Speaker 1: Oh can you name this TV show? So the width
Speaker 1: of the burn and the pinpoint detail in the fuel,
Speaker 1: I've narrowed down what our suspects using. Burned the tags
Speaker 1: off a blowtworks. Yeah, burns a small precise, just like
Speaker 1: what you get with compact torches used in dental labs.
Speaker 1: It's CSI Crime Scene Investigation, a CBS crime drama featuring
Speaker 1: a team of investigators solving crimes by analyzing the physical evidence.
Speaker 1: See once a dried, the pattern revealed itself. You see
Speaker 1: this discoloration right here. Looks at the tread from a
Speaker 1: boot well I initially thought was a V is actually
Speaker 1: a WU And that's the logo for Woodridge Hunting boots.
Speaker 1: They look at things like bloodstain patterns, footprints, and bullet casings.
Speaker 1: The original show launched in two thousand, then came the
Speaker 1: spin and offs, inspiring still more shows that dig into
Speaker 1: forensic science, Bones and CIS Dexter. The list is long.
Speaker 1: These crime scene procedurals. They're fun, they make investigations digestible,
Speaker 1: engaging millions watch them. But these shows also propel the
Speaker 1: idea that forensic science is precise in proving guilt or innocence.
Speaker 1: It's called the CSI effect. The CSI effect, from a
Speaker 1: defense attorney's perspective is is that and shows like that
Speaker 1: they depict forensic evidence as infallible, and that it's quick,
Speaker 1: it's fast, and they do it in a half an hour,
Speaker 1: and they wrap it all up right, and that jurors
Speaker 1: come into lajers come into a criminal case with the
Speaker 1: expectation that forensic evidence can conceivably do that. That's Chris
Speaker 1: fabricand I'm the director of Strategic Litigation at the Innocence
Speaker 1: Project in New York, and i am the author of
Speaker 1: Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System. CSI and
Speaker 1: shows like it give jurors a false sent of security
Speaker 1: that forensic science methods are totally accurate, that expert testimony
Speaker 1: from CSI analysts is infallible. Studies show that juries put
Speaker 1: an outsized amount of trust in the testimony of experts.
Speaker 1: But as we'll discuss in this podcast, forensic science methods
Speaker 1: and the expert testimony that shares that evidence with juries
Speaker 1: can both be flawed. It's an issue that has serious consequences.
Speaker 1: CSI this all crap. That's Keith Harward, one of several
Speaker 1: people you'll meet in this series, who was wrongly convicted
Speaker 1: based on forensic evidence that turned out to be wrong.
Speaker 1: I'm Molly Herman. I'm a filmmaker and producer of a
Speaker 1: six part documentary series for Curiosity Stream that digs into
Speaker 1: forensic crime science, one discipline at a time. I've interviewed
Speaker 1: nearly seventy practitioners, attorneys, scientists, journalists, judges, and innocent people
Speaker 1: who spend decades in prison, some who are still there.
Speaker 1: When I started this project, I believed that old adage
Speaker 1: that the US justice system isn't perfect, but it's still
Speaker 1: the best system out there. But what I discovered is
Speaker 1: that many methods of forensic science used to build criminal
Speaker 1: cases aren't just imperfect, but irresponsible and unscientific with profound
Speaker 1: impacts on human lives. And that's the mission of this
Speaker 1: podcast to investigate how and why forensic methods are flawed
Speaker 1: and how the system can be fixed. From School of Humans,
Speaker 1: Curiosity Stream and iHeart Podcasts, this is CSI on Trial.
Speaker 1: Two or three stays are really not enough to call
Speaker 1: something an impacts patter from gunshot that's going to put
Speaker 1: someone in prison the rest of their life. Sto making
Speaker 1: up a lie was gonna get you home center. What
Speaker 1: is it about a bite mark that would make a
Speaker 1: dentist an expert in this area who shot at you?
Speaker 1: He said, I will sit in this jail and I
Speaker 1: will rot before I take the problem with forensic science
Speaker 1: in the criminal legal system today is that it's an
Speaker 1: awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science.
Speaker 1: Episode one, the Flaws of Forensic Science. Popular television has
Speaker 1: made forensic science famous. True crime has been a long
Speaker 1: time fascination for the American public, from the Salem witch
Speaker 1: trials to the Missing Lindbergh Baby, to the prosecution of
Speaker 1: gangsters like al Capone. Al Capone goes to jail, the
Speaker 1: federal government strikes its first telling law at the underworld
Speaker 1: by convicting public Enemy number one on income tax brauds.
Speaker 1: Modern forensic science launches because of a massive influx of
Speaker 1: federal funding in the late nineteen sixties, after PubL unrest
Speaker 1: during the Civil Rights Movement and protests against the Vietnam
Speaker 1: War spur President Lyndon Johnson to declare a war on
Speaker 1: crime to attack and to overcome growing crime and lawlessness.
Speaker 1: I think we must have a stepped up program to
Speaker 1: help modernize and strengthen our local police forces. Our people
Speaker 1: have a right to feel secure in their homes and
Speaker 1: on their streets, and that right just must be secured.
Speaker 1: It marks the first moment in American history where the
Speaker 1: federal government becomes directly involved in local law enforcement. Menka
Speaker 1: Sinha spent a decade as a public defender in Washington,
Speaker 1: d c. She's now a law professor and teaches the
Speaker 1: Criminal Defense Clinic at the University of Maryland School of Law.
Speaker 1: She's published on how forensic science can contribute to wrongful convictions.
Speaker 1: And they believe that this crime problem originates in these
Speaker 1: black urban communities, and without really consulting with the residents
Speaker 1: of these communities themselves, they do this investigation and they
Speaker 1: do the study, and they produced this really sweeping report
Speaker 1: that was issued in nineteen sixty seven. President Johnson put
Speaker 1: together a crime Commission with a mix of backgrounds in
Speaker 1: law education, social work, and law enforcement. The report they
Speaker 1: issued was called The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society.
Speaker 1: It had over two hundred recommendations, one of them the
Speaker 1: creation of a national emergency number, you know it as
Speaker 1: nine one. One. One of the things the commission points
Speaker 1: to is it says we need to improve our law
Speaker 1: enforcement technique by improving our capability of analyzing evidence left
Speaker 1: at scenes. So we should be improving our ability to
Speaker 1: do fingerprint nails, we should be improving our ability to
Speaker 1: do shoeprint analysis, and it mentioned the whole bunch of them,
Speaker 1: and it says we should be developing a centralized fingerprint database.
Speaker 1: And this recommendation becomes the backbone of the development of
Speaker 1: crime labs. Using the Commission's report and energized by the
Speaker 1: political climate of the time, Congress creates a major federal
Speaker 1: funding pipeline for state and local police forces, including funding
Speaker 1: for forensic science development and training. In order for police
Speaker 1: to be eligible for many of the grants, they have
Speaker 1: to show an increase in arrest rates. In other words,
Speaker 1: the development of modern forensic science was tied to and
Speaker 1: incentivized by arrests and prosecutions. Notice what I didn't say
Speaker 1: fueled modern forensic science, and that's science, independent, rigorous science.
Speaker 1: Here's Manca again. We tend to think of forensics as
Speaker 1: really reliable, really accurate, really scientific, And what most people
Speaker 1: don't realize is that most forensic methods they weren't developed
Speaker 1: in scientific labs. They weren't developed through scientific method They
Speaker 1: weren't developed through scientific research. They were developed by and
Speaker 1: for law enforcement to help law enforcement pursue law enforcement functions,
Speaker 1: meeting surveillance, investigation, prosecution, securing convictions, and sometimes even at
Speaker 1: sentencing to secure a higher punishment. The problem with forensic
Speaker 1: science in the criminal legal system today is that it's
Speaker 1: an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot
Speaker 1: of science. That's Kate Judson. I'm the executive director of
Speaker 1: the Center for Integrity and Forensic Sciences. Much of it
Speaker 1: was developed for law enforcement for use in courtrooms rather
Speaker 1: than at a lab bench in academia, for example, and
Speaker 1: for that reason attend to be quite skewed. It tends
Speaker 1: to be in pursuit of a results or an agenda,
Speaker 1: rather than simply going where the science leads. In the
Speaker 1: late nineteen eighties, a proverbial bomb dropped on forensic sciences.
Speaker 1: DNA analysis developed by the scientific community far away from
Speaker 1: the world of arrests and prosecutions. DNA analysis held up
Speaker 1: a mirror to forensic science methods. My name's Julia Layton.
Speaker 1: I'm the former General Counsel for the DC Public Defender Service,
Speaker 1: but I've been retired for several years now. When I
Speaker 1: went to law school, most of the forensic disciplines that
Speaker 1: had been admitted for decades. So in the nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: when I started practicing, we weren't challenging the evidence. We
Speaker 1: weren't even looking very closely at the evidence. That sort
Speaker 1: of changed with the introduction of DNA forensic evidence, because
Speaker 1: suddenly this was something new and our responsibility as lawyers
Speaker 1: was to investigate it, learn about it, and so slowly
Speaker 1: but surely we started to learn about the technology behind it.
Speaker 1: We started to learn about the scientific method, and I
Speaker 1: think once we had started to master those topics, we
Speaker 1: naturally started to turn to look at the other disciplines.
Speaker 1: In contrast to DNA analysis, common forensic science disciplines firearms analysis,
Speaker 1: footprint comparison, byte mark analysis were revealed as unscientific. But
Speaker 1: most troubling and most revealing, DNA analysis was directly contradicting
Speaker 1: the validity of forensic evidence that had locked people in
Speaker 1: prison or even put them to death. In the early nineties,
Speaker 1: DNA technology becomes ripe enough for us to use in
Speaker 1: criminal cases. We can go back and test samples that
Speaker 1: have never been tested what they learned was that actually,
Speaker 1: we have convicted a lot of innocent people, and one
Speaker 1: of the major contributing factors they found was some sort
Speaker 1: of shoddy forensic evidence that was used in the first place.
Speaker 1: So everyone saw what was happening with DNA and exonerations
Speaker 1: and there was a huge change in the way we
Speaker 1: developed and used forensic science. Right. Well, no, it turns
Speaker 1: out there were more powerful forces than science and truth
Speaker 1: at play. It was a very impressive set of expertise
Speaker 1: in this committee and their report was really damning, and
Speaker 1: so for us it was like finally somebody's opened the door,
Speaker 1: opened Pandora's box about how little research, how little foundational, empirical,
Speaker 1: scientifically valid research has been done, and we thought we
Speaker 1: were going to go forth and have a sea change,
Speaker 1: and we were wrong. When DNA analysis began proving the
Speaker 1: innocence of people originally convicted on the weight of forensics science,
Speaker 1: Congress did act in the late two thousands. It funded
Speaker 1: a commission to study the issue and tapped the National
Speaker 1: Academy of Sciences to run it. The commission released its
Speaker 1: report in two thousand and nine. It was titled Strengthening
Speaker 1: Forensic Science in the United States a path forward. Manka
Speaker 1: Sinha says, the reports authors made sure it had a
Speaker 1: tone of optimism rather than blame. So the report's goal
Speaker 1: was really to improve the forensic system. So it makes
Speaker 1: all these recommendations for how to do that. We're gonna
Speaker 1: come up with a research strategy and guide how research
Speaker 1: should be funded. We're going to work on standards and
Speaker 1: regulations to regulate the use of forensics, and we're going
Speaker 1: to all do that centrally and through this national governing body.
Speaker 1: David Fegman is the Chancellor and dean at UC Hastings
Speaker 1: College of Law in San Francisco. So the report was
Speaker 1: published in two thousand and nine, and one of the
Speaker 1: things that the report advocated was for a federal agency
Speaker 1: to oversee the development of forensic science that would be
Speaker 1: able to accredit and certify labs, would oversee research and
Speaker 1: fund research, not unlike the National Institutes of Health might do.
Speaker 1: I'll just say it, this report came out in two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine. It's many many years after that, and
Speaker 1: there's no national governing forensic body. It never happened, It
Speaker 1: never got off the ground. Forensic analysts and their industry
Speaker 1: associations made some cosmetic changes to the language they used.
Speaker 1: The Department of Justice continued to provide research money, and
Speaker 1: some of the money did go to actual scientists. Some
Speaker 1: forensic associations and labs required more training hours, assessments, or accreditations,
Speaker 1: but there were no fundamental changes to what techniques were used.
Speaker 1: To be fair, the report was released during a tumultuous time.
Speaker 1: The research was done under the Bush administration, but released
Speaker 1: a few months after President Obama took office. The global
Speaker 1: economic crash sucked up all of the oxygen in US
Speaker 1: public policy, But years later, the Obama administration decided to
Speaker 1: pick up where the Congressional study left off. The President's
Speaker 1: Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, also known as PEACAST,
Speaker 1: pulled together the nation's top scientific talent to dig deeper
Speaker 1: into specific forensic science areas. University of Maryland physics professor
Speaker 1: Jim Gates was a principal author. Science is all about measurement,
Speaker 1: So the PEACASH report said, we are going to look
Speaker 1: at parts of forensic science that are based on measurement
Speaker 1: and ask the question, when we look at processes and
Speaker 1: practices in forensic science, how closely do those adhere to
Speaker 1: measurements made outside of forensic science, and unfortunately not much
Speaker 1: improvement had occurred. Professor Thomas Albright from the Salk Institute
Speaker 1: also contributed to the report, which came out in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: The Peacast report broadly condemned a particular category of forensic
Speaker 1: practices known as the feature comparison techniques. These are kenner fingerprints,
Speaker 1: tire tracks, bulletmarks, and so forth, and the major concern
Speaker 1: was that they hadn't been in most cases validated properly validated.
Speaker 1: Validation simply means that you've empirically tested the technique so
Speaker 1: that you're certain that a large fraction of the time
Speaker 1: it gives you the correct answer. But the Department of Justice,
Speaker 1: which has been entwined with forensic science since lbj's War
Speaker 1: on Crime agenda, rejected the findings on the day of
Speaker 1: its release. Attorney General Lauretta Lynch, who was the Attorney
Speaker 1: General at the time, she says, no, thank you, Peacast.
Speaker 1: We appreciate your efforts, but we are not going to
Speaker 1: adopt your recommendations. Attorney General Lynch said in a statement
Speaker 1: reported at the time by The Wall Street Journal that quote,
Speaker 1: we remain confident that when used properly, forensic science evidence
Speaker 1: helps juries identify the guilty and clear the innocent, and
Speaker 1: the Department believes that the current legal standards regarding the
Speaker 1: admissibility of forensic evidence are based on sound science and
Speaker 1: sound legal reasoning. The National District Attorney's Association they denounced
Speaker 1: the report immediately. The FBI criticizes the report. A whole
Speaker 1: bunch of bodies criticize the report and decline to adopt
Speaker 1: the recommendations. William Fitzpatrick from the National District Attorney's Association
Speaker 1: made it pretty clear how local prosecutors like himself felt
Speaker 1: if I were to have taken the Peacast reports seriously,
Speaker 1: which I did, or the two thousand and nine NAS report,
Speaker 1: which I did not, as well, and to embrace some
Speaker 1: recommendations suggested, I could actually picture myself in my office
Speaker 1: telling a grieving father of the domestic violence victim that
Speaker 1: even though his daughter's ex boyfriend was ideed fleeing the scene,
Speaker 1: even though he left a fingerprint that matched his left
Speaker 1: thumb in the victim's blood at the scene, and even
Speaker 1: though a friends at godentologists matched a bite mark on
Speaker 1: the victim's chest to the defendant and the thirty two
Speaker 1: caliber revolver recovered from his jacket pocket was ballistically matched
Speaker 1: to the projectile and his daughter's head. It's just right now,
Speaker 1: the case is too thin to proceed and I won't
Speaker 1: be able to prosecute please. They were worried that what
Speaker 1: it would mean for these closed cases, would they open
Speaker 1: back up? Would we have to relitigate all of this?
Speaker 1: And they were also worried about what it meant for
Speaker 1: open cases, even though the authors of the Peacast report
Speaker 1: were careful to say they had no view on the
Speaker 1: legal question of whether any past cases were erroneously decided.
Speaker 1: People convicted of a crime where questionable forensic science was
Speaker 1: used might be able to appeal their case and even
Speaker 1: walk free. Professor Jim Gates, again one of the report's authors,
Speaker 1: there's a large part of the pushback that comes from attorneys,
Speaker 1: quite frankly, particularly prosecuting attorneys. And one can understand why
Speaker 1: are there motivations for this, because in the current state,
Speaker 1: a forensic science is a tool that basically they can
Speaker 1: use to get convictions. The only problem, as I said,
Speaker 1: as an outside scientist, many of us outside the field say,
Speaker 1: this isn't science. You're using the power science. But you're
Speaker 1: not doing science. And this is a deep moral as
Speaker 1: well as practical problem. I have no criticism at all
Speaker 1: of the people who actually do the forensic science. It's
Speaker 1: a systemic problem that exists, and that systemic problem impact
Speaker 1: some communities more than others. Black people and brown people
Speaker 1: and other people for marginalized communities, but especially black people,
Speaker 1: suffer the punitive effects of our criminal legal system more
Speaker 1: and more harshly at every single stage of the process.
Speaker 1: A recent report by the National Registry of Exonerations found
Speaker 1: that Black Americans are seven times more likely to be
Speaker 1: wrongly convicted of serious crimes than white Americans. So, if
Speaker 1: that's the snapshot, and then you have a prosecutor or
Speaker 1: a prosecutorial entity saying, well, I won't be able to
Speaker 1: get a conviction if I don't have this tool. Well,
Speaker 1: if you particularly want to take somebody's liberty away, who
Speaker 1: is more likely to be black or brown? In this context,
Speaker 1: we should be making sure it's reliable and producing reliable results.
Speaker 1: At the least, if you should be able to do
Speaker 1: any of this at all, you should be doing it
Speaker 1: with tools that are reliable. Both prosecutors and defense attorneys
Speaker 1: call on expert witnesses to enter forensic science evidence into
Speaker 1: court and to explain that evidence to the jury. Judges
Speaker 1: are supposed to be the gatekeepers of those expert witnesses
Speaker 1: to make sure junk science or junk scientists aren't allowed
Speaker 1: in court. But that's not happening. Sometimes you have experts
Speaker 1: who come in and lab codes and it feels really scientific,
Speaker 1: even when it's not. It can have this effect of
Speaker 1: making other aspects of a case that are questionable sort
Speaker 1: of wash them away. We've talked about how law enforcement
Speaker 1: and prosecutors rely on forensic science, but what about judges.
Speaker 1: How do they fit in a critical Supreme Court ruling
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety three set as standard on evidence judges
Speaker 1: are supposed to follow. Here's David Fegman again. He specializes
Speaker 1: in the use of scientific research and legal decision making.
Speaker 1: And then you had in nineteen ninety three, the United
Speaker 1: States Supreme Court decided what is now a landmark case,
Speaker 1: Daubert versus Merldal Pharmaceuticals. And what the US Supreme Court
Speaker 1: said was that judges under the federal rules of evidence
Speaker 1: had to be gatekeepers and they had to look at
Speaker 1: the underlying methods and principles for scientific evidence that's being
Speaker 1: offered in court. It's called the Daubert standard after the
Speaker 1: court case that established it. So what happened in the
Speaker 1: early nineties is courts started look at what the data
Speaker 1: actually were, what the methods that were being used, and
Speaker 1: they realized that there wasn't much there. And a good
Speaker 1: example of that is handwriting in the handwriting area. Quote
Speaker 1: started asking well, where the data, and the forensic scientists
Speaker 1: basically said, well, we don't have data, we don't have studies,
Speaker 1: but we know we can do it because we've been
Speaker 1: doing it for twenty five years. So trust us. And
Speaker 1: judges said, well, under the Daubert rule, you have to
Speaker 1: tell us the statistics. You have to give us the
Speaker 1: research studies. They have to be pure viewed in mainstream
Speaker 1: scientific journals. And these experts started saying, we don't have
Speaker 1: any of that, and judges, I think we're surprised. Through
Speaker 1: pre trial evidentiary hearings, judges are supposed to evaluate the
Speaker 1: forensic science and rule on whether or not a jury
Speaker 1: should hear it. What people forget is that judges are
Speaker 1: human being subject to the same kind of cognitive pressures
Speaker 1: that other people are This is Nancy Gertner. I was
Speaker 1: a criminal defense lawyer and a civil rights lawyer for
Speaker 1: twenty four years, and I was on the bench federal
Speaker 1: bench for seventeen and now I teach, I write, I
Speaker 1: do some litigation. I'm sort of a gadfly in lots
Speaker 1: of areas. When judges are asked to decide on these issues,
Speaker 1: they often fall back on established precedent. If forensic evidence
Speaker 1: has been admitted over the years have in an unchallenged way,
Speaker 1: then there's precedent for it, and a judge, a trial judge,
Speaker 1: knows that allowing it in is consistent with the precedent.
Speaker 1: It enforces this feedback loop that keeps us from critically
Speaker 1: examining forensic evidence. Overruling that precedent is rare because it's
Speaker 1: a big deal. A ruling like that is like a
Speaker 1: rock thrown in a pond. It can send ripples system wide.
Speaker 1: So judges will often let the evidence and the expert
Speaker 1: witness in and then the chances are that if you
Speaker 1: let in evidence like this, you'll be affirmed. You will
Speaker 1: be affirmed on appeal, and you'll be affirmed on appeal.
Speaker 1: Because the review of evidentiary decisions that a judge makes
Speaker 1: is actually quite cursory, is really not very substantial. So
Speaker 1: if a judge says, I'm going to allow in this
Speaker 1: arson evidence based on the precedent, even if it's unexamined
Speaker 1: precedent over years and years and years and years, the
Speaker 1: odds are you'll be affirmed. And I think that that
Speaker 1: kept lawyers from raising the issues. It's good for the
Speaker 1: system to have standards of some threshold reliability and the
Speaker 1: irony or the tragedy is on the civil side, the
Speaker 1: courts are pretty good at restricting what comes in. And
Speaker 1: it's really been on the criminal side and the forensic
Speaker 1: side that it's been a much steeper held a quie.
Speaker 1: So that means on the criminal side juries not judges
Speaker 1: are often weighing forensic evidence. The judge, you'll say, well,
Speaker 1: I'll err on the side of let the jury decide
Speaker 1: that way. It won't be error that way. I won't
Speaker 1: be making a mistake that way. Know, the acquittal in
Speaker 1: this case of the hung jury won't be on me.
Speaker 1: So if you're a juror and you're sitting in a courtroom,
Speaker 1: you are likely to weigh evidence that you perceive to
Speaker 1: be scientific or from an expert more highly than other
Speaker 1: pieces of evidence. In that case. This is Manka Sinha again,
Speaker 1: and that's a fundamental problem because the jurors don't know
Speaker 1: about the carcerel origins of these disciplines. Jurors don't know
Speaker 1: about the criticism and the scrutiny that these disciplines have
Speaker 1: received for failing to really shore up the scientific underpinnings.
Speaker 1: Jurors don't know that stuff. Scientific studies have revealed that
Speaker 1: forensic science testimony has outsized influence with juries. Jay Kohler
Speaker 1: teaches at Northwestern's Pritzker School of Law and studies behavioral
Speaker 1: decision theory. Studies show that jurors generally do give a
Speaker 1: lot of weight to expert testimony, and because this testimony
Speaker 1: is often technical in nature, jurors tend to rely on
Speaker 1: the experts credentials and experience when deciding how much weight
Speaker 1: to give to this testimony. But some studies show that
Speaker 1: jurors don't particularly care about whether the methods used by
Speaker 1: the experts have been scientifically tested or not. Instead, they're
Speaker 1: generally content to trust the credential and experienced expert. This
Speaker 1: is a problem in some forensic sciences, where most experts
Speaker 1: are trained and experienced, but where the methods used haven't
Speaker 1: been subjected to rigorous scientific testing. When these experts testify
Speaker 1: in trials, they tend to use one phrase over and over,
Speaker 1: reasonable scientific certainty. But what does that even mean? To
Speaker 1: a reasonable degree of scientific certainty? Is kind of a
Speaker 1: bogus phrase. It doesn't really have any meaning. It's just
Speaker 1: a phrase that has caught on in the courtrooms over
Speaker 1: the last ten or twenty years. Unfortunately, now people are
Speaker 1: onto it and realizing that's just a misleading wave of saying.
Speaker 1: In my opinion, here's what I think has happened. The
Speaker 1: phrase came about in nineteen thirty five as a ploy
Speaker 1: from a lawyer. The case was about a death resulting
Speaker 1: from a capsized boat. The plaintiff's lawyer asked a witness,
Speaker 1: a man who had experienced building this kind of motor boat,
Speaker 1: if he could quote determine with reasonable scientific certainty the
Speaker 1: cause of the capsizing of the boat. So a guy
Speaker 1: who had experience in building boats, not a scientist, was
Speaker 1: providing scientific certainty. David Fegman, most of the folks that
Speaker 1: testify in court for prosecutors are not scientists themselves. They
Speaker 1: are technicians. They are simply applying a technology that has
Speaker 1: been applied for decades, if not a century. And if
Speaker 1: you keep applying the same protocols and the protocols are
Speaker 1: not producing valid, good information, then you just keep on
Speaker 1: doing it over and over again, and there's no real
Speaker 1: testing of it. So let's recap the state of forensic science.
Speaker 1: Many of the methods were all familiar with from popular
Speaker 1: TV shows like CSI are used in crime labs and
Speaker 1: presented in courtrooms all across the country without ever having
Speaker 1: been subject to scientific validation. That means there is no
Speaker 1: proof the methods work. And then DNA comes along and
Speaker 1: starts proving that some people who you'll hear from in
Speaker 1: this podcast whose convictions were based on CSI evidence are
Speaker 1: actually innocent. The wider consequences of those exonerations is, of course,
Speaker 1: that the CSI evidence therefore had to be wrong. There
Speaker 1: have been at least two major national studies calling for
Speaker 1: independent oversight of forensic science outside the criminal legal system.
Speaker 1: That oversight hasn't happened. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court says judges
Speaker 1: are supposed to play a key role in keeping bad
Speaker 1: science out of the courtroom, but many don't want to
Speaker 1: make waves. So instead, juries are often left to decide,
Speaker 1: and juries find scientific experts to be very convincing and influential. Sometimes,
Speaker 1: when my kids were little, we'd resolve a conflict in
Speaker 1: family court. Each kid could make their case and then
Speaker 1: the judge me would rule, and everyone had to agree
Speaker 1: to abide by the ruling. I think I mostly got
Speaker 1: it right, but even if someone felt wronged, it was
Speaker 1: better than fighting it out in the backyard, and hopefully
Speaker 1: they knew I was trying. That's sort of how I
Speaker 1: thought the justice system worked. Sure, a few eggs might
Speaker 1: get broken, but generally it's better than the alternative. But
Speaker 1: no amount of fair mindedness really matters. If the basic
Speaker 1: tools a decision is based on our flawed. So if
Speaker 1: the s in CSI isn't verified science, where does that
Speaker 1: leave things? How should we view forensic science. Here's what
Speaker 1: former public defender Julia Layton thinks. Forensics is a high
Speaker 1: risk industry. It's no different than medicine and aviation. People's
Speaker 1: lives are at stake, public safety is at stake. Getting
Speaker 1: it right matters, and we should be treating it as
Speaker 1: a high risk industry. We should be regulating it. We
Speaker 1: should be investing in it and we should be overseeing it.
Speaker 1: So think about that. Think about sitting on a plane
Speaker 1: with your family about to take off for a long flight.
Speaker 1: You might be afraid of flying, but logic tells you
Speaker 1: it's safe because the FAA, the air traffic controllers, the airline,
Speaker 1: the pilot, and the crew have all checked the data.
Speaker 1: The plane couldn't even be in service if it wasn't safe.
Speaker 1: Think about picking up your medication from the pharmacist. Do
Speaker 1: you pause before swallowing a pill to consider whether or
Speaker 1: not the pharmaceutical company was on the ball when they
Speaker 1: developed it, or do you assume it's safe because the
Speaker 1: industry is regulated. Now, what's being done to protect you
Speaker 1: or a loved one from junk forensic science? We now
Speaker 1: have four hundred public crime labs operating across the US,
Speaker 1: along with countless private contractors. In the coming episodes of
Speaker 1: this podcast, we will dive into specific methods like bite marks,
Speaker 1: bloodstained pattern analysis, and footprints. We'll explain the history behind
Speaker 1: the method, how it's practiced, and how reliable it really is.
Speaker 1: Kate Judson wants us to keep in mind that most
Speaker 1: people that walk into a courtroom are doing it with
Speaker 1: the best of intentions to find justice for a victim.
Speaker 1: I think that the majority of people who contribute to
Speaker 1: bad science coming into the courtroom are doing so because
Speaker 1: they are really trying to be right. I mean, they
Speaker 1: want the right result. They want to make sure that
Speaker 1: yield to people go to prison and in US and
Speaker 1: people go free. And they just are working within a
Speaker 1: system that doesn't have the quality assurances it should have.
Speaker 1: On the next episode of CSI on Trial, what is
Speaker 1: it about a bite mark that would make a dentist
Speaker 1: an expert in this area? Why use bite mark evidence
Speaker 1: when just this year long to other people besides myself
Speaker 1: have gotten out and bite mark evidence was used in
Speaker 1: the trial. I mean, explain to me what does it
Speaker 1: take to realize this stuff's all crap. CSI on Trial
Speaker 1: is a coproduction of iHeart Podcasts and School of Humans
Speaker 1: based on the Curiosity Stream series CSI on Trial, created
Speaker 1: by Eleanor Grant and produced by The Biscuit Factory. You
Speaker 1: can watch all six episodes of the video series right
Speaker 1: now at curiosity stream dot com. This episode is hosted
Speaker 1: and written by me Molly Herman and researched by Katie
Speaker 1: Dunn and myself. Our producer is Miranda Hawkins. Jessica Metzger
Speaker 1: is the senior producer. Virginia Prescott, Jason English, Brandon Barr
Speaker 1: and L. C. Crowley are the executive producers. Sound design
Speaker 1: in mix by Miranda Hawkins. Special thanks to John Higgins,
Speaker 1: Rob Burke, Rob Lyle and Brandon Craigie. If you're enjoying
Speaker 1: the show, leave a review in your favorite podcast app.
Speaker 1: Check out the Curiosity Audio Network for podcasts covering history,
Speaker 1: pop culture, true crime, and more. School of Humans