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Forensics: Air contamination in commercial aircraft gains scientist’s concern
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Tagged American Academy of Forensic Science, forensic pathology
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Texas Forensic Commission may take the national lead in eradicating bitemarks
Dr. Mary Bush is the pretty one. She and her hubby Peter have spent a decade forming scientific studies which debunked and then pissed off alot of dental bitemark experts in the US. These same media discredited experts comprise the bulk of the current National Institute of Justice’s National Commission on Forensic Science dental work group. What a joke.
February 9 may have some announcement from a multi-discipline panel of forensic managers, practitioners and scientists from Texas called the TFSC. They still have speakers on bitemarks on tap for the end of next week, so a final bitemark report may be take awhile longer.
The bitemark believer board considered the TFSC questioning of its series of faulty convictions, ineffective and obstructive leadership (with a few recent exceptions) and their failed attempts to develop some scientific basis in their courtroom testimony to be “grilling” and a form of harassment. Unbelievable arrogance.
Forensics: Typical back and forth about when DNA was left at crime scene – Triple murder
Ample bloody DNA evidence used in a second murder trial leads to a conviction. The only problem (which didn’t seem to bother the jury) is that the man used to live in the house with the victims. Maybe some day markers for “ageing” DNA will be developed. Until then its a battle of circumstantial evidence (a check ledger dated one week before the killings) pointing to the perp weighed against defense claims that found DNA is of little consequence in this type of scenario.
“The only forensic evidence Garcia [the first trial’s prosecutor] had linking Bednarz [defendant] to the bloody crime scene was the bloody [paper] tissue, and defense attorneys were able to call it into question. The tissue found on the floor inside 154 Naomi Drive had a crusty substance, probably mucus, with Bednarz’s DNA in it. The blood of victim Michael Ramsey, had been spattered onto the tissue when Ramsey, 53, and the other victims, Beverly Therrien, 74, and Pamela Johns, 60, were beaten to death, Garcia argued.”
http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-bednarz-guilty-evidence-20160201-story.html
Forensics: Incredible story of junk Canadian commercial lab ruining lives
This is unbelievable. Well, not really. We can add to the list of state run forensic labs who kow-tow to prosecutors needing felony drug possession convictions.
How families lost custody of their children.
https://news.vice.com/article/this-canadian-lab-spent-20-years-ruining-lives
Bellwether conviction dismissal based on junk FBI hair opinion confirms forensic fallibility
No matter how folks minimize or ignore the effect of overstated or flawed forensic opinions in the US CJ system, exoneration and remanded cases continue to build clear evidence to the contrary.
This particular case deals with the FBI’s elite unit of “hair matchers” that walked tall before DNA testing came online.
The culture of accepting all government oriented and defense forensic examiners as “scientists” with “no doubts” still exists as it did in the day of these hair pattern experts.
“In 2009, a panel of the National Academy of Sciences commissioned by Congress reported that although forensic examiners have long claimed to be able to match pattern evidence — such as hair samples, shoe and tire treads, bitemarks or marks on fired bullets — to a source with “absolute” or “scientific certainty,” only DNA analysis had been validated through statistical research.
Courts have continued to admit the other types of forensic evidence citing precedent, however, and rarely reopen related convictions in the absence of new DNA results.”
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Exonoree Jeffery Deskovic slams appointment of DA to New York Appeal Court
Of course the appointment started with the state governor, went to the Senate and then got rubber stamped by the NY State Bar. Deskovic has a history of receviving less than fair treatment by the NY judicial system. He was exonerated after 16 years in state prison containing years of frustration with the state’s appellate system. He received a large compensation award, became a lawyer, started a foundation to support judicial reform and watchdogs the criminal justice system. He has some choice words for the appointee Janet DiFiore’s vetting process and her saying that Deskovic’s case contained no prosecutorial misconduct. Other choice statements from her were that pros miscon is “not a problem.”
He wasn’t invited to any of the vetting proceedings. Hum, that sounds familiar.
Empirical science ignored in these new and old cases; Bitemarks win, DNA loses
When science is not important, forensic evidence is just hocus-pocus ( i.e. mumbo-jumbo; “complicated activity or language usually intended to obscure and confuse” ) in the courtroom.
All I can say from the cases in The Latest from the World of Bite mark Evidence is that…..
- some (not all) prosecutors only use DNA evidence when it suits the prosecution,
- most (but not all) gatekeepers are too over-worked to read Science, or the forensic publications of the National Academies of Science, and
- law /judges’ schools need exposure to good and bad science in their coursework.
Here is what law prof Brendan Garrett’s Forensics Forum has to say about this:
Exonerator Zellner relies on forensic advances to overturn Avery “MakingaMurderer” conviction
Steven Avery’s lawyer has said that she has new evidence she believes will exonerate the man made famous by Netflix documentary Making A Murderer.
Avery is the focus of Making A Murderer, the Netflix documentary which tells the story of his conviction for the murder of Teresa Halbach in 2005. Both and nephew Brendan Dassey are serving life sentences for the murder, having been convicted in 2007. Making A Murderer pays particular attention to perceived injustices in the case.
Avery was the focus of a new episode of Dateline NBC on Friday (January 29). The series has featured an episode on Avery and his trial once before, back in 2006, but picked up on it again after the Netflix series became a hit at the start of the year.
Among those interviewed in the Dateline special was Avery’s new lawyer, wrongful conviction specialist Kathleen Zellner. She revealed details of fresh forensic evidence which she says will prove Avery is innocent.
“Generally, since 2007, there have been significant advances in forensic testing … the clearest way to do this is with scientific testing,” Zellner said in her first TV interview since taking the case. “Am I going to tell you exactly what it is? I am not. But it’s been a long time. There was a lot of evidence that wasn’t tested.”
Zellner also tweeted about her case, telling followers that she had taken news of the forensic evidence to Avery.
Read more at http://www.nme.com/filmandtv/news/-making-a-murderer-steven-avery-s-lawyer-claims-sh/398361#6iLlUUBRx0TKWDVO.99
Kathleen Zellner is an exoneration machine as she has 17 victories, mostly in Illinois. You need to know she is an expert at ferreting out police and prosecutorial misconduct. I would say she wrote the book on it. AS of a week ago, she is now Steven Avery’s defense co-counsel. The other new attorney for Avery is Midwest Innocence Project director Tricia Bushnell.
Here she is media talking the Steven Avery case. You might say finding a neutral jury pool for a potential new Avery case may be hard to deliver. Anyway, she is doing a great job deconstructing the facts used by the prosecutors.
What she says about forensics aiding the exoneration is just a glimpse on her future targeting of the prosecution’s case. She has been on Twitter blowing them into little pieces for the last week. @ZellnerLaw .
http://patch.com/illinois/downersgrove/kathleen-zellner-nbcs-dateline-first-steven-avery-interview
More on Twitter
http://abcnews.go.com/US/steven-averys-attorney-discusses-making-murderer-case/story?id=36614686
http://uproxx.com/tv/making-a-murderer-steven-avery-lawyer-kathleen-zellner/2/
http://gawker.com/steven-averys-defense-attorney-and-prosecutor-address-i-1756015707
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Forensics: Elemental Chemistry gets further into criminal investigations
Tracking Movements With Isotopes
Remember your Chemistry classes?
Salt Lake County homicide detective Todd Park was in Reno, Nevada, for a conference about serial killers in 2007 when he first heard about what he calls “the isotope stuff.” A colleague at the meeting described the forensic potential of isotope research being done by IsoForensics, a Salt Lake City company, and Park quickly realized that the science might help identify the victim in a homicide case he had worked on seven years earlier.
http://nij.gov/journals/276/Pages/tracking-movements-with-isotopes.aspx
Texas leading massive review of criminal cases based on change in DNA calculations
For those who commented that the recent “updating” of DNA population mixture statistics would be merely a mini-blip in its potential effect on criminal cases, this Texas state-wide revisit of DNA aided convictions should be a downer.
Galveston County District Attorney Jack Roady, right, and Matthew Shawhan, an assistant district attorney for the county, show an image of a screwdriver believed to have been used by German Perez-Vasquez in a homicide. DNA analysis on the screwdriver initially showed there was a 1 in 290 million chance that a different person of a similar ethnic background to the defendant had touched it. The new protocol, released back in January 2010 but implemented unevenly across the country, found a 1 in 38 chance.
Dallas News (open access)
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