Category Uncategorized

A Fayette County judge determined in a hearing that the bite-mark expert “could not testify to a reasonable scientific degree of certainty about the validity of bite-mark analysis.” The expert later told the judge “he started to doubt the validity of… Continue Reading →

From Barbara Etter, APM:  Have just finished reading a very good article from the Hon Michael Kirby AC CMG, a previous Australian High Court Judge who is highly respected and known for his genuine concern about miscarriages of justice. The… Continue Reading →

In a Future Tense piece, Rebecca Wexler examines the advantages of defendants having access to the software code used to convict them, such as the code used in DNA software or forensic devices.

Colin Starger provides remarkable mapping of the authority relied on in the Court’s Kublicki opinion: [T]he Kulbicki court does cite one 5-4 decision, 2005’s Rompilla v. Beard. Yet this too is a savvy rhetorical choice. In granting IAC relief, the… Continue Reading →

Forensic scientists from the University of South Florida will use 3-D printers to recreate skulls and facial features of nine unidentified murder victims, with cases dating as far back as 1967. They hope to present 9 busts to the public in… Continue Reading →

The FBI flagged a common formula used before juries to communicate the likelihood of a DNA match being duplicable for “minor discrepancies.” A study conducted found that the numbers used to determine the likelihood of another match were miscalculated based on population. As a… Continue Reading →

Researchers at North Carolina State University and Washington State University found that analyzing the right index fingerprint can help determine whether a person is of European or African ancestry. Bifurcations in the Level 2 assessment provided the most differences between the… Continue Reading →

Timothy Scott Bridges was 22 when he was accused of the rape of an 83-year-old woman. He was convicted in 1991 based on testimony from an FBI expert on hair comparison analysis who said that there was a 1 in… Continue Reading →

The petitioner, an individual on Ohio’s death row, is challenging an Ohio law “that blocks defendants in capital cases from appealing a trial judge’s decision on post-conviction DNA decisions to an appellate court.” This law does not exist for individuals convicted… Continue Reading →

Joseph Buffey is a West Virginia man that was arrested in 2001 for the robbery and rape of an 83-year-old woman. He was interrogated by police for nine hours without food, when he finally confessed to the break-in in a… Continue Reading →