Monday, August 3, 2026

August 3: Technology: Cyber Insecurity: The Wall Street Journal, (Legal Affairs Reporter Mariah Timms) reports, in this fine piece of journalism, that according to a group of forensic and computer scientists, a security flaw has placed 30 years of DNA evidence at risk of hacking, in a story sub-headed, "Researchers found that widely used lab machines produced digital DNA files that are vulnerable to tampering."..."The researchers found that with the help of computer code written by widely available AI software, they could alter the data produced from computerized scans of physical DNA evidence without leaving any trace they had tampered with the records. The vulnerability is likely to have existed in the digital files produced by crime-lab machines since 1995, but recent technological advances make potential tampering much easier now, they said."

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QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Effectively, what we have are data files that are legitimately referred to as the gold standard of forensic science that ...

August 4: French Lee: New Jersey; Major (Welcome) Development: The State Supreme Court has unanimously held that a trial court should have assessed the reliability of fingerprint evidence in a burglary trial based on scientific advancements. - ruling that, "the court will appoint a Special Adjudicator to determine whether fingerprint evidence meets current admissibility standards and whether revised jury instructions are warranted. as the Morgan Stanley law firm, which worked the case pro bono for the Innocence Project, reports, noting that: The decision reflects a shift from historical acceptance of fingerprint evidence toward rigorous scientific scrutiny, potentially impacting how forensic evidence is used in New Jersey courts and nationwide."

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PASSAGE ONE OF THE DAY: " The defendant in State v. French Lee, Mr. Lee, was convicted of two counts of burglary, where the sole eviden...

August 3: Frank Gable: Oregon: (Coercive investigative techniques lead to a trail of recanting witnesses): Major (Welcome) Development: A judge has signed a certificate of innocence for Frank Gable, who was released from prison in 2019 after more than 29 years in custody, noting that no reasonable juror would have convicted Gable in light of another man’s multiple confessions to (Oregon Corrections Director Michael) Francke’s fatal stabbing - and because nearly all the witnesses in the case had recanted their testimony since the trial."

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BACKGROUND: From a previous post of this Blog:  (March 22, 2025):   " On September 29, 2022, the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals af...
Sunday, August 2, 2026

August 2: Former Neo-Natal nurse Lucy Letby: "Police and a key witness in Lucy Letby’s trial worked together to “reshape” testimony to get round data that could have exculpated the nurse, Sir David Davis a former 'Tory' minister, has claimed, the Telegraph (Science Editor Sarah Knapton) reports, noting that: "Interview notes, released by Sir David, a former Tory minister, show that police were aware that the timeline presented to the jury no longer worked, and discussed the issue with Dr Ravi Jayaram, a consultant, before the retrial, after the first jury failed to reach a verdict. An officer told Dr Jayaram: “We can’t change the data. But we can change the interpretation of it.”

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QUOTE OF THE DAY: " Mark McDonald, Letby’s barrister, said: “In 27 years as a criminal barrister, I have never encountered an investiga...

August 2: Part 2: Marshall Project Podcast 'The Last 12 Weeks,' The. inside story on a unique collaboration between journalists and a death penalty defence team, published by The Poynter Institute, under the heading "What happens in the final week before an execution, and the sub-heading, "The journalists behind ‘The Last 12 Weeks’ earned extraordinary access to a death penalty defense team — and faced difficult ethical choices."...The Serial team approached Chammah, who had written about mitigation experts for The Marshall Project. They floated what Melathe called their “pie-in-the-sky idea” for a podcast: What if they could follow around death penalty lawyers racing a ticking clock? “My initial reaction was that that would be almost impossible — not practically, but because lawyers were unlikely to agree,” Chammah said. “I had written a book about the death penalty and interviewed lots of defense lawyers, and (I’d) seen that they had just been very, very appropriately cagey about their work.” Then in November, an email changed everything. Defense lawyer Greg Wiercioch reached out to Chammah to see if he’d be interested in covering the case of his client, David Wood, often referred to as the Desert Killer. Convicted of a string of murders in El Paso, Wood had been sitting on death row for more than three decades."

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LINK TO THE PODCAST:  https://www.themarshallproject.org/series/the-last-12-weeks ------------------------------------------------- QUOTE OF...
Saturday, August 1, 2026

Part 1: August 1: David Wood: Death Row: Texas: The Death penalty Information Center's Anumta Ali zeroes in on the Marshall Projects Maurice Chammah who has built his brilliant Podcast 'The Last 12 Weeks, around the battle waged by his lawyers to. present new evidence and save his life, in the weeks leading up to David Woods 2025 execution date in Texas, noting that "In 2024, after los­ing all his appeals, Mr. Wood’s defense team obtained a sworn state­ment from pris­on­er George Hall which brought into ques­tion the legit­i­ma­cy of tes­ti­mo­ny from key pros­e­cu­tion tri­al wit­ness­es. Mr. Hall admit­ted that he and oth­er incar­cer­at­ed indi­vid­u­als were encour­aged by police to false­ly report that Mr. Wood con­fessed to com­mit­ting the Desert Murders in El Paso, Texas. Greg Wiercioch, Mr. Wood’s lead attor­ney, agreed to per­mit Mr. Chammah from The Marshall Project to cov­er the case. Through deeply vul­ner­a­ble accounts by mem­bers of Mr. Wood’s defense team, lis­ten­ers hear how they grap­pled with chal­leng­ing deci­sions, such as whether to vis­it the only liv­ing infor­mant in the hos­pi­tal, until he lat­er died from lung cancer."

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LINK TO THE PODCAST:  https://www.themarshallproject.org/series/the-last-12-weeks ------------------------------------------------- PUBLISHE...
Friday, July 31, 2026

July 31: Part Two : 'The Truth Will Out,' Junk 'Science' series: Jimmie "Chris" Duncan; Louisiana: In the previous post in this series, NBC News Investigative Reporter Dan Slepian refers to a disturbing video - buried by the court for decades - that might never have come to light if it weren't for accomplished Journalist Radley Balko, (then Senior Editor at Reason Magazine)...The article, published in 'Reason' on December 19, 2009, was headed, "Manufacturing Guilt? Experts say this exclusive video shows a dental examiner creating the bite marks that put a man on death row." As you will see, It's a wonderful article that is very relevant today, by a tough, formidable journalist, who truly understands and ably reports and comments on the world of criminal justice. HL:

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QUOTE OF THE DAY: " Reason first asked Michael Bowers to comment on the video. Bowers, a practicing dentist, is a deputy medical examin...