(Note: Regardless of all the digital artwork, measurements seen in this case are not accurate for biter “matching”)
The prevalance of bitemark injuries brought forth in child abuse investigations and prosecutions has never been disputed but they have been as so far can still be misused in courts. The problems with bitemarks occur when some dentist thinks they are as good as fingerprints. Or the dentist is allowed to guess who did the biting with some help from the police.
A Dutch medical and forensic professor got slammed by some bureaucrat for lecturing students with the aid of the Malaysia Air plane crash victims’ remains. Apparently some journalists snuck into his professional presentation. The main issue regarding post or ante mortem photo evidence is protecting the identities of the victims via insuring anonymity of victims. A few US jurisdictions directly prohibit use of any public representations of case work. Im not sure how all the reality forensic shows handle this issue unless they get written permission of privacy release from victims and/or surviving family.
I’m sure John Lentini, at http://firescientist.com/, who has helped create major changes in arson evidence interpretation throughout the US, has some comments to add on this subject of “human case” analysis advances with fire investigators.
No one ever denies that criminal trials are merely a war of words supporting implications of guilt or innocence. The experts were not at the crime scene, and neither was the jury nor the judge.
That’s what makes victim visual IDs of the assailant so powerful. In this case, from notorious Lakeland County, Ill, the trial prosecutor had his DNA expert run the table on an accused defendant by implying an “inconclusive” (read: not good for either identifying or excluding a person of interest) could have IDed the defendant if the sample was larger.
There’s a good portion in this article about what the defense attorney didn’t accomplish in response to all this.
From the new article:
“The prosecutor and his witness now compounded the problem in a series of questions and answers. Having testified that “no conclusion could be made” about the secondary source, the expert now testified that even though the DNA testing of the secondary source did not point to Cameron, it did not exclude him either.
The expert suggested that the primary source of DNA — that did not come from Cameron — might be masking out the DNA type in the second source that could be Cameron’s. She even implied the test might have shown a match if only there had been more DNA to work with.
So in just a few steps, the prosecution went from telling jurors the results were “inconclusive” to suggesting the jury could conclude, by inference, that Cameron was the rapist.”
Talk about a headache for crime lab management. The fired footwear examiner started by alleging the shoeprint exam was flawed to begin with.
http://www.wisbar.org/NewsPublications/Pages/General-Article.aspx?ArticleID=24514
She was a remarkable person in many ways. Condolences to her family.
U.S. Air Force Maj. Adrianna Vorderbruggen, 36, was killed along with five other U.S. military personnel by a suicide bomber on a motorcycle outside Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, on Dec. 21.
This is the first time I have heard a judge describe junk forensic science as a threat to “public safety.” I use the original Latin phrase…….
This story from the Texas Monthly continues to be a testament to how opening the minds of diverse forensic and legal professionals can lead to progress in reaching scientific goals and standards in the courts. Here is a excerpt about happenings when the Texas Forensic Science Commission started getting past its rancorous 2005 beginnings.
“Defense lawyers saw that lab analysts weren’t purposefully sending innocent people to prison; they were skilled but overworked scientists. Prosecutors saw that defense lawyers weren’t crazed conspiracy nuts; they were spirited advocates for their clients. The next roundtable was co-hosted with the Court of Criminal Appeals’ Criminal Justice Integrity Unit, a similarly collaborative commission put together by Judge Barbara Hervey, in 2008. The groups made two strong recommendations: first, develop a plan for certifying, or licensing, all state forensic examiners by an independent body. Second, come up with a process for notifying everyone affected by forensic errors—prosecutors, defense attorneys, defendants, and the courts themselves. They also began co-hosting seminars on forensic science, where they talked about everything from arson developments to new designer drugs.”
http://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/false-impressions/#sthash.ZBlGmWJJ.dpuf
Learn about the reasons wrongful convictions occur in the US. Its not what you may think.
Retired police chief Darrel Stephens has something to say about the subject:
Through my work for the Innocence Inquiry Commission and later the Innocence Project, I came to understand the challenges and contributing causes of wrongful convictions. As a former police chief I did a lot of work promoting best practices for eyewitness identification and evidence preservation, encouraging police departments across the country to adopt policies that help avoid wrongful convictions.
Donate for Justice The New York Innocence Project
Michael Hanline was exonerated in 2015. Justin Brooks and Alex Simpson led the CIP litigation team.
Donate to Sponsor an Innocent Individual The California Innocence Project. Free the #CA12
This case has some excellent insight into how a defense attorney finds a crack in a lab tech’s QA protocols [ she spit on a DNA sample] and then tries to blow up all the other work-product used by the Prosecution.
The evidence of interest is a single bullet with arguable DNA recovered from the scene 4 months AFTER the crime. Ooops.
The def attorney also uses a phone message from a cop to the crime lab gal.
From the news article: “The message, Buting [the defense attorney] pointed out, asked Culhane [the lab tech] to test evidence “to try to put” Halbach [the homicide victim] in Avery’s [the bad guy] trailer or garage.” Ooops.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/crime/dna-experts-record-ripped-b99643010z1-363819471.html
