PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Fire science, as it became known along its “progression from magic to science,” is one of several forensic disciplines that has historically generated inaccurate expert evidence. Our research indicates, however, that while civil courts closely scrutinize and often exclude unreliable fire-science evidence, criminal courts routinely allow it to go to the jury."
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PERIODICAL ARTICLE: "Evidence on Fire," by Valeena A. Beety and Jennifer D. Oliva, published in the NCL Review. (Thanks to Dr. Michael Bowers of CSIDDS - Forensics and Law in Focus - for bringing this important article to our attention.)
GIST: Précised: "Fire science, a field largely developed by lay “arson investigators,” police officers, or similar first responders untrained in chemistry and physics, has been historically dominated by unreliable methodology, demonstrably false conclusions, and concomitant miscarriages of justice. Fire investigators are neither subject to proficiency testing nor required to obtain more than a high school education. Perhaps surprisingly, courts have largely spared many of the now- debunked tenets of fire investigation any serious scientific scrutiny in criminal arson cases. This Article contrasts the courts’ ongoing lax admissibility of unreliable fire-science evidence in criminal cases with their strict exclusion of the same flimsy evidence in civil cases, notwithstanding that both criminal and civil courts are required to operate under the same exclusionary rules for expert evidence."
GIST: "Human beings have long been fascinated by the awesome and unforgiveable power of fire. From old southern stories about barn burners to The Confession Tapes’ chronicles of false confessions to murder by arson, fire investigations evoke the worst of human imagination. Playing off the evocative and destructive power of fire, fire experts historically conjured up pseudomagical powers in the courtroom, regaling jurors with investigatory findings that were “more art than science” and with stories about accelerant-detection dogs’ supercanine olfactory abilities, which enabled them to pinpoint a fire’s origin. The fire “expert,” imbued with gravitas due to his uncanny ability to understand the mysteries of the element, easily awes and persuades a Western jury, which, as studies have noted, is largely composed of individuals unfamiliar with how to start, maintain, or use fire. As Professor Paul Giannelli has explained, For decades arson investigators came from the “old school” of investigators—those who used intuition and a number of rules of thumb to determine whether a fire was incendiary. Critics complained that instead of being rooted in science, the approach was based on folklore that had been passed down from generation to generation—without any empirical testing. A government report noted, as early as 1977, that common arson indicators had “received little or no scientific testing” and that “[t]here appears to be no published material in the scientific literature to substantiate their validity.” Such rules of thumb include numerous scientifically debunked myths, such as accelerant-provoked fires burn hotter and faster than incendiary fires and crazed glass indicates arson. Unfortunately, these and numerous other arson-indicator-related myths were published and preserved in two widely referenced fire-science resources: Arson and Arson Investigation Survey and Assessment and Fire Investigation Handbook. Continued reliance on these unreliable resources provoked the American Association for the Advancement of Science (“AAAS”) to characterize fire investigation as a field inundated with a “widespread, persistent, and problematic literature affecting the beliefs and the behavior of practitioners.” Fire science, as it became known along its “progression from magic to science,” is one of several forensic disciplines that has historically generated inaccurate expert evidence. Our research indicates, however, that while civil courts closely scrutinize and often exclude unreliable fire-science evidence, criminal courts routinely allow it to go to the jury."
The entire article can be read at:
https://scholarship.law.unc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6713&context=nclr
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;
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FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD (FOR NOW!): "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they’ve exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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