This goes beyond funny to be incredibly sad or whatever you wanna call it.
Thanks to @MaxmHouck
Originally from The Tusoan
Here is direct commentary from Friday’s Texas Forensic Commission’s DNA focus group on what to do with adjusting ( i.e. dialing it back from over its optimistic past) DNA mixture analysis. Below, Grits describes the quandary of DNA being this forensic declared “gold standard” of being modified to a lesser plateau of certainty. Two opposing outcomes seem to be apparent: 1) this could be repeated in every state of the Union and 2) consensus of what to do needs to be determined at the national level with mandatory rules of the road.
I think most people are ignoring statements that this adjustment “won’t exclude the perpetrator” as it ignores the seminal TX case, using the proposed adjustment, had the probability of a “mis-match” likelihood ratio going from one in a million to 1 in 38.
This may require a ground breaking entry by the Congress or the Executive Branch to avoid the mish-mash guaranteed by outcome 1). Unfortunately, in the forensic science community/legal interface, the mechanism for this type of reform/science advance has always been state-by-state. Unless its the feds declaring changes in their internal methods as seen in their decommissioning hair comparisons, bullet lead profiling, and many years ago, handwriting comparisons.
Here’s a excerpt from Grits:
“Yesterday for work I attended a Forensic Science Commission committee meeting in Dallas on DNA mixtures where the agenda had suggested they’d be parsing prosecutor disclosure obligations and mapping out a path toward reviewing old cases. Instead, the committee couldn’t field a quorum, so four scientists brought in to advise them were left to field a lengthy panel-discussion/Q&A which clarified some issues and on others, only emphasized how muddy much of this remains.
Terri Langford at the Texas Tribune was the only reporter there, here’s her story. In general, she correctly summarized:
experts tried to temper the expectations about DNA testing that were built over more than a decade.
“One of the problems was DNA was called the gold standard,” Bruce Budowle, director of the University of Texas Health Science Center’s Institute of Applied Genetics, said. “Big mistake.”
In response to chilling mistakes and misdeeds involving the execution of
Todd Willingham and the 25 year false incarceration of
Michael Morton, things are changing regarding forensic experts in one US state. It is note worthy that nearly 50% (154 cases) of DNA proven wrongful convictions were generated or aided by faulty forensics testimony posing as “scientific.” This is only one statistical baseline, the other data set is at the National Registry of Exonerations. (Look up False or Misleading Forensic Evidence (F/MFE) in its Glossary).
The TX Forensic Science Commission was established by the legislature for the following purposes:
“The mission of the FSC is to strengthen the use of forensic science in criminal investigations and courts by:
One of the FSC’s first tasks is to open a review of the AAFS recognized band of bitemark interpreters (the ABFO, a much media maligned and overblown dental cross over into forensics). Their active bitemark numbers approximate 39 in the United States. Over the decades, the ABFO TX contingent has been active as its Super Senior members brought bitemark matching to courts since the 70’s in homicide and child abuse cases.
A complaint was filed by the Innocence Project’s Strategic Litigation component to the Commission about the threat to public safety this bitemark group has posed over decades. This continues to present time within the state (tragically, as in every state in the Union). The FSC investigation was launched about a month ago. The ABFO had its first day of discourse with them this last Wednesday in Dallas.
Of course the ABFO objected vociferously that past “mistakes” of its “bad apples” and “better methods” and improved “vocabulary” with an accompanying checklist will outstrip what the National Academy of Sciences denigrated them about in 2009. Recently, a federal civil court judge called them “astrologers” and “palm-readers.” But again, for the umpteenth time they “promise to do better.” Here are some recent communiques from the ABFO leadership (in bold). NOTE: [abc… ] are my comments.
“The ABFO is acutely aware of cases involving bitemark analysis in the past that have contributed to SEVERAL [emphasis added] individuals wrongfully being convicted.” [The number is 24 and counting.]
“We have learned and we have grown and evolved.” [Read more on that below].
” We tried to get across the point that we have taken to heart all those things from old cases, and the way we do bitemark analyses now is not the way that analyses were done “back in the day….” [Once DNA profiling began to overturn bitemark opinions, this subgroup of forensic dentists ignored warnings that it would rock their “status” as credible witnesses. That was 20 years ago. Not coincidentally, their casework has dropped precipitacely since then ].
“The ABFO is unable to access a database” on all the cases its members have conducted over the years.” [That is a lie. The ABFO requires it “diplomates” to re-certify every 5 years including written reference to the casework they accomplished. Read more about that below.]
“It is also the ABFO’s belief that bitemark analysis, when conducted using current ABFO standards, guidelines and terminology, based on continuous study and scientific research and with conservative conclusions,can be extremely helpful in the legal system.” [They ridicule any research and attack researchers of bitemarks who undermine their bogus assumptions. And the ABFO has not conducted a single peer reviewed scientific study that has survived the test of time by indepenent study since its conception.]
” In any case, as it turns out, the Commission does not really have authority to do much besides investigate bitemark cases and issue some recommendations–and it seems they are going to have a fairly difficult time in identifying all the bitemark cases that they may want to investigate…..they apparently hope that odontologists will voluntarily disclose to the panel a list of all their cases….ummm….yeah, maybe, maybe not…..”
The above is so self serving and cynical as to be sickening. “Grown and evolved?” Not so much.
Its hard to avoid their base rhetoric, but let me state very simply:
For 40 years they have and are proactively teaching unsuspecting dentists to practice a hypothesis that has no accompanying data because it is not derived from any empirical testing. Science it is not. It is a courtroom chimera constructed by prosecutors that was gleeful accepted by gullible dentists. Well meaning, but as I said, “not scientists.”
Science? None. Zip. Nada.
The FSC needs to stay the course regarding what their standards of forensic review involves. Its focus must be the scientific method’s relationship with criminal justice. Platitudes, promises, and future “breakthroughs” in testing by the ABFO (they have failed 3 times in proficiency testing and score a zero in the validation department) will continue to pour forth whenever they get a forum. Its also telling and obvious that they have no personal liability for the cases they have messed up. They risk nothing.
The elephant in the room of forensics is the legal inertia resisting reform that exists from years of courtroom acceptance for more than just bitemarks (i.e. hair, bullet lead, exaggerating experts, etc.). Acceptance is no substitute for using scientific approaches already in place within academia, medicine and industry. If it was paramount, Coca-Cola would still have opium in it.
Lastly, as a relevant and closer parallel, any medical/dental diagnostic or therapeutic procedure with a fraction of bitemarks’ list of supposition, non-testing, courtroom failures and damage to its patients (the innocent defendants) would have been banned by any medical society in the world. These 39 “skin-readers” still are getting a pass.
Its time to stop them.
In Texas.
The veteran law enforcement, law and science blogger at Grits for Breakfast’ in TX has some sharp points to make about his picks for the worst in forensic methods. There are more than just bitemark “interpreters” which he includes in this list.
He does touch about the ‘War on DNA mixtures” examiners who overstated their confidence levels by a power of about 10 to the seventh power.
2d state labsite has police looking into a coverup involving an examiner’s exaggerating results.
In Australia, the road for compensation of being wrongfully convicted is just like the US regarding a judiciary who lacks the tools to counteract bad actors in its own system.
Roseanne Beckett, wrongly convicted for conspiracy to kill her husband in 1991, served 10 years of her 12 year sentence. She finally overturned her conviction in 2005. This month, 26 years later, she successfully sued the New South Wales (Australia) government for AU$2.3m for malicious prosecution after proving that it was the corrupt detective, Peter Thomas and his obsession with Beckett, that led to her wrongful conviction. In a lengthy ruling, the judge stated;
“Ms Beckett says that if she had not been prosecuted by Detective Thomas, tried and imprisoned for over ten years, her future might have been “like any other normal woman, mother, or member of a community,..The fact that the State has managed successfully to defend a substantial proportion of Ms Beckett’s claims in these proceedings ought not be permitted to disguise the fact that Detective Thomas’ determination to get square sullied his objectivity. In the…
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“In numerous instances, experts diverge widely in their evaluations of the same bite mark evidence, which has led to questioning of the value and scientific objectivity of such evidence.”
The case of Andrew Mallard (pictured here) will be well known to those in Australia – he was wrongly convicted in 1995 of the murder of two women in Western Australia, spending 12 years in prison before his conviction was overturned. Mallard was eventually awarded AU$3.25 for his 12 years wrongly imprisoned, but the litany of ‘errors’ during the police investigation continue to come to light.
The real perpetrator was never convicted of the murders, he committed suicide in 2006 after being named as prime suspect by the police subsequent to a cold case review. However, during this review, and other subsequent inquiries into the policing handling of the murders, many questions have been raised about the police handling of evidence and exhibits – with many being claimed to be “lost”, now appearing on exhibit lists during a police audit – at the same time the police claimed to have…
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The phrase “don’t mess with Texas” surely is true. The state’s Department of Public Safety Forensic Science Commission’s new stance on crime lab DNA mixture outcomes surely is going to bounce around the county like a flash bang grenade.
More comments from Dallas of opinions that the DNA game may be turning towards a much less robust outcome leaving prosecutors relying more on circumstantial evidence to bolster much weaker assurances that DNA is the “smoking gun” for conviction.
This sea change within the forensic community parallels what happened in Washington DC crime lab where prosecutors and politicians slammed its now ex-crime lab director Max Houck for promoting a similar conservative approach due to subjective and sometimes conflicting DNA examiner’s opinions when mixed blood samples are recovered from a crime scene.
From the WFAA (with video)
Past WaPo news reports about the DC crime lab DNA mixture dust-up.
A crime lab accreditor suspends all DNA testing
DC mayor orders audit of DC crime lab
DC Prosecutors go after crime lab director
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