whoknew
Footballguy
This is a long article by Radley Balko so I won't post it all - just the intro. But there are good suggestions in here on how to fix forensic science in the US - which is clearly broken. And that broken science is leading to wrongful convictions.
I think Trump was wrong to let the National Commission on Forensic Science's charter expire but, you know ... Obama. Trump has, though, seemed open to changes in the criminal justice system (despite nominating Jeff Sessions and Bob Barr as AGs). Hopefully he will reconsider this issue too.
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Ten years ago, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) published a groundbreaking study on the use of forensics in criminal trials. The study found that, in the “pattern matching” fields of forensics in particular, expert witnesses had been vastly overstating the significance and certainty of their analyses. For some fields, such as bite-mark analysis, the study found no scientific research at all to support the central claims of practitioners.
Since then, other panels populated with scientists have come to similar conclusions, including the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and the Texas Forensic Science Commission. In 2013, Congress and the Obama administration responded to these reports by creating the National Commission on Forensic Science, a panel of lawyers and scientists charged with coming up with standards and protocols in these fields. The Trump administration then allowed the commission’s charter to expire in April 2017.
In covering these issues, I have found that there are lots of people willing to talk about the problems with forensics in the courtroom. But solutions are harder to come by — especially solutions that would be politically feasible, findable, and fit the current framework of our judicial-legal system. So I decided to seek solutions from those who work in the areas of law, science and forensics. I sent an inquiry to 33 people, 14 of whom were willing to email answers to a set of six questions. All could be called critics of the way forensics are used in criminal cases today. You can read their full biographies here.
I think Trump was wrong to let the National Commission on Forensic Science's charter expire but, you know ... Obama. Trump has, though, seemed open to changes in the criminal justice system (despite nominating Jeff Sessions and Bob Barr as AGs). Hopefully he will reconsider this issue too.
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Ten years ago, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) published a groundbreaking study on the use of forensics in criminal trials. The study found that, in the “pattern matching” fields of forensics in particular, expert witnesses had been vastly overstating the significance and certainty of their analyses. For some fields, such as bite-mark analysis, the study found no scientific research at all to support the central claims of practitioners.
Since then, other panels populated with scientists have come to similar conclusions, including the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and the Texas Forensic Science Commission. In 2013, Congress and the Obama administration responded to these reports by creating the National Commission on Forensic Science, a panel of lawyers and scientists charged with coming up with standards and protocols in these fields. The Trump administration then allowed the commission’s charter to expire in April 2017.
In covering these issues, I have found that there are lots of people willing to talk about the problems with forensics in the courtroom. But solutions are harder to come by — especially solutions that would be politically feasible, findable, and fit the current framework of our judicial-legal system. So I decided to seek solutions from those who work in the areas of law, science and forensics. I sent an inquiry to 33 people, 14 of whom were willing to email answers to a set of six questions. All could be called critics of the way forensics are used in criminal cases today. You can read their full biographies here.
