NAS: Forensic Needs Report

If you think of Forensics being like “CSI,” the report released on February 18, 2009, by the National Academy of Sciences will disabuse you of that notion.

Fingerprinting, ballistics, blood spatter, bite marks, forensic methods are being challanged. The crime labs are just not meeting standards for scientific investigation. Decades of casework are being called into question.How we move forward will have a far-reaching impact on crime labs, courts — and American criminal justice.

There are basic questions being asked about the validity of forensic evidence and its use in court. Academy President of the The American Academy of Forensic Sciences AAFS, Carol Henderson, JD, said, "It is important to recognize that the truth does not belong to a side in litigation and that the access to forensic science evidence should be available to everyone." This is a subject that is in the Supreme Court regarding an inmate who has been refused DNA testing in Alaska.

A 2010 symposium of the NAS will be, "Putting Our Forensic House in Order: Examining Validation and Expelling Incompetence."

At this point, unlike doctors and lawyers, those in forensics do not have professional organizations that license and can sanction practitioners in the U.S. or in the States.

The forensic science structure is fragmented and cannot provide a framework to eliminate or control standards, practice, and education. That raises the question of viability in the current system on the national level.

LAPD Fingerprint Forensics Folly

In a study on perception, cognition and expertise, by Thomas A. Busey, Ph.D. Experimental Psychology, of Indianna University and Itiel E. Dror, Ph.D., Senior Lecture of Cognitive Science at the School of Psychology University of Southampton, have done a study on "Special Abilities and Vulnerabilities in Forensic Expertise."

The findings of that study reveal a great flaw in the identification of individuals from suspect samples. When fingerprint comparisons are made, they have the standard of checking each other's work, causing that influence to affect the results. The study says, "The very fact that identifications will be verified (sometimes by more than one verifier) introduces a whole range of issues, from diffusion of responsibility (Darley & Latané, 1968) to conformity, attention, self-fulfilling prophecies wishful thinking. "

Recently, a senior fingerprint analyst for the LAPD was arrested for allegedly sexually assaulted one of his tenants in an apartment in South L.A. Miguel Martinez Rivera, 50, of Montebello was taken into custody Wednesday morning shortly after reporting to work. He has has worked in the LAPD's crime lab for over 20 years. Of the fingerprint staff, he has the highest authority of the civilian workers and reviews the work of the newer and junior staff.

This would not be so serious if the LAPD has not already had the fingerprint examiners who falsely implicated at least two people in crimes have been linked to nearly 1,000 other criminal cases. At least six print analysts with the LAPD latent print section have made critical errors in their work.

The LAPD would do well to pay out the half million dollars needed to reform the unit by hiring an outside firm to review practices and protocols of the 80-person fingerprint unit before the civil actions begin.