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In The News

2017-07-19 | NYC Official Seeks State Panel to Probe Wrongful Convictions
Former New York Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman established a wrongful commission task force in 2009. The group ultimately recommended ideas the state has approved, including expanding defendants’ access to DNA testing to fight convictions, videotaping many police interrogations, and conducting photo lineups so that the officers administering them don’t know which picture is the suspect’s. Still, the now-retired Lippman said the state needs to “find out what the pattern is” in wrongful-conviction cases as he joined Adams to call for a new commission.

2017-07-10 | Forensic Scientists Recover Human DNA from Mosquitoes
By examining DNA in blood digested by two different species of mosquito over a range of times after feeding, the team was able to trace back blood samples to individual volunteers, even after two days of digesting in the mosquito. After roughly three days the mosquitos completely digested the blood.

2017-07-04 | Lawsuit: North Charleston man sat in jail for 2 years despite evidence that would set him free
Wright was freed in May 2016. His charge was formally dropped in December. Ninth Circuit Solicitor Scarlett Wilson said the evidence "necessitated the dismissal" and prompted her to forward the new case to the Attorney General's Office for prosecution. The baby sitter, Clara Jean Ellis, now 57, faces the same charge. She remains in jail. Wright, meanwhile, continues to struggle with being labeled a "liar" and a "child killer," Toporek said.

2017-07-04 | Forensic Experts Granted ‘Qualified Immunity’ for 1990s Bite Marks Testimony
Two men were separately convicted in the 1990s of raping and killing 3-year-old girls who lived several miles apart in Noxubee County, Mississippi. One was sentenced to die. Both convictions featured bite mark evidence which was later discredited, due to DNA evidence that pointed to a single killer who later confessed to the crimes. The two convicted men, Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks, were released from Mississippi prisons in 2008, and filed federal lawsuits against the death investigators who had testified about the alleged bite marks on the bodies of the little girls that had led to the convictions.

2017-07-01 | Misidentification Defense – The 100% Method
In the criminal context misidentification is a phenomenon where victims or witnesses of criminal activity mistakenly identify one person as the perpetrator of the crime. When this happens the people making the identification become convinced that the person they identified is the person who they saw committing the crime. There are many reasons why this happens and we will not get into them here. But if you’re interested in the basic principles and causes of misidentification you can read this.

2017-07-01 | Sweden and the US to share fingerprint data
Before, the Swedish police had to file a request with the US to gain access to fingerprints from the FBI's database in a process that could take several weeks. After the summer, however, police in both countries will be able to browse in each other's fingerprint registers in the event of crimes punishable with over a year in jail. Only Sweden's Left Party voted against the decision in parliament.

2017-06-29 | Science organizations renew call for independent U.S. committee on forensics
In a statement, Justice Department spokeswoman Lauren Ehrsam said that Justice has begun reviewing the science groups’ statement, which is among more than 250 public comments filed as of June 9 in response to a request for input to help develop a forensic science strategy. That strategy will be devised by an internal department crime task force,, and that the department “will be making announcements in the near future.”

2017-06-29 | Federal court: Despite ‘grossly negligent’ testimony that put two innocent men in prison, forensic experts can’t be sued
West testified in dozens of cases, Hayne in thousands. Both often gave testimony well outside the constraints of science. Hayne, for example, once claimed that the bullet wounds in a murder victim were “consistent with” a theory that two people were holding the murder weapon when it was fired. West has claimed to be able to trace bruises on a victim’s abdomen to the specific shoe that inflicted the injuries; claimed to match fingernail scrapes to the specific fingernails that made them; and in one particularly nutty case, claimed that the knife wounds in a murder victim could only have been caused by one specific knife, and then claimed to have found marks on the chief suspect’s hands that could only have been caused by gripping the handle of that knife — and only that knife.

2017-06-28 | Mold Found in Containers of About 850 Austin Police Rape Kits
Hundreds of sexual assault kits in Austin police storage have been determined to have mold growing on the outside of them, prompting officials to seek guidance from state and national experts about how to properly preserve the evidence and raising questions about whether forensic samples may have been compromised. So far, officials said they have no indication that the mold will prevent analysts from obtaining DNA samples and that, because the kits had never been tested, evidence from them has never been used to build a case against or convict a defendant.

2017-06-26 | Broward Judges Aren't Letting Defendants Challenge Bad DNA Evidence, Critics Say
At issue was DNA evidence based on complex samples, in which the genetic material comes from multiple people. Complex samples require a complicated analysis to determine which portion of DNA belongs to which person. When the DNA is minuscule or degraded, pieces can be missing or seem to exist where they do not. Because so much of that evidence is up to interpretation, the science can become more subjective and different experts often arrive at varying conclusions. That subjectivity led ASCLD in 2010 to issue new thresholds for interpreting DNA and calculating the odds that a particular person left DNA at a crime scene. Crime labs across the nation are grappling with the changes: Some are retesting thousands of cases to make sure old evidence was sound. At the Broward crime lab, complex DNA processing was stopped after ASCLD issued its findings last year. The State Attorney's Office then began sending notices about the issue to 2,000 defendants in cases that were resolved since 1999 where any type of DNA was involved.