Conference Themes.ppt

Conference Themes DH Kaye ASU College of Law School of Life Sciences In the Media Crime Labs Are Seriously Deficient, Report Says: National Academy of Science Says Only DNA Evidence Is Dependable – Pete Williams, NBC News Crime Labs and Dismal Science – NPR, On Point Crime Labs in Disarray Nationally; Reform, Independence Needed, Report Says – A.B.A.J. L. News Now Clueless ‘Science’ – Jennifer Mnookin, L.A. Times NRC Reports Mixed record of impact Committee on Medical Legal Problems, The Coroner and the Medical Examiner (1928) Coroners, “an anachronistic institution,” should be replaced with medical examiners More than half the states still have coroners offices Committee on Evaluation of Sound Spectrograms, On the Theory and Practice of Voice Identification (1979) “[T]he assumption that intraspeaker variability is less than . . . interspeaker variability . . . is not adequately supported by scientific theory and data” Limited impact on the admissibility of “voice prints” Committee on Ballistic Acoustics, Report (1982) Rejected the conclusion of a House Select Committee on Assassinations that “scientific acoustical evidence [a tape recording] establishes a high probability that two gunman fired at President John F. Kennedy” (the “grassy knoll” theory) No broader implications or policy recommendations Committee on DNA Technology in Forensic Science, DNA Technology in Forensic Science (1992) A DNA Advisory Board outside of law enforcement should review developments and promulgate standards Certification, accreditation, proficiency testing Congress required the FBI to appoint an external advisory board Other recommendations tended to be lost in the clamor over the “ceiling principle” for computing random-match probabilities Committee on DNA Technology in Forensic Science: An Update, The Evaluation of Forensic DNA Evidence (1996) Reiterated many of the 1992 recommendations on QC and QA But focused on population genetics and statistical issues Committee to Review the S