Legal Commentary

Forensic Evidence Under Attack

By TChris

If you care about the quality of the forensic evidence that police and prosecutors use to obtain criminal convictions, you'll want to get your hands on a report that the National Academy of Sciences will be releasing later this month. The science practiced in crime labs isn't as miraculous as CSI makes it out to be.

People who have seen it say it is a sweeping critique of many forensic methods that the police and prosecutors rely on, including fingerprinting, firearms identification and analysis of bite marks, blood spatter, hair and handwriting. The report says such analyses are often handled by poorly trained technicians who then exaggerate the accuracy of their methods in court. It concludes that Congress should create a federal agency to guarantee the independence of the field, which has been dominated by law enforcement agencies, say forensic professionals, scholars and scientists who have seen review copies of the study.

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Improving the accuracy of evidence used to obtain convictions isn't likely to be a high priority given the need to address the economy, energy policy, global warming, and all the other problems that were neglected during the Bush years. Maybe the NAS report will change that. A copy should land on Eric Holder's desk the minute it's published, and every member of Congress should make it required reading.

The report may also drive federal legislation if Congress adopts its recommendations. Senator Richard C. Shelby, Republican of Alabama, who has pushed for forensic reform, said, “My hope is that this report will provide an objective and unbiased perspective of the critical needs of our crime labs.”

You can expect (as does the NAS) considerable resistance to reform from law enforcement agencies that prefer to conduct business as usual.

Donald Kennedy, a Stanford scientist who helped select the report’s authors, said federal law enforcement agencies resented “intervention” of mainstream science — especially the National Academy — in the courts. He said the National Institute of Justice, a research arm of the Justice Department, tried to derail the forensic study by refusing to finance it and demanding to review the findings before publication. A bipartisan vote in Congress in 2005 broke the impasse with a $1.5 million appropriation.

Bogus science, after all, helps win convictions. And look at the messes that need to be cleaned up when the truth is exposed:

Perhaps the most powerful example of the National Academy’s prior influence on forensic science was a 2004 report discrediting the F.B.I. technique of matching the chemical signatures of lead in bullets at a crime scene to similar bullets possessed by a suspect. As a result, the agency had to notify hundreds of people who potentially had been wrongfully convicted.

Admitting that they've been deceiving juries all these years isn't something that police and crime labs will easily do.

Enforcement officials, [forensic science expert Paul] Giannelli said, “chose to say they never make mistakes, but they have little scientific support, and this report could blow them out of the water.”

It's time for meaningful reform of questionable crime lab practices. The NAS report should make a convincing case for change even if crime lab personnel resent demands for professionalism and independence.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on February 05, 2009 (boomark / email).