WALL STREET JOURNAL: A series of recent court decisions and policy changes is starting to reshape how the U.S. justice system handles disputed or debunked forensic techniques used in thousands of criminal convictions.
The changes affect crime-show staples like identifications made using hair samples, burn patterns, bite marks, ballistics evidence and handwriting analysis, among others. Over the past two decades, many scientists have said these disciplines are unreliable and subject to bias, but courts and law-enforcement authorities had until recently done little to address them.
On Thursday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said that a sweeping review found its experts used microscopic hair comparison to help identify suspects in at least 2,100 convictions from 1985 through 1999, including 27 death-penalty cases.
Before the adoption of DNA testing around 2000, investigators routinely relied on visually matching hairs from suspects with those at crime scenes, but recent exonerations have cast doubt on the practice. The FBI said it would now review the 2,100 cases to see if its experts exceeded the bounds of science in their lab reports or testimony. The number under review could increase as the FBI studies more cases… (more)
