Week 2: Bad Science and More

The Nation Registry of Exonerations has released an infographic detailing the 125 exonerations that occurred during 2014.
Here are some important takeaways:
1. The longest incarceration of a 2014 exoneree was 39 years.
2. There were no exonerations in Arizona during 2014. Arizona has had 15 total exonerations
3. Pima County, AZ got a Conviction Integrity Unit. These divisions, called CIUs, are units within prosecutors' offices that investigate post-conviction claims of innocence.

The National Registry of Exonerations: 2014 Year in Review

Recent activities:
Meeting with Marianne Nielsen, Chair of the NAU Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice and editor of Criminal Justice in Native America (see previous post), to discuss project.
Identifying other criminal and social justice organizations that could assist in project.
Data review: Arizona Department of Corrections.
Began to work on informational letter to send to individuals incarcerated in Arizona that could potentially benefit from AIP's services.
Massive Open Online Course: The Innocence Movement.

Literature review, recent focus:
                           

1. Jeffery Ian Ross & Larry Allen Gold, Native Americans and the Criminal Justice System (Paradigm Pub. 2006).
2. Brandon Garrett, Convicting the Innocent, (Harvard Univ. Press 2011).

This week I'd like to talk about one of the biggest reasons people are wrongfully convicted in our criminal justice system: Bad science. Really bad science. 

This issue is discussed in week three of my MOOC, and I'd like to highlight some main points here:

• Expert testimony is incredibly powerful, and juries are inclined to believe experts, often blindly. DNA evidence is especially powerful. 
• Suspect forms of science that may not be as reliable as many juries have been lead to believe: bite mark comparison, voice recording comparisons, hair microscopy, shoe print analysis, firearm tool mark analysis, among others. 



 Ray Krone, exonerated in Arizona in 2002 after serving 10 years

• These disciplines were invented by forensic analysts while the analysts were working on cases and are often not widely accepted by outside scientific communities. 
• Very little quality assurance and quality control. 
• Analysts often offer testimony that goes beyond the evidence. 
• New science often reveals that old science is incorrect; the criminal justice system takes a long time to catch up with these changing standards. 
• Many state laws do not require adequate preservation of evidence that may contain DNA
• DNA collection, investigation, and analysis are subject to human error. 
• Ray Krone: wrongfully convicted in Arizona due to bite mark evidence. After his exoneration, Krone said, "Junk science convicted me but real science saved me."

Watch this video for specific instances where bad science has been used to convict innocent individuals

DNA: the impact on wrongful convictions and subsequent exonerations

• Most cases are not resolvable by DNA
• The trend has been that fewer and fewer exonerations have actually involved DNA evidence
• Many crime scenes do not yield analyzable DNA evidence (in fact, only ~10% do)
• Contaminated DNA evidence 
• Faulty preservation or collection tactics leading to cross-contamination or degradation
•  Kirk Bloodsworth: first DNA-based death row exoneree