We are going backward': How the justice system ignores science in the pursuit of convictions

Forensic techniques including bite-mark comparisons and blood-spatter analysis have sent dozens of innocent people to prison.

Jan. 23, 2019, 3:30 AM CST
By Jon Schuppe

When Paul Aaron Ross returns to court for a new trial in the 2004 murder of a 26-year-old woman, prosecutors will rely on bite marks to prove that he did it — even though the technique has been discredited by dozens of scientists and multiple studies.

Judges have said bite-mark evidence is fine to present, and in American courtrooms, that is what matters ─ not the mounting body of research questioning bite marks’ reliability, or the list of people convicted on such evidence only to be exonerated later.

Across the country, forensic techniques found tenuous by independent researchers representing a variety of specialties — including linking indentations found on a victim’s body to a suspect’s teeth — are still being used as evidence to convict people.

. . .

“If we don’t have technologies that are objective, repeatable and reliable, then we have no idea how many times we’re making the wrong decision,” said Alicia Carriquiry, director of the Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence, a government-funded project to measure the limits of forensic methods. “We don’t even have a way to estimate how many times we’re making the wrong decisions.”

More:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/we-are-going-backward-how-justice-system-ignores-science-pursuit-n961256