PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Another prominent factor in wrongful convictions across the country was misleading forensic evidence.
A close look at these cases reveals how experts in fields like hair
analysis, bite marks and DNA analysis have used exaggerated statistical
claims to bolster unscientific assertions. Once
experts meet the qualifications to take the stand in a courtroom, there
are few limits on the words that come out of their mouths. “An
expert can say whatever they want,” said Simon Cole, the director of
the registry and a professor of Criminology, Law and Society at UC -Irvine. That includes offering up invented odds like “one in a million” or “1 in 129,600,” the registry says. “A
lot of the problem with forensic testimony is that the diagnosticity is
overstated,” said Barbara O’Brien, a professor at the Michigan State
University College of Law and author of the report. A hair sample at the
crime scene that resembles a suspect’s hair “gets dressed up with this scientific certainty that isn’t justified,” she said.
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STORY: "A Leading Cause for Wrongful Convictions: Experts Overstating Forensic Results," by reporter Heather Murphy, published by The New York Times on April 20, 2019. (Heather
Murphy is a science reporter. She writes about the intersection of
technology and our genes and how bio-tech innovations affect the way we
live.)
PHOTO CAPTION: "These
three men spent decades in prison as a result of statistical
exaggerations. They were among 150 men and women released from prison
after their wrongful convictions were overturned in 2018. In
1987, a forensic expert testified that there was a less than one in
10,000 chance that these hairs came from the same person. The problem?
Those odds were plucked from thin air."
GIST: "More than 150 men and women in American prisons were exonerated in 2018, according to a recent report by a registry that tracks wrongful convictions. Combined, these individuals spent more than 1,600 years in prison, a record for the database, which has data back to 1989. The leading culprit in convicting innocent people was official misconduct, according to the report by the National Registry of Exonerations. Nearly one third of these cases involved a police corruption scheme in Chicago through which a police officer framed individuals on drug charges. Another prominent factor in wrongful convictions across the country was misleading forensic evidence. A close look at these cases reveals how experts in fields like hair analysis, bite marks and DNA analysis have used exaggerated statistical claims to bolster unscientific assertions. Once experts meet the qualifications to take the stand in a courtroom, there are few limits on the words that come out of their mouths. “An expert can say whatever they want,” said Simon Cole, the director of the registry and a professor of Criminology, Law and Society at UC -Irvine. That includes offering up invented odds like “one in a million” or “1 in 129,600,” the registry says. “A lot of the problem with forensic testimony is that the diagnosticity is overstated,” said Barbara O’Brien, a professor at the Michigan State University College of Law and author of the report. A hair sample at the crime scene that resembles a suspect’s hair “gets dressed up with this scientific certainty that isn’t justified,” she said. Here are three examples from the study’s case files.
The tool: bite marks matching:
The tool: touch DNA amplification:
Read Wrongful Convictions Blog post on the Annual National Registry of Exonerations report by Nancy Petro, (April 19, 2019) under the heading 'A record number of years lost by those exonerated in 2018,' at the link below: "A record 1,639 years were lost in prison by those wrongly convicted and exonerated in 2018, according to “Exonerations in 2018,” the annual report of The National Registry of Exonerations (NRE). The 151 persons exonerated in 2018 spent an average of 10.9 years wrongly incarcerated before exoneration. The report highlights milestones, trends, and the year’s specific exoneration takeaways. For example, in September 2018 the total number of years lost by exonerees exceeded the milestone of 20,000. As of today, that number is 21,095 lost years for the 2,418 persons known to have been exonerated since 1989. One highlight of 2018 was an extraordinary 31 defendants exonerated as a result of the scandal in Chicago stemming from an era of police corruption led by Sergeant Ronald Watts in which defendants were framed by police on drug and weapons charges. Reinvestigation of these cases — 30 of which were drug crimes — prompted the exonerations. The Registry notes contributors to wrongful conviction in each case of exoneration. The 31 Chicago cases were included in at least 107 cases involving official misconduct, a record number for the year. Official misconduct was a factor in fifty-four homicide exonerations in 2018.
However, encouraging evidence of prosecutors contributing to exonerations through Conviction Integrity Units (CIUs) was evidenced in 58 of the year’s exonerations. Innocence Organizations (IOs) were involved in 86 exonerations, an increase from 70 in 2017. These organizations, considered “professional exonerators” were responsible for 99 exonerations and the two worked together on a record 45 exonerations in 2018. Other frequent contributors to wrongful conviction were noted in the exonerations of 2018: Perjury or false accusation contributed in a record 111 cases; eyewitness misidentification in 31 cases; and false confession in 19 cases. The comprehensive report includes an analysis of exonerations by state and type of crime, as well as the latest findings on other aspects of the workings of criminal justice and its broader impact on states and the nation. As one example, the report includes new research on compensation for exonerees by George Washington University of Law Professor Jeffrey Gutman who studied 1,900 exonerations in state courts posted in the registry as of March 1, 2017. Fewer than half of these exonerees received compensation. Even so, state and local governments have paid more than $2.2 billion in compensation, which does not include the massive financial and human costs related to incarceration, particularly wrongful incarceration. The National Registry of Exonerations, founded in 2012 in conjunction with the Center on Wrongful Conviction at Northwestern University School of Law, is a project of the Newkirk Center for Science and Society at University of California Irvine, the University of Michigan Law School and Michigan State University College of Law. This writer is honored to serve on the Registry’s advisory board. The complete National Registry of Exonerations 2018 annual report is available here."https://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/2019/04/09/annual-exonerations-report-a-record-number-of-years-lost-by-those-exonerated-in-2018/
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/c
GIST: "More than 150 men and women in American prisons were exonerated in 2018, according to a recent report by a registry that tracks wrongful convictions. Combined, these individuals spent more than 1,600 years in prison, a record for the database, which has data back to 1989. The leading culprit in convicting innocent people was official misconduct, according to the report by the National Registry of Exonerations. Nearly one third of these cases involved a police corruption scheme in Chicago through which a police officer framed individuals on drug charges. Another prominent factor in wrongful convictions across the country was misleading forensic evidence. A close look at these cases reveals how experts in fields like hair analysis, bite marks and DNA analysis have used exaggerated statistical claims to bolster unscientific assertions. Once experts meet the qualifications to take the stand in a courtroom, there are few limits on the words that come out of their mouths. “An expert can say whatever they want,” said Simon Cole, the director of the registry and a professor of Criminology, Law and Society at UC -Irvine. That includes offering up invented odds like “one in a million” or “1 in 129,600,” the registry says. “A lot of the problem with forensic testimony is that the diagnosticity is overstated,” said Barbara O’Brien, a professor at the Michigan State University College of Law and author of the report. A hair sample at the crime scene that resembles a suspect’s hair “gets dressed up with this scientific certainty that isn’t justified,” she said. Here are three examples from the study’s case files.
The tool: microscopic hair comparison:
In
2013, the F.B.I. reported that testimony asserting that microscopic
hair comparison could produce a “match” between two hairs was
scientifically invalid. Four years later, a man named Glenn Payne
was still grappling with the consequences of three sets of misleading
odds. In 1990, when he was 28, he was charged with sexually abusing his
2-year-old neighbor. Upon arrest, Mr. Payne was asked to disrobe. A hair
was left behind on a sheet of butcher paper. Investigators located a
second hair on a tablecloth draped over the girl. In
court, a lab analyst testified that the hair on the butcher paper had a
1 in 2,700 chance of matching someone other than the victim, and the
hair on the tablecloth had a 1 in 48 chance of belonging to someone
other than Mr. Payne. He then multiplied these figures together to get a
“1 in 129,600” chance of anything other than a random occurrence. In
2017, lawyers who were reinvestigating the case reached out to the
analyst. He acknowledged that the statistical evidence was invalid. He
said he should have indicated “that the hair sample found on the
defendant could have come from the victim, and the hair sample found on
the tablecloth used to cover the victim could have come from the
defendant.” A new medical report
also suggested that the charges were a product of a misunderstanding.
The little girl wasn’t suffering from abuse, it concluded: She had a
strep infection.
The tool: bite marks matching:
Ms.
O’Brien said bite mark analysis was even more bogus than hair
comparisons. Often you can’t even tell if a wound is a bite mark, she
said. “It doesn’t even get past the barest suggestion of scientific
reality.” This pseudoscience cost Steven Chaney decades of his life. In 1987, Mr. Chaney was charged with murdering a couple who sold him drugs. At
trial, a medical consultant testified that he’d compared a wax model of
Mr. Chaney’s mouth to a mark on the male victim’s arm. Mr. Chaney’s
upper and lower arches “matched” the bite, he said, adding that “only
one in a million” people could have made that impression. In
2018, an appeals judge concluded that “scientific knowledge underlying
the field of bite mark comparisons has evolved” since Chaney’s trial “in
a way that contradicts the scientific evidence relied on by the State
at trial.” Though
this was an extreme example, Mr. Cole said, exaggerated odds are
common. “Often they are just saying this person is the source of the
bite mark or it’s practically impossible that they are not the source of
the bite mark,” he said. He remains
concerned that, even though this type of analysis has been widely
disavowed by forensic scientists, “not one court in the entire United
States has said that bite mark evidence shouldn’t be admissible in
court.”
The tool: touch DNA amplification:
DNA
evidence analysis continues to be far more scientifically respected
than the older methods of matching hair samples and bite marks, but the case of Mayer Herskovic is a reminder of how testimony about genetic odds can be misleading in court. In
2013, as a group of men was attacking a victim, an assailant grabbed
the victim’s shoe and flung it onto a nearby roof. The genetic sample
collected from the shoe was too small to be useful. But
the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in New York had developed
software that it claimed could amplify samples. At trial, an expert
testified that the probability that the shoe sample contained Mr.
Herskovic’s DNA was 133 times greater than the likelihood that it came
from an unknown person. He was
convicted. Two years later, a higher court concluded that the expert
witness had oversold this newfangled technique. Mr. Herskovic was
exonerated. And the medical examiner’s office abandoned the
amplification tool."
The entire story can be read at:
The https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/us/a-leading-cause-for-wrongful-convictions-experts-overstating-forensic-results.htmlRead Wrongful Convictions Blog post on the Annual National Registry of Exonerations report by Nancy Petro, (April 19, 2019) under the heading 'A record number of years lost by those exonerated in 2018,' at the link below: "A record 1,639 years were lost in prison by those wrongly convicted and exonerated in 2018, according to “Exonerations in 2018,” the annual report of The National Registry of Exonerations (NRE). The 151 persons exonerated in 2018 spent an average of 10.9 years wrongly incarcerated before exoneration. The report highlights milestones, trends, and the year’s specific exoneration takeaways. For example, in September 2018 the total number of years lost by exonerees exceeded the milestone of 20,000. As of today, that number is 21,095 lost years for the 2,418 persons known to have been exonerated since 1989. One highlight of 2018 was an extraordinary 31 defendants exonerated as a result of the scandal in Chicago stemming from an era of police corruption led by Sergeant Ronald Watts in which defendants were framed by police on drug and weapons charges. Reinvestigation of these cases — 30 of which were drug crimes — prompted the exonerations. The Registry notes contributors to wrongful conviction in each case of exoneration. The 31 Chicago cases were included in at least 107 cases involving official misconduct, a record number for the year. Official misconduct was a factor in fifty-four homicide exonerations in 2018.
However, encouraging evidence of prosecutors contributing to exonerations through Conviction Integrity Units (CIUs) was evidenced in 58 of the year’s exonerations. Innocence Organizations (IOs) were involved in 86 exonerations, an increase from 70 in 2017. These organizations, considered “professional exonerators” were responsible for 99 exonerations and the two worked together on a record 45 exonerations in 2018. Other frequent contributors to wrongful conviction were noted in the exonerations of 2018: Perjury or false accusation contributed in a record 111 cases; eyewitness misidentification in 31 cases; and false confession in 19 cases. The comprehensive report includes an analysis of exonerations by state and type of crime, as well as the latest findings on other aspects of the workings of criminal justice and its broader impact on states and the nation. As one example, the report includes new research on compensation for exonerees by George Washington University of Law Professor Jeffrey Gutman who studied 1,900 exonerations in state courts posted in the registry as of March 1, 2017. Fewer than half of these exonerees received compensation. Even so, state and local governments have paid more than $2.2 billion in compensation, which does not include the massive financial and human costs related to incarceration, particularly wrongful incarceration. The National Registry of Exonerations, founded in 2012 in conjunction with the Center on Wrongful Conviction at Northwestern University School of Law, is a project of the Newkirk Center for Science and Society at University of California Irvine, the University of Michigan Law School and Michigan State University College of Law. This writer is honored to serve on the Registry’s advisory board. The complete National Registry of Exonerations 2018 annual report is available here."https://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/2019/04/09/annual-exonerations-report-a-record-number-of-years-lost-by-those-exonerated-in-2018/
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/c
