I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for being a reader of this blog. It is a real passion of mine. I cannot express how wonderful it makes me feel to help promote legitimate science in the courtroom. As I do every year, here is my tally for travel: In 2012, I […]
A New Year’s Resolution for us all: Better forensic science
I would love it if our collective societal New Year’s Resolution would be for us to demand more science in forensic science. What a wonderful world it would be. I have reprinted in its entirety a wonderful article about the state of forensic science today (Hat tip to Michael Romano for noticing the article and […]
Just because you could doesn’t mean you should: lawyer Ethics in the Forensic Science case
Quite honestly, I think that most criminal defense attorneys who handle cases are not substantively and truly competent to handle the case that they accept. That’s right over 50%. At first blush, I am sure that this assertion makes me seem like a pompous know-it-all and perhaps even a jerk, but that is not my […]
Loophole for Justice: Does a Combination of Prosecutorial Ignorance and Outsourcing of Forensic Services Matter?
One of the alarming trends I am seeing locally and even nationally is the employing of third party vendor laboratories to do forensic analysis. While I think it is a good idea to remove the forensic analysis from law enforcement per the NAS report recommendations, I fear that it is also done, in part, for […]
The Shame that is Dallas County Crime Lab-the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences, or SWIFS
It is great to live in a time of great awakening. It is marvelous to watch even the mainstream media do what it should have done decades ago: question. We must continue to question the sacred cow of forensic science. In doing so, it will only promote justice. Here is a great article on the […]
How maintaining scientific justice is like establishing and maintaining a path in the darkest jungle
One of my all time favorite books is Heart of Darkness written by Joseph Conrad. It is a short read but the combination of the first person narrative and the vivid imagery makes it unforgettable. The book is set in colonial times in Africa. The main character is a sailor by the name of Marlow. Marlow […]
Integration and the need for electronic data files
Boss Tweed (pictured below) was a notorious political crime boss in New York. He had a quote that was attributed to him: “Remember the first rule of politics. The ballots don’t make the results, the counters make the results. The counters – keep counting.” This is also true in chromatography. We have written in this […]
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