Eyewitness testimony is STILL the worst form of evidence.
Iâd take picture analysis over it, any day.
Thank you Josh and TPM for your partnership with ProPublica!! Their ongoing research and reporting on the criminal justice system has been breathtaking and deeply distrubing.
Last year, a federal study determined that professional image examiners matched faces more accurately than untrained students
Raise your hand if this makes you more confident in the process? Would you be willing to stake the rest of your free life on âmore accurately than untrained students?â Christ.
The shortcomings of eyewitness evidence does nothing to increase the validity of false technical testimony.
The problems with the FBIâs photo comparison work plague other subjective types of forensic science, such as fingerprint analysis, microscopic hair fiber examination and handwriting analysis, said Itiel Dror, a neuroscientist who trains U.S. law enforcement on cognitive bias in crime laboratories. Dror is a researcher at University College London, frequently teaching at agencies like the FBI and New York Police Department on ways to minimize personal beliefs from influencing casework.
Even DNA analysis can be swayed by bias, Dror said. But pattern-matching fields like image analysis are especially vulnerable. Image examinersâ lab work is, generally, only seeing if evidence from a suspect âmatchesâ that from a crime scene.
âMany of them are more concerned by what the court accepts as science rather than being motivated by science itself,â Dror said.
This is precisely why we have 28 crime scene analysis shows on television. Itâs so that jurors say, âHey, I saw that shit on CSI: Des Moines! That has to be real!â
Add this to lie detectors and drug-sniffing dogs.
Hey, careful with the drug-sniffing dogs, theyâre having to work through their substance abuse issues just like us.
So much bad science
About as much confidence as the statement, âLast year a Trump University study determined that professional football players scored more touchdowns in US Bank Stadium than laboratory rats.â
How long before DT and his minions start claiming that Mueller was FBI director in 1997?
Every false conviction means letting to real perpetrators go free. And there is so much good work that could be done in this area, but these jerks discredit it all.
Iâve done image analysis â not for the FBI â but for the Innocence Project. Much as my heart ached over these men wasting away unjustly in prison, I had to conclude that the photo âevidenceâ I was working with could never meet scientific standards of objectivity. Itâs all subjective.
and no hope of improvement:
https://cen.acs.org/articles/95/i16/US-Justice-Department-ends-forensic-science-advisory-panel.html
Examiners had long testified in court that they could determine what fingertip left a print, what gun fired a bullet, which scalp grew a hair âto the exclusion of all others.â Research and exonerations by DNA analysis have repeatedly disproved these claims, and the U.S. Department of Justice no longer allows technicians and scientists from the FBI and other agencies to make such unequivocal statements, according to new testimony guidelines released last year.
Not to mention other spurious âabsolute scientific proofâ put out there by the FBI like bite mark evidence on human skin being an âexact matchâ to a person. The FBI has been using this pseudo-scientific crap for decades and it has been played up so much in the media it has become a point of absolute belief for many people⌠Carpet fibers, a single hair, bite marks - they have exploited a gullible public and an ill-informed justice system for years by putting a scientific veneer of authenticity on what is basically voodoo. They have never let anything like actual science get in the way of a good conviction.
Iâd add evidence from fires to this laundry list. What our justice system needs is multiple double-blind studies examining and either upholding or refuting these claims. @paulw is right.
On the other hand, can an ordinary citizen, say a member of a grand jury or trial jury, question those findings in a meaningful way so they donât become part of the record when the subject is found guilty and has to appeal?
and @alyoshakaramazov1 Deuteronomy 19:15 Even the old Hebrews knew that: âOne witness shall not rise up against a man for any iniquity, or for any sin, in any sin that he sinneth; at the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses, shall a matter be established.â
DNA analysis is also extremely flawed. It should pretty much only be used to exculpate, or to support other evidence, not to make false claims of 1 in more-humans-than-have-ever-lived probabilities of identification.
All of the enormous numbers, for example, assume that the potential suspects arenât part of any kind of genetic subgroup. Which is often, uh, counterfactual. And they still really donât have enough samples for good statsâŚ
It was much worse in the beginning, but itâs still not great.
What!?! I thought that this photo analysis stuff was all rock-solid. I must have been misled.
