PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Convicted through the power of forensic fire science, Parks was sentenced to life in prison without parole. She has steadfastly proclaimed her innocence. Nearly 30 years later, a revolution in the understanding of fire has exposed many of the scientific certainties of the era as guesswork in disguise — including forensic evidence used to convict Parks that was flat-out wrong. At her trial, the prosecution’s lead arson expert incorrectly claimed that a common and very intense burning known as flashover did not occur in the fire. Flashover can obscure a fire’s origins and make an accident look like arson, and its absence allowed the prosecution to argue with powerful certainty that the fire was deliberately set. Research since then has led to more accurate ways of looking for evidence of flashover and a greater understanding of its misleading effects, and even prosecution fire experts acknowledge now that it did occur in Parks’ case. Yet she remains in California’s women’s prison in Chowchilla. Welcome to the real world of forensics, where the wizardry lionized by the “CSI” television empire turns out to have serious flaws. The science of bite-mark comparisons, ballistic comparisons, fingerprint matching, blood-spatter analysis, arson investigation and other common forensic techniques has been tainted by systematic error, cognitive bias (sometimes called “tunnel vision”) and little or no research or data to support it. There is, in short, very little science behind some of the forensic “sciences” used in court to imprison and sometimes execute people."
GIST: "On
an April night in 1989, Jo Ann Parks survived a house fire in the
Southern California city of Bell that claimed the lives of her three
small children. Two years later, investigators announced that the
seeming accident was actually a monstrous crime in which the 23-year-old
waitress had set several fires, then barricaded her 4-year-old son
inside a closet so he could not escape. Convicted through the power of
forensic fire science, Parks was sentenced to life in prison without
parole. She has steadfastly proclaimed her innocence. Nearly
30 years later, a revolution in the understanding of fire has exposed
many of the scientific certainties of the era as guesswork in disguise —
including forensic evidence used to convict Parks that was flat-out
wrong. At
her trial, the prosecution’s lead arson expert incorrectly claimed that
a common and very intense burning known as flashover did not occur in
the fire. Flashover can obscure a fire’s origins and make an accident
look like arson, and its absence allowed the prosecution to argue with
powerful certainty that the fire was deliberately set. Research since
then has led to more accurate ways of looking for evidence of flashover
and a greater understanding of its misleading effects, and even
prosecution fire experts acknowledge now that it did occur in Parks’
case. Yet she remains in California’s women’s prison in Chowchilla. Welcome
to the real world of forensics, where the wizardry lionized by the
“CSI” television empire turns out to have serious flaws. The science of
bite-mark comparisons, ballistic comparisons, fingerprint matching,
blood-spatter analysis, arson investigation and other common forensic
techniques has been tainted by systematic error, cognitive bias
(sometimes called “tunnel vision”) and little or no research or data to
support it. There is, in short, very little science behind some of the
forensic “sciences” used in court to imprison and sometimes execute
people. Welcome
to the real world of forensics, where the wizardry lionized by the
“CSI” television empire turns out to have serious flaws. The
rigorously researched and peer-reviewed newcomer to forensics, DNA
matching, has thrown into sharp relief the lack of scientific rigor in
many other forensic disciplines. According to data gathered by the
National Registry of Exonerations, of the 2,363 inmates exonerated of
murder or other serious felonies since 1989 (most commonly through DNA),
553 were convicted with flawed or misleading forensic evidence—nearly
one out of four. Forensic
science’s shortcomings have left the justice system alternately in a
quiet panic or massive denial. The issue was first brought into the
spotlight by a highly critical report from the National Academy of
Sciences in 2009, which found a dearth of scientific backing for most
forensics methods other than DNA. It cited evidence that “faulty
forensic science analyses may have contributed to wrongful convictions
of innocent people.” That report was followed by an even more blistering
presidential commission report in 2016, which found serious errors and
junk science in a host of commonly used forensic methods tying suspects
to crimes.
Even
the seeming infallibility of fingerprint evidence took a big hit.
Multiple experts at the FBI’s vaunted Latent Print Unit incorrectly
matched a Portland, Ore., attorney to prints found at the scene of the
2004 Madrid train station bombing. The prints actually belonged to an
Algerian terrorist. A form of cognitive bias — finding what you expect
to find— has been blamed because the FBI examiners had received
extraneous information about the lawyer converting to Islam, and they
were also told that a respected senior agent had already declared a
match. Closer
to home, the murder conviction of Bill Richards of Mojave led the
California Legislature to confront the problem of junk science in the
courtroom — but only after an innocent man served 22 years in prison for
supposedly killing his wife. After two hung juries failed to convict
Richards, prosecutors found a bite-pattern expert who tilted the scales
by matching a mark on the victim’s hand to Richards’ crooked teeth.
Years later, attorneys at the California Innocence Project based in San
Diego requested testing of samples from the murder weapon, which
uncovered DNA that did not belong to either Richards or his wife. The
expert recanted and admitted there was no scientific basis for any of
his bite-mark findings in the case. But Richards’ release was delayed
for eight years after prosecutors argued successfully that only factual
testimony, not expert opinions, can be false evidence under California
law. It took new legislation to change the definition of false evidence
to include disproven or recanted expert opinions before Richards walked
out of prison in 2016. The
change in expert witness law also allowed the California Innocence
Project attorneys to attempt to overturn Parks’ conviction for burning
her children to death. Her attorneys argued that false forensic expert
opinion was used against her at her original trial. But
the fire investigation community remains divided on how to handle cases
such as Parks’. Experts testifying for her during a recent habeas
corpus hearing said the misleading fire patterns and destruction wrought
by flashover made it impossible to determine the origin and cause of
the fire, and that she deserved a new trial. Prosecution experts argued
they could still read the fire patterns like a book despite their
concession that flashover had occurred. They offered little in the way
of research or error rate studies to back that assertion. In
November, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge William C. Ryan ruled
that the new flashover evidence was insufficient to win Parks a new
trial because the experts cannot agree on its significance. “The world
of fire science and fire investigation is a complex area rife with
differing opinions and contentious debates,” Ryan wrote. His decision is being appealed. Whatever
the outcome of the Parks case, it is one of many demonstrating the
profound difficulty the justice system has in separating good science
from bad. The National Academy of Sciences has suggested raising the bar
for expert testimony by requiring hard data and error rates for all
forensic disciplines. Right
now the bar is shockingly low. One expert in the recent Parks hearing
testified that his analysis of door hinges showed that she had
barricaded her child in a closet, using a technique he had never
attempted before and for which he cited no scientific data. This lack of
scientific rigor in the courtroom has to change. A
commission formed by President Obama to study solutions to flawed
forensics was disbanded by the Trump administration. It may be time for
the states, individually or in partnership, to undertake this effort. The stakes are too high to maintain the status quo."
The entire commentary can be read 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/
