Taking a close look at why forensic tox is so complicated and takes weeks to months to complete.
Unlike other medical tests, where technicians isolate a specific compound like cholesterol, Middleberg says that you don’t always know what you’re looking for with forensic toxicology. “If you have a young person who is found dead in bed and there’s no history of drug abuse, you’re looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack,” he tells Quartz.
The author has excellent academic credentials and states unregulated proliferation of court accepted ‘digitalizing’ experts has its obvious risks. As in wrongful incarcerations and convictions. The realm of forensics (any technology or expert opinion used in the courts) “digital” evidence ranges from photography to computer and video analysis. Educators and the practitioners on these subjects have little guidance from the AAFS digital section (here promoting itself to students) and various DOJ study groups (this one is defunct and here are their published documents) which have been around since the last decade. Full article.
Here’s an example of a totally overly enhanced (“changed”) autopsy photo accepted into a TX federal court habeas corpus case as merely “improving” the injury patterns seen in an original image (according to the DA and the judge). Obvious arbitrary color changes were made and other distortions are seen in the ruler and artifacts added to the skin to produce “hidden evidence.” The digital image was made by the creator of his personally owned “imaging” program.
In this same case, a Prosecutor’s dentist then chose the perpetrator from one of these three suspects whose teeth are outlined in different colors. This image was created by me. I found found it impossible to use any of this evidence to reach a reliable opinion.
Can you see the difference?
Bitemark aided TX conviction and later execution of Humberto Leal in 2011 ignored direct appeal from the White House. The US Supreme Court id nothing mcuh. Then Governor Rick Perry rejected defense plea for claim of ineffectiveness of counsel and the trial court’s use of junk forensic dental opinion.
This is Dr. Mary and Peter Bush, from the U of Buffalo. Their recent series of research papers have given the ABFO bitemark “skin-readers” a real headache.
The great state of Texas will be taking a microscopic look at bitemarks. Texas was a hot bed of bitemark convictions and plea deals influenced by this discredited evidence. It even has a case called Coronado which a few years ago said bitemark “matching” was Aok. There also have been executions which relied on bitemark opinions to establish the perpetrator’s identity. See a case I consulted on 7 days before the inmate, Humberto Leal, was executed. Leal_Affidavit_Bowers
Let’s see if the bitemark group, the American Board of Forensic Odontology, cooperates on this review. They have always stonewalled requests for independent case reviews of their “bad” cases claiming “bad apples” were to blame. It sounds like TX is going to look at their “good” cases as well. If the ABFO ignores this latest and the first state action of this kind, then maybe the American Academy of Forensic Sciences will step up and force them. Or maybe the Attorney General of Texas will subpoena all the casework and take depositions of the bitemark experts involved.
What happens when ‘police science’ has no external oversight. Current NCFS deliberations on forensic science protecting the innocent is largely controlled by law enforcement elements and their practitioners.
We’ve reported here before about the fact that FBI agents have been giving scientifically unsupportable testimony regarding hair comparison evidence for decades. Please see Hair Analysis Evidence About to Join CBLA as “Junk Science.”
This Monday, August 17th at 10pm ET/7p PT, Al Jazeera’s Emmy Award-winning “Fault Lines” investigates how the FBI used the flawed science of microscopic hair analysis to help convict thousands of criminal defendants.
In this new episode, “Under the Microscope: The FBI Hair Cases,” Fault Lines correspondent Josh Rushing and team travel to Savannah, Georgia to meet Joseph Sledge. In 1978, Sledge was convicted of murder, partly based on FBI testimony that his hair was “microscopically alike in all respects” to hairs found at the crime scene. He was released this January, after serving 37 years in prison, when DNA testing proved the hairs used at trial were not his.
As “Fault Lines” reveals, Sledge is…
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Let me say that the following researchers are totally serious about what they do. I also surmise that they are getting funding from government-related law enforcement orgs to pursue their endeavors.
Both have established hypotheses. Here’s 1). Materials commonly found at crime scenes can be profiled for bacteria to create a “unique” link to a perpetrators feet or most likely their shoes. So, its not really “poo” that they are studying. Its bugs from the environmentalal “microbiome.” That would actually be better, since poo may contain sloughed skin cells from the animal that could be subject to DNA testing. If you find Fido’s genetic material on a suspect, then maybe there might be a provable connection between the scene. Unless the suspect is a dog walker. The microbiome arena is still hypothetical.
2) Here’s the technical one about aging fingerprints from fat. This field of investigation has been around since the 1980’s. Here is a better news release with video from Phys.org.
Thus far I haven’t seen these on CSI.
Ray Krone was arrested for the sexual assault and brutal murder of a female bartender in Phoenix, Arizona in 1991. The case rested largely on bite mark evidence on the body of the victim, 36-year-old Kim Ancona. Krone was dubbed by the media as the “snaggletooth killer.” He was found guilty and received the death penalty.
“I was called a monster, then an unremorseful killer, then sentenced to death and shackled and taken right straight to death row,” says Krone.
He vehemently maintained his innocence and fought for a retrial. In 1996 Krone was given a second chance to prove he didn’t commit the murder. Again, the same bite mark expert’s testimony portrayed him as guilty, but this time Krone’s defense team had their own bite mark experts to rebut the prosecution.
The blog starts on how scientific arguments about DNA (and everything else dealing with forensics) within the US courts are so heavily affected by legalisms which allow one state (in this newest case NJ) to accept the opinion of another state (NY of course across the Hudson river) court with hardly any effort (for judicial ‘economy’ purposes). Similar failures of this concept are seen in US states still accepting bite mark opinions based on either misinterpretation of a precedent-making case ( Marx from CA in 1975) or ignoring another precedent-case being overturned decades later by DNA evidence and the inmate being exonerated. (Robert Lee Stinson from Wisconsin in 1985) . Exonerated in 2009.
Here is the real example of this ‘stare decisis’ (‘precedent’) in action this last week. The NJ trial court denial of a defense motion for review of DNA statistical methods (i.e the ‘Toolbox’) allowed the lady DA to ridicule defense attempts to overcome the 1923 Frye Rule which says almost anything (like palm reading and bitemarks) is ok if it has the “acceptance of a relevant scientific community.” This legal dinosaur does NOT mean it has to be FULLY accepted or how big is the ‘community.’ Here’s the scientific context of Frye: In 1923 scientists could not prove that DNA existed. Watson, Crick and Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin, their unrecognized female collaborator, did that in 194os. Not a good show affirming cutting edge judicial, legal scholastics and statutory scientific relevance regarding their “gatekeeping” responsibilities. ( “gatekeeping” is from the vaguely written and severely ‘lawyered’ Daubert/Kumho (1990’s federal cases) improvement on scientific admissibility used in about 35 US states.
Now onto the broader topic of High(er) Sensitivity DNA.
Comments on this article “Junk Science” by Keith Rose from ‘Insider Time.’
This British publication does a good job talking about crime lab biology taking DNA from a recognized and accepted validated status (regular 28 cycle PCR) to the realm of higher sensitivity (increased to 32 PCR cycles) fraught with difficulties involving interpretations of blood mixtures (except in NJ an NY).
This topic is the crux of discontent in the US press reporting about fired crime lab managers in the Washington DC “ex-independent” lab facility and confusing court interpretations about what is or is not validated in its accompanying interpretations.
Mr. Rose uses quotes which reveal how “junk” science is poorly handled by US law enforcement even after they finally admit their mistakes (and now are professing upcoming improvements). There are parallels elsewhere in the forensic science communities where “group think” committees tasked to reform problem subjects in police ‘sciences’ are filled with practitioners of the very same methods in need of serious revamping. This current trend of ‘reform’ is really a counter-punch to the 2009 NAS review finding a slew of questionable practices. That really pissed off the practitioners since the NAS personnel were without doubt real scientists. Take this example of the standing within the NIST/DOJ study group on bitemarks.
From the “Insider Time”
“For example, it took around 5 years for the FBI to identify around 60 death row inmates whose cases required further examination, and in that period at least 3 prisoners were executed.”
and the real KICKER:
“However, future problems with cross-contamination of DNA is looming on the horizon. UK police forces are trialling [testing] technology that allows ordinary police officers to analyse DNA samples in custody suites after a 2-week training course.
Police custody suites are hardly sterile areas, and a 2-week training course is hardly likely to turn plod into a forensic scientist, yet the proposal is that ordinary police officers will soon be able to input DNA profiles directly into the National DNA Database.”
Here is the US connection with HITDNA (LCN).
“The DNA ‘RapidHIT’ machines were developed by IntegenX in the US and are marketed in the UK by Key Forensic Services. Police forces who have trialled, or are currently trialling the machines, are the Metropolitan Police, Nottinghamshire, Lancashire together with other undisclosed forces.”
Read the last paragraph in the short article to get a real chill about ‘police science’ use of originally university-based DNA now morphed into commerically based for-profit police applications.
This is a long read, but is worth it. Its rather incredible that anyone who admits or “confesses” to crimes and misdeeds to a non law enforcement examiner providing prepping them to pass a lie detector test. The rub appears in the excerpt below showing the lie-detector guy putting $$ in front of any concerns he originally had about ethics or being an accomplice to criminal activities. The feds sent in undercover officers.
“Frankly, Javier, I SMELL A RAT,” Williams e-mailed on Oct. 17. “You are doing what I told you not to do, and that is telling me that you are lying. … DO NOT SEND THE MONEY—DO NOT MAKE THE RESERVATIONS—I AM NOT GOING TO HELP YOU!!!!” When Castillo called Williams to ask him to reconsider, Williams angrily rebuffed him: “Either you’re an agent trying to set me up or an idiot. I ain’t working with either one of those guys.” But in recordings later played in court, Castillo’s repeated pleas softened Williams somewhat. He hung up saying he’d think about it.”
Bloomberg Press article.
A bad month for the bite mark crew of the American Academy of Sciences and the NIST/DOJ National Commision on Forensic Science.
http://m.nationallawjournal.com/module/alm/app/nlj.do#!/article/1751566393
