The Evidence

In today's society, there is a great deal of weight put on forensic findings as hard evidence. Unfortunately, forensic evidence isn't as concrete as you may want to believe. In recent years, the FBI has even admitted to flawed forensic evidence that has been involved in death penalty cases. According to the FBI, their forensic lab that handles hair follicles as provided flawed testimony by matching hair evidence to hair to the defendants charged with the crime.

The FBI reports that of the 268 trials that have been reevaluated so far, the forensics experts have systematically overstated the certainty of the match between the evidence and the defendants hair. The flawed testimony given by the forensics experts ended up favoring the prosecutors 95% of the time. Of the inaccurate testimony, 32 of them were death penalty cases leading to conviction favoring death. Five of these cases come from Pennsylvania, the most from Florida with ten. Unfortunately, of the 32 flawed cases, 9 of the the convicted have already been executed. The FBI believes that this improper testimony of hair comparison may have already contributed to at least one wrongful execution. The report of flawed FBI testimony is likely to only cover a fraction of affected cases seeing as more cases are still under review. Unfortunately, it may be too late for some people.

This issue of flawed forensic evidence is more common than people think, but unfortunately the evidence is still seen as rock solid in courts. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, false or misleading forensic evidence was a contributing factor in 24% of all wrongful convictions nationally. In the United States incorrect forensic evidence, such as DNA, results in 45% of wrongful convictions. When people try to fight this forensic evidence, it could take a long time due to high evidentiary standards. Even worse, some state courts do not recognize discredited scientific evidence as new evidence of a wrongful conviction.

In order to fix this, we need to have a mechanism in place that allows convicted people to prove their innocence if the forensic evidence used to convict them was incorrect. They shouldn't be punished because someone in the lab made a mistake. Currently, there are only five states that have enacted laws allowing convicted people to go back to court based on discredited forensic evidence; California, Connecticut, Michigan, Nevada, and Texas. The rest of America needs to implement laws like these five states in order to ensure a fair trial with correct evidence. We also need to understand as a society the forensic evidence is not as solid as we think.

For more information on this topic, please visit www.innocenceproject.org