Based-on-faulty | Innocence Project Bournemouth

posted by Justice on Dec 10

DNA testing has been suspended for over a month in New Mexico’s State Police crime lab after the state’s forensic accreditation lapsed at the end of October, and a backlog is building up. Officials reported recently that the lab is 124 cases behind and that at least two cases will have passed court deadlines before accreditation can be renewed, which could happen as soon as this week. “This could be a blow to every district attorney's office across New Mexico, as well as law enforcement,” Lemuel Martinez, a district attorney in New Mexico, told the Albuquerque Journal .

DNA Backlogs Build Across the U.S.

DNA testing has been suspended for over a month in New Mexico’s State Police crime lab after the state’s forensic accreditation lapsed at the end of October, and a backlog is building up. Officials reported recently that the lab is 124 cases behind and that at least two cases will have passed court deadlines before accreditation can be renewed, which could happen as soon as this week.

“This could be a blow to every district attorney's office across New Mexico, as well as law enforcement,” Lemuel Martinez, a district attorney in New Mexico, told the Albuquerque Journal. “To not have that service readily available will really be terrible for the entire criminal justice system. I just hope no cases fall through the cracks.”

We’ve reported in recent weeks that backups in labs across the country have left critical evidence, including rape kits, untested nationwide in thousands of cases.

And budget shortfalls mean that some departments rule out testing in entire categories of crimes. Although DNA testing has been used increasingly in burglary cases in recent years, Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt told the Houston Chronicle on Friday that he can’t get funding to expand the use of DNA tests in burglary investigations. Burglaries are up 4.4 percent in Houston this year, with 21,212 break-ins through September.

It would cost $8 million to upgrade the current HPD crime lab to process DNA evidence from non-violent offenses in addition to violent crimes, Hurtt estimated….

“I'm so frustrated with this whole process,” Hurtt said Friday. “We find a problem, we find a solution, and … everybody says, ‘This is important. We have to do it.' However, it doesn't seem to be a priority. And we're not going to be able to do this for free.”

Even when testing is eventually conducted, lab backlogs can delay arrests for violent crimes and delay the slow investigations that eventually clear innocent suspects.

A Massachusetts man recently spent five months in jail before DNA tests proved he didn’t commit the crime he had been charged with — and he was freed. Another man was recently charged with a 2003 sexual assault based on evidence collected in 2005, but not tested until this year.

Despite this, Massachusetts officials announced last week that are not focused on eliminating the state’s backlog of 16,000 cases.

Tags: law, legal aid, Miscarriage of Justice

posted by Justice on Dec 10

In 1999, facing devastating testimony from a man considered at the time to be one of the world’s leading pediatric pathologists and a possible life sentence, Sherry Sherret-Robinson pled guilty to suffocating her four-month-old son, something she had always said she didn’t do. Yesterday, she was cleared.

A Canadian Mother Is Cleared in Her Son’s Death
In 1999, facing devastating testimony from a man considered at the time to be one of the world’s leading pediatric pathologists and a possible life sentence, Sherry Sherret-Robinson pled guilty to suffocating her four-month-old son, something she had always said she didn’t do.

Yesterday, she was cleared. A panel of three Ontario judges set aside her conviction, saying she had been wrongfully convicted. The work of Dr. Charles Smith, the pathologist who testified that Sherret-Robinson’s son had been asphyxiated, has been discredited in recent years. Sherret-Robinson is the second person cleared of a conviction based on faulty testimony from Smith, and nearly 30 additional cases are under review.

The wrongful conviction has taken a toll on her life, reports the Toronto Star. She served a year in prison before being released, and also lost custody of her eldest son. She has struggled to find work due to her criminal record and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Read the full story – and more on the other pending Smith cases. (Toronto Star, 12/08/09)

Unvalidated or improper forensics, including faulty testimony from medical examiners, has been a factor in at least half of the wrongful convictions overturned through DNA testing to date. Learn more about forensics as a cause of wrongful conviction here.

Tags: Innocence Project, , Layla D’monte

posted by Justice on Sep 21

An editorial in today’s Los Angeles Times makes a strong case for federal forensic reform, pointing out that Cameron Todd Willingham, an innocent man executed in Texas in 2004, is among countless people sent to prison in the U.S. based on faulty forensic evidence. Willingham’s case is heartbreaking: He lost his children to fire and his wife to divorce, spent 12 years in prison and died still protesting his innocence

LA Times: We Can Do Better with Forensics

An editorial in today’s Los Angeles Times makes a strong case for federal forensic reform, pointing out that Cameron Todd Willingham, an innocent man executed in Texas in 2004, is among countless people sent to prison in the U.S. based on faulty forensic evidence.

Willingham’s case is heartbreaking: He lost his children to fire and his wife to divorce, spent 12 years in prison and died still protesting his innocence. But his is not an isolated case. There are thousands of Willinghams in prisons across the country. If not on death row, they are nonetheless serving decades-long or even life sentences after having been convicted on the basis of erroneous scientific conclusions made by poorly trained “experts.”

The editorial refers to the Senate Judiciary hearings earlier this month on forensic science, where Innocence Project Co-Director Peter Neufeld called for an expanded federal role in forensic reforms. The LA Times editorial calls for the creation of a federal entity to stimulate forensic research, set standards and enforce those standards.

Read the full editorial here.

Get background on the Willingham case here.

Visit the Just Science Coalition website to sign a petition for federal forensic reform.

Tags: Layla D’monte, legal aid, legal

posted by Justice on Sep 10

Milwaukee police have arrested a 49-year-old man in connection with nine murders – including the 1995 killing for which Chaunte Ott was wrongfully convicted. Walter Ellis has been charged with two murders so far, but police said his DNA has been found at the crime scenes of at least nine killings.

Suspect Arrested in Milwaukee Killings
Milwaukee police have arrested a 49-year-old man in connection with nine murders – including the 1995 killing for which Chaunte Ott was wrongfully convicted. Walter Ellis has been charged with two murders so far, but police said his DNA has been found at the crime scenes of at least nine killings.

Ott served nearly 13 years in prison before DNA testing obtained by the Wisconsin Innocence Project proved him innocent this year. He was freed in June.

Tags: legal aid, pro bono, Layla D’monte

posted by Justice on Sep 10

Innocence Project Co-Director Peter Neufeld testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee today about the need for federal standards and for research in forensic science.

Senators Consider Federal Forensic Reforms

Innocence Project Co-Director Peter Neufeld testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee today about the need for federal standards and for research in forensic science. And Neufeld and other witnesses found bipartisan support for a federal role in stimulating research, training forensic analysts and setting standards.

Forensics have been a central part of the criminal justice system for decades. Defendants are regularly convicted of crimes based on analysis of fingerprints, hair samples or blood spatters from a crime scene. A recent report by the National Academy of Sciences said many of those techniques have never been scientifically tested.

That report “is one of the most important developments in forensic science since the creation of the first crime laboratory in the 1920s,” Case Western Reserve professor Paul Gianelli told the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Sen. Al Franken (D-MI) called the report's conclusions “damning” and “terrifying.”

With Neufeld at today’s hearing was Roy Brown, who spent 15 years in prison in New York for a murder he didn’t commit. He was convicted based on faulty bite mark analysis.

“The forensic dentist [at Roy Brown's trial] used what was then the prevailing method of comparing bite marks found on a body with the dentures of a suspect,” said Neufeld. “He examined them and decided that he had a match with Roy's bite. He so testified in court, and Roy was convicted.”