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Banned
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by ShaniFaye
I dont split hairs over it. Im 100% for it in cases where its proven without a doubt that someone deliberately murdered another human.
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Shani, this former police officer was found guilty of murder "beyond reasonable doubt", on the basis of scientific findings by the FBI crime laboratory:
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...ail/components
SILENT INJUSTICE A Twist to the Left
A Murder Conviction Torn Apart by a Bullet
In a 1995 Maryland Case, Key Testimony and the Science Behind It Have Been Discredited
By John Solomon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 19, 2007; Page A01
Former Baltimore police sergeant James A. Kulbicki stared silently from the defense table as the prosecutor held up his off-duty .38-caliber revolver and assured jurors that science proved the gun had been used to kill Kulbicki's mistress.
"I wonder what it felt like, Mr. Kulbicki, to have taken this gun, pressed it to the skull of that young woman and pulled the trigger, that cold steel," the prosecutor said during closing arguments.
Prosecutors had linked the weapon to Kulbicki through forensic science. Maryland's top firearms expert said that the gun had been cleaned and that its bullets were consistent in size with the one that killed the victim. The state expert could not match the markings on the bullets to Kulbicki's gun. But an FBI expert took the stand to say that a science that matches bullets by their lead content had linked the fatal bullet to Kulbicki.
The jurors were convinced, and in 1995 Kulbicki was convicted of first-degree murder in the death of his 22-year-old girlfriend. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
For a dozen years, Kulbicki sat in state prison, saddled with the image of the calculating killer portrayed in the 1996 made-for-TV movie "Double Jeopardy."
Then the scientific evidence unraveled. .....
...."If this could happen to my client, who was a cop who worked within this justice system, what does it say about defendants who know far less about the process and may have far fewer resources to uncover evidence of their innocence that may have been withheld by the prosecution or their scientific experts?" said Suzanne K. Drouet, a former Justice Department lawyer who took on Kulbicki's case as a public defender.......
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...and, back to Texas....again. Have people been executed wrongly because of this abuse of authority, BS? Who "TF" knows?
Quote:
http://www.khou.com/crimelab/stories...w.3f93831.html
FBI audit: Problems at HPD crime lab known before it reopened
10:55 PM CST on Wednesday, November 14, 2007
By Jeremy Desel / 11 News
In our ongoing investigation into the Houston Police Department’s crime lab, 11 News has uncovered new evidence showing there were problems at the new crime lab -- before it ever reopened.
Why should you care?
Because a mistake at this lab could send you to jail or it could let a killer walk free.
In the lab, evidence is supposed to be protected.
We have protected the identity of a crime lab analyst currently working in the lab.
That’s because the analyst is afraid to be fired for speaking out and claims that at the Houston Crime Lab, problems are to be protected too.
“They are interested in keeping it quiet. They are not interested in fixing it,” the analyst told 11 News.
There are also allegations of cheating and evidence custody tampering inside the new lab. Questions raised in an official affidavit to internal affairs investigators.
An affidavit obtained by 11 News.
“We do respect that it has in common DNA, but it is a far different situation that what occurred in the past,” said Houston Mayor Bill White said when 11 News questioned him on the latest problems uncovered.
Maybe, but the trouble has been brewing right from the lab’s rebirth in November 2005.
Trouble uncovered in a March 2006 FBI audit of that new HPD Crime Lab.
It was buried in a box filled with thousands of pages of documents we asked for from HPD.
Inside that audit? Standard questions:
“Has each examiner/analyst successfully completed a qualifying test before beginning independent casework responsibilities?”
Troubling answer to that one: “No.”
“Does the laboratory use methods and procedures for forensic DNA analysis that have been validated prior to casework implementation?”
Again, the answer was “No.”
“Does the laboratory maintain a chain of custody for all evidence?”
Yet another “No,” answer.
All questions now being revisited in the ongoing HPD internal affairs investigation into the lab.
What is especially disturbing now to some, is that the test question where cheating is alleged was related to finding sperm in a sample.
“They did not want to draw attention to that issue again on the proficiency test,” said the analyst whose identity 11 News is protecting.
Because it is one of the specific problems in the old lab that led to the release of Ronnie Taylor just last month. He was wrongfully convicted of a rape he did not commit.
All because the old crime lab covered up its mistakes.......
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...and here is the conduct and reputation of the "authority" doing the auditing in Houston....the FBI:
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...111501575.html
Monday, Nov. 19, at noon ET
Silent Injustice
Bullet-matching Science Debunked
John Solomon
Staff Writer, The Washington Post
Monday, November 19, 2007; 12:00 PM
At noon ET on Monday, Nov. 19 Washington Post staff writer John Solomon responded to reader questions and comments about "Silent Injustice" his 6-month investigation with 60 MINUTES correspondent Steve Kroft into a flawed science used in the convictions of thousands of defendants, scores of whom may be innocent.
....John Solomon: Absolutely. I had written extensively on FBI lab problems in the 1990s and earlier this decade. And I had worked for the last several years with some groups to pursue Freedom of Information Act requests seeking documents about how the FBI was handling the end of its bullet lead science. When the bureau announced the end of the science, it had claimed publicly that it remained confident in the "scientific foundation" of its past work. But when we started to get internal emails and documents under FOIA and from sources, we realized the bureau was aware that large numbers of its scientists had given testimony that was inaccurate and not supported by science. And that is what got us started. We began by reviewing trial transcripts and finding cases where the now-discredited bullet lead science had been a crucial piece of the prosecution's evidence. As for 60 Minutes, I had been talking with producers there for about a year about possible collaborations and this project just made sense. It had strong visual elements and characters to go along with a compelling issue of justice and fairness.
Washington, D.C.: Do you think that laboratories are resistant to change that would help weed out bad science, such as more oversight, blind testing, or redundant independent testing?
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John Solomon: This is a good question, which is resonating in courts around the country as defense lawyers begin to identify flaws in many local crime labs work. While it is hard to make sweeping conclusions, the internal FBI documents we obtained provided some fascinating insight into why the FBI was so slow to end the science in the face of questions. As early as 1991, the FBI lab had done a study that raised questions about some of the assumptions being made about lead bullet matches. <h3>But rather than seeing the red flags, the scientists dismissed them as coincidences. In 2002 when one of the FBI's own retired metallurgist questioned the science, the FBI sought to drown out his concerns by flooding the forensic science journals with articles praising the bullet lead science.</h3> And even after the National Academy of Sciences concluded the science was flawed in both its statistics and testimony, many in the lab fought to continue its use or at least to minimize the problems when informing the public. When asked why, FBI officials told us that it was hard for scientists who practiced a particular science for decades in good faith to admit they were wrong. What should not have been so hard, the FBI officials said, was for the lab to do the right thing and to review all cases were misleading testimony was given. That didn't happen back in 2005. But now that these are issues are public, the FBi has belatedly agreed to do that......
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C'mon, Shani, and pan....we musn't let emotion turn us into...<h3>if we ignore the lack of integrity of the folks in charge of determining who the guilty are...</h3>what amounts to a revenge seeking lynch mob!
They are supposed to be impartially gathering and evaluating the evidence, while protecting the rights of the accused, and time after time, we find that they just don't effing care about the rights of the accused:
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...701681_pf.html
FBI's Forensic Test Full of Holes
Lee Wayne Hunt is one of hundreds of defendants whose convictions are in question now that FBI forensic evidence has been discredited.
By John Solomon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 18, 2007; A01
Hundreds of defendants sitting in prisons nationwide have been convicted with the help of an FBI forensic tool that was discarded more than two years ago. But the FBI lab has yet to take steps to alert the affected defendants or courts, even as the window for appealing convictions is closing, a joint investigation by The Washington Post and "60 Minutes" has found.
The science, known as comparative bullet-lead analysis, was first used after President John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963. The technique used chemistry to link crime-scene bullets to ones possessed by suspects on the theory that each batch of lead had a unique elemental makeup.
In 2004, however, the nation's most prestigious scientific body concluded that variations in the manufacturing process rendered the FBI's testimony about the science "unreliable and potentially misleading." Specifically, the National Academy of Sciences said that decades of FBI statements to jurors linking a particular bullet to those found in a suspect's gun or cartridge box were so overstated that such testimony should be considered "misleading under federal rules of evidence."
A year later, the bureau abandoned the analysis.
But the FBI lab has never gone back to determine how many times its scientists misled jurors. Internal memos show that the bureau's managers were aware by 2004 that testimony had been overstated in a large number of trials. In a smaller number of cases, the experts had made false matches based on a faulty statistical analysis of the elements contained in different lead samples, documents show.
"We cannot afford to be misleading to a jury," the lab director wrote to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III in late summer 2005 in a memo outlining why the bureau was abandoning the science. "We plan to discourage prosecutors from using our previous results in future prosecutions."
Despite those private concerns, the bureau told defense lawyers in a general letter dated Sept. 1, 2005, that although it was ending the technique, it "still firmly supports the scientific foundation of bullet lead analysis." And in at least two cases, the bureau has tried to help state prosecutors defend past convictions by using court filings that experts say are still misleading. The government has fought releasing the list of the estimated 2,500 cases over three decades in which it performed the analysis.
<h3>For the majority of affected prisoners, the typical two-to-four-year window to appeal their convictions based on new scientific evidence is closing.</h3>
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...so please, stop. No more eagerness and advocacy for giving more authority to thugs who take revenge on other thugs, IN THE NAME OF THE LAW!
The "justice daddy", just as the "War president"....righteous protectors and defenders of "good" against "evil", do not exist, even here in the United States of jesusland.
The "system" is too imperfect to advocate for penalties that cannot be mitigated in the event that the rights of the accused are found to be compromised. Abandon that core principle, and you abandon even that pretense that what you are seeking is justice, because if you allow an imperfect system the authority to determine who to execute, it is not justice that will be meted out.
Last edited by host; 11-27-2007 at 10:20 AM..
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