FBI Admits Committing Decades-long Forensics Fraud

There seems to be a lot of conflict of interests when it comes to funding for the various arms of law. On one hand, they need to act "tougher on crime", on the other they need to hand out tax cuts so that they can say they are "shrinking the government" or "starving the beast." What to do, what to do.

Yet another reason I don't like the death penalty.

This is criminal conduct, plain and simple. Where'd you find that budget hook, X?

I was just getting ready to post this, but I was going with the original source article at WaPo. Also worth a read.

The bite-mark "science" mentioned in the story is nothing new. Radley Balko has been campaigning against that for years.

The same holds true for the arson "science" that helped convict and execute Cameron Willingham.

The death penalty needs to go away. Now.

Don said:

This is criminal conduct, plain and simple. Where'd you find that budget hook, X?

I was just getting ready to post this, but I was going with the original source article at WaPo. Also worth a read.

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This whole justice-disaster-on-wheels is not a problem that has gone unreported. As Conor Friedersdorf notes, state and national publications have been exposing the inadvertent errors and deliberate manipulations of forensic crime labs across the country for years now. We have covered these issues at Slate. But as long as crime labs answer to prosecutors, and indeed, according to Business Insider, in some cases they are compensated for each conviction, the incentives for reform are hopelessly upside-down. The problem, in short, isn’t that we can’t identify the problem.

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From the Slate article posted above.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_..._analysis_bite_marks_fingerprints.single.html

NC had a horrible scandal over the exact same thing under our former Attorney General. It was the SBI labs doing it. Those labs just can't be in bed with the prosecutors, for obvious reasons. I can't fathom the motivation behind behaving that way as a scientist.

There's a weird set of public perceptions about the reliability of various kinds of evidence in criminal cases. Probably due to TV shows, the currently public perception is that the best of all evidence is anything that can be called "forensic". But the various kinds of forensic evidence have various levels of reliability. This gets into statistics, which, however simple they are, just baffle a lot of people, including people who sit on juries. From what I've read and heard, bite mark evidence is among the least reliable, and most debated. Fingerprints, more reliable, DNA perhaps even more than that (assuming that neither have been falsified, which is a separate matter). Ballistics on projectiles and shell casiings are a very common source of forensics. Things like footprints, tire-tread marks, physical residue on vehicles, etc., all get used "forensically" in criminal cases. And soooooo much depends on the rigor with which such evidence is handled, and the reliability/objectivity of the examiner.

"Circumstantial" evidence, on the other hand, has a public reputation of being "unreliable", even though it may often be the best possible evidence pointing to the guilt of an offender. Cell phone records, in particular, are extremely good at circumscribing movements and locations of people.

Eyewitness testimony is not unusually very unreliable, and there have been a bunch of convictions based solely on eyewitness testimony overturned on the basis of later forensic discoveries (notably DNA evidence). Yet, having a victim or observer of a crime sit in the testimony box and point a finger at a defendant is usually persuasive in a huge way.

Given our level of technology today, I think there need to be some national judicial rules put in place to control and guide the use of various forms of evidence to be used in criminal trials.

caw

Xelebes said:

There seems to be a lot of conflict of interests when it comes to funding for the various arms of law. On one hand, they need to act "tougher on crime", on the other they need to hand out tax cuts so that they can say they are "shrinking the government" or "starving the beast." What to do, what to do.

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people want crack down on crime but on the right criminals, in Australia we have government organizations that do watch the police, but I think it starts at the hiring and salary levels.

so we pay more tax but we get the level of professionalism we pay for.

lance.schukies said:

so we pay more tax but we get the level of professionalism we pay for.

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^^^^^

We here in America like things clean and simple. The bad guys wear black hats and are GUILTY! None of this wishy-washy, maybe-he-did-and-maybe-he-didn't stuff for us.

And dammit, those guys convicted are GUILTY! *sarcasm alert*

This is so very fucked up and wrong.

Sorry, would love to come up with an incisive paragraph or two, but at the moment, they'd all come back to that sentence. WTF.

That sentence in and of itself is a pretty incisive paragraph.

lance.schukies said:

people want crack down on crime but on the right criminals, in Australia we have government organizations that do watch the police, but I think it starts at the hiring and salary levels.

so we pay more tax but we get the level of professionalism we pay for.

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I don't know about that in these types of cases. Pay was not an issue with our SBI lab guys in NC falsely testifying and making up their own bogus tests that were allowed to be used in court.

It's like it was about winning at all costs. Lab folks get paid really well here in NC, because we have the Research Triangle.

I don't know about the FBI specifically, but I've never heard that they complain about their salaries. Some states don't have enough labs and so the tests take forever to come back, and that certainly relates to taxes, but the FBI (and NC) don't have that problem.

onuilmar said:

^^^^^

We here in America like things clean and simple. The bad guys wear black hats and are GUILTY! None of this wishy-washy, maybe-he-did-and-maybe-he-didn't stuff for us.

And dammit, those guys convicted are GUILTY! *sarcasm alert*

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Yeah, I think that's the biggest issue. There can be a big mentality of "the ends justify the means," and a lot of people's main exposure to the legal system is from crime procedural shows where the heroes might routinely bend the rules in order to ensure that clearly guilty people go to prison. A lot of people are not very concerned if procedure is handled poorly as long as the "right" person gets convicted.

There's also a dangerous attitude that if you're not guilty of something, you're not going to find yourself arrested. Even if you happen to be innocent of the crime you're accused of, you probably did something else to deserve being put in prison.

But in reality, even if someone is guilty of the crime they're accused of, it's vitally important to handle the case properly. Not only does everyone deserve a fair trial, but improper handling of the case during the investigation and trial phases can open the door to appeals down the road. We don't need innocent people going to prison for stuff they didn't do. We also don't need guilty people getting out because they can prove that their trial was mishandled. It's a lose/lose.

DancingMaenid said:

Yeah, I think that's the biggest issue. There can be a big mentality of "the ends justify the means," and a lot of people's main exposure to the legal system is from crime procedural shows where the heroes might routinely bend the rules in order to ensure that clearly guilty people go to prison. A lot of people are not very concerned if procedure is handled poorly as long as the "right" person gets convicted.

There's also a dangerous attitude that if you're not guilty of something, you're not going to find yourself arrested. Even if you happen to be innocent of the crime you're accused of, you probably did something else to deserve being put in prison.

But in reality, even if someone is guilty of the crime they're accused of, it's vitally important to handle the case properly. Not only does everyone deserve a fair trial, but improper handling of the case during the investigation and trial phases can open the door to appeals down the road. We don't need innocent people going to prison for stuff they didn't do. We also don't need guilty people getting out because they can prove that their trial was mishandled. It's a lose/lose.

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A big yes to all of this.

On the one hand, it's completely horrifying that we might have executed and imprisoned innocent people because of fraudulent forensics. But it's also scary that we might end up releasing guilty people because of it.

I'd add a third thing. I'd be surprised if this case doesn't have an effect on cases in the future. I hope for the most part the effect is positive -- that they won't dare to exaggerate or falsify forensic evidence. But it could also have a negative effect -- some forensics are reliable, and not all the guys in white coats are dishonest. However, I'm sure this case will cause some to doubt forensic evidence in general, regardless of its actual reliability.

Any way you look at it, it's a goddamn disaster. Most of all, of course, for the innocents who might have been executed or spent years of their lives in prison.

CassandraW said:

On the one hand, it's completely horrifying that we might have executed and imprisoned innocent people because of fraudulent forensics.

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I don't think it's a matter of "might." I'm 99% certain Cameron Willingham was innocent of the arson deaths he was executed for, and those convictions were based on faulty arson "science."

cmhbob said:

I don't think it's a matter of "might." I'm 99% certain Cameron Willingham was innocent of the arson deaths he was executed for, and those convictions were based on faulty arson "science."

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There have definitely been other cases of proven or alleged forensic fraud, too. There's Joyce Gilchrist, a forensic chemist who was accused of intentionally falsifying evidence.

I know that the Innocence Project handled another case involving a forensic scientist who lied about tests and falsified results, but I can't remember the names involved.