Bulletin: Marlon Williams: D.C. Ballistics: Significant development: (Although it did not help the defendant!) Washington Post reports that DC Court of Appeals ruled that claims that forensic experts can match a bullet or shell casing found at a crime scene to a specific weapon lack a scientific basis and should be barred from criminal trials as misleading. (Although access to the story by reporter Patrick Hsu is limited to subscribers, lawyer Stephen A. Cooper reports on the decision in a Huffington Posr Blog headed "D.C. judge rejects junk science but the law is slow to follow."..." The opinion, by Associate Judge Catherine Easterly, is not binding on criminal prosecutions in D.C. Superior Court, where firearms and ballistics evidence have been introduced in scores of violent felony cases in recent years. Easterly's opinion came in response to an appeal brought by Marlon Williams, 36 of Southeast Washington. He argued that his murder conviction in the 2010 fatal shooting of Min Soo Kang, 37, of Fairfax County should be overturned because, among other things, a D.C. police forensics expert improperly declared a "unique" match between bullet slugs recovered from the victim's car and a handgun found in Williams's bedroom. "Those markings are unique to that gun and that gun only," Luciano Morales testified, according to court filings. "Item Number 58 fired these three bullets," he told the jury . . . .Hsu's article goes on to note that "the U.S. attorney's office for the District called the error 'regrettable,'" agreeing "that forensic practitioners should not state conclusions to an 'absolute' or '100% [degree of] scientific certainty.'" Judge Easterly was having none of it, according to Hsu, telling the government (and all of us) in her opinion that the erroneous expert testimony in Marlon Williams' murder trial was "more than regrettable. It [was] alarming," akin to "the vision of a psychic" with "foundationless faith in what he believes to be true." Despite Judge Easterly's belief that "[t]o uphold the public's trust," errors like those in Williams' case should not be permitted, Williams did not get a new trial, because his lawyer did not object to the faulty expert testimony." (Must Read. HL);

"Almost seven years ago, on February 18, 2009, in what was thought to be a watershed development for the use of forensic science in the courtroom, the National Academy of Sciences issued a groundbreaking report called Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward (2009); the legal community calls it the "NAS report.".........In 2012, longtime federal district judge turned Harvard Law professor, Nancy Gertner, described the NAS report in an article for the American Bar Association as "an extraordinary document": It questioned whether the underlying research justified the claims forensic scientists were regularly making in courts throughout this country, claims that they had been making for decades. It concluded that for many long-used types of forensic science, including fingerprint identification, firearms identification, handwriting and toolmark identification, experts' conclusions were simply not supported by their methodology or training. There was not an adequate basis for individualization, for linking crime scene evidence to a particular defendant, much less for conclusions that were announced to an exceptional degree of certainty: This bullet matches the gun associated with the defendant 'to the exclusion of anyone else in the world,' as one ballistics expert testified, to my astonishment. Fast-forward almost 7 years after the NAS report was issued to an article by Spencer S. Hsu on January 22, 2016, called "D.C. Court of Appeals judge faults overstated forensic gun-match claims"; it was buried in the Public Safety section of the Washington Post. Here is some of it: Claims that forensic experts can match a bullet or shell casing found at a crime scene to a specific weapon lack a scientific basis and should be barred from criminal trials as misleading, a D.C. Court of Appeals judge wrote this week. The opinion, by Associate Judge Catherine Easterly, is not binding on criminal prosecutions in D.C. Superior Court, where firearms and ballistics evidence have been introduced in scores of violent felony cases in recent years. Easterly's opinion came in response to an appeal brought by Marlon Williams, 36 of Southeast Washington. He argued that his murder conviction in the 2010 fatal shooting of Min Soo Kang, 37, of Fairfax County should be overturned because, among other things, a D.C. police forensics expert improperly declared a "unique" match between bullet slugs recovered from the victim's car and a handgun found in Williams's bedroom. "Those markings are unique to that gun and that gun only," Luciano Morales testified, according to court filings. "Item Number 58 fired these three bullets," he told the jury . . . .Hsu's article goes on to note that "the U.S. attorney's office for the District called the error 'regrettable,'" agreeing "that forensic practitioners should not state conclusions to an 'absolute' or '100% [degree of] scientific certainty.'" Judge Easterly was having none of it, according to Hsu, telling the government (and all of us) in her opinion that the erroneous expert testimony in Marlon Williams' murder trial was "more than regrettable. It [was] alarming," akin to "the vision of a psychic" with "foundationless faith in what he believes to be true." Despite Judge Easterly's belief that "[t]o uphold the public's trust," errors like those in Williams' case should not be permitted, Williams did not get a new trial, because his lawyer did not object to the faulty expert testimony.........Optimistically, Hsu tells us that Judge Easterly's opinion "continues a nationwide push for heightened scrutiny of forensic techniques and testimony." "But, in fact," as the Honorable Nancy Gertner observed in 2012, "little [had] changed" since the 2009 NAS report's issuance. And now, four years later, despite Judge Easterly's bold stance, it seems the more people talk about improving the use of forensic evidence in the courtroom, the more things stay the same."
About the Author: Stephen Cooper is a former federal and D.C. public defender. He writes full-time and lives in Woodland Hills, California.