Tuesday, April 25, 2017

US Attorney General Jeff Sessions' war on science/forensics: (Part 13): Important perspective: "Clinical laboratories must meet higher standards to be allowed to diagnose strep throat than forensic labs must meet to put a defendant on death row."...Reporter Pema Levy; Mother Jones..."The message was clear: The era of independent scientific review of forensics is over. Julia Leighton, a commission member and retired public defender, conveyed the disappointed mood of the room when she spoke a few minutes later. "We have to understand the importance of this juncture that we're at, where we're really grappling with, frankly, are we telling the truth as a matter of science to judges and jurors?"


STORY: "Jeff Sessions Wants Courts to Rely Less on Science and More on "Science," by reporter Pema Levy, published by Mother Jones on April 24, 2017. Thanks to Dr. Mike Bowers at CSIDDS (Forensics in Focus) for bringing this story to our attention.

GIST: "On April 10, a group of lawyers, scientists, judges, crime lab technicians, law enforcement officers, and academics gathered in Washington, DC, for the final quarterly meeting of the National Commission on Forensic Science, a group whose two-year charter expired in late April...The message was clear: The era of independent scientific review of forensics is over. Julia Leighton, a commission member and retired public defender, conveyed the disappointed mood of the room when she spoke a few minutes later. "We have to understand the importance of this juncture that we're at, where we're really grappling with, frankly, are we telling the truth as a matter of science to judges and jurors?" she said. "And that can't be put on hold. It is inconsistent with the Department of Justice's mission to put that on hold." For years, scientists and defense attorneys have fought an uphill battle to bring scientific rigor into a field that, despite its name, is largely devoid of science. Evidence regularly presented in court rooms—such as bite-mark, hair, and lead bullet analysis—that for decades have been employed by prosecutors to convict and even execute defendants are actually incapable of definitively linking an individual to a crime. Other methods, including fingerprint analysis, are less rigorous and more subjective than experts—and popular culture—let on. "Clinical laboratories must meet higher standards to be allowed to diagnose strep throat than forensic labs must meet to put a defendant on death row." But on the witness stand, experts routinely overstate the certainty of their forensic methods.........DNA emerged as a reliable tool in the late 1980s. It has since exonerated tens of thousands of suspects during criminal investigations and more than 349 convicted defendants, according to the Innocence Project. "I think what we've seen with the DNA exonerations," Paul Giannelli, a member of the commission, told Mother Jones at its final meeting, "is that there's a heck of a lot more innocent people in prison than anyone dreamed of.".........In 2009, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the bombshell 2009 NAS report. In his opening statement, Sessions, the committee's top ranking Republican at the time, expressed skepticism of the report's findings. "I don't accept the idea that they seem to suggest that fingerprints is not a proven technology," he said. "I don't think we should suggest that those proven scientific principles that we've been using for decades are somehow uncertain." Instead, Sessions' worried that the NAS report would be used by defense attorneys during cross-examination to discredit exerts, leaving prosecutors "to fend off challenges on the most basic issues in a trial."The hearing took place in the shadow of new information about the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, a Texas man who was executed in 2004 after he was found guilty of murdering his three children by setting fire to their home. The principal evidence prosecutors used against Willingham was the findings of two fire investigators who claimed that the conflagration could only have been caused by arson. Yet even before Willingham's execution, the arson evidence against him had been debunked by a premier fire expert, though Texas' clemency process had failed to heed the report. In August 2009, a few weeks before the Senate hearing, a fire scientist hired to review the case issued a blistering report denouncing the original investigators' work as "characteristic of mystics or psychics," not scientists. A few weeks later, The New Yorker published a detailed investigation of the Willingham case. Based on flawed forensic science, an innocent man had been executed. "I don't think we should suggest that those proven scientific principles that we've been using for decades are somehow uncertain," Sessions said. When Sessions had his turn to question the witness panel, he brought up the Willingham case. Sessions read extensively from a piece of commentary submitted to a small Texas newspaper by John Jackson, one of the prosecutors in the Willingham case, who had gone on to become a local judge. In his op-ed, Jackson claimed that despite the flawed forensic evidence, Willingham was guilty, and listed bullet points intended to prove Willingham's guilt. But Jackson's points read like someone in denial of the newfound facts about the case—in fact, the author of The New Yorker piece, David Grann, had already written his own rebuttal to Jackson's list by the time of the Senate hearing. Still, Sessions proceeded to read several misleading facts about the case. "That does not excuse a flawed forensic report," Sessions concluded. "But it looks like there was other evidence in the case indicating guilt." The 2009 investigation into the Willingham case was the work of Texas' own Forensic Science Commission—a state-level version of the national commission that Sessions just closed down. In the last few years, the Texas commission has received increased funding and responsibilities from the state Legislature, becoming a national leader in reviewing the scientific validity of forensic disciplines. It has taken up issues such as hair analysis and problems with DNA testing, and last year it recommended a ban on using bite-mark evidence in the courtroom. Texas, not Washington, is now carrying the torch for forensic reformers. At the final meeting of the National Commission on Forensic Science, the group held a session on wrongful convictions, featuring Keith Harward, who had served 33 years in Virginia for a rape and murder based on bite-mark evidence before being exonerated by DNA evidence. When the panel ended, a few members expressed a sense of helplessness now that the commission was shutting down. John Hollway, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, rose to apologize to Harward for the decades he lost in prison. "Your story brings up the tragedy of putting this commission on hold," said Hollway, who was not a commission member but was involved in subcommittee work. Hollway said he worried that "we will lose time to help the other people like you who are incarcerated improperly or, worse, the people who are still to be incarcerated improperly because we cannot solve these problems yet.""

The entire story can be found at:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/04/sessions-forensic-science

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy; Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog;