"And certainly no scientific analysis supports the analyst's claim that his method has no error rate. No real science, not even DNA analysis, can claim such perfection.
This is precisely the type of indefensible testimony that sent Robert Lee Stinson to prison for 23 years for a Milwaukee murder he did not commit. In that case, the expert (a forensic dentist) proclaimed that he had matched Stinson's teeth to bite marks on the deceased's body, to the exclusion of all other teeth in the world. DNA not only exonerated Stinson 23 years later, but also identified the true perpetrator.
KEITH FINDLEY: MILWAUKEE WISCONSIN JOURNAL-sentinel; Keith Findley is co-director of the Wisconsin Innocence Project. He is also president of the Innocence Network, an affiliation of more than 60 innocence projects around the world which filed a brief in the court of appeals challenging the ballistics expert's claims in the case discussed."
PHOTO: ROBERT LEE STINSON;
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BACKGROUND: Robert Lee Stinson was convicted of the 1985 murder of a Milwaukee woman. Stinson's conviction rested almost exclusively on bite-mark identification purporting to match Stinson's teeth to bite patterns found on the victim's body. (Dr. L Thomas Johnson, a Wisconsin bite mark analyst, testified at Stinson’s trial for a 1984 murder that bite marks on the victim’s body matched Stinson’s teeth.) In 2005, the Wisconsin Innocence Project accepted Sinton's case and developed two kinds of new evidence. First, DNA testing revealed male DNA in saliva on the victim's sweater, and this DNA excluded Stinson. Second, working with California forensic science expert Christopoher Plourd, WIP arranged for the bite-marks to be re-examined by a panel of four nationally-recognized experts, Dr. Gregory Golden, Dr. David Senn, Dr. Norman Sperber, and Dr. Denise Murmann. Using modern methods, the panel unanimously concluded that Stinson's teeth could not have inflicted the bites. The Milwaukee County District Attorney's Office did not oppose Stinson's motion to reverse his conviction, and he was freed. Bite-mark identification has been implicated in numerous other wrongful convictions around the country.
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"Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen was right recently when he declared, "Murderers should fear forensic science." Forensic science evidence can be a powerful tool against the guilty," Keith Findley's commentary on the Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal-Sentinel, published on Sept. 2, 2010, under the heading, "No silver bullets in forensic evidence," begins.
"It has also proven to be a powerful tool for exonerating the wrongly accused and convicted," the commentary continues.
"But in our exuberance to embrace the wonders of forensic science, we must be careful not to be swept away too readily by any claims presented in the guise of "forensic science." As effective as forensic science evidence can be, it can also be flawed, misleading, remarkably unscientific, and sometimes flat wrong.
Indeed, examination of the nearly 260 DNA exonerations of the last two decades reveals that misleading or erroneous forensic science evidence has been the second most prevalent contributor to wrongful convictions - second only to mistaken eyewitness identification. And a recent analysis of DNA exoneration cases found that prosecution forensic analysts gave invalid or inaccurate testimony in 60% of the trials studied.
It is thus with some irony that Van Hollen celebrated the power of forensic science evidence in a press release about a court of appeals opinion affirming a conviction in a case that included some of the most suspect and least-scientifically grounded forensic "science" testimony possible. In that case, a ballistics expert visually matched a bullet from a murder to the defendant's gun, and testified that no "other gun in the world would have left those particular type of markings on that bullet." He added, "There is no error rate" for his "eyeball analysis."
Ballistics can be a useful tool in identifying sources of bullets from a crime scene. But there is no basis in science for proclaiming that a particular bullet could be matched to a particular gun to the exclusion of all other guns. There is no scientific basis for such assertions because they have not been studied adequately. No scientific principles define how many points of similarity must be identified to call a gun and a bullet a match, or even what protocols analysts should employ when making their visual comparisons.
And certainly no scientific analysis supports the analyst's claim that his method has no error rate. No real science, not even DNA analysis, can claim such perfection.
This is precisely the type of indefensible testimony that sent Robert Lee Stinson to prison for 23 years for a Milwaukee murder he did not commit. In that case, the expert (a forensic dentist) proclaimed that he had matched Stinson's teeth to bite marks on the deceased's body, to the exclusion of all other teeth in the world. DNA not only exonerated Stinson 23 years later, but also identified the true perpetrator.
And it is precisely the kind of testimony that the National Academy of Sciences decried recently as unsupported by scientific evidence and grossly improper.
It is, unfortunately, very common for ballistics experts to make these kinds of exaggerated claims.
In upholding admissibility of such misleading and unfounded testimony, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals did not endorse the sort of testimony or claims made by the analyst; it merely declared that it was bound by Wisconsin law to permit such testimony - dubious as it may be - because in Wisconsin, unlike most other jurisdictions, courts are not permitted to play a significant gatekeeping role in screening out unreliable expert testimony.
In the end, what the case really demonstrates is the importance of taking a fresh look at the way we generate and use forensic science evidence in Wisconsin. If courts are not going to screen out unreliable and exaggerated scientific claims, then the state - through legislation, oversight by prosecutors, or self-regulation by the labs - must ensure that only forensic science evidence truly grounded in scientific principles, and validated by scientific research, is offered in our courts.
Making sure that murderers (and other felons) have good reason to "fear forensic science," and that forensic science does not lead us to pursue innocent people like Robert Lee Stinson, depends on it."
The commentary can be found at:
http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/102105579.html
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://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=120008354894645705&postID=8369513443994476774
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog; hlevy15@gmail.com;