Forensic Science Misconduct
Because forensic
science results can mean the difference between life and death in many
cases, fraud and other types of misconduct in the field are particularly
troubling. False testimony, exaggerated statistics and laboratory fraud
have led to wrongful conviction in several states.
Since forensic evidence is offered by "experts," jurors routinely give
it much more weight than other evidence. But when misconduct occurs, the
weight is misplaced. In some instances, labs or their personnel are too
closely tied to police and prosecutors, and therefore not impartial.
Other times, a criminalist lacking the requisite knowledge embellishes
findings, confident that he will not be caught since the lawyer, judge
and jury have no background in the relevant science.
In some cases, critical evidence is consumed or destroyed, so that re-testing to uncover the misconduct is impossible. Evidence in these cases can never be tested again. Those wrongful convictions will never be overturned.
One weak link
The identification, collection, testing, storage, handling and reporting
of any piece of forensic evidence involves a number of people. Evidence
can be deliberately or accidentally mishandled at any stage of this
process.
The risk of misconduct starts at the crime scene, where evidence can be
planted, destroyed or mishandled. Then the evidence is sent by police to
a state forensic lab or independent contractor, where it can be
contaminated, poorly tested, consumed unnecessarily or mislabeled. The
next step is a report, in which technicians and their superiors
sometimes misrepresent results. DNA exonerations have revealed numerous
instances of “drylabbing” evidence – reporting results when no test was
actually performed. It's cheaper and faster – but fraudulent.
All over the
map
The Innocence Project has seen forensic misconduct by scientists,
experts and prosecutors lead to wrongful conviction in many states. The
following are among the more notorious:
-
A former director of the West Virginia state crime lab, Fred Zain, testified for the prosecution in 12 states over his career, including dozens of cases in West Virginia and Texas. DNA exonerations and new evidence in other cases have shown that Zain fabricated results, lied on the stand about results and willfully omitted evidence from this reports.
-
Pamela Fish, a Chicago lab technician, testified for the prosecution about false matches and suspicious results in the trials of at least eight defendants who were convicted, then proven innocent years later by DNA testing.
-
A two-year investigation of the Houston crime lab, completed in 2007, showed that evidence in that lab was mishandled and results were misreported.
Ending forensic
fraud
The Innocence Project has uncovered these abuses since 1992 and has
developed recommendations for crime labs, law enforcement agencies and
courts to ensure that forensic science misconduct is prevented whenever
possible. The Innocence Project calls for state to impose standards on
the preservation and handling of evidence. When exonerations suggest
that an analyst engaged in misconduct or that a facility lacked proper
procedures or oversight, the Innocence Project advocates for independent
audits of their work in other cases that may have also resulted in
wrongful convictions.
With our sincere appreciation to the Innocence Project - http://www.innocenceproject.org
