need for independent management of these supposedly neutral, yet alarmingly easily coerced police controlled facilities.
If these allegations are true, or even partially true, they reflect badly on the lab’s accreditation organization, which is the very successful American Society of Crime Lab Directors.
Above, this meeting’s theme, overlayed onto the Nevadan sunset, is “Transformation: Embracing Change”
In fitting irony, attendees at next week’s American Academy of Forensic Sciences meeting in Las Vegas will hear bitemarkers hoping to sway public and professional sympathies against their proposed “eradication” by scientific and criminal justice peers. Fierce to the bitter end, this patter is a blend of bitemarkers cloaking themselves as beyond (and immune to) scientific proofs expected by the courts and a lady “explainer” prosecutor who says that is just AOK. These two recently had their bitemarks opinions removed from a New York v. Dean homicide case by her DA. Caveat Emptor
Scorched Earth Forensics — Why The Move to “Eradicate” Disciplines From the Courtroom Is Bad for Science and Bad for the Law
Abstract
Melissa Mourges, JD*, New York County District Attorney’s Office, One Hogan Place, New York, NY 10013; and Roger D. Metcalf, JD*, Tarrant County, Medical Examiner’s District, 200 Feliks Gwozdz Place, Fort Worth, TX 76104
After attending this presentation, attendees will explore the debate behind calls to “eradicate” various forensic disciplines as being insufficiently “scientific.”
This presentation will impact the forensic science community by explaining the dangers to victims, defendants, and civil litigants if the move to “eradicate” various forensic disciplines succeeds.
When the 2009 National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Report, Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward, was published, how many of us realized that “the path forward” would involve a concerted effort to impose a wholesale ban on the use of well-established forensic disciplines? Calls by highly placed government officials to “eradicate” entire fields of evidence, along with well-funded attacks by defense groups, threaten to undermine the civil and criminal justice systems rather than to fix them. Jo Handlesman from the White House Science and Technology Office blasted forensic odontology and other disciplines, saying they were not based on science but relied on “gut reaction.” She said, “These are the types of methods that must be eradicated from forensic science and replaced with those that come directly out of science.”1
Any discussion must recognize that testimony by forensic dentists, although grounded in sciences like anatomy, histology, and dental medicine, is also based on the skill and experience of the forensic dentist, including his/her skill in pattern impression analysis. The same holds true for forensic pathology, forensic psychiatry, latent print analysis, and a host of other disciplines. None of these are bench sciences in which the same experiment always yields the same result. After all, we do not shoot volunteers at point-blank range to study gunshot wounds, or feed people increasing amounts of fentanyl to determine the lethal dose. Instead, we wait until they present at the emergency room or at the morgue and make observations that inform diagnoses and conclusions.
Any discussion must also accept that each bitemark is a unique event, as is every injury to a murder victim; every latent print is left under unique circumstances, as are footprints or tire tracks at a crime scene. Diagnoses of mental illness and its effect on criminal responsibility can be highly subjective and fiercely debated among experts. Ultimately, it all constitutes opinion, albeit expert opinion. How do we determine what comes directly from science, or what definition of science or evidence controls?
Defense counsel often seek to introduce the very kinds of evidence slated for extinction; this scorched earth approach affects everyone. Suspects often benefit from the threatened disciplines. Identification of one suspect exonerates another; forensic evidence provides proof of self-defense or consent. Post-conviction testing requests always seek proof that “some other dude did it.” Careful thought must precede any move to eradicate forensic odontology. Many child abuse and fatality cases involve bitemark comparisons, where victims live with the perpetrator and DNA may be cleaned away or is simply not probative.
Although important lessons are learned from exonerations, decisions to eradicate 2016 forensics because of 30-year-old mistakes will have far-reaching negative effects. Newspapers only report plane crashes, not the overwhelming number of safe landings. With courts already equipped to handle opposing forensic theories through discovery, cross-examination, and experts for each side, it is far wiser to improve forensics rather than eradicate them.
Reference(s): 1. Handlesman J. International Symposium on Forensic Science Error Management – Detection, Measurement and Mitigation, Arlington, VA, July 20-24, 2015. Forensic Odontology, Pattern Impression Analysis, Eradication 670
Here is another UK university paid news flash on the use of high tech instrumentation to super-image walking gaits (“unique”) and shoe prints as a “low-cost” means to associate shoes with crime scenes. They also talk about “speeding up” investigations with their methods. The promo says….
“Low cost, easy and quick”
“Much like fingerprints we all leave behind our own individual footprint.”
The research innovator hopes to take this study to the national level with police agencies.
Not a word about validity studies, etc. Just high tech acronyms. Lets slow this train down a bit, before it wrecks itself.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-02/uon-wys021616.php
This continues the US forensic saga and underscores why all the bitemark ID cases are junk opinions. It also contradicts and makes moot the NIST sponsored National Forensic Science Commission’s bitemark committee outcomes. I mentioned at some point in the past that this sub comm was “laying an egg” with their multi-deliberations in 2015.
The statistician has figured things out in this quote.
“Clearly, when somebody goes to court and says the bite marks indicate this person was the murderer or whatever, there’s no good reason to say that,” Carriquiry said. “There’s no science behind that particular type of evidence.”
http://m.amestrib.com/news/isu-statistician-strives-use-more-science-behind-forensics
The shadow of “big brother” watching you comes out in print within this piece about massive forensic DNA collection in numerous states. California has the biggest database.
“The question is: Do we want the government to have all these genetic samples?” said Elizabeth E. Joh, a professor of law at the University of California, Davis. “There are other ways the government can use these databases.”
Joh said advancing DNA science also means samples obtained for CODIS can yield increasingly personal information about people and their families. For example, she said, California allows searches that can lead to not only suspects themselves but also relatives of people in the database.
also from the late Justice Scalia:
A 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision in a Maryland case upheld the practice but drew sharp criticism from the four dissenting justices. In a scathing dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote, “Make no mistake about it: As an entirely predictable consequence of today’s decision, your DNA can be taken and entered into a national DNA database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason.”
One prosecutor says that we leave our DNA all over the place anyway, so what’s the big deal?
I suppose future generations shall find out what the “deal” will be.
In the rollup to a new trial against a man previous accused of murder, convicted and then released after 19 years, the focus of misuse or at least the accusations of questionably “researched” forensic evidence is in the headlines. Seems an FBI GSW guy went over and testified for the Commonwealth and agree with their gun guy who later ran afoul of a credibility review. The FBI GSW guy and his FBI unit soon after the first trial got slammed as well.
Another memoir about chasing the bad guys.
FORENSICS and LAW in FOCUS @ CSIDDS | News and Trends 