FORENSICS and LAW in FOCUS @ CSIDDS | News and Trends

Camille Tilley, whose daughter Courtney was wrongfully convicted in Maricopa County, was kind enough to post a link to the lawsuit recently brought by Debra Milke against a number of Phoenex and Maricopa County, AZ officials regarding her wrongful conviction for the murder of her 4 1/2 year-old son. This post was contained in a comment to our recent story about the Debra Milke case.

If you haven’t had a chance to read the lawsuit, I think it deserves some special comment. You can access it directly here:  Debra Milke-lawsuit. It’s very interesting to note that Milke is represented in her suit by the firm of Neufeld Scheck & Brustin. You probably know that Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck are the founders of the original Innocence Project.

I’ve read the suit, and if you think this kind of thing can’t happen to you, you need to…

Today, the Arizona Supreme Court refused to grant the prosecution a retrial for Debra Milke. Milke’s conviction had been overturned by the US 9th Circuit for prosecutorial misconduct, and sent back to the Arizona courts.  See the AZ Central story here.

We’ve covered this case extensively. See here, here, here, and here.

And …….. Debra Milke has filed suit against Maricopa County, AZ, the prosecutor (Bill Montgomery), the detective (Armando Saldate), and twelve other officials. See the Courthouse News Service article here.

All I can say is …. YOU GO, GIRL!

Photo by: Heidi Huber/AP

This picture has Ray Krone ( left) immediately after his release from AZ prison in 2000. Part of his story is below, which develops the persona of the Prosecutor Noel Levy who put Ray on  death row. The article was written in 2013 about prosecutorial misconduct in AZ which focused on multiple cases including Krone’s. Ray is now a international public speaker on the subject of “win at all costs” prosecutors and junk forensic science.

He hates bitemark identification.

In fact, during the 10 year fight for freedom, his family reached out to the American Board of Forensic Odontology (ABFO), the “elite” dentists of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS) for an official review of the bitemark aspects of Ray’s case.

The Preamble of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences is it’s public commitment to scientific integrity (and its subsidiary forensic boards like the ABFO). I…

Once convicted, the state of Nevada tries to ignore or deny evidence and even the inmate from public scrutiny.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/03/12/murderinvegas/

DNA mixtures (multiple person DNA blood samples) interpretation disagreement raises DC prosecutors to backlash against respected DC crime lab director Max Houck and his $200 million facility. He says different statistical methods produces varying opinions and he has setup a 4 member review panel. “Nothing is broken” he says in response. These agendized prosecutors want to make a big deal about this mixture issue but blithely ignore the fact it is well known within the appropriate scientific community and already is under extensive scrutiny and ongoing adjustment. They would rather make the entire lab suspect. Obviously, there are backroom politics in play. Somebody in the media should dig into this one.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/dc-prosecutors-criticize-city-crime-labs-handling-of-some-dna-cases/2015/03/05/b5244f88-bea4-11e4-b274-e5209a3bc9a9_story.html