FBI Overstated Forensic Hair Matches In Nearly All Trials Before 2000

[ElNono]

The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials (http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/fbi-overstated-forensic-hair-matches-in-nearly-all-criminal-trials-for-decades/2015/04/18/39c8d8c6-e515-11e4-b510-962fcfabc310_story.html) in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000. Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory's microscopic hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed so far, according to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Innocence Project, which are assisting the government with the country's largest post-conviction (http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/justice-dept-fbi-to-review-use-of-forensic-evidence-in-thousands-of-cases/2012/07/10/gJQAT6DlbW_story.html)review of questioned forensic evidence (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/local/forensic-analysis-methods/). The cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death. Of those, 14 have been executed or died in prison, the groups said under an agreement with the government to release results after the review of the first 200 convictions.

[spursncowboys]

So the process isn't flawed. The people just overstated it.

[ElNono]

So the process isn't flawed. The people just overstated it.

The process didn't help convict potentially innocent citizens, people's testimony did.

[Winehole23]

Fake forensics killed as many as 14 people. Officer Barbrady sez move along, you looky-lous, nothing to see here.

[MultiTroll]

So the process isn't flawed. The people just overstated it.
By how much?
Are they saying the pussy hairs of the dead bikini babe found on CPT sprusncowboys lips are 99.998% a match when indeed they were 99.997%

Or are they saying the pussy hairs of the dead bikini babe found on CPT sprusncowboys lips are 99.998% a match when indeed they were 2% match and Prosecuter Hard On simply wanted to convict you so fudged? Badly fudged.

[spursncowboys]

By how much?
Are they saying the pussy hairs of the dead bikini babe found on CPT sprusncowboys lips are 99.998% a match when indeed they were 99.997%

Or are they saying the pussy hairs of the dead bikini babe found on CPT sprusncowboys lips are 99.998% a match when indeed they were 2% match and Prosecuter Hard On simply wanted to convict you so fudged? Badly fudged.
sprusncowboys?

[spursncowboys]

The process didn't help convict potentially innocent citizens, people's testimony did.
"alleged" and I agree. Was just making a point that it is a personnel problem. Hopefully the "alleged" perpetrators are arrested and convicted.

[spursncowboys]

Fake forensics killed as many as 14 people. Officer Barbrady sez move along, you looky-lous, nothing to see here. sipping wine out of a straw now a days?

[ElNono]

"alleged" and I agree. Was just making a point that it is a personnel problem. Hopefully the "alleged" perpetrators are arrested and convicted.

Well, I think the biggest problem is that we potentially imprisoned and killed innocent people due to whatever reason.

I mean, a few cases can happen. But allegedly misleading jurors for almost two decades?

I'm certainly glad they're taking a second look.

[MultiTroll]

sprusncowboys?
typo.
Multitasking in game prep.

[Winehole23]

state by state. there have been four exonerations.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/local/fbi-hair/

[boutons_deux]

"potentially imprisoned and killed innocent people"

:lol potentially! :lol

[ElNono]

"potentially imprisoned and killed innocent people"

:lol potentially! :lol




I'm not privy of all the cases involved.

[Winehole23]

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0731129X.2013.817070#

[Winehole23]

Some of the basic problems of forensic science are hinted at in the term itself. The word forensics refers to the Roman forum; forensics is the “science of the forum,” oriented toward gathering evidence for legal proceedings. This makes forensics unusual among the sciences, since it serves a particular institutional objective: the prosecution of criminals. Forensic science works when prosecutions are successful and fails when they are not.



That purpose naturally gives rise to a tension between science’s aspiration to neutral, open-ended inquiry on the one side and the exigencies of prosecution on the other. Likewise, while true understanding is predicated on doubt and revision, the forum must reach a definitive result. The scientist’s tentativeness is at odds with a judicial process built on up-or-down verdicts, a point the Supreme Court has emphasized in order to justify allowing judges wide deference as the gatekeepers of evidence.



It shouldn’t be controversial to point out that forensic science is not really a science to begin with, not in the sense of disciplines such as biology and physics. Forensic science covers whatever techniques produce physical evidence for use in law. These may be derived from various actual scientific disciplines, including medicine, chemistry, psychology, and others, but they are linked less by their inherent similarity than by their usefulness during investigation and prosecution. Law enforcement agencies themselves have invented a number of the techniques, including blood-spatter and bite-mark analysis.



Law is a poor vehicle for the interpretation of scientific results.


Much forensic knowledge has thus developed by means unlike that of ordinary scientific research. Comparatively few major universities offer programs in forensic science; joint training in forensic sciences and policing is common. Forensic laboratories themselves are a disparate patchwork of public and private entities, with varying degrees of affiliation with police and prosecutors. The accountability of some subfields such as “forensic podiatry” (the study of footprints, gait, and other foot-related evidence) can be dubious, with judges taking the place of accreditation boards. In such a decentralized system, it can be difficult to keep track not only of whether forensic investigation is working well but also of how it even works in the first place.

http://bostonreview.net/books-ideas/nathan-robinson-forensic-pseudoscience-criminal-justice

[Winehole23]

http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=117866
http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=207666 (http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=117866)

[Winehole23]

Thus even as we try various fixes, rooting out bad apples and introducing oversight, a systemic and elementary problem remains: a science of the forum can never be science at all.

[Winehole23]

Texas leads the way on rooting out forensic psuedoscience:


Forensic science more broadly is in turmoil as prosecutors, defense lawyers and judges confront evidence that many long-used methods, like handwriting analysis and microscopic hair comparisons, were based more on tradition than science and do not hold up under scrutiny. Even fingerprint and certain kinds of DNA matches are not quite as certain as many once believed, scientists say

But no lingering technique is under stronger attack than the analysis of purported bite marks (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/02/13/how-the-flawed-science-of-bite-mark-analysis-has-sent-innocent-people-to-jail/), a method first thrust into fame in the televised trial of Ted Bundy in 1979.


The Texas agency has won national praise for its examinations of the reliability of all sorts of forensic methods and testimony. Initially it responded to complaints about evidence in individual criminal cases. It has moved on to also evaluate whole fields, like bite-mark matching.


“Some aspects of forensic science have never been validated,” said Vincent Di Maio, a retired doctor and medical examiner who has been chairman of the Texas commission since 2012. “That’s a problem that had to be addressed, and nobody else was going to do it for us.”


The commission’s recommendations, expected in February, will be the first formal finding by any state or federal agency on the validity of bite-mark evidence, said Chris Fabricant, the director of strategic litigation at the Innocence Project (http://www.innocenceproject.org/). He added that they might help speed up inquiries into hundreds more convictions around the country as well as discourage dubious testimony in the future.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/us/lives-in-balance-texas-leads-scrutiny-of-bite-mark-forensics.html?_r=0

[boutons_deux]

Texas leads the way on rooting out forensic psuedoscience:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/us/lives-in-balance-texas-leads-scrutiny-of-bite-mark-forensics.html?_r=0

dubya swore the 152+ executed on his watch were all guilty, deserving.

[Winehole23]

he was wrong. the state of Texas is cleaning up the mess and in fact is miles and years ahead of other US states...have you got something against criminal justice reform, boutons?

[Winehole23]

credit where credit is due, it's something Texas is getting good at. it's not overstating the case to say we're a national leader in criminal justice reform.

[boutons_deux]

he was wrong. the state of Texas is cleaning up the mess and in fact is miles and years ahead of other US states...have you got something against criminal justice reform, boutons?

no, I just don't think racist/xenophobic TX Repugs give shit about it. Such reform costs lots of money, and changing lots of prosecutor/da/police minds, and keeping them changed. What's their motivation for changing since the current system works FOR THEM so well?

[boutons_deux]

In Texas Jails, Hanging Most Common Suicide Method


But of the 501 inmate deaths that have occurred in county jails since 2009,

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/07/24/hanging-most-common-suicide-method-texas-jails/

[Winehole23]

Texas needs the reform, no doubt. But not giving Texas credit for the reform it has already undertakenis not only unhelpful, it's unfair. In this one area, Texas could be and should be a model to other states.

[Wild Cobra]

dubya swore the 152+ executed on his watch were all guilty, deserving.

Liar.

Link please.

[boutons_deux]

Liar.

Link please.

I did mine.

"Do Your Own Research" -- WC

[boutons_deux]

The incredible decline of America's death penalty, in one chart

There were fewer executions than at any point since 1991, and the fewest death sentences imposed since 1973.

the death penalty is increasingly geographically isolated.

Only six states carried out executions in 2015, with

86 percent of executions occurring in three states: Texas, Missouri, and Georgia

http://www.vox.com/2015/12/16/10294588/death-penalty-us-decline

Bible humping slave states sure love to kill people, esp the black ones.

[Wild Cobra]

I did mine.

"Do Your Own Research" -- WC

Liar, and no thanks. I have no intention of researching your ass which you flagellantly speak out of.

I believe you when you implied Bush was for the death penalty, but I'll lay odds his words were to the effect they were convicted by their peers, and that he supports the system. Not what you said.

[boutons_deux]

Liar, and no thanks. I have no intention of researching your ass which you flagellantly speak out of.

I believe you when you implied Bush was for the death penalty, but I'll lay odds his words were to the effect they were convicted by their peers, and that he supports the system. Not what you said.

He said EVERY ONE of the 152 executed in his governorship deserved to die, no errors, the system was perfect.

[Wild Cobra]

George W. Bush: Death penalty for deterrence, not revenge
Q: What about the death penalty?

GORE: I support the death penalty. I think that it has to be administered not only fairly, with attention to things like DNA evidence, which I think should be used in all capital cases, but also with very careful attention. If the wrong guy is put to death, then that’s a double tragedy. Not only has an innocent person been executed but the real perpetrator of the crime has not been held accountable for it, and in some cases may be still at large. But I support the death penalty in the most heinous cases.

Q: Do both of you believe that the death penalty actually deters crime?

BUSH: I do, that’s the only reason to be for it. I don’t think you should support the death penalty to seek revenge. I don’t think that’s right. I think the reason to support the death penalty is because it saves other people’s lives.

GORE: I think it is a deterrence. I know that’s a controversial view, but I do believe it’s a deterrence.
Source: (X-ref Gore) St. Louis debate Oct 17, 2000

George W. Bush: Not proud that Texas has most executions
Q: Are you proud of the fact that Texas is number one in executions?

BUSH: No, I’m not proud of that. The death penalty is very serious business. It’s an issue that good people obviously disagree on. I take my job seriously, and if you think I was proud of it, I think you misread me, I do.

I was sworn to uphold the laws of my state. I do believe that if the death penalty is administered swiftly, justly and fairly, it saves lives. My job is to ask two questions. Is the person guilty of the crime? And did the person have full access to the courts of law? And I can tell you, in all cases those answers were affirmative. I’m not proud of any record. I’m proud of the fact that violent crime is down in the state of Texas. I’m proud of the fact that we hold people accountable. But I’m not proud of any record, no.

http://www.ontheissues.org/Archive/St_Louis_Debate_Crime.htm