"These weren't a few rogue analysts; the crime lab's problems extend across a wide array of forensic disciplines. Until 1997, the lab's serology unit didn't release negative test results as a matter of policy. If tests showed that a substance that police claimed was blood wasn't in fact blood, analysts simply kept those results to themselves.
Greg Taylor was wrongly convicted precisely because of this policy. A substance that police falsely identified as blood was found in Taylor’s truck. But the field tests that police use to find blood at a crime scene have a high margin for error. More sophisticated lab tests showed that the substance wasn’t blood, but a SBI analyst testified at Taylor's innocence hearing that technicians were told to ignore these tests if they contradicted the field-test results.
In another case, an attorney for a woman accused of killing her mother was shocked to learn that the lab's DNA tests on blood found at the crime scene matched his client. He called the lab and asked them to retest. They refused. He was finally able to obtain a court order for a new test. It was negative. It turned out that a lab technician had swapped the sample provided by his client with blood taken from the crime scene."
RADLEY BALKO: (Wikipedia informs us that: "(Radley) Balko is senior editor at Reason magazine. Previously, he was a policy analyst for the Cato Institute, specializing in vice and civil liberties issues. He writes on drug policy, police misconduct, obesity, alcohol and tobacco, and civil liberties. He also writes on trade and globalization issues and more generally on politics and culture. He was also a biweekly columnist for Fox News from 2002 until 2009. His work has been published in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Playboy, TIME magazine, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Slate, Reason, Worth magazine, Canada's National Post, and the Chicago Tribune. He blogs at The Agitator, his personal weblog, and for Reason's Hit & Run blog. He has appeared on CNN, CNBC, Fox News, MSNBC, and National Public Radio. Balko's work on "no-knock" drug raids was profiled in The New York Times, and cited by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer in his dissent in the case Hudson v. Michigan. He is also credited with breaking and reporting the Cory Maye case. His work on the Maye case was also cited by the Mississippi Supreme Court. He has also written extensively about the Ryan Frederick case and the raid on Cheye Calvo's home.")
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"These weren't a few rogue analysts; the crime lab's problems extend across a wide array of forensic disciplines. Until 1997, the lab's serology unit didn't release negative test results as a matter of policy. If tests showed that a substance that police claimed was blood wasn't in fact blood, analysts simply kept those results to themselves.
Greg Taylor was wrongly convicted precisely because of this policy. A substance that police falsely identified as blood was found in Taylor’s truck. But the field tests that police use to find blood at a crime scene have a high margin for error. More sophisticated lab tests showed that the substance wasn’t blood, but a SBI analyst testified at Taylor's innocence hearing that technicians were told to ignore these tests if they contradicted the field-test results.
In another case, an attorney for a woman accused of killing her mother was shocked to learn that the lab's DNA tests on blood found at the crime scene matched his client. He called the lab and asked them to retest. They refused. He was finally able to obtain a court order for a new test. It was negative. It turned out that a lab technician had swapped the sample provided by his client with blood taken from the crime scene.
North Carolina's Corrupted Crime Lab."
RADLEY BALKO: REASON;
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"Greg Taylor served 16 years in prison after he was falsely convicted of murdering a prostitute in Raleigh, North Carolina. He was released in February by a special three-judge panel after it was discovered the blood police claimed to have found in his SUV wasn't blood at all. In the wake of that debacle, North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper ordered two retired FBI agents to conduct an investigation on the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) crime lab. The report came out last week, and it is damning," Radley Balko's 23 August 2010 post published in his Blog "Reason" begins, under the heading, "A damning state report finds systematic abuse, including in death penalty cases."
"The report found that SBI agents withheld exculpatory evidence or distorted evidence in more than 230 cases over a 16-year period. Three of those cases resulted in execution. There was widespread lying, corruption, and pressure from prosecutors and other law enforcement officials on crime lab analysts to produce results that would help secure convictions. And the pressure worked," the post continues.
"A stunning accompanying investigation by the Raleigh News & Observer found that though the crime lab’s results were presented to juries with the authoritativeness of science, laboratory procedures were geared toward just one outcome: putting as many people in prison as possible. The paper discovered an astonishingly frank 2007 training manual for analysts, still in use as of last week, instructing researchers that “A good reputation and calm demeanor also enhances an analyst's conviction rate.” Defense attorneys, the manual warned, often “put words into the analyst's mouth to try and raise inaccuracies.” The guide also instructs analysts to beware of “defense whores”—analysts hired by defense attorneys to challenge their testimony.
Forensic science in America is corrupted by a fundamental conflict of interest. In far too many states, crime labs fall under the auspices of law enforcement, usually reporting to the state attorney general. A forensic analyst's real aim should be to follow the science, even if results prove disappointing to bosses who are trying to secure convictions. But the pressure from prosecutors, even when it’s not overt (which it often is), produces bias even in the work of the most fair-minded analysts.
The relationships between SBI crime lab researchers and North Carolina prosecutors aren’t just cozy, they’re downright cuddly. The News & Observer reports that in one case two blood-spatter specialists ran through multiple experiments in order to produce even one that would make the blood patterns on a defendant's shorts support the prosecution's case. The two analysts are seen on video high-fiving after finally producing the desired result.
For those clinging to the notion that analysis in a law enforcement-managed laboratory can be independent, the newspaper uncovered prosecutor reviews of crime lab analysts indicating the contrary. In 2003, for example, prosecutor Ann Kirby, wrote in a review of a drug analyst, "If Lisa Edwards gets any better on the witness stand, the Johnston County defense bar is going to try and have her banned from the county!"
These weren't a few rogue analysts; the crime lab's problems extend across a wide array of forensic disciplines. Until 1997, the lab's serology unit didn't release negative test results as a matter of policy. If tests showed that a substance that police claimed was blood wasn't in fact blood, analysts simply kept those results to themselves.
Greg Taylor was wrongly convicted precisely because of this policy. A substance that police falsely identified as blood was found in Taylor’s truck. But the field tests that police use to find blood at a crime scene have a high margin for error. More sophisticated lab tests showed that the substance wasn’t blood, but a SBI analyst testified at Taylor's innocence hearing that technicians were told to ignore these tests if they contradicted the field-test results.
In another case, an attorney for a woman accused of killing her mother was shocked to learn that the lab's DNA tests on blood found at the crime scene matched his client. He called the lab and asked them to retest. They refused. He was finally able to obtain a court order for a new test. It was negative. It turned out that a lab technician had swapped the sample provided by his client with blood taken from the crime scene.
The SBI crime lab scandal is only the most recent story of forensics malfeasance. In recent years there have been forensics scandals in Virginia, Maryland, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Nebraska, California, Michigan, Texas, and at the FBI. And this is only a partial list. At some point, it becomes sensible to conclude that these scandals aren't the result of isolated bad actors, but of a system that produces them.
Last year the National Academy of Sciences released a scathing report on the use of forensics in the courtroom, finding systemic problems ranging from analysts routinely overstating the implications of their test results, to the widespread use of forensic specialties like bite-mark analysis that have little basis in science at all.
Most forensic disciplines were invented by police investigators, not scientists. Courts have allowed these disciplines to be admitted into evidence before they've been subjected to any serious scrutiny from the scientific community. The methods used in most crime labs disregard critical scientific principles such as blind testing, competency testing, peer review, and statistical analysis. Yet when a forensic specialist testifies in the courtroom, his testimony usually carries the weight and veneer of actual science. (See here for some suggested reforms.)
North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper is a good illustration of the political hurdles standing in the way of fixing any of these problems. Cooper deserves praise for ordering such a comprehensive investigation. It takes guts for a politican to risk being labeled “soft on crime,” especially a politician who is a current or former prosecutor.
Still, Cooper was made aware of the problems in SBI as long ago as 2005, when he was pressed by local media and activists to look into how Floyd Brown, a developmentally disabled man who can't recite the alphabet past the letter K, was able to articulate to SBI investigators a detailed confession about how he murdered an elderly woman in his neighborhood. Brown seved 14 years in a mental institution before he was exonerated in 2007. Cooper didn't order an investigation into Brown's case until last year, and even then only in the face of a lawsuit.
And even after Cooper’s own damning report and the series of follow-on investigations by the News & Observer, Cooper is treating the SBI scandal as if it were a series of isolated cases and not a systemic problem. Cooper told the paper he sees nothing wrong with lab researchers consulting with prosecutors before performing their analysis, a practice proven to produce biased test results (SBI analysts are also discouraged from consulting with defense attorneys). He also objected to moving the crime lab to a different government agency so that analysts wouldn't be reporting to prosecutors, telling the News & Observer, "You don't want to hobble law enforcement by removing key tools such as technology to prevent them from solving crime." No, you don't. But moving the lab wouldn't do that. It would merely prevent analysts from feeling they need to please prosecutors by providing them with favorable test results."
The post can be found at:
http://reason.com/archives/2010/08/23/north-carolinas-corrupted-crim
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: 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 accessed at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith
For a breakdown of some of the cases, issues and controversies this Blog is currently following, please turn to:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2010/08/new-feature-cases-issues-and_15.html
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog; hlevy15@gmail.com;