Month March 2016

Defendant Gary D’Angelo McDuffie was convicted of charges including bank and post office robbery in a 1999 trial. McDuffie argued that an expert’s testimony regarding hair comparison analysis violates the standards set by the FBI and the Innocence Project in 2012. He… Continue Reading →

The Houston Forensic Science Center will review its policies after three separate incidents where evidence samples were contaminated. The actual results of the tests in the three incidents were not affected because there were other uncontaminated samples that were testable. However,… Continue Reading →

Professor Brandon Garrett of UVA Law recently wrote a book review of three new books that explore the extent to which flawed forensics have affected the criminal justice system. These books range from discussing the crisis in Harris County, Texas… Continue Reading →

The first case involves 81-year-old Han Tak Lee, who had spent 24 years in prison wrongfully convicted of murder and arson based on faulty forensic theories about arson. After his release, he remains bitter and suspicious of others. He struggles… Continue Reading →

Annie Dookhan, a former drug chemist for a Massachusetts crime lab, is potentially connected to thousands of cases that may have been mishandled. In 2013, pled guilty to tampering with evidence and was sentenced to three to five years in prison, but… Continue Reading →

Lawmakers in Washington have introduced a bill that would have a bar code for each rape kit and allow victims to electronically track the progress of the rape kit testing. Approximately 6000 rape kits had gone untested in Washington state,… Continue Reading →

Keith Hayward, age 59, has spent 33 years in prison due to a wrongful conviction of raping a woman then murdering her husband. The surviving victim stated that the attacker held a diaper over her head as he raped her… Continue Reading →

Watch the entire conference – hosted by WVU College of law and West Virginia Law Review – streaming on youtube. The symposium website is here and the agenda is here.

Today, Science discusses CSafe’s efforts to undo “a legacy of junk science in the courtroom,” including to “collaborate with NIST statisticians to develop statistical methods that describe … how many fingerprints other than the suspect’s might have left a similar pattern… Continue Reading →

A New Jersey crime lab technician, Kamalkant Shah, was suspended this last week after discovering that he had written results of a test, before the test was completed. PINAC reports, “Shah was found to be taking inordinate amount of time… Continue Reading →