The Forensic Science Community Response
I really wanted to attend the annual meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences last week. It wasn't just the presentations - I wanted to see the reaction to the "takedown" by the NAS report. By now everyone knows that report pointed out problems - some severe - with everything except DNA evidence. I expected an attack on the NAS report itself. Instead, it appears most agree with the substance of the report, and agree their are problems.
The them of the conference was "Putting our house in order", which is telling. According the president-elect a nationwide critique is "long overdue". I was pleased to see that DOJ has already started funding research on fingerprint reliability and fire-debris analysis. Let's hope that goes more quickly than the NAS report - which took almost 4 years to get out
One thing they don't agree with is the recommendation that forensic labs be independent of the police. I don't ever expect that to happen, but that was one of the more important recommendations. Too many problems arise out of close relationship between the police and the labs. That includes context bias - which is interpreting evidence in light of what you expect to find. The only remedy for that is for the scientist to have no information on the case - in other words, they won't know whether they helping or hurting the prosecution.
The jury is still out on what impact all this is going to have on criminal defendants. So far, things don't seem to have changed much. Questionable evidence is still being admitted, many times for no reason other than it has been admitted before. It remains our obligation to challenge the evidence and educate judges on the issues. Who knows what we will accomplish if we keeping pushing.
