Securing the Evidence Fred Zains academic record does not reveal the makings of a person fit to wield a beaker, let alone work in a forensics lab. When forensics fail, it isnt just the victims and their families who pay the price. 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. Photograph: Stefano Medici/AP. And a big part of the problem could be pinned on the man running the show: Chief Medical Examiner Richard Callery. A card left by the killer was handled by dozens of people in the crowd, making fingerprint forensics useless in court. After various appeals and retrials, students from the Northwestern University Medill School of Journalismincluding award-winning NPR journalist Laura Sullivanpresented new evidence in 1996. For nine years, Annie Dookhan worked as a crime lab chemist in Massachusetts, performing drug tests for criminal cases. (Evans, 2003) According to a 2010 investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), a detective constable and two trainees revised the statement of a rape survivor to suggest that she had retracted her claims. A bloody fingerprint at Nicoles house was noted by a policeman but overlooked by the forensics team. Although it was documented in his notes by Detective Mark Fuhrman, one of the first to arrive on the scene, no further action was taken to secure it. Despite setbacks in the advancement of the science, there are groups committed to exonerating falsely accused people with sound forensic evidence. Simpson murder case. One of the most frustrating and heartbreaking docu-series in recent memory was The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez. Sometimes it's forensic evidence and sometimes it's merely re-examining clues, but cold cases do occasionally get solved. A final eyewitness named Marvin Simpson came forward five days after the murders identifying four completely different men as the killers, but the police failed to investigate these claims. Firefox was used to access an address with "chloroform.htm.". Schmal had been raped seven times. Acclaimed fire investigator and scientist Gerald Hurst found Vasquezs claims to be dubious and stated that there was no evidence to suggest arson. The officer who arrested Oscar Pistorius on the night Reeva Steenkamp was killed last year testified Friday that police at the crime scene mishandled evidence, including a ballistics expert who. 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. 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. 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.. 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Since no one could tell which tests were real, which ones were fake, or which ones shed personally contaminated, all of Dookhans results became suspect. The prosecution had expert witnesses who testified that the evidence was often mishandled. Prosecutorial misconduct complaints against several lawyers and police officers who worked regularly with Erdmann claimed that the lawmen bribed, threatened, or encouraged the doctor to provide whatever evidence was needed to secure a conviction. Atty. 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. You can get free samples of her books here or watch free tarot videos on her YouTube channel here. On March 27, 2015, both Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were exonerated for the murder of Meredith Kercher. Simpson was accused of murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown-Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman on June 12, 1994, between approximately 9:40 p.m. and 10:55 p.m., in the front courtyard of her condominium on Bundy Drive, Brentwood. Photos were taken of critical evidence without scales in them to aid in measurement taking. The cases were reported to include homicide investigations and officer-involved shootings. 10. Jamie founded Listverse due to an insatiable desire to share fascinating, obscure, and bizarre facts. On June 13, 1994, the bodies of Ron Goldman and the ex-wife of OJ Simpson, Nicole Brown, were found outside of Browns home. While interviewing with the CIA, Harding touted his evidence planting exploits as an example of his ability to conduct covert operations, somehow failing to comprehend that admitting to a string of serious crimes might get him in trouble with the government. One of the examiners most aggravating mistakes was the loss of an entire head, which contained a bullet from the killers gun. At the trial, James Grigsona psychiatrist known as Doctor Death for frequently recommending the death penalty for defendantswas called as an expert witness. 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. It will depend on the judge and whether the mishandled components are enough to throw out the case. Subsequent exploration of Kofoeds other cases revealed a pattern of dubious handiwork. 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. Sollecito tried to force the door open and failed, prompting him to call the police. Forensic evidence is crucial to crime scene investigators. Still, Robert Lowery, vice president of the Missing Children's Division at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, points to other high-profile missing children's cases as support for the belief that cases like . West Virginia alone paid $6.5 million in compensation to innocent people convicted by Zains deception, and the state of Texas shelled out $850,000. Experts also noted that while the alleged murder weapon did contain trace amounts of Knoxs DNA, it was curiously free from the victims DNA. Coupled with confessions from the murderers and DNA evidence, Williams, Adams, Rainge, and Jimerson were finally exonerated after 17 years in prison. The person who drew the blood could only guess he had taken 8 mL; only 6 mL could be accounted for by the LAPD. A graduate of West Virginia State College, Zain had only managed to pass some of his chemistry courses by the skin of his teeth, while utterly failing in others. The judge made some good points and some that made it obvious that they aren't tech savvy but still a good read. She then compounded the problem by testifying about her findings during criminal trials. And, in that capacity, she seemingly set a bar for excellence that was prohibitively high. Lost evidence has collapsed 6,000 cases including alleged killers and rapists Crime expert fears that 12,000 prosecutions have failed in the past two years because pieces of evidence that. 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. 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 . The real killer was later identified. Gibson claimed to have heard a female voice call out, Henry! before the fatal shots were fired. 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. Rebuffing scientists who had presented evidence of false applications of DNA analysis, Attorney General Jeff Sessions stated, I dont think we should suggest that those proven scientific principles that weve been using for decades are somehow uncertain and leaving prosecutors having to fend off challenges on the most basic issues in a trial (Washington Post, April 2017). And, for those eight yearswhich is a long time to get away with any crimethose troopers helped decide thousands of felony cases across more than half a dozen counties across New York. Preliminary testing revealed that the doctor had faked at least 100 of his autopsies, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. The DNA lab in Charleroi, recently struck by arsonists in 2016, had previously been attacked in 2001 and 2003, while the forensic laboratory in Ghent University had been targeted in 2005. A series of arson attacks against forensic laboratories in Brussels has alerted the world to a huge security fail going on in Belgium. Erdmann later admitted that he had thrown the head away. But a small number of cases around the country have . Apparently, old habits die hard. Dookhan was indicted on 27 charges, including obstruction of justice for tampering with evidence, perjury, and even falsifying her university degree. Simpsons Bronco truck, his driveway, the foyer of his home, and his bedroom. In 2006, the lab rehired a forensic analyst who previously resigned under suspicion of falsifying data. 2 Henry and Leon McCollum. 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. But, in truth, the lab had been plagued by corruption long before those thefts ever occurred. Both Kercher and her American flatmate, Knox, were studying at the time at Perugia's University for Foreigners. Death row inmates, however, lose more than time. "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. A major hurdle that the prosecution team failed to overcome was the lack of knowledge and understanding regarding forensics, specifically the relatively new science of DNA. 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. One piece of key evidence that was overlooked was Michael's navy blue shirt. 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