Defendant George D. Perrot has been in jail for the past 30 years, serving two concurrent life sentences for a rape. Both Perrot and the victim of the crime have repeatedly asserted that Perrot was not the man who committed… Continue Reading →

The concurring opinion in Williams v. U.S., 2016— A.3d —-2016 WL 275301 (D.C. Ct. App. Jan. 21, 2016) is now available.  Below are excerpts: EASTERLY, Associate Judge, concurring: In our adversarial system, we do not expect trial courts to “recognize on… Continue Reading →

Despite a 2009 policy barring such “absolute” conclusions about ballistics, in the Marlon Williams trial in 2010, a D.C. police analyst testified: “Those markings are unique to that gun and that gun only,” and that gun “fired these three bullets.”  Spenser… Continue Reading →

The Washington Post reported on the recent opinion issued by the D.C. Court of Appeals, in which in the concurring opinion Judge Catharine Easterly wrote about the dangers of overstating claims that “forensic experts can match a bullet or shell… Continue Reading →

While scientific evidence is often very compelling and can be a prosecutor’s “ace-in-the-hole,” the justice system needs to be on guard for experts who fabricate results, use shoddy testing techniques, or testify outside their areas of expertise. Recent problems with… Continue Reading →

In Miami,  nine of the past twelve exonerations of a convicted person relied heavily on witness identification. This has led legislators and defense attorneys to agree that most DNA exonerations involve faulty suspect identifications. As a result, Miami legislators have introduced the Eyewitness… Continue Reading →

The Japan Times reports the appellate acquittal of a Kagoshima man for a 2012 rape, based on new DNA tests.  The presiding judge criticized the failure of the police crime lab to report a DNA exclusion at the time of the… Continue Reading →

An independent investigation found that the Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children forensic lab did not meet forensic-testing standards for hair-strand drug and alcohol testing. As a result, ten years’ worth of results are being questioned as valid. These labs results were used in… Continue Reading →

In an uncontested motion, defendant John Flick moved to vacate, set aside or correct his sentence for a 1999 conviction of five counts of armed bank robbery and one count of the use of a firearm in a crime of… Continue Reading →