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Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Barry Allen weeps.*

Forensic science is badly in need of reform. Here are some suggestions. - By Radley Balko and Roger Koppl - Slate Magazine:
"Last week, the state of Mississippi terminated its 20-year relationship with medical examiner Dr. Steven Hayne. Hayne has come under fire from fellow medical examiners, criminal justice groups like the Innocence Project, and one of the authors of this article for his impossible workload, sloppy procedures, and questionable court testimony. In the early 1990s, Hayne and his frequent collaborator, now-disgraced forensic odontologist Dr. Michael West, helped secure murder convictions for Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks, both later proven innocent through DNA testing. The two were released from prison earlier this year.

...Courts have also missed plenty of mistakes from well-intentioned, conscientious scientists, too. In fact, these may be even more common—and harder to catch. Studies show that crime lab fiber, paint, and body fluid analyses, for example, may consistently have error rates of 10 percent or higher. The error rate in fingerprint analysis is possibly between 1 percent and 4 percent. And bite mark evidence is notoriously unreliable though still widely used.

...reforms are needed... A scientist whose job performance is evaluated by a senior official in the district attorney or state attorney general's office may feel subtle pressure to return results that produce convictions. In cases in which district attorneys' offices contract work out to private labs, the labs may feel pressure—even if it's not explicit (though sometimes it is)—to produce favorable results in order to continue the relationship.

Cognitive bias can be even subtler. For some experts, merely knowing the details of a crime or discussing it with police or prosecutors beforehand can introduce significant bias to a lab technician's analysis.

A research team led by Seton Hall law professor Michael Risinger published a study in the January 2002 California Law Review identifying five stages of scientific analysis in which bias can affect even the most professional expert's opinion. The study was careful to note that these biases were unintentional and not the result of outright fraud. But according to the study, cognitive bias can factor into the ways in which a scientist observes the initial data, records that data, and makes calculations and also how he remembers and reinterprets his notes when preparing for trial—a problem that looms larger as time elapses between the lab work and trial testimony.

Most jurors aren't aware of any of these biases; in fact, most give enormous weight to expert witnesses. Even out-and-out frauds like West and Shaibani can persuade jurors if they're presented in court as reputable experts, appear likeable, and can testify with conviction. A study of the first 86 DNA exonerations garnered by the Innocence Project estimated that faulty forensic science played a role in more than 50 percent of the wrongful convictions. While it's obviously not possible to completely eradicate bias and scientific error from the courtroom, a few simple and relatively inexpensive reforms could go a long way toward reducing it..."

You can click over for the reforms suggested, which seem reasonable and level headed, ensuring that they will never come to pass.

*Barry Allen is the silver age Flash, who recently returned after being killed off in the comics 23 years ago [ain't comics grand?] ...In his day job he was a police/forensic scientist, 44 years before CSI made it cool. I'm a geek. Shut it.

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