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. On May 11, 1978, newly engaged Carol Schmal and Lawrence Lionberg were found shot in the head. 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. In the face of brazen inaction by Scotland Yards sex crimes investigators, a drastic rejiggering of the force followed. In 16 cases, pieces of evidence were returned to the wrong rape kit, hindering 19 investigations. In 2014, a group of police officers was apprehended after executing a vicious extortion plot that involved kidnapping, threats, and even holding criminal suspects out of windows. Famous cases Bill Miner. More information about the 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. During the third trial, the defense presented evidence that the initial blood splatter expert had falsified his credentials and had no history of working with blood splatters. 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. 1. She had been shot in the head . It was Romanelli who uncovered Kerchers two cell phones in a garden nearby and she requested that the police break into Kerchers room. HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- The Houston Forensic Science Center says it fired a crime scene investigator after it discovered she violated policy and protocol, affecting two sexual assault cases. Throughout the investigation, there were issues with how evidence was secured. He did not perform a thorough psychiatric evaluation. People are being sentenced to jail for life or are being put on death row. All seven were examined and proved inconsistent with his findings. Notably, all three of the interviewed professors highly recommended a strong core of hard science courses to thrive in forensics careers. Todd Spitzer has dropped or reduced charges in 67 criminal cases as a result of. While multiple-source DNA, fingerprinting, and other forensic methods may be useful, they require further testing to establish both foundational and applied validity. Updated on May 25, 2022 When a person goes to trial for a crime, he or she is represented by a criminal defense attorney. Other mistakes included overlooking stains, botched chemical tests, and improperly processed rape kits.[3]. The overwhelming evidence of lab misconduct has already resulted in the dismissal of 200 drug cases and reduced sentences in 60 more. Simpsons Bronco truck, his driveway, the foyer of his home, and his bedroom. They lose lives. Several inquiries and protests have been made by experts within the legal system regarding the deplorable way that forensic evidence is being stored across the country. In that moment, Lowry single-handedly torpedoed the prosecutions of at least 28 alleged drug offenders, many of whom are thought to be part of dangerous gangs, and he potentially compromised an additional 150 cases. 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 . 1. The real killer was later identified. Forensic evidence is crucial to crime scene investigators. On April 27, a woman in eastern Brooklyn called the police. Photos were taken of critical evidence without scales in them to aid in measurement taking. He has been a guest speaker on numerous national radio and television stations and is a five time published author. Hearn said Pinholster, 58, is the only known example of evidence destruction in a case of a living death row inmate convicted in L.A. County. After spending 680 days in jail awaiting trial on murder and robbery charges, an Oklahoma City man was finally acquitted late last month. In many cases, security for the labs consisted of nothing more than a few cameras and a wire fence. Simpson We'd be remiss if we started our list anywhere other than the case dubbed the " trial of the century. The world watched every detail of the case on Court TV, which highlighted the many mistakes of forensics investigators as an epic fail. In a separate, more jarring, example of wanton duplicity, detective constable Ryan Coleman-Farrow, another member of the allegedly elite Sapphire unit, simply declined to pursue the claims of at least 12 women who reported sexual assaults between 2007 and 2010. Going in, the public were already influenced by Simpsons likeability and star power as a pro football player and beloved celebrity. This faith in Zains abilities sent untold numbers of innocent men behind bars, primarily for rape and murder charges. Two years later, having been convicted only of kidnapping, Bundy was preparing to stand . This was probably the only case on record where criminals trying to steal old forensics were caught using new forensics.[4]. One of them, Briton Meredith Kercher, was murdered on . Coleman is an author, screenwriter, university student, and tarot reader. 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). In 2008, Brooklyn cops were caught siphoning off drugs confiscated in arrests which, for many observers, would constitute a textbook case of crooked policing. Method used to test air for decomposition made its courtroom debut in this trial. Erroneous convictions can have immeasurable consequences for exonerees, original crime victims, and families. It is the defense attorney's job to speak for the defendant and to cast doubt on the prosecution's case. For aspiring forensics professionals, these documented abuses of the science are presented as cautionary tales. 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. The National Institute of Criminology, considered the most important forensic testing center in Belgium, was also hit by arsonists in 2016. Ironically, the work of a man determined to secure criminal convictions, regardless of innocence, may allow an apparently guilty man to go free. In the months that followed, investigators revealed a pattern of malfeasance and unprofessionalism that would tax and tarnish Delawares criminal proceedings. 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. Microscopic analysis can narrow down a suspects race, hair color, dye treatments, thickness, and many other characteristics, but it cannot determine if the hair is an exact match to a suspect. 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. Gibson claimed to have heard a female voice call out, Henry! before the fatal shots were fired. Simpson case can be found here. Doohkan worked for nine years at the Department of Public Health, processing more than 60,000 samples involving 34,000 defendants. A criminalist collects, documents, preserves, and examines the physical evidence at a crime scene, which could be something as huge as a bus, or as tiny as a pollen grain; criminologists, on the other hand, study why crimes occur, how they can be prevented, and the effects they have on a society. Simpson murder case. The new figures, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal the total number of people whose trials have ended or the charges against them dropped due to a failure to disclose evidence . B efore he became a true-crime celebrity, forensic scientist Henry Lee took the stand at a wildly bloody murder trial in Connecticut. Before mitochondrial testing, the hair of a suspect was tested using microscopic analysis, which shows if the hair has a similar appearance to hair taken from the scene of a crime. An additional 500 convictions are slated to be challenged with thousands more in the works. In West Virginia alone, Zain may have lied in as many as 182 different cases. Sheriff had investigator probe into evidence mishandling even though he had mishandled evidence O.C. Some costs, however, may be incalculable. The millionaire who gunned down the high-society architect. The prosecution had expert witnesses who testified that the evidence was often mishandled. In fact, she didnt even have the masters degree she claimed to have earned. 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. On September 10, 1904, Miner and two accomplices, later identified as William "Shorty" Dunn and Louis Colquhoun, were involved in the first train robbery in Canada. 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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. As in the Zhang case, network logs can be analyzed to identify mass movements or deletions of data and other suspect user activity. 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. But, despite even the presence of eyewitnesses who could attest to grotesque law enforcement misconduct, charges leveled against Baird and other officers were consistently dismissed as baseless until Philadelphia investigators and federal agents finally began pursuing the matter in 1991. Cases Where Digital Evidence Was Not Accepted. And, in that capacity, she seemingly set a bar for excellence that was prohibitively high. Cameron Todd Willingham A push for cheaper public cloud services might make it easier for hackers to view, delete, or steal critical forensic data in the future. Whatever the outcome, the jurors must feel that their decision is beyond a reasonable doubt. 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]. In the results-driven world of laboratory work, her virtually inhuman ability to amass test results placed Dookhan in a position of distinction. "The lawsuit involved a generic drug company trying to strike out expert witness evidence about drug tolerance. After 36 years of appeals, the evidence was finally located on the top shelf of a forensics storage room. Defence lawyers argued that it was to be expected that Knox would have used the knife while visiting Sollecito, her boyfriend at the time of the killing. Belgian prosecutors are angered over the lack of adequate security measures for scientific labs in their nation, especially since there was sufficient warning that the sites were vulnerable to attack. 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. In at least 26 cases, the technician missed biological evidence that could have been useful for a rape trial. In 2006, he faked DNA evidence that was used to solve the murder of Jessica OGrady. (Evans, 2003) This blatant falsification of a crime report, the IPCC found, was part of a concerted effort by senior officials in the Sapphire unit to improve the rate of solved rape cases in part by recording a higher number of non-offenses. Copyright 2022 Crime Museum, LLC - All Rights Reserved | Privacy Policy |. Blood was also found in O.J. The defense noted several items that had gone missing, including a vial of blood from OJ Simpson. Vendors camped at the site, selling balloons and soft drinks to the hundreds of visitors trampling around the crime scene. The first decision to uphold the admission of DNA evidence in s tate appellate court was in 1988; before that, DNA was thought of as too inconclusive.Now c ourts have determined that DNA identification theory, practice, and techniques are widely accepted among the scientific community and therefore valid as . This case is documented as the first to establish the modern law of negligence. The Sapphire unit was merged with the Metropolitan police forces child abuse division, and bolstered with 100 additional officers in what was essentially a vote of no confidence for what was supposed to be a world-class collection of crime solvers. Inside one of them, the server was discovered. The experts at the appeal court were scathing yesterday in their criticism of the reliability of that evidence. The large server contained vital evidence for multiple criminal cases. The son of a Sunday school teacher, a long-time law enforcement officer, and an honors graduate of the FBI Academy, Lowry was not exactly the spitting image of drug addiction. While the future of forensics methods is beyond the scope of this article, its important to remember examples where the collection or processing of evidence have failed. But, for residents of Douglas County, Nebraska, those three letters could just as easily stand for Criminal Subterfuge in Investigations thanks to disgraced David Kofoed, whose tenure as chief of the local CSI division was marred by the willful manipulation of DNA evidence in a series of murder cases. The person who drew the blood could only guess he had taken 8 mL; only 6 mL could be accounted for by the LAPD. And, in another case of negligence, Callery failed to fire a chemist who had failed required proficiency tests. On Monday, Rudy Guede, who has also been convicted and jailed for the 2007 murder, repeated his claim that the pair had carried out the killing. Prosecutors also rely on scientific evidence to establish and prove their cases during prosecution. In an article called " 8 Famous Faces Who Were Falsely Accused Of A Crime" has a case of a man named Dewey Bozella, who is a boxer, was accused of murdering a elderly woman in her apartment at the age of 18. 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. But thats only the beginning. If handled properly, forensics can make or break any trial against dangerous criminals. 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. 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. The collection and meticulous analysis of evidence arent easy processes and the techniques are still far from perfect. Unfortunately, Dookhan wasnt some laboratory wunderkind with a passion for drug offenses. In 2006, the lab rehired a forensic analyst who previously resigned under suspicion of falsifying data. When the prosecution presented hairs found in the back of Williamss car, Podlecki claimed they were consistent with the victims. There's a case out of British Columbia called Regina v Hamdan that goes into some detail on the lack of proper digital evidence collection. In reality, not all blood spatter can be seen with the naked eye. Once Meredith Kerchers room was thoroughly searched, police uncovered fingerprints and DNA belonging to Rudy Guede, who had gone on a date with the victim the night of her murder. Few questioned it when, in 2010, as her lab saw a drastic decrease in the number of drug analyses completed, Dookhans output skyrocketed, accounting for an astounding 31 percent of all the evidence processed by her lab10,933 samples in all. 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). He fled on foot and attempted to fight an officer. Wet items were also packaged before allowing them to dry, causing critical changes in evidence. Robinson was on-site at a Tucson facility in April 2018 when the FBI took the servers into custody pursuant to a federal warrant. The consequences of that complacency have been devastating for Massachusetts. They uncovered Marvin Simpsons genuine eyewitness account. Such evidence should have resulted in an open and shut case by todays standards but was not made clear enough to understand at the time. Death row inmates, however, lose more than time. This is a broad concept that can range from using excessive force, performing illegal searches, selective law . As a private contractor, he performed more than 3,000 autopsies in 41 jurisdictions spread out over West Texas. The grim implications of such a callous disregard for the law were clear: In order to improve the Sapphire units image, these three men were willing to deny victims justice and permit violent predators to roam free among the vulnerable. IDAHO, PETITIONER v. LAURA LEE WRIGHT. 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. And some of the labs forensic data is believed to have been falsified. There was about 1.5 mL of O.J. 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. He reported another death as homicide caused by blunt force trauma, which was revealed to be an accidental drowning.[9]. However, EDTA is also a chemical found naturally in human blood and chemicals such as paint. 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. Coupled with confessions from the murderers and DNA evidence, Williams, Adams, Rainge, and Jimerson were finally exonerated after 17 years in prison. This article explores five fascinating cases of fraud in forensics to underscore the importance of using scientifically valid and reliable methods in this growing career field. Testimony that hair . Wright (89-260), 497 U.S. 805 (1990) IDAHO v. WRIGHT. 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. 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. "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. Meanwhile, trees, grass, and rocks from the area were snatched up by onlookers to be sold as souvenirs of the tragic slaying. The victims were from one jurisdiction, but their bodies were found in another, leading to disagreements about which department should collect the forensic evidence. After pleading guilty to perjury, obstruction of justice, and evidence tampering, she received a prison sentence of three to five years, followed by two years of probation. 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. Joseph Sledge, for example, served 36 years for a crime in North Carolina, but he could have been out decades earlier if police hadnt misplaced evidence from his trial. grimm's geometric stacker famous cases where evidence was mishandled 3 Duke University Lacrosse Team. Sometimes it's forensic evidence and sometimes it's merely re-examining clues, but cold cases do occasionally get solved. 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. 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. 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. Two people were convicted and imprisoned for that brutal affair: Michael Kinge and his mother, Shirley. Mishandled Evidence Should Have Prompted a Mistrial. Forensic data storage is also a problem. 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. He could not prove his whereabouts during this time. Kercher, 21, from Coulsdon in Surrey, was found dead in a flat she shared with Knox and two Italian women. Over a span of 13 years, prosecutors in two states sought out Zains ostensibly expert opinions, never questioning the fact that he managed to produce evidence with a certainty that other lab technicians couldnt approach. Lauren. The discovery is the latest twist in one of New York's most famous cold cases, and it also revealed a major flaw in the way that evidence can be mishandled by one of the most prestigious police departments in the world. Gorkski, a Polish meat factory worker, is appealing his conviction for the murder of Shirley Finlay in Ballymena. A suspects laptop and cell phone can show evidence of a crime, motivation, or premeditation. Once the thieves discovered that the information was useless, they had no idea what to do with the server or how to abandon it without arousing suspicion. A series of arson attacks against forensic laboratories in Brussels has alerted the world to a huge security fail going on in Belgium. The security of LAPD storage and labs was also brought under scrutiny when it was discovered that some pieces of evidence had been accessed and altered by unauthorized personnel. California O.C. O.C. In 2015, the FBI admitted to decades of relying on faulty hair analysis in trials, a grave error in criminal proceedings. Preliminary testing revealed that the doctor had faked at least 100 of his autopsies, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. Although serial killer Ted Bundy was responsible for an estimated 30-plus murders, there was little physical evidence to connect him to the crimes when he was arrested in 1975. In 1989, the Harris family of Dryden, New York became the victims of a grisly murder. I can't find the actual judge's decision. During the June 2011 appeals trial, experts uncovered the numerous flaws in the forensic evidence levied against Knox and Sollecito. The reputation of Brooklyns officers has been doubly besmirched, as not only had they likely been arresting innocent people for years as a matter of convenience, but they covered up that behavior by casting themselves as heroic wrongdoers when, in reality, they were simply doing wrong. On July 22, 1933, he and another man kidnapped wealthy Oklahoma City oilman Charles Urschel.