Thread. Many non-lawyers don't have any idea what a sham criminal trials are in the United States. Did you know that virtually every piece of "forensic evidence" used in court to send people to prison for the last 50 years doesn't meet basic standards of science? (1)
In 2009, the National Academy of Sciences issued a landmark investigation into the evidence that police, prosecutors, and judges use to convict people. It found that, other than DNA, no forensic discipline met the most basic requirements for scientific rigor and reliability (2)
What does this mean? It means that the "experts" testifying about things like fingerprints, ballistics, arson, bite marks, etc... were not using scientific methods and couldn't meet basic standards of scientific reliability. (3) papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
Remember the 17-year-old child wrongly convicted of murder and imprisoned for decades b/c the FBI "hair expert" supposedly matched his hair to a crime? DNA later showed the FBI was completely wrong, and one of the FBI's "matching" hairs was from a dog. (4) splinternews.com/the-fbi-convic…
Remember the father who was wrongly convicted and executed for killing his three young daughters after completely bogus "arson experts" testified that it was an arson when it wasn't? (5) innocenceproject.org/cameron-todd-w…
In another study, FBI fingerprint "experts" were given the same samples they had reviewed at earlier times in their careers but given different context about the case. They came up with different fingerprint matches based on what they thought the case needed! (5)
Why is this a scandal? Because cops, prosecutors, and judges know the evidence they use isn't reliable and have done little to correct it. What lessons might we learn about the integrity of "law enforcement" and the purposes of the punishment bureaucracy from this fact? (End)
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