STORY: "Jeff Sessions Wants Courts to Rely Less on Science and More on "Science," by reporter Pema Levy, published by Mother Jones on April 24, 2017. Thanks to Dr. Mike Bowers at CSIDDS (Forensics in Focus) for bringing this story to our attention.
GIST: "On
April 10, a group of lawyers, scientists, judges, crime lab
technicians, law enforcement officers, and academics gathered in
Washington, DC, for the final quarterly meeting of the National
Commission on Forensic Science, a group whose two-year charter expired
in late April...The message was
clear: The era of independent scientific review of forensics is over. Julia Leighton, a commission member and retired public defender,
conveyed the disappointed mood of the room when she spoke a few minutes
later. "We have to understand the importance of this juncture that we're
at, where we're really grappling with, frankly, are we telling the
truth as a matter of science to judges and jurors?" she said. "And that
can't be put on hold. It is inconsistent with the Department of
Justice's mission to put that on hold." For years, scientists and defense attorneys have fought an uphill
battle to bring scientific rigor into a field that, despite its name, is
largely devoid of science. Evidence regularly presented in court
rooms—such as bite-mark, hair, and lead bullet analysis—that for decades
have been employed by prosecutors to convict and even execute
defendants are actually incapable of definitively linking an individual
to a crime. Other methods, including fingerprint analysis, are less
rigorous and more subjective than experts—and popular culture—let on. "Clinical laboratories must meet higher
standards to be allowed to diagnose strep throat than forensic labs must
meet to put a defendant on death row." But on the witness stand, experts routinely overstate the certainty
of their forensic methods.........DNA emerged as a reliable tool in the late 1980s. It has since exonerated tens of thousands of suspects during criminal investigations and more than 349 convicted defendants, according to the Innocence Project. "I think what we've seen with the DNA exonerations," Paul Giannelli, a member of the commission, told Mother Jones at its final meeting, "is that there's a heck of a lot more innocent people in prison than anyone dreamed of.".........In 2009, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the
bombshell 2009 NAS report. In his opening statement, Sessions, the
committee's top ranking Republican at the time, expressed
skepticism of the report's findings. "I don't accept the idea that they
seem to suggest that fingerprints is not a proven technology," he said.
"I don't think we should suggest that those proven scientific
principles that we've been using for decades are somehow uncertain."
Instead, Sessions' worried that the NAS report would be used by defense
attorneys during cross-examination to discredit exerts, leaving
prosecutors "to fend off challenges on the most basic issues in a
trial."The hearing took place in the shadow of new information about the
case of Cameron Todd Willingham, a Texas man who was executed in 2004
after he was found guilty of murdering his three children by setting
fire to their home. The principal evidence prosecutors used against
Willingham was the findings of two fire investigators who claimed that
the conflagration could only have been caused by arson. Yet even before
Willingham's execution, the arson evidence against him had been debunked
by a premier fire expert, though Texas' clemency process had failed to
heed the report. In August 2009, a few weeks before the Senate hearing, a
fire scientist hired to review the case issued a blistering report
denouncing the original investigators' work as "characteristic of
mystics or psychics," not scientists. A few weeks later, The New Yorker published a detailed investigation of the Willingham case. Based on flawed forensic science, an innocent man had been executed. "I don't think we should suggest that those
proven scientific principles that we've been using for decades are
somehow uncertain," Sessions said. When Sessions had his turn to question the witness panel, he brought
up the Willingham case. Sessions read extensively from a piece of
commentary submitted to a small Texas newspaper by John Jackson, one of
the prosecutors in the Willingham case, who had gone on to become a
local judge. In his op-ed, Jackson claimed that despite the flawed
forensic evidence, Willingham was guilty, and listed bullet points
intended to prove Willingham's guilt. But Jackson's points read like
someone in denial of the newfound facts about the case—in fact, the
author of The New Yorker piece, David Grann, had already
written his own rebuttal to Jackson's list by the time of the Senate
hearing. Still, Sessions proceeded to read several misleading facts
about the case. "That does not excuse a flawed forensic report,"
Sessions concluded. "But it looks like there was other evidence in the
case indicating guilt." The 2009 investigation into the Willingham case was the work of
Texas' own Forensic Science Commission—a state-level version of the
national commission that Sessions just closed down. In the last few
years, the Texas commission has received increased funding and responsibilities from the state
Legislature, becoming a national leader in reviewing the scientific
validity of forensic disciplines. It has taken up issues such as hair
analysis and problems with DNA testing, and last year it recommended a ban on using bite-mark evidence in the courtroom. Texas, not Washington, is now carrying the torch for forensic reformers. At the final meeting of the National Commission on Forensic Science,
the group held a session on wrongful convictions, featuring Keith
Harward, who had served 33 years in Virginia for a rape and murder based
on bite-mark evidence before being exonerated
by DNA evidence. When the panel ended, a few members expressed a sense
of helplessness now that the commission was shutting down. John Hollway,
a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, rose to
apologize to Harward for the decades he lost in prison. "Your story
brings up the tragedy of putting this commission on hold," said Hollway,
who was not a commission member but was involved in subcommittee work.
Hollway said he worried that "we will lose time to help the other people
like you who are incarcerated improperly or, worse, the people who are
still to be incarcerated improperly because we cannot solve these
problems yet.""
The entire story can be found at:
The entire story can be found at:
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/
