“Modern forensics, including the analysis of fingerprints, bite marks, ballistics, hair and tool marks, can sometimes send innocent people to prison.”
On Wednesday, October 17, at 9:00 PM EDT, Nova will air a special documentary on the subject of “forensics gone wrong”.
I’m expecting this to be a “must watch”.
Police arrested Annie Dookhan, a chemist at a Boston drug lab, on Friday for allegedly faking drug results, forging paperwork and mixing samples at a state police lab in a scandal that has lawyers scrambling to figure out how to handle the 1,140 inmates who were convicted using possibly tainted evidence.
Dookhan, 34, was arrested at her home in Franklin, about 40 miles southwest of Boston. She is scheduled to be arraigned in Boston Municipal Court on Friday afternoon.
Dookhan’s alleged mishandling of drug samples prompted the shutdown of the Hinton State Laboratory Institute in Boston last month and resulted in the resignation of three officials, including the state’s public health commissioner.
Huff Post story here
CBS News story here
Boston Globe story here.
Former New York inmate Michael Clancy has been awarded $2 million for his wrongful murder conviction. He was released in 2008, after spending 11 years in prison.
See the story here. The page includes a brief informative video about the recently established National Exoneration Registry.
In recognition of the 300th DNA exoneration, the Innocence Project (NY) published an infographic, which is included below.
Note: The Innocence Project (NY) deals only with DNA cases. Many other Innocence Projects across the country take cases that are not solely DNA-related, and in which convictions may be based upon false confessions, junk science, perjury, police/prosecutor misconduct, shaken baby misdiagnosis, sloppy medical examiner work, or just plain mistakes, all in the absence of DNA evidence.
Posted in Uncategorized
First, here is some interesting, relevant data to which this case adds: (the emphasis is mine)
Of 83 exonerations in the past five years, more than 15 percent didn’t involve rape. As many as a quarter of the cases involved a false confession, in which one or more defendants admitted to the crime under interrogation.
Samuel Gross, an author of a report by the recently created National Registry of Exonerations at the University of Michigan, calculated that based on the proven rate of exonerations among death-row prisoners in the past two decades, U.S. courts appear to have an error rate in capital cases of between 2.5 percent and 4 percent.
Posted in Exonerations, False confessions
The Brian Banks case has appeared on this blog before with postings by Nancy Petro here and Kana Sasakura here.
A high school football standout in southern California, he was wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for rape. With the help of the California Innocence Project, he was exonerated earlier this year. His dream has always been to play pro football.
He has just signed with the Las Vegas Locomotives, and hopes that this will be his stepping stone to the NFL. See story here.
Posted in Exonerations, False confessions
An evidentiary hearing will begin today in the conviction of Green Beret Jeffrey McDonald, who was convicted of murdering his wife and children in their home in 1970.
McDonald always claimed that a group of “hippies” broke in and bludgeoned and stabbed his wife and children, while he sustained stab wounds resulting in a collapsed lung.
New DNA evidence, along with an allegation of prosecutorial misconduct will be assessed by the court.
McDonald was convicted by a Federal jury in 1979, and has been in prison since 1982.
See article here.
The most famous bite mark case in the US, and perhaps the world, is that of serial killer Ted Bundy. On Jan. 15, 1978, Bundy broke into the Chi Omega sorority on the Florida State University campus, assaulting and killing three women. During the crime, Bundy left a bite mark on the buttocks of Lisa Levy, whom he raped and killed. It was this bite mark that was primarily responsible for his conviction. He was executed in Florida’s electric chair on Jan. 24, 1989. Shortly before his execution, he confessed to 30 other murders in seven states, but it is believed that he may have been responsible for as many as 100 deaths.
Here are photos of the bite mark on Lisa Levy’s buttocks, and the wax impresstion that was made of Bundy’s lower dentition:
Over the past few years, some researchers have been looking at the possibility that an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) brain scan can reveal whether or not someone is lying. In experiments, subjects are instructed to lie about certain things while an MRI monitors their brain activity. When the subject lies, the researchers look for differences in the patterns of brain activity. They have observed ‘differences’ when a subject is lying as opposed to when the subject is telling the truth.
Here are two recent articles on the subject:
…….. From yesterday’s Washington Post Laris M. MRI polygraphy. Wash Post, 2012-08-26
…….. From the August, 2010 IEEE Spectrum (the official publication of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) MRI Polygraph
There is even a company called No Lie MRI that is trying to commercialize the phenomenon. http://noliemri.com/
Now, let me comment on these developments from the standpoint of the scientific method, design of experiments, and logic. These “experiments” are nothing more than observational studies. The experiment may have a hypothesis, that is, when the subject “lies” we’ll see differences in brain activity, which, in the experiment, would be the “dependent variable”. However, this is very non-specific. What areas of the brain? What kind of activity? What extent of activity? What level of activity indicates a “lie” over a statistically significant population of subjects of representative ages, races, genders, IQ’s, and physical & mental health? And the most glaring shortcoming of these experiments is lack of control over independent variables. A properly designed experiment should have a single dependent variable and all independent variables should be controlled. That is, if the independent variable being measured is “lie or no lie”, all other independent variables must be constant throughout the experiment – age, race, gender, mental and physical health, IQ, amount of sleep, state of mind, …………..
It has already been observed that the MRI can be “fooled” if the subject imagines imperceptibly wiggling a finger or toe while lying.
I fear that we might be seeing yet another forensic junk science in the making. Conclusions based upon these studies are another example of forensics being driven by anecdotal, observational studies that get pushed through a process of flawed inductive reasoning. “I’ve seen a hundred roses, and they’re all red; therefore, all roses are red.” Or, “I’ve never seen anything like that before; therefore, it must be unique.”
So far, this technology also fails the question that most all forensics fail; “Show me the statistically valid data from which I can compute a probability of occurrence.” And by the way, even “fingerprints” fails this question.
One saving grace of many forensic disciplines is that they can be statistically valid in excluding a suspect from consideration. I don’t see that MRI scans are legitimate enough to even do that.
Science is in its infancy in terms of truly understanding the functioning of the human brain. MRI lie detection may some day be legitimate, but my prediction is that it will be decades, if not generations, from now.
Anders Breivik, the Norwegian who meticulously planned and carried out an attack that killed 77 people, has been found sane, and sentenced to 21 years. See the NY Times article here.
Meanwhile, this past May, Marissa Alexander, a Florida woman, who was in a fight with her abusive husband, fired a warning shot into a wall without injuring anyone, and was sentenced to 20 years. See GlobalPost article here.
Does anybody else see a problem here?
And then there are the “three strikes” laws. Under these laws people who have committed three felonies, albeit non-violent and minor, can be sentenced to life in prison. 24 states currently have some form of “three strikes” law. The intention was to reduce crime from repeat offenders, but no statistically valid causal correlation with reduced crime has been shown. However, it has been observed that offenders in jeopardy of a “third strike” are more likely to violently attack police.
Something is seriously out of kilter here.
Many post-conviction innocence cases rely upon the discovery of new evidence to support a claim of actual innocence. But to be admissible in the case, the new evidence must meet the prevailing legal standard for admissibility.
In Ohio, this standard is called the Petro standard, because it resulted from the case of Ohio vs. Petro in 1947. OH vs. Petro Most states use some version of this standard. There are six prongs to the standard:
Posted in Uncategorized
On Tuesday night, Texas executed Marvin Wilson, whose IQ score was 61 — low enough that it should have met any standard for “diminished mental capacity.” Shockingly, the US Supreme Court did not intervene to stop the execution despite its 2002 decision in Atkins v. Virginia barring the execution of the “mentally retarded” as “cruel and unusual punishment” in violation of the Eighth Amendment.
See full article here.
I was planning to post an article about the minefields and pitfalls involved in expert testimony in general, but after thinking about it, I decided that there is a specific area that deserves special consideration – expert medical testimony in SBS cases. The “general case” I will save for another day.
I cannot say that I’m deeply experienced, but over the last 4+ years, I’ve been personally involved in five separate SBS cases (all still ongoing), and have become a student of the subject in general. I’m not an attorney, and I’m not a doctor. I’m an engineer by training, and have spent a 42 year career deeply involved in a broad range of sciences and technologies, which has taught me the value of “cause and effect” and “root cause” analysis, as well as for the “scientific method” and “design of experiments”. So I think I can kind of figure out what’s going on.
My study of the early medical literature on the subject, tells me that the origins of the “triad” theory of SBS causation (reference) were founded on conclusions from “studies” (by Drs. Guthkelch and Caffey) that resulted from logically flawed inductive reasoning and experimental sample sizes that were so small as to be statistically meaningless. But somehow, the “triad” became embedded in pediatric medical dogma, and has been so for the last 30 years.
Two public defenders in Minnesota, not satisfied with a 1 or 2 page summary from the St.Paul crime lab, made the effort and had the chutzpah to demand complete case files, visit the lab, and interview lab staff. What they found was staggering. Controls, procedures, and minimum standards were woefully lacking. When they asked one lab staffer why there weren’t minimum standards in place, the answer was, “I guess I don’t know what minimum standards are.”
Prosecutors are now offering favorable deals in 160 drug cases, and more cases may come under review.
Law enforcement agencies are no longer sending samples for testing to the St.Paul crime lab.
Here are three articles from the St.Paul StarTribune chronicling the story.
Xiong C. St. Paul Crime Lab. Star Tribune, 2012-07-28
Despite recent justice system progress in South America, here is a link to an article about police in Argentina using torture. The two “suspects” in this case had only been detained for a misdemeanor.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/20/world/americas/argentina-video/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
Posted in Latin America, Police conduct (good and bad)
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The United States has 4.47% of the world’s population (2012). The United States has (depending upon which study you use) 23%-25% of the world’s prisoners. The incarceration rate in the US is 5 times the average for the rest of the world. In the graphic above, the US is the only country in the world colored bright red at greater than 750 per 100,000 population.
At an incarceration rate of 750 per 100,000, 1 out of every 133 adults in the US is in prison/jail. Now, considering the fact that the incarceration rate for males in the US is 13 times higher than for females, this means that approximately 1 out of 67 adult males in the US is in prison.
The actual number of people in prison in the US is approximately 2.3 million. But get this – there are an additional 5 million on probation or parole!
Does anybody else find find these to be staggering statistics?
Take a look at the chart below:
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The incarceration rate in the US is 6-10 times that of other industrialized countries with which we typically compare ourselves – Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan.
The story is all too familiar.
Posted in Uncategorized
The National Innocence Network has established a full-time position for an SBS litigation point person. The position will be located at the offices of the Innocence Project of Wisconsin at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
Particulars of the position here: SBS Fellow 07.02.12
At a time when the American Academy of Pediatrics has been redoubling its political/propaganda efforts to shore up support for the SBS Triad, this couldn’t come at a better time.
Personally, I’m thrilled.
Posted in Junk science, Reforming/Improving the system
Mark Godsey recently posted an article on a US District Court ruling about a “time-bar” exemption to habeas law in an arson case that was driven by new developments in fire science. See that post here.
For those of you who may be interested in the details of the case, here is the original magistrate’s ruling that was upheld by the US District Court:
Habeas Ruling New Fire Science
This was made available by renowned fire scientist John Lentini, who worked on the case.
FYI. It was necessary for me to post this as a new post, rather than a comment to Mark’s original post, because I can’t embed a document in a comment. Thank you.
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