An interesting series airing on NBC News this week.


DNA acquittals shaking up forensic science:
Current methods questioned as more wrongful convictions emerge

By Robert Bazell
Chief science and health correspondent
updated 9:30 a.m. CT, Tues., Feb. 12, 2008

Last week sheriff�s deputies in Chickasaw County, Miss., arrested Justin Albert Johnson for the 1992 rape and murder of a 3-year-old girl.

What makes the case noteworthy is that another man, Kennedy Brewer, was convicted and sentenced to death for the same crime. Brewer spent 12 years in various prisons and jails, including death row, at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parcham.

DNA evidence exonerated Brewer in 2001. But because certain prosecutors were reluctant to admit they made a mistake, Brewer remained imprisoned until last August. Charges against him are still technically pending, but they will likely be dropped soon.

Brewer�s case is yet another victory for the Innocence Project, a non-profit group that used DNA evidence to overturn 212 cases since 1992. Fifteen of the accused had been sentenced to death.

Each of these wrongful convictions raises a profound question: What evidence was used to reach a guilty verdict in the first place? As part of a series "Who We Are: The Truth About DNA," airing on "NBC Nightly News" this week, on Wednesday I will explore how DNA testing is shaking up the world of forensic science.

�Misleading results�
Courts believe DNA evidence because it is scientifically proven. It originated in the worlds of science, with molecular biology and clinical medicine. But in criminology different rules apply. With the number of DNA acquittals rising, many defense attorneys and prosecutors say it's time to take a hard look at current forensic techniques.

For example, at Brewer�s trial there were bite marks on the child. A local expert testified they matched Brewer�s teeth. Brewer�s attorneys now contend animals bit the child after her body was thrown in a pond.

In another case, Wilton Dedge spent 22 years in a Florida prison, convicted of the rape and slashing of a 17-year-old girl, in part because an expert testified that hairs found on the victim matched his. DNA analysis of the same hairs were the proof of Dedge�s innocence.

In a laboratory where he teaches forensics at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, Dr. Lawrence Koblinsky showed me two hairs under a microscope that certainly looked identical, but were not.

�We learned that often microscopic analysis of hairs can give you misleading results," he says. �In other words, what looks like a perfect match turns out not always to be a perfect match, and that we know through DNA testing.�


Most forensic techniques �started because some officer had a case he had to solve, and they had to come up with some new angle on it,� Peter J. Neufeld, founder of the Innocence Project with his law partner Barry C. Scheck, told me. "So, they invented a technique. And those techniques, whether they're bite marks, or hair or fiber, never went through the kind of robust research that DNA was subjected to.�

Congress has asked the National Academy of Sciences to study the validity of current forensic techniques. The report, due out this summer, could shake up the field even more.

Not like on TV
One issue nowadays is the false impression the public often gets from crime shows like �Law and Order� and �CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.�

�The truth is, 80 percent of the stuff you see on TV hasn't been invented yet," Neufeld says. �It's good TV, but it's not realistically used in any crime laboratory in America or in the world, for that matter.�

But Neufeld and many others argue that is a tiny concern compared to what real crime labs really can and cannot do.

People are often convicted by eyewitnesses, an informant, or someone with a grudge. Even witnesses with the best of intentions can be totally wrong, psychology tests show.

Physical evidence will always be important. Unfortunately, there is no DNA to be found at the scenes of many serious crimes. Forensic techniques need to be a good as possible and courts and juries need to understand the limits.

It is not just a question of freeing those wrongfully convicted, but catching the real perpetrators of the crimes.

� 2008 MSNBC Interactive
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23113417/

Note that both "bogus" technologies, as you name them, are now absorbed within the realm of DNA testing, so this article, like most of its ilk, is effectively obsolete.

Once upon a time people believed witches were made of wood!

Yes there will be mistakes. Yes some things we do today will be quaint compared to future technology. Just remember that everyone is doing the best they can and the chances of being wrongly punished because of a false positive or bogus test are smaller today then they've ever been.

Today's forensic tests are infinately better than burning someone at the stake to test if they are made of wood.

"the chances of being wrongly punished because of a false positive or bogus test are smaller today then they've ever been."

I'm not so certain this is true, because today there are so many tests (with attendant experts) out there - many of them with no real scientific grounding. What's worse, even if the theory underlying the science is valid, the actual practice is often undertaken by people/organizations with less than stellar competence. Example 1: The Houston crime lab fiasco. On CSI you see all these hyper-smart highly motivated experts working with 'state of the art' technology in an aesthetically pleasing laboratory....reality is often an under-achieving lab tech with a 'safe' government job in a crowded, dirty, underfunded, basement lab who knows there is little chance of being caught 'drylabbing.'

Or take an entire field like "arson investigation", which has been turned on its head in the past few years by serious scientific study which has undercut much of what has been testified about in courtrooms for decades. As the magazine "Fire Chief" pointed out:

As early as 1986, the landmark treatise "Scientific Evidence in Criminal Cases" stated: "Many of the arson indicators which are commonplace assertions in arson prosecutions are deficient for want of any established scientific validity. In many instances the dearth of published material in the scientific literature substantiating the validity of certain arson indicators should be sufficient grounds to mount a challenge to the general scientific acceptability of such indicators. It is clear, from the cases, however, that arson indicators are given a talismanic quality that they have not earned in the crucible of scientific validation." A.A. Moenssens, F.E.Inbau and J.E. Starrs, Foundation Press, Mineola, N.Y., 1986


I welcome science in the courtroom, but having something of a sci/tech background I fear that too many people see it as a panacea. Of course, then there is the whole issue of trying to explain any of it to an 'average jury'.

But then if we just used lie detectors we wouldn't need juries...

I think there is a distinction between "bogus" forensics and labs that have broken down. The accreditation requirements enacted by the Legislature in 2003 will help prevent breakdowns like the HPD crime lab fiasco.

As to the various forensic science disciplines, new technology and proper application of scientific method will create some obsolescence and rethinking. Other disciplines will adapt. Hair identification, for example, is now used to select hair for DNA testing. In this context, one of the leading mitochondrial DNA labs has found that hair examiners get their identification right about 90% of the time. YMMV. As to the bitemark evidence discussed in the article, a medical examiner or evidence tech who seeks a bitemark should swab the mark for DNA testing as that is a prime spot for DNA deposition by the biter.

While some arson methodologies have been undermined, it is important to remember that this is a small number of case in our docket, and most arson cases are ultimately cleared by other means.

This also goes to show you that you need to do more with your cases than rely on some single piece of forensic evidence.

On the other hand, merely barfing back one-sided attacks by anti-law enforcement types on this forum is not going to help you do your job better.

Once upon a time people believed witches were made of wood!

Witches are made of wood, and they weight the same as a duck, as this film clip of forensic science at work clearly demonstrates:

YouTube "Monty Python: She's a Witch!"

She turned me into a Newt!

... I got better.

Insert your most inappropriate "wood" joke here ...

-----------------------------

Pleas for condemned Saudi 'witch'
By Heba Saleh
BBC News
February 14, 2008

Human Rights Watch has appealed to Saudi Arabia to halt the execution of a woman convicted of witchcraft.

In a letter to King Abdullah, the rights group described the trial and conviction of Fawza Falih as a miscarriage of justice.

The illiterate woman was detained by religious police in 2005 and allegedly beaten and forced to fingerprint a confession that she could not read.

Among her accusers was a man who alleged she made him impotent.

Human Rights Watch said that Ms Falih had exhausted all her chances of appealing against her death sentence and she could only now be saved if King Abdullah intervened.

'Undefined' crime

The US-based group is asking the Saudi ruler to void Ms Falih's conviction and to bring charges against the religious police who detained her and are alleged to have mistreated her.

Its letter to King Abdullah says the woman was tried for the undefined crime of witchcraft and that her conviction was on the basis of the written statements of witnesses who said that she had bewitched them.

Human Rights Watch says the trial failed to meet the safeguards in the Saudi justice system.

The confession which the defendant was forced to fingerprint was not even read out to her, the group says.

Also Ms Falih and her representatives were not allowed to attend most of the hearings.

When an appeal court decided she should not be executed, the law courts imposed the death sentence again, arguing that it would be in the public interest.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/7244579.stm