“Texas has a long history with the use of unreliable evidence. [It also has made] unique efforts to address that searing history.” Chris_Fabricant speaks with MichellePitcher about his new book on criminal justice: Forensics BookTwitter
is important both in terms of past cases … but also in preventing future crime lab scandals and to assure, to the extent possible, that valid and reliable science is being used in Texas criminal courts.
Several well-known forensics have been discredited in recent years. Your book even points out some issues with fingerprints, which are often imperfect in a crime scene setting. Can we trust anything but DNA testing? But to be a little bit more specific … you can take a reliable technique and make it pretty unreliable, depending on the quality of evidence. If you don’t have enough information from a crime scene sample—and we don’t really have any objective thresholds about how much information one actually needs to come to a reliable conclusion—then we can take a reliable technique and make it pretty junky.
Your book notes that for most felonies, DNA exonerations aren’t an option. Crimes like robberies, arson, drive-by shootings, or even assaults often don’t include the transfer of any genetic material. Even in Steven Chaney’s case, the DNA under the victim’s fingernails was found to belong to someone else, but that wasn’t enough to convince the courts—they assumed there had just been an accomplice.
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