Re: There Are No Standards or Oversight for Pathologists in the US
Newsweek has an interesting article on our crappy non-system of death investigation. One point it focuses on that the Frontline story didn't is that even beyond the nightmare politics, undue police/prosecutorial influence and lack of oversight, forensic investigation is in some ways not really grounded in scientific principles at all.
The same goes for bite mark analysis, carpet-fiber analysis, blood spatter analysis, that shit they do where they match voices based on those graphic equalizer looking things, and even the hallowed fingerpint analysis which despite what CSI would have us believe, still primarily relies on eminently fallible eyeballed comparisons.
According to the National Academy of Sciences, DNA analysis is the only forensic discipline capable of conclusively determining "a connection between evidence and a specific individual or source."
At least the story seems to be getting traction, not just in the press but also in state and national legislative bodies. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) has introduced a bill that would require any crime lab that receives federal funding to be accredited and certified, by what governing body remains unclear. The bill also provides funding for determining scientific best practices in all forensic fields.
Re: There Are No Standards or Oversight for Pathologists in the US
Actually, even DNA analysis is far from error-free. The fault lies not so much with the DNA and its usefulness in identifying someone, but with the error-prone processes by which it is collected and analyzed.
Cheers,
Michael
__________________
“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”
Re: There Are No Standards or Oversight for Pathologists in the US
True, but the NAS isn't suggesting DNA analysis can't be wrong, tainted, fraudulent, etc., just that it alone among forensic disciplines is genuinely capable of connecting evidence to a specific person. I think teevee has led many of us to believe otherwise.
Re: There Are No Standards or Oversight for Pathologists in the US
With the hair thing, it's also the case that not all hairs from the same head are the same. While my hair is mostly a light/medium brown, I do have some blond hair on my head.
Re: There Are No Standards or Oversight for Pathologists in the US
Frontline is back on the case, this time focusing on the reliability of forensic practices like fingerprint matching. They bust CSI right open, starting with the case of Brandon Mayfield, the Portland lawyer who was falsely accused of being involved in the Madrid bombing based solely on a partial fingerprint recovered from a bag of detonators.
You can watch the whole show on the PBS website right now, but don't delay because it'll come down once they start promoting the DVD.
Re: There Are No Standards or Oversight for Pathologists in the US
The Mayfield case is particularly bad. Ever since Portland refused to join the federal task force, they seem to be targeting Oregon for extra special bad detective work.
Re: There Are No Standards or Oversight for Pathologists in the US
At least the Madrid cops found the real guy before Mayfield was tried, convicted and executed. Some of the other people featured in the Frontline show weren't so lucky.
Re: There Are No Standards or Oversight for Pathologists in the US
How despicable. Both of the cases mentioned in that article are deaths at the hands of third parties that Patel falsely determined were deaths from natural causes. In the second case he was judged to have intentionally obscured data that contradicted his findings. I wonder what dog he has in this hunt.
Re: There Are No Standards or Oversight for Pathologists in the US
Quote:
Originally Posted by mickthinks
Yes, I'd like to know that too.
Okay, I've done some sleuthing and found this blog by Westminster Labour MP, Michael Meacher. Apparently, Patel shouldn't even have been on the register ...
He was appointed to Ian Tomlinson's botched postmortem by a dude called Paul Matthews, and no one is sure why. Meacher hints darkly about conspiracy to pervert the course of justice ...
And to make matters murkier, according to Paul Lewis of The Guardian Paul Matthews refused a request from the Independent Police Complaints Commission to have an investigator present during Tomlinson's postmortem.
So why are we still focussed on the pathologist's incompetence, when we should be focussed on the coroner's apparent determination to have Tomlinson's death incompetently investigated?
Re: There Are No Standards or Oversight for Pathologists in the US
The Guardian article previously cited has Paul Matthews explaining his choice of Patel as routine, because Patel regularly attended St Pancras mortuary to carry out "routine postmortems".
But according to James Meikle, also of The Guardian, it was probably the only such job Patel had been given in two years.
Massachusetts is reeling from a massive scandal in its state crime lab. Details are still emerging about what officials call a "rogue chemist" who may have mishandled evidence in as many as 40,000 cases over 10 years.
It could mean the unraveling of countless convictions.
Even lawyers prone to hyperbole may not be overstating it when they call the scandal a catastrophic failure and unmitigated disaster.
"Any person who's been convicted of a drug crime in the last several years whose drugs were tested at the lab was very potentially a victim of a very substantial miscarriage of justice," says defense attorney John Martin.
Forty. Thousand. That would be a mind boggling number of people.
Re: There Are No Standards or Oversight for Pathologists in the US
Oow fun!
SF hasn't had its own crime lab for over two years now since it was discovered that one of the main techs was pinching drugs for themselves and falsifying documents to hide it.
One at a time, the prison inmates sat down at a wooden table, linked by videoconference to a Boston courtroom, where their attorneys and prosecutors explained the role a disgraced chemist played in their criminal cases.
One by one, the judge agreed to let them go free while their legal challenges make their way through the courts, placing their sentences on hold and setting bail.
The fallout from a scandal at a state drug lab played out in court Monday, as Judge Christine McEvoy began hearing what is expected to be nearly 200 legal challenges in Suffolk Superior Court drug cases.
The scandal has put thousands of criminal cases in jeopardy. Dookhan tested more than 60,000 samples covering about 34,000 defendants in her nine years at the lab, according to state police.
Monday was the first day of a two-week special session set up to hear challenges in Suffolk Superior Court, which covers Boston. Similar sessions have been scheduled in courts around the state. The first sessions were held in Boston Municipal Court earlier this month.
The assembly line-style of hearing cases via videoconference made for some unusually casual moments.
After the judge greeted the first inmate, he responded, "How ya doin'?"
Re: There Are No Standards or Oversight for Pathologists in the US
January 14th, 2014. A Delaware State Police trooper opens an envelope while on the stand during a trial. Everyone expected there to be 64 oxycontin pills, instead there are 13 blood pressure pills. So began a many months long investigation into the Delaware State Medical Examiner's office drug lab. At immediate risk are over 4,000 cases with associated drugs and drug paraphernalia. It calls into question many years worth of cases, (thankfully only) stretching back to 2010.
Bipartisan legislation pushed by Gov. Jack Markell to abolish the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner and place its forensic testing functions under control of law enforcement is attracting criticism even as lawmakers voted the measure out of a state Senate committee on Wednesday.
Delaware's policy on forensic testing is moving backward, according to a 2009 National Academy of Sciences study that recommended that forensic labs be separated from the control of prosecutors and police to eliminate the sometimes subtle and sometimes direct pressure to produce results favorable to the state.
Nationally known criminal defense attorney Mark Geragos, president of The National Trial Lawyers, said he "couldn't be more adamant that the new direction Delaware is headed is the wrong direction. I think that is absolutely the wrong thing to do."
Delaware is proposing moving testing functions to the Department of Safety and Homeland Security, which also oversees the Delaware State Police. "The whole idea is a lab is supposed to be independent and not under the thumb of law enforcement," Geragos said.
Out of 28 FBI laboratory examiners, 26 overstated the hair matches in order to help convict defendants, and the hair evidence has been found to be unreliable as an indicator of guilt in over 95% of the cases being reviewed.
Re: There Are No Standards or Oversight for Pathologists in the US
The review is ongoing, too, so the numbers may get even worse, and that's saying a lot because 14 of the defendants convicted with hair evidence -- which, as noted above, is bullshit anyway, never mind when it's routinely overstated -- have already been executed. They've reviewed a tenth of the targeted cases so far (268 out of 2,500).
It's also worth noting that the FBI itself KNEW it had been fucking up for three decades because they quietly changed their procedures in 2000 from using so-called hair matches as evidence of guilt to only using it to rule someone out. Of course they swept their dirty past under the rug for the next decade and a half until the Washington Post blew the lid off the story last year. That's the only reason these cases are being reviewed now.
Last edited by livius drusus; 04-23-2015 at 11:35 PM.