Convicted by a Hair: Laboratory Misconduct in the Courtroom

Science Magazine recently posted a self-quiz on forensics (see here). The results are important because so many of us know so little about what actually is, and is not, science. (I scored just over the median.) Most informative - and disturbing to me - were these two:

• Twenty-six of 28 FBI hair analysts who were investigated provided testimony or submitted laboratory reports with “grossly exaggerated” data that often helped prosecutors.
• Very small amounts of DNA can lead to false positives…. Analysts have picked up DNA transferred from one person to another by way of an object that both of them have touched, or from one piece of evidence to another when two items jostled against each other in an evidence bag.

On the upside, from that quiz, bite marks have been disallowed as evidence here in Texas. Unfortunately, tire tracks, shoe prints, lip prints, and repressed dreams were not part of that decision.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS
The Fallibility of Fingerprinting
Star of Wonder: Arguments over the Christmas Star
Austin Energy 2016 Regional Science Festival
Impossible Usually is Not

Stand Up and Be Counted

Electronic voting makes election fraud even easier. Here in Travis County, no audit trail exists. The process of voting leaves no physical traces.  Moreover, no "red team" or "capture the flag" tests have been conducted. Instead, county clerk Dana DeBeauvoir repeatedly insists that adhering to good specifications removes the need for security tests. This is a logical outcome of the secret ballot. The secret ballot is called the "Australian ballot" because Australia was settled by criminals who did not trust each other.  That can be a bedrock foundation for social structures of laissez faire and laissez passer individualism. But in America, it is different. When you know that your rights will be respected by your neighbors, you can voice an unpopular opinion. 

Massachusetts still has open town meetings.  And they are serious about it.

Selected Case Law
District Attorney for the Northern District v. Wayland School Committee, 455 Mass. 561 (2009). "Prior to conducting an open meeting, the school committee commenced a private e-mail exchange in order to deliberate the superintendent's professional competence. This violated the letter and spirit of the open meeting law. Governmental bodies may not circumvent the requirements of the open meeting law by conducting deliberations via private messages, whether electronically, in person, over the telephone, or in any other form." -- http://www.lawlib.state.ma.us/subject/about/openmeeting.html

An open vote is also easier to audit because everyone present can see the tally.  Of course, that works best in a village of a few thousand where a few hundred show up and a few dozen actually lead the process.  With about 700,000 people in the average Congressional district, open voting would be held in stadiums. But that is workable, given some new social norms.  Certainly, for local matters, every community has several venues that can serve a few hundred people.

If the concept were extended to juries, they would be held liable for wrongful convictions. The history of innocent people released from prison by DNA evidence suggests that right now about 80,000 innocent people are incarcerated.  For most crimes, DNA is not an issue.  Williamson County, Texas, prosecutor Ken Anderson was given ten days in jail, fined $500, and agreed to resign from the bar, for his wrongful conviction of Michael Morton, charged with killing his wife 25 years ago. (KVUE News here.) Back then, Anderson stood before the jury, with tears running down his face in grief for the victim, though he knew that he had been withholding exculpatory evidence. Of course, the jury bought it, also, allowing themselves to be swayed despite a lack of any physical evidence or eye-witness testimony.  As the innocent man served 25 years in prison, it seems fitting that the jury should be awarded the same consequences.  We know from the basics of criminology that very few perpetrators suddenly commit a causeless heinous act. While we all make mistakes, the fact is that for about 20% of us, crime is a lifestyle.  When considering the prosecutor's actions, it makes sense to review all of his cases and investigate his lifetime career for hidden crimes.

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

Another Example of Unlimited Constitutional Government
The Fallibility of Fingerprinting

Eyewitness Testimony and the Innocence Project

An Objective Foundation for Government

Systemic Injustice

We know the factors of failed justice.  Often, they form a syndrome.  No single correction or remedy will address them all.  The cures cannot be legislated.  Like all crime, ultimately it comes down to the individual who makes the choice.  Scandals are rooted in bad society, when injustice is rewarded because of willful corruption or careless disregard for consequences.  That may be easier to fix. 

Tucker Carrington, the director of the Mississippi Innocence Project, says he and his colleague Will McIntosh decided to pursue Mabry's killer themselves after they attempted to bring the case to the attention of the prosecutor in Humphreys County, and then to Hood's office, and received no response from either.

“When you take on a case and it reveals a glaring injustice like this -- something that could easily be taken care of if someone would just give it some attention -- you can't just turn a blind eye to that," Carrington says. "In the end, I guess we saw this through because no one else would.”

“In fact, the way forensics are handled in the courtroom has become a persistent problem across the country, not just in Mississippi. Forensic scandals have been erupting at crime labs nationwide over the last decade. Most recently, there was a scandal at the state drug lab in Massachusetts that could affect thousands of convictions; another drug lab scandal in Nassau County, N.Y., that could also hit thousands of cases; and misconduct at the state crime labs in Connecticut and North Carolina that have led to reviews of hundreds of cases, including murder convictions. Currently, there's an ongoing controversy involving the FBI's crime lab, in which analysts were found to have vastly overstated the significance of hair and fiber analysis while testifying in court. That too has spurred a review of thousands of cases going back more than a decade. The FBI lab had been considered one of the most elite crime labs in the world.”

Solving Kathy Mabry's Murder: Brutal 15-Year-Old Crime Highlights Decades-Long Mississippi Scandal by Radley Balko

Posted: 01/17/2013 1:42 pm EST

Updated: 01/17/2013 9:44 pm EST

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/17/kathy-mabry-murder-steven-hayne-michael-west_n_2456970.html

A decade later, more-advanced DNA testing determined that there was semen from two men inside of Jackson, and neither of them was Kennedy Brewer. The state Supreme Court ordered a new trial. Despite the test results, Allgood planned to prosecute Brewer again. When The New York Times asked him why he hadn’t bothered checking the crime scene DNA against the state’s DNA database, Allgood replied that the state doesn’t have such a database. This came as a surprise to the man who had been running it.

“Bad Boys: A rogue’s gallery of misbehaving prosecutors, plus three worth praising” by Radley Balko from the July 2011 issue

http://reason.com/archives/2011/06/27/bad-boys

On LinkedIn

On 01/27/13 4:30 PM, Lettie McSpadden wrote:

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I've written an actual case study that has examples of most of the procedural errors that can be made by law enforcement officials.  It began with the murder of a girl, the arrest and trial of three men two of whom were convicted and sentenced to death.  Later the Illinois Supreme Court overturned the convictions and the prosecution tried the individually two despite the admission of guilt by a third party. During two new trials, convictions, and two subsequent Illinois Supreme Court appeals, the prosecutors refused to admit error even when the third man’s DNA proved his guilt. (Meanwhile he committed two other murders.)  After a preliminary hearing where one policeman’s previous testimony proved erroneous, a new judge ordered the release of the accused.

Unlike other prosecutions full of procedural errors, this one resulted in the investigation, indictment, and trial of three policemen and two prosecutors who were found not guilty. Nevertheless, a new prosecutor ordered an examination of the facts and subsequently indicted and tried the real killer who was found guilty and sentenced to death.  He has not been executed as Illinois has a moratorium on the death penalty.

Meantime the convicted men filed a civil case in federal for wrongful imprisonment, and it was settled by the county where the criminal trials took place for three million dollars.

“Mistakes Were Made:  Prosecutorial Mistakes or Misconduct?

Download on Amazon.com to Kindle  Or Createspace for hard copy.

Lettie McSpadden, Professor of Political Science, Emerita, Northern Illinois University; maclettie@gmail.com

A checklist of factors is all too easy to construct.

ü      Mistaken eyewitness identification

·        At the scene

·        Police Lineups

ü      False confessions

·        Coerced pleas

·        Faux perpetrators

ü      Unreliable informants

·        Street

·        Jail, prison

ü      Prosecutorial misconduct

·        Withholding evidence, especially exculpatory evidence

·        Theorizing the existence of unidentified assailants

ü      Flawed forensic science

·        Laboratory fraud

·        Laboratory misconduct

·        Junk science

·        Pseudo-science

ü      Ineffective legal counsel

·        Physical resources

·        Courtroom community

ü      Prejudices, especially racism

·        Presumption of guilt

ü      Authoritarianism

·        Subjectivity of Policing

Based on Wrongly Convicted:Perspectives on Failed Justice by Saundra D. Westervelt and John A. Humphrey, eds., Rutgers University Press, 2002.