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FBI Doesn't Tell Courts About Bogus Evidence
dprovine writes "According to a joint investigation by The Washington Post and 60 Minutes, a forensic test used by the FBI for decades is known to be invalid. The National Academy of Science issued a report in 2004 that FBI investigators had given "problematic" testimony to juries. The FBI later stopped using "bullet lead analysis", but sent a letter to law enforcement officials saying that they still fully supported the science behind it. Hundreds of criminal
defendants — some already convicted in part on the testimony of FBI experts — were not informed about the problems with the evidence used against them in court."
They were all guilty! We know they were all guilty! How? We just know!
Besides, would you let a killer/terrorist/robber free?
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
That's why former Illinois Governor George Ryan commuted all the death sentences in Illinois to life after DNA evidence proved that half the men on death row were innocent.
Ryan himself is now in a Federal slammer.
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
The article says the National Academy of Sciences started the study in 2002, and it took 18 months, to give them the benefit of the doubt let's say that they finished the study in 2004 and found that the method was severely flawed. Then they waited an entire year to stop using the technique and the report they issued downplayed the severity of the issue saying that they still stood behind the science, even when they knew it could have been wrong. Nobody in the FBI or the Justice Department tried to identify the hundreds of cases that used their analysis, nor did they notify the defendants, prosecutors or judges involved in these cases.
What kind of twisted lies do you have to tell yourself to justify keeping possibly innocent people behind bars? They weren't just trying to ignore the science, they didn't notify defendants or their lawyers when they knew their time for appeal was almost up. Oh sorry, you appealed too late, no doubt the evidence against you is utter horseshit, but sorry, it's been a few years and everyone else has moved on, get used to jail.
It took 60 Minutes to actually get some progress on this, I hope all the people involved in keeping evidence that could exonerate someone get a fair punishment.
Si Hoc Legere Scis Nimium Eruditionis Habes
Convict someone of a crime based on evidence you know to be faulty, you serve the sentence instead.
You argued for the death penalty?...ohhh....bad move...
Happiness does not come from having much, but from being attached to little.
As a jurror, how the hell am I supposed to not have "reasonable doubt" about anything that's introduced as evidence in a trial? It's already very well-established that eye-witness identification has horrible reliability. Now apparently I shouldn't even take the reliability of forensic evidence forgranted. What's left? If the prosecution presents damning forensic evidence and the defense lawyer simply says "Yeah, but since it's been proven that even established forensic tests aren't necessarily reliable, why should anyone believe you?" how am I supposed to not have reasonable doubt about the forensic evidence now?
"the breathalyzer tests have been shown to read higher than actual in more than 25% of tests"
Heck, DNA labs have had 10% error rates. There have been cases where they run first the DNA sample from the suspect, then run the comparison with the crimescene sample in the same batch, insufficiently cleaning equipment between so the suspects sample is actually transferred into the crimescene sample during the testing procedure. And labs that refuse to change such flawed procedures due to cost.
There was a case in the UK where a man with advanced Parkinsons who couldnt drive and who could barely dress himself became a suspect in a burglary 200 miles away, after a DNA database search popped his name out as a match. He put in jail for several months, until his lawyer demanded a test on more loci and they noticed that, ooops, DNA isnt really that accurate, and seeing as human beings do not vary in size and form between flatworm through elephant, they can have quite a lot of matching loci without actually being the same person.
Forensic science isnt questioned anywhere near as much as it should be. Which gives us idiotic ideas like fingerprint and dna databases that will be so diluted by irrelevant false positives they can only either waste resources and slow down police work or provide a whole host of scapegoats to throw in jail even when there's not the slightest chance they could actually be guilty.
On a related note, if you ever go to trial and DNA matching is used, question the methodology and get the source to the software used. A friend of mine works at a company that makes DNA comparison devices and says they make some really, really, really questionable choices in their matching algorithms. Like if the DNA strand shows a sequence that is rare in the common populace (rarer than an arbitrarily chosen value) the algorithm assumes it is an error an substitutes the most common sequence for purposes of matching. He says it sometimes keeps him up at night worrying about who is going to jail.
Anybody remember the big deal over the manipulated crime lab results a few years back?
The FBI's function has always been since Day One to put people in jail without regard to guilt or innocence.
Does anybody really believe that J. Edgar Hoover ever gave a damn about "evidence"?
There's a reason that the rule for talking to the FBI is: You say "On advice of attorney I have nothing to say to the FBI." That's it. You never say anything else, because they WILL use it to build a case against you even if you have done nothing.
Ask that guy Jewel from the Atlanta bombing case. Ask the guy suspected in the anthrax case. Ask thousands of people in Federal prison.
The FBI is the equivalent of the Gestapo except they have slicker methods and better PR thanks to the TV shows.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
That was the grounds for the retrial, but according to the report, the original prosecutor had been dead several years and the original defender refused interviews.
Science rarely examines onetime events, out of all the phenomena it studies. And when it does, it explicitly states its certainty in very low confidence levels. And, like with the Big Bang, composes a theory of how the event itself isn't just gone, but is part of massive evidence everywhere - or scientists won't argue with much certainty of all.
Science also works on shades of doubt and uncertainty. Science, in fact, took many of the terms and practices of law, as they coevolved - usually in the same countries and cultures.
So it is you who misunderstands, and misstates, both science and law. And especially you misunderstand one device common to them both: analogy and metaphor.
--
make install -not war
I can't say that a large chunk *aren't*, but I've met (through a clinical internship this semester) many of the folks at the Camden (NJ) Defender's office, and while there are certainly touches / streaks / rivers of justified cynicism and battlefield humor, many of the folks there are basically idealistic and hard working, and most of them aren't very young. They're like a really good law firm with terrible pay and computers straight out of Bedrock.
... at length.
They're overburdened with cases, I'd say, but they aren't overworked in the same way some private attorneys are. They'll freely tell you (if you are a criminal defendent in Camden, NJ, which I hope is not the case) that if you have the money to hire a private attorney, you should. Not because the result will be any better (you're going to be hard pressed to find people who know the system or the law any better), but because a) it makes things easier on them and b) if you like to talk with your attorney more frequently, those guys are billing you aggressively and therefore happy to talk
(In NJ, the PD is a statewide agency, with locations / branches around the state, I think one per county. Some places, that's not the case. Also, the PD -- contrary to my initial thought -- is not "free" for the clients, just very cheap vs. a private attorney. They don't collect every bill, but some percentage.)
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Similar to the upcoming US election results