shirleymckie.myfastforum.org

Big Wullie · Joined: 25 Apr 2007 Posts: 1149 Location: Glasgow

http://criminaljustice.change.org/blog/view/the_perils_of_junk_science

Warning

Please be aware there are some graphic details in some of the content on the link above.

by Christopher Hill
Published March 11, 2009 @ 04:42AM PST

If a scientist were to testify that he saw a person commit a crime because he went to the scene in the Way Back Machine with Peabody and his pet boy Sherman, everyone would know it was untrue. Unfortunately, innocent people have been convicted of crimes based on science just as unbelievable as the Way Back Machine. Junk science and incompetent forensic technicians are at least two reasons that people are charged and convicted of crimes they did not commit.

That is why the study released recently by National Academy of Science describing the problems in forensic laboratories across the country is so important. The NAS found that many labs have poorly trained technicians. The lack of standardized methods and training create an environment where sloppy work is presented and accepted in court. The study recommends the creation of a federal agency to provide oversight of the country’s forensic labs. The suggestion is for the agency to develop best practices for training, research and uniformity in analyzing information.

An article in the current issue of Reason magazine demonstrates the dangers of junk science convicting innocent people. Dr. Michael West is a forensic odontologist (or bite mark expert). He has testified in many capital cases. Kennedy Brewer, who has since been exonerated from Mississippi’s death row, was convicted when the jury believed Dr. West’s testimony. Dr. West claimed that he saw Brewer’s bite marks on the victim, and Brewer was convicted of raping and murdering a little girl. The marks were later found to be insect bites and not those of Brewer or any other human being. Another man has since been convicted of the crime. The Innocence Project was able to help free Mr. Brewer.

Dr. West once claimed to have developed a new technique for analyzing wound patterns and dubbed it “the West Phenomenon.” The “West Phenomenon” consists of the doctor putting on a pair of goggles, using ultraviolet light and observing a body. Dr. West has been sanctioned by forensic organizations, and yet some prosecutors continue to use him as an “expert.” In the film “Traces of Guilt: The Verdict,” John Holdridge, Director of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project, discusses the serious flaws in Dr. West’s techniques and testimony.

Dr. West is just one forensic “scientist” who has put people on death row by testifying to junk science. In Oklahoma, forensic scientist Joyce Gilchrist helped send 23 people to death row. At least one judge stated that she had withheld exculpatory evidence and provided “untrue” false testimony.

Curtis McCarty was exonerated from death row because Gilchrist’s transgressions with the evidence in his case. Junk scientists and junk science have sent many innocent people to death row. Ernest Willis of Texas was exonerated because the science used to convict him of arson and murder has been rejected by fire experts. The same science used to prove Willis’s innocence may exonerate Cameron Willingham who was executed for an arson murder in 2004. Texas has hired a fire expert to investigate Willingham’s case. An Innocence Project review with arson experts has shown that the fire was probably accidental.

The NAS study provides needed solutions to an epidemic problem. Unfortunately, we do not have a Way Back Machine to go back in time to correct all of the errors produced by junk science. However, the recommendations of the new NAS study, if implemented, should help to keep some (but by no means all) innocent people out of prison and off of death row.

Big Wullie · Joined: 25 Apr 2007 Posts: 1149 Location: Glasgow

Warning

The video in this link shows some graphic details of how this man was set up:

Editor's Note: The following article contains graphic and disturbing photographs and video excerpts of an examination conducted on the body of a 23-month-old girl. The images are the basis of claims that forensic experts fabricated evidence in a case that put a man on death row, where he awaits exoneration or execution.

http://www.reason.com/news/show/131527.html

Yet here in this country we cannot get access to witness statements and evidence held by our Crown Office.

scotkaz · Joined: 28 Aug 2008 Posts: 527

A friend of mine who is a Forensic Pathologist wrote this, regarding the article you posted Wullie.

This problem is not new. Voodoo Science has been around longer than the organized discipline of Forensic Science of which Forensic Pathology is part. The forensic scientist or pathologists carries with him an aura of correctness that is sometimes clearly not warranted, and hidden agendas often cloud an already murky ballpark.

In part this dates back to the Oath of Hippocrates, and the mysticism that surrounds all physicians. It is the non-recognition of signs (=clues) or their misreading that causes the main problems, assuming that the investigator is both competent and intellectually honest, as having a clear mind at the beginning of his investigation . It is the misreading or non-recognition of these signs that lead to wrong conclusions, wrong testimony, and wrong verdicts.

Unfortunately there are Dr Erdmanns, Joan Wood, Fred Zain, Joyce Gilchrist and others, who for some reason or another betray our trust and cause extreme havoc in the courts. A predetermined mind set will steer an investigation down the wrong path, and it is difficult to self correct. After all, if the doctor says so, it must be true….

Not so. Believe it or not, forensic pathologists are human, and sometimes their critical thinking is not so critical after all. There are a plethora of old sayings in the forensic pathology corpus of data that just will not go away.

A well respected forensic pathologist can state on television, for example that a right handed person will[ always] shoot him/herself with his right hand on the right side of the head, or that a person jumping off the Eiffel Tower will always remove his/her glasses first.

An old medical aphorism, generally attributed to Rabelais (a physician as well as a baudy writer) which states:

“Dans la medicine comme dans l’amour, jamais jamais, jamais toujours.”
(In medicine as in love, never a never” and never an “always”).

The medical examiner, Criminalist, investigator and detective has to know what s/he is looking for, how to find and identify it, and how to preserve and document what he finds, finally how to properly evaluate what he finds. It is the last step – the separation of the wheat from the chaff that enables the expert to draw the right conclusions, even from bad evidence if there are any to be had.

Mistakes in reasoning are easy to come by, even discounting the fraudulent reporting what was not done, and the deliberate destruction of potentially exculpative material. A well trained pathologist will not confuse a tâche noire for petechiae, or a gunshot entry for an exit, or a stab wound for a gunshot wound.

A forensic investigator can just be loud wrong; two examples of this resulted in the death of one inmate, and the almost execution of another.

Cameron Todd Willingham was convicted of setting a fire that killed his children, based on now a clearly false presumption of correctness by an “arson” investigator, using discredited theories and a malignant mind set. He went to his death because the courts were unable or unwilling to recognize the truth cited in a report by several leading fire investigators who clearly refuted the original “arson” investigator’s conclusions. Because of bad science – or rather no science at all--- an innocent man was executed by the state of Texas .

Kenneth Richie faced a similar death in Ohio ’s electric chair, based on similar evidence, that was also refuted by a gaggle of fire experts, applying newer techniques. He was luckier than Willingham, and his innocence did prevail, in spite by a concerted effort by the then Ohio Attorney General, who actually said that it is OK to execute Richie even if the evidence was false, because a jury convicted him!

The OJ Simpson case presented many problems for the prosecution. Most interesting was the evaluation of the DNA evidence; using the same data, two different statistical probabilities defined blood stains that were found at the scene or on O J Simpson’s clothing; both probabilities could not be correct.

Perhaps most troubling is the destruction of evidence either by the initial investigators, or those entrusted to investigate the pristine scene. In one case out west Texas , an alleged murder weapon was discarded, because the investigator felt “ there were too many knives around, and testing only some would do”. In a Florida case involving a black man accused of the rape murder of an elderly well known local white woman, the medical examiner instructed her therapist to destroy blood samples after only doing A-B-O grouping. The medical examiner knew better.

Then of course there is malicious prosecution: more than one recent case and many others in time, involved the prosecutor deliberately misleading the jury by falsifying physical evidence. George Whitmore was convicted of a double rape murder, and one previous robbery murder; part of the physical evidence included a button allegedly ripped off the coat of the robbery victim; the prosecutor knew that this button was not from the coat in question, but portrayed it as such to get his conviction and death sentence. Whitmore was eventually exonerated.

Lloyd Miller came to the door of the electric chair before getting a reprieve. He was convicted of a heinous murder of a little girl, based on a red stain on a pair of men’s undershorts, alleged to be the blood of the little girl. The prosecutor knew that 1) the shorts were too small for MiIller to wear, and 2) the stain on the shorts were red paint and not blood. Still the state of Illinois wanted to execute Miller.

By selectively ignoring exculpative evidence, and relying on false presumptions of correctness and wilder and wilder speculation to get a conviction, justice is thwarted, convictions are unsafe, and innocent people have been executed, partly because of reliance on junk science. When proper testing is performed by well informed investigators using valid science, the forensic sciences can ease the way through the courts; when corrupt, the forensic sciences present a nightmare to an innocent defendant.

©G M Larkin Md
Charlotte NC/ 2009

Big Wullie · Joined: 25 Apr 2007 Posts: 1149 Location: Glasgow

After Reading the following article I am left in no doubt the very same happens in this country:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,109568-1,00.html

All too often these experts that give evidence in these cases are employees of the police, Police Pathologists etc.

All too often they say this is the worst case I have ever come across like the Fernieside three case for example:

I am told by David that the expert in their case claimed in court: She did not take notes when examining the victim.

So she went to court and claimed this was her worst ever case YET the police report has noted the injuries as Minor.

The expert was also noted as claiming: she had never examined someone who had had sex with three men before.

So how could she then claim to be an expert in this field.

All too often the experts are employed by the Crown and rely on the Crown for employment so therefore will say anything to get convictions.

All too foten in the past these experts got away with not being challenged.

Times are changing and not before time