Blood samples found inside of Simpsons Bronco, which was discovered outside Simpsons home the next day, were equally matched to Simpson and both victims. The world watched every detail of the case on Court TV, which highlighted the many mistakes of forensics investigators as an epic fail. As the defense attorney for an alleged narcotics kingpin opined, It stands to reason that the strict chain of custody claimed by the government in most cases is a sham.. Coleman is an author, screenwriter, university student, and tarot reader. For an unattended death, law enforcement must use a combination of investigative techniques and science to calculate how much time elapsed between the victim taking their last breath and their remains being found. Over the course of this three-year period, Coleman-Farrow not only neglected to interview suspects, but also forged victim statements, allowed video evidence to remain untouched, and failed to bring forensic evidence to the proper channels. California O.C. The National Institute of Criminology, considered the most important forensic testing center in Belgium, was also hit by arsonists in 2016. 10 Examples of Police Intimidation Cases: Wrapping Up. He testified about the condition of a dead mans spleen, not knowing that the spleen had been surgically removed years earlier. The expert's affidavit merely referenced to a homepage link and did not specify nor attach any webpage to be presented as exhibits. Though movies and media headlines have taught society to view police officers with an ample (but arguably healthy dose) of suspicion, pop cultures treatment of the FBI has been comparatively favorable. On April 27, a woman in eastern Brooklyn called the police. And, for a time, its Sapphire sex crimes unit was expected to be no exception. But the sheer scale of ineptitude and invalidation wrought by this crime lab arguably rivals the grievous nature of the crimes it was tasked with solving. Bolding, and the hundreds of cases he compromised, were emblematic of a culture of inadequacy at the Houston crime lab, where numerous technicians knowingly conducted unreliable analyses in a lab which itself was woefully sub-par. H.E. Other mistakes included overlooking stains, botched chemical tests, and improperly processed rape kits.[3]. "Even after the state Supreme Court threw out Ralph Armstrong's conviction based on evidence of his innocence, the prosecutor continued to withhold yet more evidence of his innocence." The Innocence Project got involved in Armstrong's case in 1993 and has worked on the case ever since with Wisconsin attorneys Jerome Buting and Keith Belzer. Investigators exhumed seven bodies that Erdmann had testified about. Furthermore, Johnny Webb, a jailhouse informant, testified against Willingham claiming he had confessed to the arson leading to the murders. In 2004, the Indiana Court of Appeals overturned the conviction and ordered a new trial. Without the head, police couldnt run forensic tests on the bullet or match it to their suspect. Gibson claimed to have heard a female voice call out, Henry! before the fatal shots were fired. The next day brought another disturbing discovery: A county road worker found 16-year-old Patricia Kalitzke's body in an area north of Great Falls, the paper reports. The Thornes had just been named as the winners of the Opera House lottery, established to raise money to build Joern Utzon's masterpiece. Webb would later recant his testimony, telling a reporter he was mistaken as a result of being on multiple medications for bipolar disorder. In addition, the US Department of Justice revealed that more than 400,000 stored rape kits have not yet been tested across the country because of insufficient funding. In 16 cases, pieces of evidence were returned to the wrong rape kit, hindering 19 investigations. "The international procedures for the inspection [of the scene of a crime] were not followed," Stefano Conti and Carla Vecciotti, both professors, said in their report. Additionally, a Dutch forensic expert found Boneys DNA under Kim Camms fingernails and her DNA on his sweatshirt, two pieces of evidence which sealed his conviction. And a certain heightened credibility comes with that. The government has since identified nearly 3,000 cases for review, based on questionable hair analysis testimony.[8]. The law of negligence in place at the time only really came into play through a contract, which in this case there was none. DNA wasn't always widely accepted as valid evidence in court cases the way it is today. The victim's sweater was found neatly folded by the truck. The cases were reported to include homicide investigations and officer-involved shootings. During the first trial in 1978, state serologist Michael Podlecki testified that at least one of the rapists had type A secretor blood, a trait shared with approximately 25 percent of the population. She had been shot in the head . During the trial, all of the missteps of the forensic team came to light, including the possibility of evidence tampering (and obvious evidence mishandling), as well as the glaring absence of evidence security. Six out of ten of the nations forensic laboratories have been badly burned by arsonists, with thousands of pieces of evidence ending up lost or damaged. Nor had the police "respected international standards for the collection and bagging of exhibits", they maintained. As one would expect, the costs of cleaning up after the trail of investigative mayhem have been astronomical. The case took a turn as there were no eyewitnesses and no physical evidence. Acclaimed fire investigator and scientist Gerald Hurst found Vasquezs claims to be dubious and stated that there was no evidence to suggest arson. Boney ultimately claimed it was Camm who murdered the family. Simpsons Bronco truck, his driveway, the foyer of his home, and his bedroom. Oscar Pistorius' defence team accused a South African police photographer of mishandling the crime scene during day 12 of his trial in Pretoria. After 36 years of appeals, the evidence was finally located on the top shelf of a forensics storage room. A former Boulder, Colorado, police chief who investigated the death of 6-year-old beauty queen JonBent Ramsey has acknowledged the murder case was mishandled. For people seeking careers that are simultaneously challenging, meaningful, and exciting, it is tough to beat becoming a crime scene technician. During Camms trial, the prosecution stated that Camm had dual motives: a $750,000 life insurance policy and alleged infidelity. This case is documented as the first to establish the modern law of negligence. Simpson that led to his acquittal? Whether its DNA testing, tool mark identification, bite mark measuring, or blood spatter analysis, its assumed that these methods are reliable, consistent, and valid measures of criminal activity. A civil court awarded the plaintiffs a total of $6.5 milliona gesture which is more symbolic than practical in light of Kofoeds inability to pay the fine. Defense attorneys became suspicious because Erdmann seemed to be able to supply prosecutors with whatever testimony they needed, without the proper testing to back up his reports. At the time, tests were not readily available to differentiate between natural and contaminant EDTA or the differences in the level of EDTA in blood. He spent 26 years in jail before a group called The . On Tuesday, Matheson unveiled scientific evidence suggesting that Simpson's blood type matches a drop found on a "trail of blood" near the body of his ex-wife, and that her blood type was on a. For example, the police didnt wear caps or change gloves as they collected items, allowing cross-contamination of the objects in the room. How many innocent people are serving sentences for crimes they didnt commit? DNA testing then proved that he wasnt a murderer. On May 11, 1978, newly engaged Carol Schmal and Lawrence Lionberg were found shot in the head. In 1999, the Ford Heights Four won a $36 million in damages from Cook Countythe largest settlement for a civil rights case in U.S. history. Schmal had been raped seven times. All the while, she outpaced her colleagues in productivity, sometimes by a factor of three. The LAPD could not counter the idea of lost blood because there was no documentation of how much reference blood was taken from Simpson as evidence. Wrongfully convicted suspects, grieving family members, and the victims of violent criminals who should have been behind bars all suffer because of this ongoing forensic storage fail. His wife had been out Christmas shopping and despite her insistence that Willingham had never been abusive and had no motive for the crimes, he was arrested. In a scandal that broke on the heels of extensive efforts to reform Philadelphias habitually corrupt police force, the officers of the 39th shocked the conscience of Philadelphia with tales of false arrests, evidence tampering, violence, and even theft. He estimated internal organ weight measurements for subjects that had never been cut open. The jury disregarded Gibsons testimony, acquitting Mrs. Hall and her brothers of all charges. Mishandled Evidence Should Have Prompted a Mistrial. The appeal by Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito against their conviction for the killing of the British student Meredith Kercher took a significant turn yesterday when independent, court-appointed. But, in at least one other instance, he failed to submit marijuana and guns seized during a crime, and there is some cause to believe that he may have been involved in the displacement of $130,000 confiscated during an FBI search. This faith in Zains abilities sent untold numbers of innocent men behind bars, primarily for rape and murder charges. "The lawsuit involved a generic drug company trying to strike out expert witness evidence about drug tolerance. For example, the Innocence Project aims to free the staggering number of innocent people who remain incarcerated, and to bring reform to the system responsible for their unjust imprisonment. Founded in 1992 by Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck, it has helped to free 350 people on DNA evidence and identified 149 alternative perpetrators as of June 2017. Fred Zains academic record does not reveal the makings of a person fit to wield a beaker, let alone work in a forensics lab. But, like so many corruption cases, Lowrys greatest crime may not be one which exists on any US law book. Helmsman of the drug lab for nearly two decades, and himself suspected of professional improprieties, Callery had overseen a spate of irresponsible hiring decisions. Those struggling used the extra drugs to frame innocent people. Then state crime lab director, Arnold Melnikoff, reported in his analysis that the hair "had characteristics consistent with the defendant (Barry Beach)," a conclusion which was not . Not only is there a huge volume of data collected for current investigations, but there is also a huge volume of digital forensics that must be stored indefinitely, in case of later appeals. On the the basis of falsified evidence, her presumed killer, Christopher Edwards, may now have legal grounds to overturn an otherwise convincing murder conviction. It found that only single-source DNA had both of the requisite types of scientific validity: foundational (i.e., accurate in a controlled lab environment) and applied (i.e., applicable in a real world context). Guede was given a 16-year sentence after a plea bargain. A woman who waited a decade for detectives to charge the man accused of raping her is the second alleged victim pursuing a complaint about Queensland police losing forensic evidence. B efore he became a true-crime celebrity, forensic scientist Henry Lee took the stand at a wildly bloody murder trial in Connecticut. Subsequent exploration of Kofoeds other cases revealed a pattern of dubious handiwork. Defense attorneys were quick to argue that lax procedures by the forensics team could have led to the degradation or cross-contamination of blood evidence. Eleanors tongue had been removed, a horrifying insult to her love of singing. She served only three years in jail for her crimes and is now free, just like the dangerous Dookhan Defendants she put back on the streets. The jurors agreed that the DNA testimony was difficult to appreciate since expert witnesses were not able to put their evidence in terms that the jury could understand. The abbreviation CSI has become a household term to capture the magic of Hollywoods high-tech vision of forensic work. Jamie founded Listverse due to an insatiable desire to share fascinating, obscure, and bizarre facts. She could pass through borders with no apparent problems and was linked crimes in at least three countries. Fuhrman was accused of planting critical evidence, contaminating it with Simpsons blood, and falsifying police records. On May 3, 2007, 3-year-old Madeleine McCann disappeared from her family's vacation apartment in Praia da Luz, in southwest Portugal. What had sealed the case against the pair at their trial, which began in January 2009 and ended with their conviction the following December, was testimony from police scientific experts which seemed to support the prosecutors' claim that Kercher died in a sex game involving all three defendants. In some ways, it can be said that Dookhan was just giving her superiors what they wanted. He has remained in jail since the spring of 2013. The newer mitochondrial testing of hair is more expensive, but it does exactly match hair to a suspect through DNA. One of the few witnesses brave enough to testify against Mrs. Hall was Jane Gibson, a swine herder who became known as the Pig Lady in the press. Prior to exiting a taxi at the fast food chain Popeye's in New York last October, Franqueira refused to pay his fare and pulled a gun on the driver. Todd Spitzer has dropped or reduced charges in 67 criminal cases as a result of. It wasnt until many years later that investigators would attribute his wounds to Willingham being in the fire before the flashover (i.e., when the entire room suddenly ignites in flames). In the state of Texas, Americas death penalty capital, forensic analysts weighing in on cases of rape and murder literally tip the scales in favor of life or death for a defendant. However, EDTA is also a chemical found naturally in human blood and chemicals such as paint. The carnage disturbed Knox, who described her roommate as neat and tidy. Knox had spent the night with her boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, and she attempted to get into Kerchers room, which was locked. According to an examiners study, at least 90 percent of trial transcripts in their Microscopic Hair Comparison Analysis Review contained erroneous statements. But they may explain why Zain spent the duration of his forensics career habitually faking lab results and lying to courtrooms in order to secure criminal convictions. A sample of 300 of his autopsy reports was examined by a panel of experts, who ruled that one-third of his patients had never been autopsied. Gabriel Fernandez, an 8-year-old boy, was found dead with multiple trauma wounds on March 22, 2013. Since the discovery of Dookhans conduct, at least 1,100 criminal cases have been dropped or dismissed and at least $8.5 million has been spent attempting to account for her mountain of faked lab data. Podlecki also testified that both Williams and Adams tested positive for being type A secretors, an assertion later refuted by an independent forensic witness. Unfortunately, Dookhan wasnt some laboratory wunderkind with a passion for drug offenses. Dubbed "The Phantom of Heilbronn," the anonymous woman's genetic material was detected at the scene of more than forty crimes over a two-decade period. The exploits of the 39th district eventually made media headlines in the mid-1990s. On June 13, 1994, the bodies of Ron Goldman and the ex-wife of OJ Simpson, Nicole Brown, were found outside of Browns home. With the rate of laboratory malfeasance far outpacing the capacity of authorities to address it, we may never fully ascertain just how many lives were ruined or potentially lost thanks to the Houston Police Departments forensic infractions. Throughout the investigation, there were issues with how evidence was secured. One of the main issues in the Casey Anthony case was that the prosecution went forward with evidence that the forensic experts told them was questionable. Mrs. Hall was the obvious mastermind. In 2003, Kofoed linked Ivan Henk to the murder of four-year-old Brendan Gonzales with what was likely a manufactured blood sample that prompted Henks arrest and eventual guilty plea. Overstating the utility of common forensic methods has serious consequences. O.J. At the trial, James Grigsona psychiatrist known as Doctor Death for frequently recommending the death penalty for defendantswas called as an expert witness. Shocking reports have been filed against crime labs, police departments, and sheriffs offices concerning improper, underfunded, and outrageously inadequate forensic storage facilities. Between 2010 and 2012, there were over 50 thefts from the state Medical Examiners Office. They uncovered Marvin Simpsons genuine eyewitness account. Photos were taken of critical evidence without scales in them to aid in measurement taking. During the June 2011 appeals trial, experts uncovered the numerous flaws in the forensic evidence levied against Knox and Sollecito. Authorities suspected something might be amiss when Massachusetts forensics chemist Annie Dookhan somehow managed to process a large volume of samples in a relatively short time. Simpson We'd be remiss if we started our list anywhere other than the case dubbed the " trial of the century. Theres no shortage of crime-fighting TV shows where protagonists brandish the latest forensic science techniques. OJ Simpson was found not guilty on October 3, 1995. The chance that blood found on Simpsons sock could be from someone other than Nicole Brown was 1 in 21 billion. False or misleading forensic evidence was a contributing factor in 24% of all wrongful convictions nationally, according to the National Registry of Exonerations, which tracks both DNA and non-DNA based exonerations.1 This includes convictions based on forensic evidence that is unreliable or invalid and expert testimony that is misleading. Evidence showed that Epstein had transferred over $30 million to Maxwell, his onetime girlfriend, during and after a stretch of years from 1994 to 2004 when they were most closely connected . The victims were from one jurisdiction, but their bodies were found in another, leading to disagreements about which department should collect the forensic evidence. Advocates from the Innocence Project are now working with the Department of Justice to develop a set of evidence storage guidelines that will hopefully be standardized across the nation in the future.[6]. The DNA traces on the knife, which were discovered by police in Sollecito's kitchen, appeared "unreliable in as much as [they were] not supported by scientifically validated analytic procedures", the experts' report said. Coworkers at the medical examiners office had to work around the clock double-checking the fired technicians findings. The millionaire who gunned down the high-society architect. The detectives who took over Fuhrmans shift apparently were never aware of the print and eventually, it was lost or destroyed without ever being collected. In the years that followed, more than 1,400 cases were reviewed, hundreds of convictions overturned, and $5 million in compensation was awarded to victims of the police. Every city has ignominious chapters in its history that it would rather forget. On July 22, 1933, he and another man kidnapped wealthy Oklahoma City oilman Charles Urschel. Additionally, some jurors have since admitted that the verdict was retribution for the acquittal of white police officers in the beating of Rodney King in 1992. The case, which earned Kofoed his first and greatest encounter with infamy, revolved around the suspects in a double murder: Nicolas Sampson and Matt Livers. Some costs, however, may be incalculable. Second only to Sherlock Holmes and Batman, Scotland Yard is what people associate with excellence in detective work. The experts at the appeal court were scathing yesterday in their criticism of the reliability of that evidence. Lauren. Nearly everyone in the town of New Brunswick, New Jersey, seemed to know that Reverend Edward Wheeler Hall and choir singer Eleanor Reinhardt Mills were in love. Many experts assert that it can be easily compromised, planted, or deleted without a trace. The errors came to light when lawyers from the Innocence Project and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers got together with members from the Department of Justice and the FBI to ensure more thorough testing and testimony. And, in that capacity, she seemingly set a bar for excellence that was prohibitively high. Manuel Vasquez, a state deputy fire marshall, took the stand and testified to seeing puddle configurations (i.e., areas of rapid burning) suggesting the use of accelerants in the fire and indicating arson. The recanted testimony was never reported to Willinghams attorneys and the prosecution ultimately cited the statute of limitations. 10. Without perfect organization and updated records, things inevitably go missing, and when they do, defendants end up paying a very steep price. One of the most frustrating and heartbreaking docu-series in recent memory was The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez. An investigation revealed that Dookhan had been dry labbing many of her assignmentsreporting results without performing the actual tests! Autopsy reports indicated that most of Kerchers injuriesbruising and cuts near the genital regionwere sustained as a result of being restrained during the sexual violence. He did not perform a thorough psychiatric evaluation. The real killer was later identified. Lawyers, experts say forensic evidence was too experimental for courtroom. Another witness named Paula Graya woman with an IQ of 55 who would later recant her testimony, thereby facing perjury chargesadded Verneal Jimerson to the attackers. Vendors camped at the site, selling balloons and soft drinks to the hundreds of visitors trampling around the crime scene. All seven were examined and proved inconsistent with his findings. Robinson was on-site at a Tucson facility in April 2018 when the FBI took the servers into custody pursuant to a federal warrant. What happened in the trial of O.J. 2 Henry and Leon McCollum. Its a grim burden that grows ever heavier in light of the fact that, for decades, the Houston Police Department crime lab has relied on faulty DNA analyses and bogus courtroom testimony that, according to a lab director, have tainted at least 5,000 to 10,000 cases. At trial, several issues became evident, including: Roughly 1.5 ml of Simpson's blood was mysteriously absent from a container; The blood was not immediately entered into the chain of custody; The first edition of Electronic Evidence in Criminal Investigations and Actions: Representative Court Decisions and Supplementary Materials was published in February of 2016. An additional 500 convictions are slated to be challenged with thousands more in the works. Independent experts have seriously disputed much of the scientific evidence relied on in the case. In reality, not all blood spatter can be seen with the naked eye. A series of arson attacks against forensic laboratories in Brussels has alerted the world to a huge security fail going on in Belgium. The dropped charges. Both Knox and Sollecito were arrested and charged with Kerchers murder due to trace amounts of Knoxs DNA found on the kitchen knifethe presumed murder weaponand Sollecitos DNA found on Kerchers bra clasp. 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