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In The News

2019-01-17 | The FBI Says Its Photo Analysis Is Scientific Evidence. Scientists Disagree.
The bureau’s image unit has linked defendants to crime photographs for decades using unproven techniques and baseless statistics. Studies have begun to raise doubts about the unit’s methods.

2019-01-13 | Bad forensic science is putting innocent people in prison
On an April night in 1989, Jo Ann Parks survived a house fire in the Southern California city of Bell that claimed the lives of her three small children. Two years later, investigators announced that the seeming accident was actually a monstrous crime in which the 23-year-old waitress had set several fires, then barricaded her 4-year-old son inside a closet so he could not escape. Convicted through the power of forensic fire science, Parks was sentenced to life in prison without parole. She has steadfastly proclaimed her innocence. Nearly 30 years later, a revolution in the understanding of fire has exposed many of the scientific certainties of the era as guesswork in disguise — including forensic evidence used to convict Parks that was flat-out wrong.

2019-01-02 | Illinois mom wrongly convicted of murder
In 2002 she was convicted of first-degree murder, largely based on the testimony of two bloodstain-pattern analysts. However, she was exonerated in 2006 and acquitted at a retrial thanks to the work of a legal team from the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law in Chicago.

2018-12-21 | Lab contamination slows progress on Kentucky's rape kit backlog
Contamination at an out-of-state laboratory that tests rape kits has delayed progress on thousands of backlogged kits in Kentucky. Staff at Kentucky State Police’s central forensic laboratory in Frankfort caught the error in late May as part of their normal data review process.

2018-12-21 | Texas Court: Man Convicted of Murder by Bite Marks ‘Actually Innocent’
The case against a man convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the 1987 murder of a Dallas couple was based largely on a bite mark on one of the bodies. The forensic odontologist testified in court that there was a 1-in-a-million chance that someone other than Steven Mark Chaney left the impressions there. Decades later, the dentist said he was wrong. Chaney went free in 2015. And now, a Texas appeals court has declared him, after 28 years behind bars, “actually innocent.” Could it mark the final turning point for some bite-mark evidence in American courtrooms? The Innocence Project, which counts at least 25 wrongful arrested or convictions due to erroneous bite mark analysis, seems to think so.

2018-12-19 | Minnesota Panel Seeks Overhaul of Police Response to Sexual Assault
The blue-ribbon working group issued a 47-page report that makes a series of recommendations for the upcoming legislative session, and separate sets for law enforcement and prosecutors. They include improving investigations with mandatory standards, a focus on including victims and establishing a statewide coordinating council on sex crimes. It also calls for better training of police, more services for victims and audits of law enforcement responses to sex crimes. Swanson assembled the task force after an investigation by the Star Tribune found widespread lapses in how sexual assault cases are handled, including failures in police training and staffing. The newspaper said it found that chronic errors and failings plague most rape investigations in Minnesota, and repeat rapists often slip past police.

2018-12-13 | FBI plans ‘Rapid DNA’ network for quick database checks on arrestees
Though DNA has revolutionized modern crime fighting, the clues it may hold are not revealed quickly. Samples of saliva, or skin, or semen are sent to a crime lab by car (or mail), and then chemists get to work. Detectives are accustomed to waiting days or weeks, or longer, for the results. Some labs are so backed up, they take only the most serious crimes. Some samples are never tested. But a portable machine about the size of a large desktop printer is changing that. A “Rapid DNA” machine can analyze the DNA in a swab and produce a profile of 20 specific loci on the DNA strand in less than two hours. Some local police departments and prosecutors have been using Rapid DNA machines for about five years to solve crimes.

2018-12-10 | How the Absence of Blow Flies Overturned a Wrongful Conviction
I, and two other forensic entomologists whom I recommended, testified in front of a judge in October 2017. We all stated that insects would have been attracted to this body very rapidly and the lack of eggs suggested that death had occurred after sunset. Prosecution brought in a fourth entomologist who said you could not be absolutely sure. Two months later the court granted Lobato’s writ of habeas corpus and ordered a new trial based on our evidence, stating that Lobato’s lawyers were ineffective in not consulting an entomologist in the original trial. Ten days later, the court vacated Lobato’s conviction and dismissed all charges against her. Lobato was released “with prejudice,” meaning she cannot be retried.

2018-12-04 | Texas DNA Mixture Review Yields Recalculations of Cases
So far, the recalculations have yielded a single case where a convicted defendant was excluded from the genetic mixture—and five other cases where results changed in some meaningful way. “There are some convictions that may be undone—it’s hard to say,” said Bob Wicoff, appellate division chief of the Harris County Public Defender’s Office, who was involved in the work.

2018-11-27 | Ex-director promotes oversight panel as he criticizes State Police labs
The former director of the Michigan State Police forensic science division gave fiery testimony Tuesday about problems at the agency while pleading with lawmakers to support the formation of a commission to oversee the lab’s work. As director between 2010 and 2012, John Collins said he was forced to give first preference to troopers instead of scientists when jobs opened up and was told to rehire a “rogue scientist” fired for “knowingly falsifying data” because of binding arbitration.