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In The News

2017-10-20 | Federal Judge Unseals New York Crime Lab’s Software for Analyzing DNA Evidence
Caproni’s ruling comes amid increased complaints by scientists and lawyers that flaws in the now-discontinued software program may have sent innocent people to prison. Similar legal fights for access to proprietary DNA analysis software are ongoing elsewhere in the U.S. At the same time, New York City policymakers are pushing for transparency for all of the city’s decision-making algorithms, from pre-trial risk assessments, to predictive policing systems, to methods of assigning students to high schools. DNA evidence has long been a valuable tool in criminal investigations, and matching a defendant’s genetic material with a sample found on a weapon or at a crime scene has impressed many a judge and jury. But as new types of DNA analysis have emerged in recent years to interpret trace amounts or complex mixtures that used to be dismissed as hopelessly ambiguous, the techniques are coming under fire as overly ambitious and mistake-prone.

2017-10-18 | Court: Examine if Austin crime lab botched death penalty evidence
“Areli Escobar’s capital murder conviction rests on forensic evidence developed by incompetent scientists using bad science,” defense lawyers with the state Office of Capital Writs said in his latest appeal. Austin police officials closed the DNA portion of the crime lab in June 2016 after an audit by the Texas Forensic Science Commission found that some staff members were not properly trained and that incorrect methods were used to examine DNA samples. “In light of these developments, a comprehensive, independent review of … Mr. Escobar’s case is critical,” defense lawyers told the Court of Criminal Appeals.

2017-10-17 | Judge Orders Murder Retrial Based on ‘Invalid’ DNA Mixture Analysis
Before the second trial, a San Diego Police DNA analyst cut open the gloves, took more swabs and again used the combined probability of inclusion (CPI) methodology to determine whether Florencio Jose Dominguez was the one wearing the gloves at the time of the murder of 15-year-old Moises Lopez. The results showed a better likelihood that Dominguez had worn them. The accused was convicted after three days of jury deliberation. But what was never mentioned in the proceedings was that the DNA mixture protocols in San Diego had changed just days before the second trial—something the jury never heard in court.

2017-10-17 | Report Finds State Lab Withheld Breathalyzer Test Results
“We conclude that OAT leadership made serious errors of judgment in its responses to court-ordered discovery, errors which were enabled by a longstanding and insular institutional culture that was reflexively guarded . . . and which was inattentive to the legal obligations borne by those whose work facilitates criminal prosecutions,” the report found.

2017-10-13 | Likelihood Ratios—Can Objective Odds Come From Subjective Decision Theory?
A new study by two statisticians at the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) contends LRs should be used sparingly in American courtrooms—since the attempt at objectivity is actually only a mathematical model of an expert’s subjective reasoning process. “We are not suggesting that LR should never be used in court, but its envisioned role as the default or exclusive way to transfer information is unjustified,” said Steve Lund, one of the statisticians, in a NIST statement on the work. “Bayesian theory does not support using an expert’s opinion, even when expressed numerically, as a universal weight of evidence. Among different ways of presenting information, it has not been shown that LR is most appropriate.”

2017-10-05 | DNA Mixtures Topic of ISHI Talks, NIST Testing—and ‘Conflict of Interest’ Accusations
DNA mixtures are a growing concern in the world of forensic science. The detection of even miniscule touch DNA in a pool of blood, or the skin cells left behind on the handle of a kitchen knife that later becomes a murder weapon, is now more possible than ever before with hypersensitive instruments. Forensic experts contend detectives and scientists need to be able to understand how the invisible ATCG alphabet soup at a crime scene may implicate a murderer, an innocent person—or both.

2017-10-02 | Albuquerque Fingerprint Backlog Increases to 6,000 Cases
At the Albuquerque Metropolitan Forensics Science Center, 6,000 latent fingerprint packets are waiting to be processed. The backlog has increased 20-fold since 2014, according to APD data. In 2014, there were five forensic scientists and approximately 300 backlogged cases. Back then, prints took one to two months to process. Now, latent fingerprints can wait anywhere from one week to 16 months to be processed depending on the Bernalillo County Case Management Order.

2017-09-28 | Sheriff, Forensic Experts Say Convicted Murderer is Innocent, Based on DNA Analysis
But after testifying at trial, Burton did an unusual thing. Instead of filing away all the samples that were collected, she put some blood samples right in the investigative file. She had done so on other cases, which have led to high-profile exonerations over the last two decades based on the DNA preserved in those small swaths. In this case, there were 42 blood samples taken from the house. From the samples preserved by Burton the DNA experts were able to cull 11 partial profiles. All of them had less than 16 CODIS loci, since the genetic material had deteriorated without proper preservation. But those partial samples were exculpatory, said the experts revisiting the case. Instead, it shows two men were bleeding in that house where the two Haysom bodies were found, they added.

2017-09-25 | First Large Scale Study of Cocaine Users Leads to Breakthrough in Drug Testing
The study involved taking fingerprints from a group of patients seeking treatment at drug rehabilitation centres, as well as a larger group not known to be drug users. All of those taking part washed their hands before the test in a variety of ways, and then samples were collected on the prepared chromatography paper. The fingerprint is developed using chemicals, so that the ridges of the fingerprint (and therefore the identity of the donor) can be established prior to analysis. When someone has taken cocaine, they excrete traces of benzoylecgonine and methylecgonine as they metabolise the drug, and these chemical indicators are present in fingerprint residue. Importantly, the traces can still be detected even after handwashing.

2017-09-21 | Court Asked to Dismiss Cases Tied to Former Drug Lab Chemist
A petition submitted Wednesday to the state’s highest court seeks the dismissal of every case connected to a convicted former state chemist who authorities say was high almost every day she went to work at a state drug lab for eight years. The petition was filed with the Supreme Judicial Court by the state’s public defender agency, called the Committee for Public Counsel Services, and by two women whose drug possession convictions are tied to evidence handled by chemist Sonja Farak.