'The
Justice Department on Monday proposed expanding its review of forensic
testimony by the FBI Laboratory beyond hair matching to widely used
techniques such as fingerprint examinations and bullet-tracing. Officials
also said that if the initial review finds systemic problems in a
forensic discipline, expert testimony could be reviewed from
laboratories beyond the FBI that do analysis for DOJ. “The
authority afforded to scientific experts is second to none, and we must
make sure that our statements are clearly supported by sound science,”
Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said. Yates
linked the expanded review to an FBI and department finding last year
that nearly all FBI hair examiners overstated testimony about hair
matches incriminating defendants during the two decades before 2000..........Wroblewski
on Monday proposed beginning with techniques including fingerprints,
ballistics, handwriting, shoe and tire treads, fibers, glass and soil,
among others. Cases in which FBI experts testified would be sampled
regardless of whether a defendant was convicted, he suggested. Justice
Department officials continued to leave open questions of how many
cases would be reviewed, what standards would be used and over what time
period, whether and how convicted defendants or the public would be
notified if isolated errors are found, and what degree of problems would
trigger more exhaustive review and notification. Wroblewski (Jonathan Wroblewski, head of the Justice Department’s office of legal policy)
asked for input on who will review sample cases, and said that the
department hoped to begin executing reviews this year. “It’s both a very
important project, and I think it’s going to be a very, very difficult
project,” he said. To assist the effort, Yates’s office has
recruited Victor W. Weedn, outgoing president of the American Academy of
Forensic Scientists and chairman of the George Washington University
Department of Forensic Sciences, officials said. Officials said
the review does not necessarily mean that there were problems with the
science of the underlying techniques, but they said it indicates that
the department is committed to establishing best practices to identify
and address problems — possibly through ongoing, periodic tests of
various disciplines and labs. Yates’s
proposal is among the broadest responses to a National Academy of
Sciences panel report in February 2009 that questioned subjective
comparisons of evidence by experts. The panel concluded that although
examiners had long claimed to be able to match pattern evidence to a
source with “absolute” or “scientific” certainty, only DNA analysis had
been validated through statistical research.........“What has crept into the forensic field are forensic sciences
that are not sciences, and that is one of the basic problems,” said
commission member Vincent Di Maio, presiding officer of the Texas
Forensic Science Commission and editor-in-chief of the American Journal
of Forensic Medicine and Pathology/"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/justice-department-frames-expanded-review-of-fbi-forensic-testimony/2016/03/20/ed536702-eed9-11e5-85a6-2132cf446d0a_story.html
