"Study Calls for Oversight of Forensics in Crime Labs," is the New York Times report by Solomon Moore.
Crime laboratories around the country are grossly underfunded, lack a scientific foundation and are compromised by critical delays in analyzing physical evidence, according to a broad study of forensic techniques published Wednesday by the National Academy of Sciences, the nation’s premier scientific body.
Among its many criticisms, the study counted a backlog of 359,000 requests for forensic analysis in 2005, a 24 percent increase in delays since 2002. A survey of crime laboratories found 80 percent of them to be understaffed.
A new federal agency is needed to regulate these laboratories, standardize forensic techniques and pay for research, according to the report, which was financed by Congress in 2005.
The study recommends that an agency, to be called the National Institute of Forensic Science, be created and be independent of the Justice Department, which has traditionally been the nation’s primary forensics research agency. Crime laboratories should be managed separately from police departments to ensure that their findings are protected from bias, the report said.
“The potential for conflicts of interest between the needs of law enforcement and the broader needs of forensic science are too great,” the authors wrote.
The report, the product of a two-year review by the academy, an independent body, is not legally binding. But legislators from both parties have already committed to holding hearings on the study, and officials from all the federal law enforcement agencies are reviewing the document in anticipation of possible policy changes.
“I am troubled by the report’s general finding that far too many forensic disciplines lack the standards necessary to ensure their scientific reliability in court,” said Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican on the committee, said he was also troubled by the findings.
The report calls into question the scientific merit of virtually every commonly used forensic method, including analysis of fingerprints, hair, fibers, blood spatters, ballistics and arson. Only DNA, which the panel said had benefited from rigorous scientific scrutiny and peer review outside of the forensics discipline, escaped significant criticism.
"Report: Real-world CSI's lack consistent standards," is the AP report by Devlin Barrett, via the Washington Post.
The report calls into question the scientific merit of virtually every commonly used forensic method, including analysis of fingerprints, hair, fibers, blood spatters, ballistics and arson. Only DNA, which the panel said had benefited from rigorous scientific scrutiny and peer review outside of the forensics discipline, escaped significant criticism.
“The fact is that many forensic tests, such as those used to infer the source of tooth marks and bite marks, have never been exposed to stringent scientific scrutiny,” the report said. The report highlights crime laboratory scandals involving hundreds of tainted cases handled by police agencies in Michigan, Texas and West Virginia, and by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. At least 10 wrongly convicted men have been exonerated as a result of those laboratory investigations, and the cases of hundreds of other people convicted with the help of those facilities are under review.
The panel also found that most of the nation is served by death investigation offices that lack accreditation. It cited an 18-year-old high school student in Indiana who was recently elected deputy coroner after a short training course.
The academy said that in addition, judges and lawyers generally lacked the scientific expertise necessary to “comprehend and evaluate forensic evidence in an informed manner.”
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said his office would be reviewing the report over the next several days.
"National report finds forensic science labs underfunded, understaffed and without proper oversight," is Marcia Coyle's web-only report at National Law Journal.
• Certification should be mandatory for forensic science professionals. Among the steps required for certification should be written examinations, supervised practice, proficiency testing and adherence to a code of ethics. Accreditation for laboratories should be required as well. Labs should establish quality-control procedures designed to ensure that best practices are followed, confirm the continued validity and reliability of procedures, and identify mistakes, fraud and bias.
• To ensure the efficacy of the work done by forensic scientists and other practitioners in the field, public forensic science laboratories should be made independent from or autonomous within police departments and prosecutors' offices.
• In addition to investigating the limits of the forensic techniques themselves, studies should also examine sources and rates of human error. As part of this effort, more research should be done on "contextual bias," which occurs when the results of forensic analysis are influenced by an examiner's knowledge about the suspect's background or an investigator's knowledge of a case. One study found, for example, that fingerprint examiners did not always agree even with their own past conclusions when the same evidence was presented in a different context.
• Standardize and clarify the terms used by forensic science experts who testify in court about the results of investigations. The words commonly used — such as "match," "consistent with," and "cannot be excluded as the source of" — are not well-defined or used consistently, despite the great impact they have on how juries and judges perceive evidence.
• Any testimony stemming from forensic science laboratory reports must clearly describe the limits of the analysis; currently, failure to acknowledge uncertainty in findings is common. The simple reality is that interpretation of forensic evidence is not infallible — quite the contrary, said the committee.
• The recommended new National Institute of Forensic Science should have a full-time administrator and an advisory board with expertise in research and education, the forensic science disciplines, physical and life sciences, and measurements and standards, among other fields.
The report was sponsored by the National Institute of Justice at the request of Congress. The National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council make up the National Academies. They are private, nonprofit institutions that provide science, technology and health policy advice under a congressional charter. The Research Council is the principal operating agency of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering.
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