RELEASE: "Take action: Call on the Department of Justice) and Federal Bureau of Investigation to ensure justice and accuracy in Forensics," by Maddy deLone, Executive Director, published by The Innocence Project on April 20, 2015.
GIST: Yesterday we and our partners at the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers announced the initial results of the historic review being conducted by the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation into past cases involving hair microscopy evidence. In 257 of the 268 cases reviewed thus far, analysts were found to have given faulty testimony or to have filed erroneous lab reports. This frequency of inaccurate testimony is shocking and is a mistake that must be both corrected and prevented from ever occurring again. Write Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director James Comey to ask that they act now to complete the hair review and establish an independent investigation! Thousands of cases have yet to be reviewed and it is imperative that these remaining cases be analyzed quickly. If this level of error holds, then thousands of defendants – many of them still in prison – will be found to have had inaccurate forensic evidence presented in their cases. It is also important to ensure that this widespread level of scientifically invalid testimony never be repeated. Only an independent investigation can prevent this from happening again. The DOJ and FBI have stated that they intend to conduct a complete review of cases and establish an independent investigation to look into why scientifically invalid forensic testimony was used so broadly and permitted to be used for so long. Please take action now to ensure that these critical next steps happen immediately. These preliminary results shock us all, but we must ensure that all defendants whose cases included erroneous testimony or laboratory reports receive true justice and prevent a situation like this from ever happening again. To that end, I hope you’ll join me in calling on Attorney General Holder and FBI Director Comey to complete the full case review quickly and establish an independent investigation.
The entire release can be found at:
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=wm#inbox/14cddf67d94ecf4e
See Eric Lander's New York Times Op Ed column: "Fix the flaws in forensic science: "The
problem is not limited to hair analysis. Last month, Alabama released a
man from death row who had been convicted 30 years ago based solely on
ballistics evidence; the state now concedes that the bullets in question
did not actually match the weapon used. A few years earlier,
Mississippi released two men who had been convicted of separate murders
based on testimony that their teeth perfectly matched bite marks on the
victims. After the true killer was later identified by DNA, experts
concluded the wounds were not human bites after all but were most likely
caused by crawfish and insects nibbling on the corpses. The
Justice Department, in collaboration with the National Institute of
Standards and Technology, took an important step to bring rigor to
forensic science in 2013 by appointing a national commission
on the issue. It has had a rocky start: Judge Jed S. Rakoff, a federal
judge in Manhattan, resigned from the panel in protest in January when a
Justice Department official sought to limit the panel’s scope, but
returned when the department reversed that approach. The commission,
most of whose members are tied to law enforcement or involved in current
forensic practice, now needs to listen to its independent panelists and
get down to making rigorous recommendations. Under
the federal rules of evidence, expert testimony must be based on
“reliable principles and methods.” It is now abundantly clear that an
expert’s opinion is not a reliable basis for drawing connections between
evidence samples and a particular person. No expert should be permitted
to testify without showing three things: a public database of patterns
from many representative samples; precise and objective criteria for
declaring matches; and peer-reviewed published studies that validate the
methods. Insistence
on high-quality forensics should unite law enforcement, prosecutors and
defense attorneys. It’s a matter of both justice and safety: No one
wants innocent defendants in jail — or executed — while true
perpetrators are still at large."
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/21/opinion/fix-the-flaws-in-forensic-science.html?_r=0
