On Monday, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the government would dissolve the federal commission that had been working towards creating national standards in forensic science. Removing the new science-based policies could lead to more false convictions, especially given the Trump administration’s hard line on crime.
Forensic standards vary by state. Some techniques have been found scientifically invalid and their use has led to false convictions.
For example, after serving 20 years for the rape and murder of a high-school student, in 2009 when the shaky soil analysis on which a jury had convicted him decades before was contradicted by evidence from more modern DNA methods. At the time, the National Academies of Sciences issued a report broadly condemning forensic science practices in the US. With the exception of DNA testing, the authors wrote, no forensic method could consistently and reliably connect evidence to a specific individual or source.
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“It’s clear that in many forensic disciplines, experts have been overstating their conclusions, going farther than is supported by scientific evidence,” says , a professor of criminology at the University of California, Irvine.
In the wake of the report, the Obama administration launched the National Commission on Forensic Science to advise the Department of Justice, a group that included scientists, prosecutors at both the federal and state level, defence lawyers, judges, crime laboratory directors and law enforcement officials. “The commission started cracking down,” says Thompson, forcing forensic labs to undergo inspection and accreditation.
Shock anouncement
So it came as a shock to many when Sessions announced that the Department of Justice wouldn’t renew the commission’s charter when its term expires on 23 April. Instead, the government will ask individual forensic labs across the country to assess their own needs, and appoint a forensic advisor to the justice department. This, many think, is exactly the opposite of what should be happening to standardise and strengthen forensic science in the country.
The move highlights the tension between the science and those fighting crime. “The goal of forensic science reform is to correctly identify the guilty and protect the innocent,” says , a neuroscientist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California who serves on the commission. “But if your goal is to make sure you catch all the bad guys – which is the administration’s ideal – then forensic science reform can be seen as taking the teeth out of the prosecutors.”
That’s because forensic science’s roots aren’t in science, but in policing. The term “forensic science” is a misnomer that creates false expectations of its capabilities. “It’s not as simple as it appears to be when you watch TV,” says Albright. “That gives people false ideas about what forensic science can do.”
For one thing, not all forensic techniques are equal. DNA analysis and toxicology are based on decades of scientific research, but analyses of bite marks, hair, fingerprints or fire marks are not based on any rigorous experimentation, says of West Virginia University. “There’s no scientific study about the validity of bite marks. It’s been debunked, but it keeps getting admitted [in court as evidence],” she says. “Fingerprints and toolmarks and firearms – there’s extraordinary value in those kinds of analyses. But they have to be presented properly with the strengths and limitations, error rates or probabilities.”
The commission was working on developing standards for these analyses, which would have both helped to set expectations of their efficacy for judges and juries, and perhaps make the outcome of trials that involve the techniques more consistent.
Forensic evidence
In the wake of this decision, state level commissions may have to take up the work of standardising forensic techniques, though many may not be able to afford to, says Bell, a professor of chemistry and forensic sciences who served on the commission.
She says the key to improving the use of forensic evidence in court is not only to put more science into forensic science but also to train judges to understand and accept new findings the way scientists do. “In science, the most current finding is what we base things on. In law, the precedent is set by past judgments,” Bell says.
US District Judge says that very few judges have a scientific background and need training on how to evaluate the evidence presented in court.
Not everyone is unhappy to see the commission’s demise. The National District Attorneys Association released a statement applauding the decision that Thompson says “seemed almost gleeful”.
Sessions’s decision makes sense given his past role in the legal system. He is a former prosecutor, and Thompson says, “he is seeing the problem through his partisan adversarial lenses, rather than the way a scientist or scholar would look at it: how do we have a just system that works well.”
Albright says that the loss of the commission means the US will continue to operate a justice system where more people meet Steven Barnes’s fate.
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