Arson update - Are th e courts finally getting it?
Thanks in large part to Cameron Todd Willingham and the work of the Innocence Project the problems with arson investigations are now well known. Almost everyone now concedes that there prior convictions that are flawed by investigations involving false assumptions and bad science (if it can even be called that) While courts - and individual judges - have publicly acknowledged the problem, they have been slow to actually do anything about it. Hopefully that may be changing.
Several recent cases show that the courts may be starting to take this seriously. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals last week sent a case back to the District Court for an evidentiary hearing. In doing so the court suggested that a conviction based on faulty science might constitute a due process violation.
In another case a federal magistrate in California in considering whether George Soulitous' 1997 conviction should be set aside because it was based on a faulty investigation. According to a former ATF agent:
Steven W. Carman, a fire investigator for 20 years with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, said Modesto investigators relied on fire patterns and other forensic evidence that amounted to "a laundry list of things we used to believe broadly in this profession that have since been widely discounted."
Finally, an Ohio inmate is challenging his arson conviction before the parole board.
There is no doubt that these attacks are going to continue, as more cases are identified. Let's hope the Court's are up for the challenge.
