COUNTDOWN: 15 days to Wrongful Conviction Day: (Thursday October 6, 2016);
WASHINGTON POST CRIME AND COURTS REPORTER TOM JACKMAN'S INTRODUCTION TO PROF. BRANDON GARRETT"S COMMENTARY: "A White House advisory council on Tuesday
issued a report urging federal prosecutors and judges to tread
cautiously around forensic science on bullet markings, bite marks, tire
tread marks and complex DNA samples, saying the science on them has not
been proven by testing and research. The Post’s Spencer Hsu has the
full story here,
including strongly dissenting views from police and prosecutors’
groups, and the report from the President’s Council of Advisors on
Science and Technology is included at the bottom.
[White House science advisers urge Justice Dept., judges to raise forensic standards] University
of Virginia law professor Brandon L. Garrett, who has written a book on
flawed forensics and wrongful convictions, titled, “Convicting the
Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong,” argues that the
council’s report is well-founded and supports a 2009 National Academy of
Sciences report that much of forensic evidence used in criminal trials
is “without any meaningful scientific validation.”
(Tom Jackman has been covering crime and courts for The Washington Post
since 1998, after handling similar beats at The Kansas City Star. Tom
helped lead the coverage of the D.C. sniper trials in 2003, and was the
lead writer on The Post’s breaking news coverage of the 2007 Virginia
Tech shootings, which won the Pulitzer Prize. More recently he focused
on the police killing of an unarmed man in Fairfax County, Va., which
ended with the officer convicted of manslaughter and serving jail time.
In 2016 Tom launched the “True Crime” blog which looks at criminal
justice issues and important cases both locally and nationally.)
GIST OF PROF. GARRETT'S COMMENTARY: “They weren’t looking for the truth. They were looking for a conviction,” Keith Harward said after he was exonerated. “They need to stop this stuff.”
Harward
served 33 years in prison in Virginia before his exoneration on April 8
for a Newport News rape and murder that he did not commit. He was
originally convicted based on false testimony by two experts claiming
his teeth matched bite marks on the victim. If it were up to him, such
unreliable forensics would be banned.
[Va. exoneration underscores mounting challenges to bite-mark evidence] In
a remarkable report released this morning, the White House’s Council of
Advisors on Science and Technology prominently called on prosecutors to
do just that: stop using unreliable forensics and stop making
unscientific claims about the forensics. The administration’s
recommendations are an important step toward safeguarding forensics and
preventing tragic wrongful convictions. After all, at Harward’s
trial, it wasn’t just that the experts were wrong. They were
spectacularly wrong. Yet they told the jury that they were totally
certain they were right. One dentist testified to “a very, very, very
high degree of probability those teeth left that bite mark.” A second
dentist testified that “there is just not anyone else that would have
this unique dentition.” They
were both wrong — and it gets worse. In a massive dental dragnet,
police took over 1,000 molds of every Navy sailor on a ship docked at
Newport News. One of those sailors was the actual culprit, but the bite
experts didn’t detect him — DNA tests identified him 33 years later. Stopping
the use of unreliable forensics like bite-mark evidence is just the
beginning. Despite depictions on shows like “CSI,” many types of
forensics can provide valuable information but can also go wrong. Jurors
understandably place great weight on testimony by an expert who claims
to have found a match. But jurors might think differently if they heard
about the real error rates for forensics. Any human technique has
an error rate, and a crucial quality control is to do testing to find
out how good experts really are. It is not enough for fingerprint or
bite-mark examiners to vouch for their own reliability. We must put
their experience to the test. ......... Cases
like Harward’s are not isolated examples. Having read trial transcripts
of DNA exonerees by the hundreds, I have found that more often than
not, the testimony was exaggerated, overstated and erroneous. Of the
first 330 people exonerated by DNA testing, 71 percent, or 235 cases,
involved forensic analysis or testimony. DNA set these people free, but
at the time of their convictions, the bulk of the forensics was flawed.\ It
has taken too long to respond to a national crisis of bad forensics. A
2009 report by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that much of
forensic evidence used in criminal trials is “without any meaningful
scientific validation.” Little changed. To be sure, scientists and
researchers have made strides to improve forensics and how they are used
in courtrooms; I have taken part in such efforts. However, the White
House is right that seven years later, it is time for the use of flawed
forensics to come to an end.
Here is the full report:
Pcast Forensic Science Report Final by
Tom Jackman on Scribd
The entire commentary can be found at:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2016/09/20/calls-for-limits-on-flawed-science-in-court-are-well-founded-a-guest-post/
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. 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 found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html
Please
send any comments or information on other cases and issues of
interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com.
Harold Levy. Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog.
