"A recent legal research paper from the School of Law at Queen
Mary University of London has raised the issue of technology’s impact
upon the criminal justice system, and how its effect may be replacing presumption of innocence with presumption of guilt. A truly frightening prospect. You can download the paper here: Automatic justice? Technology, Crime and Social Control. The nature of evidence in the justice system has steadily been
evolving to be ever more founded in technology, be it legitimate and
proven technology … or not. And the tendency is for the prosecution (and
police) to say, “We have ‘scientific’ evidence of your guilt;
therefore, you are guilty.” And here’s the problem: much of this “technology” has not been
verified and statistically validated. It just gets presented in court as
“science,” and judges, lawyers, and juries don’t have a clue as to
whether or not it’s actually accurate or relevant. How do you know the
latest “computer app” is actually true and accurate? You don’t. We’ve
seen frequent examples of so-called forensic “science” being proven
wrong. Just three of these would be compositional analysis of bullet lead (CABL), microscopic hair comparison, and bite marks.
There are currently thousands of cases under re-investigation as a
result of scientifically flawed FBI hair comparison work and testimony.
There are some infamous cases of fingerprint identifications being
wrong; one of these being the case of Brandon Mayfield. Most people, (including lawyers) don’t understand that there is huge margin for error in locating a cell phone through cell towers. The agents of the justice system – lawyers, judges, police, and especially juries
– have been notoriously ignorant regarding the scientific,
technological, and mathematical issues of evidence. This is why so much
of the justice system depends upon so-called “experts” to try to
understand and explain what all the technology means; but, these
experts, often self-styled, may be legitimate — or they may not be.
Unfortunately the lawyers, judges, and juries have no way to tell.
Defense attorneys will most commonly not technically question (cross
examine) prosecution “experts.” This is too bad, because, in my opinion,
a technically knowledgable and logically-penetrating defense attorney
could just “take apart” many prosecution “experts” – even medical
doctors. The typical legal defense strategy is to present “your own”
expert, which puts the poor jury in the position of having to decide
which of the dueling experts to believe. All this, unfortunately, leaves
the justice system, and the defendant, at the mercy of “experts,” and
there is no scientific way built into the justice system to sort through which “science” is true and correct, and which is junk – and which experts are truly expert, and which are charlatans. From the conclusion of the paper: “Our deepest concern is the
emergence of a potentially unfettered move towards a technologically
driven process of ‘automatic criminal justice.’” "We – all of us – have a problem. The justice system was never
conceived or designed to comprehend the explosion of technology. And the
lawyers and judges are not trained or prepared to deal with it. It’s a
problem."
http://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/2015/10/29/automatic-justice/
